#031 Intentional Interludes | Thea Weeks

Thea Weeks, guest · [02:01]I really believe, and, and I mean, I can only speak about my own lived experience. In my instance, it was different seasons. So at the start, I've always been, very driven, followed the standard path in terms of studies and career and being hugely committed, and I never took a gap year as a young student or just after I matriculated. So early in my career, I studied, I continued advanced studies, and then worked extensive hours, and within the first seven years, I thought, you know what, I actually want to plow back, and I want to do volunteer NGO type of work. I really want to give back what I've learned. I want to plow back and invest. so that was the one break, which ended up being a five-year break and an investment really in a different sphere. And then the second break was when I expected my son, and I decided that at the time I was spending extensive times, you know, visiting different sites, various areas in Africa, traveling extensively, which is really lovely if you're young and you have that flexibility, but when you have a child, I think I wanted to be able to just focus on this newborn baby and to be able to invest without the burden of feeling that I'm letting the team down because I can't travel extensively. And then the last opportunity came where I was traveling in Cameroon for a project. I really, really felt ill, and, at that time I thought, you know what, I'm not going to burden the client, the staff, I'm not even going to tell anybody I'm feeling horribly ill. I will travel back to South Africa and see a doctor here, not thinking that if you have such high levels of fever and inflammation and infection that you should actually not be traveling, and I lost hearing in my left ear and then also impacted hearing in my right ear. So I had to adjust to the fact that mid-career you're sort of at your peak, and suddenly you have a disability. I used to engage and have like a thousand people in one go, sometimes up to five thousand at different events or public participation meetings or conferences, et cetera, and suddenly you can't hear, and you just feel that your career has come to an absolute end. How can you be in stakeholder engagement or engage at that level if you can't even Such an board meeting and hear the conversation. So yes, I took three different breaks in my career for different reasons.

Thea Weeks, guest · [06:38]But to come back to your question, did I feel in any of those three instances that I should go the sabbatical route? I think number one, with government at that stage, I don't think that was an option. At the time, I think there was room for people that would study, you know, let's say I wanted to do my PhD, there would be room for that especially. But I wanted to have a clear break and be able to do this and come back on my own terms. The second was with my son. As I said, you know, I traveled extensively in Africa, but I did not want to leave a baby. Even after four months of maternity leave, I did not want to have that burden of having to travel or pause it for a year and then go back to that level of travel. I actually resigned and never took maternity leave, told them that I really value this time. It's a new season. I will always be committed. I will always be loyal, but I really need to take this space alone. And even if I work as an independent consultant, I would do so, but I really want to value and invest in this time. And what, you know, my son was five days old when they phoned and said, Batia, can you just review this or can you look at this? And in all honesty, I, when my son slept, I was looking at documents and reviewing documents and actually continuing, but in my terms, when it was convenient, when it fit around my personal circumstances. In the last instance, when I lost my hearing, I think of all three breaks suddenly being labeled with a disability, battling in the workplace, battling in meetings, battling in open plane, place settings, because you suddenly have a hearing aid that is picking up literally everything. If somebody is sitting next to you stirring their teacup, you know, that is elevated and nuanced rather than people having a conversation. So that was the most difficult break for me, and I know from a company perspective, they would have given me time to address, to work, you know, with the occupational therapist. But at the time, I was working on the trans-atlantic pipeline, working extensively with a team in Albania and in Europe, and I just felt that I would rather pause my career, adjust, Look at tools, resources, different ways of working, and they encircle back. But I do understand that a lot of people now actually just take a year or two sabbatical, and they encircle back to their careers.

