How Dual Career Couples Can Thrive at Work and Home

Because it's not one person's issue to solve alone

Look around at the “guides” for working parents. You’ll find books for working moms about how to juggle it all, then recover with rosé all day.  Working dads are mainly provided with guides on how to teach your kids about finance, and how to stay close to your kids after a divorce. Working family caregivers who provide care for a sibling, spouse, parent or in-law are usually not even recognized as also wanting big, bold professional lives. Enough!

This one hour workshop fundamentally reframes the challenge of being a “working parent/ caregiver” as an opportunity for both working partners to engage strategically to move towards their shared life vision. At the core is a tool to help them consider what each person can do both at home and in their own workplaces to create a sustainable path to their career and life goals.   

Participants leave the workshop with a new understanding of the three key transitions all dual career couples face, a new set of tools and resources to use with their partner to design their work and home lives together, experience experimenting with a specific tool and an invitation to their partner to follow up on it together after the workshop. 

After the workshop, participants receive a resource guide that includes more experiments to do with their partner and information for their partner to share in their own workplaces (because we know the best scenario is when both partners work for employers who are supportive of dual career couples.)

The workshop is designed for all types of current and future working caregivers, and is inclusive of all genders, generations, sexual orientations, and caregiving scenarios for children and adults. Caregivers who do not currently have a partner can also use the content and resources to strengthen their support networks at home and work.  The workshop can be offered in-person or via videoconference.

An hour that can change lives and retain leaders

The Signature Workshop covers three core topics:

1. Get Real.  Look Hard at Your Context. 

Check your own individual biases and assumptions.  Identify where you are as a couple in the set of key transitions all dual career couples face. The tools in this topic area can provoke deeper conversations about your values as an individual and a couple to ensure they are aligned.

2. Get Inspired. Look Up to See Your Life Vision.

Pull up from the daily grind to envision your career goals and your life goals. First do this as individuals, then as a couple.  The tools in this topic area can show where couples have clear alignment or predictable tensions, and can identify areas where one partner is acting “small” in ways they assume help their partner-- both at home and at work.

3. Get Grounded. Tame the Logistics Monster and Share the Emotional Labor.

The daily logistics and emotional labor are inevitably where the rubber meets the road for dual career couples. The tools in this topic area can help both partners map a much wider set of support than most assume are available, determine what each person can do at work and at home to build more support, and create “just enough” of a plan. The Murphy’s Law of Dual Working Couples is that if you craft a highly detailed, “equal” plan you are bound to both have urgent work travel on the same night. So think of your plan not as a contract, but as a touchstone for the conversations about how to juggle what life throws at you. Together.