Fantastic Tips For Negotiating Flexible Working With A Stubborn Boss

There is little to match the exuberance or ecstatic feelings that you and your whole family share when a new arrival is on the way. You will be beside yourself with joy as an expectant mother and you can be sure that this will be one of the finest moments of your family’s life.

Friends and acquaintances will also be over the moon and will all look forward to the big day with much anticipation.

As your feelings of happiness know no bounds, you would be forgiven for thinking that all the World would be happy for you as well and while this is largely the case, certain elements of negativity may, however, still arise.

Surely, your boss is happy for you, but he or she may not be on quite the same level as everyone else and be particularly concerned with the operation of the business. You may soon come to realise that the business is classified squarely in first position in the eyes of your boss and if you want to consider flexible working hours as you go forward, you are going to have to be really persuasive.

If your boss is something of a dinosaur when it comes to flexibility in these situations, then you will have to be creative if not very persuasive.

Seek out a co-worker or friend who has been in the position that you are in now and sit down to have a heart-to-heart conversation with her, to see how the two-way communication with her boss was initiated and how the situation panned out. Now is the time to do a lot of research and to find what solutions could be available to you, according to other friends or acquaintances in other professions or industries.

Your creativity may well unveil to you the idea of working from home or telecommuting, especially if you are forward thinking. As companies around the World realise that they need to save on their overheads, this concept is becoming more and more acceptable. If the kind of work you do supports this, all the better.

Don’t forget, that you must work out what would be the ideal situation for you, first and foremost. In other words, be careful what you wish for!

At the top of your list should be an ideal scenario, but you should also have options available in a less-than-perfect situation. Look at your home commitments first before asking for something you might not be able to accommodate.

You should always be careful when you are discussing options with colleagues and you might have to exercise some strategy. If you all collectively share a workload, see how you could come up with ideas to divide the work accordingly, giving you a more flexible schedule. You must be more than willing to pull your weight, of course, and before you consider approaching others or your boss with the idea, be fully confident that it will be a win/win/win position for everybody.

If your job essentially allows you to complete certain tasks regardless of time, or what used to be known as a “job and finish” situation, determine whether you would be able to do this during your personal time as part of a newly revised schedule.

If you look at your boss as a dinosaur, maybe you can cause him or her to stop chewing the vegetation for a moment and realise that you can be equally as productive, if not more so, by working this more flexible schedule.

Contemplate online life coaching as a valuable source of research. Thankfully, coaching for women can always help by looking at a variety of situations and suggesting options. This is far from being the private domain of executives or sports players and you should turn to professional coaching, as well!

Amanda Alexander, Director of Coaching Mums, helps pressure-cooked, stressed working mums who long for more hours in the day. Through her coaching programmes and online life coaching courses, Amanda shows mums how to create fulfilling and successful lives. For your simple 5 step guide to balance as a working mum, download our free eBook today!