Thea Weeks, guest · [22:33]Yes. I think, I think the surprises, especially for me, as I said, is I felt institutionalized in the NGO space after a period. I really missed the wider collaboration, the, let's say, multi-dimensional teams and the wider networks. So I think that for me was a big miss. The aha moment was the fact that I could really build and learn in capacity and also what you can do with less. You know, I really had to learn to work around financing, looking at blended financing, public-private partnerships. so, so that was a really, a great moment. And then I think in the other two instances, the aha moment is that You can actually come back a better person because of this experience. So if you allow yourself, I always refer to it as sort of a, well, everybody in, in that knows me know I'm a bit of a coffeeholic, but if I have a beautiful steaming mug of coffee and somebody says, Thea, I'm really thirsty, I will have enough to share. But if I don't take a moment to fill my cup and it becomes empty and emptier and emptier, and in the end there's nothing in it, I will not have anything to share. So for me, it was really important to know that, you know, I always say in your career, you can see times where your cup is becoming depleted or less and less and less, and we don't listen to those warning signs. The lesson I had to learn is you saw them, going emptier and emptier and emptier, and you did not respond. If I look at in Cameroon when I became ill, it was probably a combination of burnout and your immune system just crashing and you not being able to cope with everything and, you know, making you more susceptible, for a viral infection. But I think it's so important to, if my cup is empty, I really have nothing to share. Whether it's with well-meaning friends, with family, with colleagues, you will not have anything to share. So I need to pause, stop, fill my cup. And make sure I have enough to spill over into other people's lives.

Thea Weeks, guest · [30:17]And then lastly, even after the disability, I think that thread stayed with me, but I then, strangely enough, was somebody with a hearing disability, focused to a larger extent on communication because I realized how important as a person with a hearing disability, communication is, stakeholder engagement is, partnerships is, and how to evolve that. So the refined, refreshed me had a lived experience as a person with a disability, and I wanted to look at diversity, equity, and inclusion with a different lens. I weren't only advising clients on how you can enhance social impact. I had that lived experience of, but what are you doing in your workforce, within your own companies, and also then in your communities to enhance inclusion of women or vulnerable groups or youth or people with disabilities, and to what extent is it sort of a tick box checklist exercise versus authentically understanding the challenges they face and the accommodations you could do? I think I've, because of the research I did, with my second break and third break, I really understood far greater, you know, the role that human resources can play in providing accommodations, in providing a more Equitable workforce and how to really transform companies and communities within Africa. My heart and my passion is in Africa, and being able to plow that back and to advising clients and even looking, I mean, a lot of companies come to me and say, but here, you know, we've got a lovely balanced workforce, you know, this is our numbers, and then they would only focus on ethnicity or gender, for example, but they don't really understand the granularity or complexity, and they haven't really had authentic Discussions with their teams. So I think it's really important to look at that, and I personally feel that Thea of today is a completely different person than the Thea that took her first break late in her twenties, because I've evolved and grown, and each of these breaks have actually added great value to my life.

Thea Weeks, guest · [33:55]And from day one, we agreed that I do not want to give up The things I value. I value my time, I value flexibility, I value the fact that I can travel, I value the fact that I can do research, plow back, sharpen the sword. And even with that, I amended and were clear in the negotiations with my contract time. So I actually have adjusted remuneration and benefits and incentives around giving me more flexibility and time. So I would rather have more leave days, for example, in brackets, leave days to do research, to present, to speak, to be able to assist other companies to grow, to develop, than just Be restricted to X number of leave days because from a legal standpoint, that is required as a minimum requirement. So I adjusted my own contracts going forward, and also with clients, we build it in, even with my own team, we've got a hybrid working environment. You know, for me, it's about your end product. So if you are working on a research report, if you have to get something done, how you juggle your day and how you manage your day. Yes, we do have core days. We typically try to come into the office two days a week. for connectivity, for cohesion, for collaboration, it remains core to what we do, but you actually trust people to get on and do their work and do it well. So I think I've been able to instill a lot of those principles in our own company at the moment, and also helping other companies to have a more agile, hybrid working environment where you give flexibility. I mean, we've had a lot of the men come back to us post-COVID and saying, Tia, it's been remarkable. You know, I used to leave at five o'clock in the morning, come back late at night, basically kiss my child goodnight. That was the extent of my involvement during the week. Now I've been able to have breakfast with them, take them to school. Work, go and fetch them, have lunch with them, work, and then when they go to bed, I circle back to my computer, and it's not a problem, but I actually feel that I'm making, I'm more connected to my children, to their lives. I'm able to tell everybody, guys, I'm going to go and watch this soccer game now, and we all applaud you because you're involved, you're present, and I know that come Friday, if we need to give a deliverable into a client, it's going to be done exquisitely because you have the flexibility to have time for what you value as well. So I think it's really important that we, we don't lose that when we come back, that we don't take a sabbatical or have a break, and then we just go back, and we don't take those lessons into the, the, the day and week and month and year we want in the future.

