Welcome to the Big Careers Small Children Podcast. My name is Verena Hefti. I believe that no one should have to choose between becoming a CEO and enjoying their young children for much too long. Amazing people like I'm sure you listening right now have found themselves stuck on the career ladder when they have children and that leads to gender inequality in senior leadership because because those people don't progress to senior leadership and the same stale, often male, middle class people leading our organizations. We must change this together and I hope that many of you listening right now will progress to the most senior leadership roles that you like where you can make the decisions that make our world a better place. Outside of the podcast. I am the CEO and founder of the Social enterprise Leaders Plus. We exist to help working parents progress their careers to senior leadership in a way that works for you and for your families. We have free events and resources on leadersplus.org where you can download helpful toolkits such as on returning from maternity leave, share parental leave, securing a promotion, dealing with workload challenges, or managing as a dual career couple. We also have an award winning fellowship community which is global for working parents who have big dreams for their careers but don't want to sacrifice their family. You'll join an absolutely wonderful group of people, a very tight knit, supportive group of parents who have your back. Together. You'll explore what your career aspirations are and you'll get advice from senior leaders who are also working parents about how to achieve those aspirations. You'll get new ideas to combine your hopes for your careers with your hope for your family. And you are supported by people who are experiencing what you're experiencing yourself. I'm really delighted that a larger majority of our fellows have made tangible changes following the program, be that becoming more senior in their roles, working shorter hours, having better flexible working arrangement. They always impress me so much with the courage that they instill in each other to do what is right for them without apologizing for having a family or apologizing for wanting that top job. Details are on leadersplus.org/Fellowship. Today I'm chatting to Dan Reed about his story of showing up with his authentic self at work, about setting boundaries and about how he managed to progress his career whilst still being present with his young children. Enjoy the conversation.

Thank you so much for inviting me. So I am Dan Reed. I currently am head of Digital Servicing at Barclays for the Global Transaction Bank. So that's all around how do we provide excellent digital servicing platforms for small businesses right up to large corporates to basically self serve. I'm actually in a notice period, so I'm going to be moving roles, which I'm sure we'll come on to. And in my family is my wife Fiona, my 10 year old son Theo, and my 5 year old daughter Xanthi.

Lovely. What beautiful names. Can you share one thing that you used to believe about combining a big career with young children that you've changed your mind on?

So before we had. My wife and I had children and we met at university, so we've been together a long time. I. I thought in my early 20s, do I want to either double down on my career and kind of get that kick started and then we'll have kids later, or do I, and I say this and it probably will come out much worse than. I mean it. Do we kind of get kids out of the way and do that and then as they're a little bit older then double down and focus on the career? Probably in my kind of mid-30s, 30s to 40s. And that's something that I think I used to believe that that's the choice that I had to make. And I decided to do both at the same time, have kids relatively young and also push my career at the same time.

And how did that go? You thought at the time it wasn't possible, but how did it go in reality?

How did it go? And so on that at the time I didn't think it was possible. I think that's because that was the role modelling that I had growing up both in my household, but also just in wider society. It was very much and to some extent still is patriarchal. Men go out to work and women stay home and look after kids. And so that's what I thought. That's the route that we had to take. How I found it was incredibly hard. And the reason for that is because it was the time that my son was born, when my promotion started to happen relatively quickly. I got two promotions, the first one within 18 months and the second one within two years. So went from a analyst junior role to a senior manager within four years. And that was a long time ago. And that meant that I had to be. This is pre Covid. So you're working in offices a lot more. And I was working in London a lot. I don't live in London. I'm a two hour commute each way from Canary Wharf. So four hours round trip. And I was there more days than not. And as my son was growing up, I felt a bit like a weekend father and was really tired as well, because I was just commuting all the time. And that actually led to a lot of guilt, anxiety, feeling really selfish about, well, hang on, I'm pushing this career forward. I was really clear in my younger years that I wanted to have a family and keep that family together. My parents divorced when I was quite young. I was quite keen to book that trend and I saw a version of myself doing something that was at odds with how I wanted to set up my work and my career. So I really struggled with it. I ended up going to therapy for about 10 months just to kind of deal with that guilt and anxiety and that really, really helped. But then, and we can go into this in a little bit more detail, but it just kind of fell into place when I started being just authentically who I am. And pushing the work wasn't some horrible thing that I had to endure so that I could then live a life, but work was actually part of life and I enjoyed it. That really helped to then also set those boundaries and to know that if I was saying, for example, I'm leaving the office early to go to my son's Christmas play, it's not some excuse that I've got a dentist appointment, so no, I'm going to do this thing. And I found that that kind of open and honest authenticity has really helped make me feel like I'm a present father in my kids lives and a co parent with my wife as opposed to a second support. But also I truly think has actually helped my career as well, which was a little surprising. The number of career conversations that I've had where family has come up and that authenticity has played a big role in particularly moving into more very senior leadership roles.

