Esther's blog: Stress in the City and how to alleviate it, plus boobs in a boys’ club.

At the beginning of last week my attention was very much focused on delivering a seminar for Citymothers on managing stress, with two psychologists Dr Fran Smith and Dr Sara Chaudry, both distinguished practitioners working in public and private sectors.  The seminar was called “Stress:  strategies for thriving in the City” and was the second of a pair we gave on the topic.  Each time the seminar room was full and there was a waiting list.  When you type “stress” in your browser, the internet is replete with articles, advice, headlines, leaping at you:  “Stress, the 21^st Century epidemic”, and so on.  Whilst the last couple of decades of the 20^th century educated people to improve their physical health, with step classes and Jane Fonda workouts, the current century is preoccupied with the mind, due amongst other things to the explosion of research findings in neuroscience and psychology and the ever increasing pace of life created by the march of technology.  Physical exercise is still considered important, but it is now seen in the context of overall mental and physical wellbeing.  In response, in many of our offices you will find workshops on mindfulness, yoga classes and nice green plants.  In short, managing stress is a constant issue in our working lives.  So much so that virtually all of the seminars and talks Citymothers puts on are in some way related to this topic, hence Louisa’s and my idea for a couple of seminars specifically dealing with it.

Psychologists, like Fran and Sara, specialising in assisting people who have moved from the worried well towards burn out, say that often the crossing of that line occurs when we’ve been hanging on my our fingernails and then just one extra thing—the birth of a child, the office reorg, the request to travel abroad—happens.  The job of the coaching professional includes helping people to keep on the right side of that line. But before resorting to professional assistance of whatever kind, Citymothers as you know offers two other kinds of support, through the Citymothers mentoring scheme and simply by offering opportunities for networking between our members at each of our speaker events and seminars.   I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard how valuable people find it to meet up with others who are in the same position as they are, as working parents, and be able to compare notes and just talk together.  I am now beginning of the process of evaluating the mentoring scheme, and it will be interesting to see where participants think it sits along the spectrum of sources of help I’ve mentioned in this paragraph.  Personally I think different people benefit from different interventions at different time.  Horses for courses, as the City says--and it took me years to realise this phrase wasn’t referring to their dietary preferences.

Finally to end on a lighter note, maybe.  Some of you may recall the brief frenzy that gripped the papers on the day it appeared that the Sun was planning to stop its page three topless model.  That night I was invited to dine at a Gentleman’s club in the City, which is still open only to men as full members.  I accepted on the understanding that I would be allowed to express my views on their membership during the dinner.  In my thank you afterwards to my host, I wrote: “if we have reached the day when we get boobs off page three, it must be possible also get boobs properly integrated into your club rather than being merely trophy items”.  My host is still speaking to me and is apparently working on integration despite the Sun’s subsequent entrenchment, but as far as I’m concerned this segregation is a symbol of what still needs changing in the City, for the benefit of us all not just women, and putting boobs on page three is arguably just a more vulgar manifestation of the same problem.  I spend so much time now dealing with women in business and the professions seeking advancement to senior positions, and the key thing that is identified as stopping them is the sense the do not move in the same circles as the men who still largely hold those senior positions.  How many full members of these Gentlemen’s clubs could give a leg up to aspiring members of the 30 percent club, and have a jolly interesting conversation at the same time , if they simply talked together with them as equals in their currently strictly men only bar, I wonder?  Does anyone else out there think these things matter, too?

Have a good, and hopefully not too stressful week!

Esther is a member of the Citymothers Steering Committee and runs the Citymothers mentoring scheme. She trained and first made her living as a musician and then worked for over two decades in the City, becoming a partner in her law firm. She now combines legal consultancy, executive coaching, performing the piano, teaching and two non-executive Board positions in what seems to have turned into a third, portfolio career.