Thea Weeks, guest · [37:58]You know yourself, and you see the warning bells going on, you know, in the morning when you suddenly feel like, oh my goodness, do I have to get up? How do I get through this week? You start living for weekends. You really, where you typically would quickly pop something out, it suddenly takes you an hour to write the most mundane letter, or it takes you longer to finish a report or a design, or to complete tasks, or you're losing concentration, or you, you just realize that it takes you longer to complete the same things. You have more brain fog, you are tired. Often, when I speak to people, they say, oh, I've noticed, you know, now that I think about it, I've had flu more often, I've had sick days more often. It's difficult for me to get up on a Monday. It's difficult for me to finish a Friday. So please listen to your bodies. I think it's so, so important to listen to your gut, to see the warning signs, and to put systems in place and measures in place, and to take the time out, and to be honest with the people around you if you do need to take the time out. You know, a, a, a lot of the people I speak to save their leave until the end of the year to have a proper break, but to go the whole year without a break is actually not sustainable, you know, and we then encourage people to look at in each quarter to take a little bit of time out and to not just be at home. Sometimes people say, Tia, I'm so tired, I'm just gonna take two days to sleep, which is also fine, but sometimes changing your physical environment as well, go and visit a friend, go and visit family that stay in a different country or stay in a different province. Sometimes just getting out of your house as well, because we fall into habits in our own homes. We, we tend to go back to our laptops or our office space that we now sort of post-COVID made in our homes. So don't get into that habit of saying, I've got a break, but oops, I'm just quickly going to scroll through and answer twenty emails. If your body is tired, take the time out. Put in the leave days, have the rest periods, and if you need to take longer time, I've seen now where people have said, you know what, I may need to run out of leave, and I may have to actually take one or two days unpaid leave, and it's also okay. To juggle it, to move things around, to give yourself the freedom. We've also seen where people would say, you know what, I'm going to take half days of leave. I am going to take every Friday afternoon off this month, which is two days effectively, but just to allow myself to feel I've got a bit of a long weekend. Or we encourage our teams as well, if there's public holidays, to look at the annual calendar and to say, okay, but if I take this Friday or this Monday or this Tuesday, I actually make a longer long weekend for myself and give myself a solid break. So I think it's about planning as well and being honest with yourself if you see the warning signs.

Thea Weeks, guest · [43:28]Yes. I think it's really important to plan, to make sure that you put finances aside, you know, whether you're going to tap into savings or investments, but try to always plan ahead so that ideally you have put money aside, whether it's three-month salary, whether it's a year salary, you know, try to have savings, try to at least put a pocket aside. Should you want to take a month's sabbatical, a three-month sabbatical, a year's sabbatical, so plan for it already, and then make sure that you look at that rest period where you can just allow yourself not to start doing, not to start performing, where you just let your hair down, and whether it's sleeping or doing absolutely nothing but reading fifty books or binge-watching series, that's horrible, but that just goes into that, you know, no-brain zone, do that. But then also start slowly building and looking at your recovery and your realignment. Start looking at who do you want to be in the next phase, what should you do differently, and have a soft re-entry. A lot of people are saying, was the re-entry hard? I think people that go from sort of a zero phase to a suddenly a full-time, let's call it in brackets, a nine to five corporate career, will definitely battle. Try to see if you can stagger it. Try and see if you can shape it differently, that you commit a certain number of hours for a year or two, and then slowly build up to where you want to be or where you find that that is your sweet spot. This is the number of hours you comfortably want to work in a week. So I think it's important to just look at your return to work as