Interesting you mentioned the words. It fell into place. I'm curious and just I guess for the listeners who, some of whom might feel they are in that place where there is this pressure and never ending guilt.

Yeah.

What happened for you there? What did you change if anything? Or was it literally just, oh, I don't know how it happened, but somehow it did.

When I say fell into place, that's probably me looking back with rose tinted glasses. What happened and the therapy was, was a huge catalyst for this is I'd got to the point where I wasn't really doing anything for myself in that. So I've got a lot of hobbies, a lot of activities and you know, I'd have a friend say to me, hey, do you want to come to Milton Keynes? We're going to go snowboarding for the evening and grab Some food. And I'd say I can't even ask my wife if that's okay to do because I'm never at home because I'm always working. And that's just one example. But it got to the point where I didn't feel like I could even go for a drink at the pub with a friend because how selfish of me, because when does my wife ever get any time? So anytime that I'm not working, I should be at home helping and giving her a break. But I never brought this up with her. So this was just all internal. And it kind of got to a boiling point where I almost. I wouldn't say I broke down, but I definitely burst into tears just in the middle of the office one day because I just, I just didn't know how to deal with all of this emotion. And so that was a real wake up call to start therapy. Which then led to very honest conversations with my wife, whose response is probably as you'd imagine. Why the hell have you not spoken to me about this? Of course you can go, go and do those that you're allowed a life as well. And it just felt like this huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders and that I could breathe again. And so that's when I started to, you know, not, not be super absent. But I wasn't as afraid to say, could I have some time for me? Because I was almost seeing that four hour commute. Well, I'm not, I'm not doing anything in that time. I'm watching something on Netflix, I'm reading a book. Surely that's my time. And so then my wife and I kind made sure that we both had time for ourselves and time for each other. So on a, on a Saturday morning when it was just my son, we'd wake up, I take him into town, we go get breakfast and I get a coffee and stuff and we just like take some toys to a little cafe and play. And that was great for me and him, but also for my wife. Like she had three hours just uninterrupted by herself to do whatever she wanted. And so by, I guess being honest with myself and also communicating and speaking very openly with a professional, that then started to make me realize that the blockers that I thought were there, I'd put there, no one else had put them there. And being able to work through that then, as I say, removed that kind of shroud so that I could start to feel comfortable with who I am and who I was and what I feel I stand for. Which then paved the way to, I guess, where I am now, which is just such a different. And this is, you know, I'm going back nearly. This is the course of nine, ten years, but just such a different place that I truly elated to be in.

And you mentioned setting boundaries at work. How did that come about?

So I live in Northampton, which for particularly international listeners that might not have an in depth UK geography knowledge, it's about 60 miles north of London, so it's relatively. It takes about an hour on the train to get in central London, but working in financial services, that's all in Canary Wharf, which is nearly another hour to get to. And again, pre Covid, what I found is living and working in Northampton, the centre of power of those leaders has often been in London. So I've often had to spend time in London. And when I was then going down three or four days a week, that just got too much. And so part of me wanted to be there because it was the hubbub and it was fun and it was exciting. But then what I got to was a re. And again, pre Covid, a really nice working pattern where I said, I'll do two days in the Northampton office, which is about 20 minutes drive from where I live, I'll do two days in London and I'll do one day from home and obviously I'll flex it as needed on an ad hoc basis. But that is generally my setup. And this was around 2017, 2018. That boundary was the best thing that happened because it meant that then my London days was super packed. You know, sometimes the laptop wasn't getting open because all I was doing was meeting people, taking notes, catching up, doing that. Northampton was my kind of get work done days. But also most of my team, my actual team were based in Northampton so it was one to ones and you know, relationship building with wider stakeholders. And then my day from home was just deep thinking strategy, but also putting a wash on and taking my son to school. So that when the weekend came around, we weren't spending five or six hours doing chores, we're actually having a weekend. And then obviously Covid came along and we're all familiar with how that played out. But I think that was the biggest boundary for me was just to say, I really want, you know, the tagline that I used to use to try and sum this up is my career is super important, but being a dad is also super important. So yes, I want to go to Germany for that meeting, but I also want to do the school run, like not on the same day. But that kind of ethos don't think that either isn't important because what you're seeing is the other being important. To me, they're both incredibly important.

