Leadership and work-life balance

Being able to balance work and every day life isn’t a walk in the park but there are women who have defied the odds and redefined what it means to achieve a work-life balance and remain at the top of their game.

Last Saturday in Dar es Salaam, an event was organised under the Women Will initiative by Google’s Business Group at Safe Space with the theme of Leadership and redefining work-life balance for the modern working woman in Africa, I had a chat with these three women who shared their stories.

Rita Tarimo

Rita Tarimo is a human resource manager for AIM Group, a Marketing and Advertising agency. She also partners with a friend to run a school and has authored “The Color of Life” book. Aside from that, she also runs a talk show on YouTube that is also shared on her other social media pages and has been impactful to many a people, the show is graced by guest speakers as well who share topics on personal growth, financial literacy, career and relationships.

On leadership at the work place, Ms Tarimo shared the challenges that she faces in her work place as a human resource manager. She talked about the lack of enough creativity from professionals and a lack of confidence from prospective job employees, underpayment at the work place, among others.

The discrimination of women in the workplace has also been an obstacle hindering them from executing their duties as required. Ms Tarimo narrated an incident where a male colleague blocked her from addressing a pending issue in a board meeting by telling her to go fix her “marital problems first and then she could be in a position to handle an office of employees”.

Because that was meant to be a distraction, she never fought back but politely told him to let her finish what she was addressing.

These incidents are common and clearly depict the struggles women go through in leadership positions while still expected to perform efficiently in all their roles and responsibilities at the same time.

That said, Ms Tarimo enlightens us on the importance of identifying oneself for who we really are, what we are capable of and our utmost strengths so that no one distracts us.

In making the workplace a better place, Ms Tarimo creates a safe space for all of her fellow colleagues where she allows them room to make mistakes, to dress as they please and to be themselves .

Family

Being a mother, an HR personnel, an author, speaker and co-owner of a school, she priotizes her activities, while holding tight to her daily mantra along the way “if there’s a barrier that blocks me from my lifes’ agenda, it has to go, no matter what that is”.

She believes in questioning God’s divine intervention on one’s purpose.

She dismissed the idea of ever having a balance between work and everyday life saying we can only attend to one activity at a time.

We have to let go of the guilt especially as mothers because work on its own is part of life, family is part of life, friends and other fun activities are part of life, too.

“Because I need to work to provide for my family, I also need my family to enjoy the outcome of my work. I also need self-time for spiritual connection,” she says adding that “I take one day at a time.”

She then shared her magical secrets to being content in life without trying to achieve the balance. First there are priorities that she sets, then she decides to trust her judgment on whatever that which she chooses to do at the time and lastly finding peace in between all of that.

For instance, she talked about being able to choose to attend to the event while her son was ailing back at home, who also needed to be attended to as well. Her golden rule is trusting your judgment on what you priotise and finding peace in between.

Grace Matata

Grace Matata is a renowned singer and song writer and a mother to a 5-year-old son.

She talks about stage fright at work and how she battles that by practise and and positive affirmation.

“Wherever am infront of people, I remind myself that they came to see me and receive what I came to offer, I therefore focus on myself and don’t think what others think of me,” she says.

“My art has to show and present me in a way that am woman enough to fail and that shouldn’t affect my worth,” she continues.

She says that people shouldn’t think that celebrities are perfect individuals just because they are celebrities. They also don’t have it all together even though the public expects them to be perfect .

“Celebrities should be given room to make mistakes and not be judged, we shouldn’t be in pressure to display perfection,” she urges.

As for her relationships, they have been a roller coaster with several incidences where a patner doesn’t conform to her values as an entertainer but instead worries that his parents won’t be welcoming to her, she talks about having the privilege to choose to her advantage over a partner who doesn’t blend into her work and life in general.

She shares with us how she balances work and life where she borrowed a leaf from her mother who was a single parent with all the responsibiliies as a mother and a father to her and her siblings.

Her mother taught her about priorities, she praised her mother as a woman who wore so many hats in the family and was also able to show up for everyone of them at the same time.

“Your work is an extension of you are and a partner shouldn’t use that against you, choosing a partner who understands you and your career is imperative and dropping your career or who you are for a partner is basically accommodating their insecurities,’’ she says.

Grace says having role models have paved way for her in the music industry. She says young women and girls should learn and have set principles on who a role model should be and what they should expect from one due to the fact that the society has less or no proper role models today.

Salha Kibwana

She runs multiple companies; a food cutlery business at nekofoods and a PR company known as Las Consultancy. She also spends her time inspiring young women through her Africa initiative which is a great network of women and young girls.

She works with a small team of people, who are easy to manage and who share ideas for the smooth running of their activities. Even though her business pitches most of the times are secure good deals, some male clients at times make sexual advances which makes her uncomfortable.

Her mother, on the other hand, isn’t for the idea of her running a business but wishes she could be employed.

Salha urges women networking event organizers to extend the help to the women who are less privileged financially instead of just awarding the already successful and established ones every day.

“They should follow up and do some ground work on all those women they give awards to, women networking events should actually help the real women with needs,” Salha says.

To sum it up, the three women interviewed, and others who attended the Google event at Safe Space were of the view that there is the need to understand the setting of of an organisation and live up to the standards, policies, mission and vision.

The audience had alot to say on women conforming to the society standards on work-life balance but agreed they should instead set their own terms on work and every day life.

The women were reminded to believe in themselves and not just follow suit to other peoples’ ways of living just because they are in the spotlight and have all the attention.

The society still expects women to hide emotions, tuck them away and hide their problems.

They should be given room to make mistakes and to learn from them and not conform to society standards hence subjecting themselves to labels which make them unable to break glass ceiling at the work place and be their best selves.

Outdated beliefs and society expectations shouldn’t stop women from choosing certain careers.