I'm so glad that you're challenging the status quo. That's exactly why I set up our social enterprise. It's exactly this idea that actually we should be able to do it differently and we shouldn't have to have that choice. But the issue is, I guess we don't have a blueprint yet of how to do both. Which is why it's so important to have people like you who came through it in their own riddly way sharing the stories and get people to think about what might work for them. I was intrigued by that authenticity point and that you actually said how it helped you to get promotions. I have to say I was a bit surprised by that and curious. Can you tell me more about it?

Yeah, I can give you one very specific example. So I work at Barclays. It's actually my second time at Barclays. I was there for about eight years. I then left and then I came back and I'm leaving again. But the first time that I left was to go and work for Adobe to do strategic consultancy. And I'd gone through a series of interviews and presentations and all of that good stuff. And then the final interview was with the big super sales guy, the guy called Mark. And I remember sitting down with him and the first thing he said to me is obviously, hi, Dan, thanks, thanks for being here. He said, dan, I must say I've seen everything that you do with career dad, which is something that I used to be very, very involved in a few years ago, which was just this notion of I want to have a career, but I also want to be a dad. He said, I absolutely love it. My kids are much older now, but everything that you say really resonates. I wish that I'd had the equivalent years and years ago. So just let's talk about that for a little bit and how great, because it was a really good way to build rapport. It's shown that he done a little bit of work and looked into who I am and what was important to me. But it was really easy for me to get across my values of work is clearly important. That's why I talk about the career side of it. That's not at the expense of the dad side of it. And that is also really, really important. So when my normal calendar, you know, my work day, I put in meetings or events with Myself that are picking the kids up, going to school, parents evening or going for a run, you know, whatever it is, because I want to, I don't want to hide these things. This is life, this is where I am. And if you can't get hold of me because I'm on a treadmill, this is why I'll be back in 15 minutes. But that was a really specific example of someone saying, I see what you're doing, it really resonates with me. But also the fact that you're doing it gives me insight into who you are and that's the type of person that we want at our company.

And to translate this story for the listener, sorry, that sounded more authoritarian than I meant. But I'm interested. Just what are the implications for it if a listener is listening to this and thinks, well, actually I would like to use my life, both being a parent and the leader, I would like to use that to also shape my career in a positive way. Is there any practical advice that you can think of?

There's a few things I'd say and it's easy for me to say and also slightly easy for me to do because I've done it for so long. If you're starting, it may be harder, but the biggest thing I'd say is just start to be unashamedly vocal about what it is that you're doing in your career from a family perspective, but also vice versa. And what I mean by that is I really, really dislike the whole 9 to 5 concept or 8 to 6, or whatever it is that people work because there is no way I can switch off that part of my brain to do with family between nine and five and there's absolutely no way that I can switch off that work bit between then 5 and 9. And so for me it's all about ebbs and flows. So I will be checking emails while I'm having breakfast, but then I'll also be going to do the school pickup and in the summer holidays going to the ice cream parlor with the kids at 3:00, half four, you know, in the afternoon. So it's have a real think individually about what is important to you and then where are you now and how big is that gap? And in an ideal utopian world, what would need to happen to be able to bridge that gap? So if it is, for example, I would love to go to more of my kids things at school, but feel like I can't. Okay, so what would need to happen to be able to make you feel like you can and would that be a conversation with a line manager? Would that be seeing and hearing from role models or other people at organizations doing the same thing? And when you know what that gap is. And I think this is something that's often forgotten. Who are the younger generation coming up who might be looking at you and seeing, well, actually if they just role modelled a little bit more and then that person's wanting to see their superiors role model a bit more and they might be wanting to see their superiors role model a little bit more. So it's what can I do that I feel comfortable with that is meaningful and authentic to me to demonstrate that I'm willing to go against what has been the traditional norm. And it could be as simple as on a Thursday, I don't have any meetings before 9:30 because I like to go swimming. And I'm just going to tell my team that.

Or if you don't have a team, I'm just going to tell people I work with, please don't put a meeting in before 9:30 because I'll be getting dried and dressed at the swimming pool. How great is that?

Absolutely. I've been swimming this morning as we speak. So your example resonates very good. So you've been very vocal. When someone checks you out on LinkedIn, then they will see that this is what you stand for. Have you ever had a backlash and people actually judging you and not giving you opportunities?

Well, so not giving opportunities, I don't know. I've definitely had because I've been. Before COVID I was a huge, flexible, working advocate. And that's where some of my more probably controversial posts on LinkedIn would go viral. Like set several examples of, you know, between 2 and 10 million views viral. And I would get comments from particular actually some senior males at work who would say, what's your angle here? Or oh, here he is, Dan Reed, the brand is in the office and things like that. And I'd like to think it was meant in good humor. I think some of it was, some of it wasn't. I did have a line manager once say to me, just be careful that you don't become a caricature of yourself. Think about the message and the brand that you're putting out there. And I thought, well, of course I am, that's why I'm doing this. It's just that my version of what I think is good is different to you and that's fine. So it's something that I have dealt with that pushback and I've also had completely Random people as well. Like some of the comments I used to get on LinkedIn and some of the private messages as well were pretty abhorrent and very just not nice to read. How I dealt with that is. And again, I kind of have a romantic view of the world. So I think that no happy person wants to try and make someone else feel bad. So if someone is trying to make someone feel bad, that's actually more about them than it is about the person. So there was actually one individual who used to really, over the course of months, used to leave the most hurtful and hateful comments. And I ended up getting into a private direct message with him over LinkedIn just to check he was okay because it was just so raw. And again, that's not everyone's approach. But yeah, I've definitely had to deal with that kind of backlash and it did actually stop me posting for a while on LinkedIn for about nine months or so because I just thought, I don't want to deal with this. And then when I did start posting again and the comments came in, I'm so glad that you're back and that is really refreshing. And I thought, yes, screw everyone else who doesn't agree with this. Like, if this is important to me, that should be the most important factor as to whether I do this or not, not how someone might perceive me.

And can you remind listeners or what a period where you've been really vocal about actually wanting both to be a present dad and to have an ambitious career. What was the impact on your career? So you did mention that you did get two promotions. Where are you now compared to where you started?

Oh yeah. And I think I'll package up the me being vocal with the whole family, flexible working thing. I'll package that along with being my authentic self. When I started the particularly banking, when I started the corporate world, I thought I had to be this quote unquote corporate face. What you can't see, and obviously listeners can't see, is I'm absolutely covered in tattoos. I'm an ex rock and roller and my kind of personality is I'm a little bit goofy and a little bit off the wall, but I take my work incredibly seriously. So again, it's, you know, I don't take myself very seriously. But my work and what we achieve, I'm very passionate about and achieving high performing results. And so when I got comfortable with, well, I'll let the work speak for myself and I will just be who I am. That almost opened up the door for me to go yeah, okay. Actually, and this is me and my family and this is what's important. So if I package that together I would then say that was the turning point for my career to take off. So up until that point, yeah, my background's marketing, so my degree, master's marketing, English related. I'd done entry level marketing assistant roles, marketing exec roles that had been over the course of maybe three to five years. I then joined Barclays and in a kind of junior exec role, really felt I could be myself very quickly there and as I say, within 18 months had a promotion to a managerial role. Two years later had a promotion to a senior manager role. Now I've done a number of head of roles within both marketing and digital space and now and again throughout all this time have been very authentically me both internally and externally. And now just about to start a role with KPMG as their new director of digital marketing and technology transformation for the uk. So a huge role. Super, super excited about that. But again, I remember one of the final interviews and it was a presentation, 10 minute presentation and I was kind of advised that eight of those 10 minutes should be about who you are as a person, what is important to you, morals, ethics, who is Dan? And I thought I've had a lot of practice at this, I feel like I can hit the mark. And again the feedback, obviously yes, I was offered the job which was great, but the feedback was we love how authentic you are and we know that Dan, who we meet by the coffee machine is going to be Dan who is in the meeting, who is presenting to the board or you know, whatever it is, it's the same person. So I, whether family is your thing, whether it's health and fitness, whatever your thing is, I think it's really hard to try and truncate yourself into these different people. Just bring your whole self and that allows you to focus your energy on what you want to do instead of how do I have to act in front of certain people.

That's really interesting and I think it would be fascinating now you've been quite a while at Barclays to see how you're going to take that into a new organization with a different culture. So we have a fellowship program with a community of leaders who also have children, who support each other, who have mentors and go through a nine month program to help progress their career. But in a way that isn't about just sticking to the breadwinner, you know, working hundred hours a week approach, but one topic that comes up again and again Is at that moment of changing jobs is a real opportunity to shape how your work life is going to be.

Yeah.

And at the same time, a new job. I don't know how you found it, but most of my new jobs are always in the first three months. It's really tough. It's hard.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just how are you approaching this? How are you setting yourself up? Well, and if you'd rather cut this out and pretend I've never asked.

No, it's fine. One thing that I am eternally grateful for is that my wife and I are such a team. And so when I told her that I've been offered the job and she said, oh, you did it. You made it. And I said, no, no, we did it. Like, I would not be able to do what I do and be on where I'm at without her full support and partnership. So. And I, you know, for full disclosure, she works part time. She works three days a week. And that really helps what we want as a. As a family. I think where I have this real drive for career as well as family. She wants a job that she can go into, do a really good job and be really proud of that work that she does. But she is not, and she's much smarter than I. She's just not interested in kind of climbing that career ladder. So our setup really works for us. But I also do not take for granted what that also helps me and allows me.

Could you share with our listeners three practical pieces of advice that someone who is listening, who is a new or soon to be, that could apply as they're trying to navigate both that father role and their big hopes for their careers?

Yeah, I will do my best. And firstly, I'd say, and I've just had someone in the wider team who's about to become a father. And he said to me yesterday in the office, what's your number one piece of advice about becoming a dad? And I said, my number one piece of advice is that everyone will have an opinion on how you should parent your child. And most of them unsolicited. Basically, screw what anyone else tells you and do whatever works for you because there's going to be a ton of different ways that you can do it. So that that would be my main piece of advice is don't do anything just because someone tells you that that's how they did it. I think as well, in a work capacity, it's hard, but try and find your tribe, try and find other parents, other dads who want to help. And there are some dads. I tried this very early on and there were some dads that told me, just suck it up. This is what life is like now. That doesn't really help. So just try and find those people that want to support you. And I'm a real big fan of parental mentoring in the workplace. It's something that I don't think he's done enough and something that KPMG in particular, I'm going to be, if it doesn't exist, I'm going to be very vocal about getting it set up. So that is a really good opportunity. And thirdly, I'd say you're going to get things wrong and you're going to feel like you're letting work down or that you're letting your family down. Potentially at some point you might feel one of those two things and just give yourself a bit of a break. And that's where I think talking either with a professional or with a group of peers and particularly your partner, is really important. Just to vocalize what's going on in your head and try and make sense of that. Because the echo chamber inside one's head can be one of the most terrifying places to be.

I could not agree more and thank you for saying all these things. If someone listening is looking for a mentor who is also a senior leader and believes in the things that we just talked about and has children, then have a look at the Leaders plus Fellowship or one of our other programs because I think that's quite a valuable thing. And also there are lots of places where you can get support. Maybe you're lucky enough that you have some amazing senior leaders in your NCT group. Should you do something like NCT again? With Leaders plus Fellowship you can get groups of people who want to have big careers who really are ambitious but also have children. I'm just thinking. Or obviously your workplace parent networks, if they do exist, is a great place. Or just asking people for a one off coffee chat if you know there's a senior leader. That's a very useful way of starting a mentoring conversation because once that coffee chat has gone well, you can then say, oh, would you mind being my mentor for six months? And you'd be surprised how many people say yes, absolutely. If people want to connect with you, find out more about you, where should they go?

So LinkedIn more than happy if people just. If people type Dan Reed Career dad, that's probably the easiest way. Dan Reed Barclays if it's after March. Dan Reed KPMG. But yeah, LinkedIn is the easiest place and that would be read R double ed. And also if people are TikTok fans, Dan Reid, career dad is also on TikTok with about 42,000 followers, so there is definitely a need to talk about this in the TikTok space as well.

Excellent. Well, I might have to then overcome my aversion to the TikTok and have have a, have a look. Thank you so much for everything you do. It's been very inspiring. I shall be in contact and try to headhunt you as a senior leader mentor. I know you might say no because you are busy with your new exciting move and best of luck with the move.

Thank you so much. Yeah, definitely. That sounds really interesting so we'd love to stay in touch on that.

Fabulous. I really appreciate you listening. Thank you so much and I always love to hear from our listeners. If you want to connect with me on LinkedIn, just go to Verina Hefti and I'd be delighted to hear your feedback and your suggestions or just have you say hi. Likewise, if you do feel passionately about about gender equality and you want to support a female led podcast, then please do leave a review and share it with a friend. Just because at the moment podcasting is still a very very male dominated environment. Most of the top charting podcasts are led by men. I really love all the people who've joined from the podcast our fellowship program and if you want to do the same then please head over to leadersplus.org/Fellowship in order to get access to a community of support to help you combine ambitious career with young children together with people who have your back. See you next week.