Introducing Leadership and Motherhood!

Welcome to Leadership and Motherhood, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women, navigating leadership in the boardroom and at home. I'm your host, Leanne Laski McGrath business leader, mom and certified executive coach. I believe that every woman deserves to create a life and career on her own terms, one that she truly loves.

This podcast is here to help you do just that. Let's get started. Hello. Welcome to Leadership and Motherhood. I am so excited to be saying that to you. Welcome to the first episode.

Oh my goodness. It has been a minute since we last talked. I. Have missed all of you have missed the mic, although you've been hard at work behind the scenes. Really laying the groundwork for this new podcast and looking at all of our operations and all of the content, really getting to step back and put things into place that we want to.

And so I am so excited. We've been waiting for. This moment for March 1st to launch this new podcast. So, yay, we're here. And you're here. And I'm so glad you're here. I know that there are so many podcasts out there, and it is honestly such an honor to me that you choose to spend your time on this one. So thank you.

If you've been a long time listener of the Executive Coach for Mom's podcast, or if you're just tuning in for the first time with leadership and motherhood, I welcome you. I'm so glad you're here. I also wanna share why I chose March 1st for a launch date. March is a very special month for me. It's my birth month and it's the month that my mom became a mom.

It's also Women's History Month, and I love the opportunity to step back and look at how far we've come. I know we still have a long way to go, and we're continuing to work toward equality. Also, I think it's important to acknowledge how far we've come, and I just sit in awe and gratitude of all the women who came before us who fought so hard for our rights.

And March also houses International Women's Day, and it is also Endometriosis Awareness Month. So I will be talking about that a bit. Later in March as I recently had this diagnosis, so Marsh is very special to me, and it seemed like the perfect time for me to go ahead and launch this big initiative. So today I really want to share my reasoning for ending the Executive Coach for Mom's podcast, which we had run for two and a half years.

We posted weekly episodes. We shared 153 total episodes, including our bonus episodes, and we reach people all across the world. Almost all 50 states here in the United States, Vermont and Wyoming. I'm hoping that we'll have some folks tuning into leadership and motherhood. It was an amazing show and it was my first podcasting experience, and I absolutely loved it.

I totally fell in love with podcasting and I'm so happy to be back and so happy to. Have created a podcast now that feels even more aligned for me and is one component of a bigger picture vision, which I'm gonna tell you all about. So the executive coach for mom's podcast, I ran that for two and a half years, like I said, and towards that end of the fall of 2025, I was just starting to feel a little bit of.

I don't know, just, you know how you have that feeling where you're like, this is something that I love and it's important to me, and also something feels a little bit off or something feels a little bit. Out of alignment for me and can't quite put my finger on it, and that's how I was starting to feel.

Also, around the same time, I started to have this idea for something that I wanted to create much bigger than a podcast, but really. Really a bigger initiative. And so I started thinking about that and then every time I would start to work on that, I would be like, oh man, I've gotta produce an episode for this week.

Because, you know, writing and finding guests for and recording interviews. It takes a lot of time, and when you're doing it every week and making sure that you get a show out every single week, that can take a lot of your time. And so I decided to end the podcast, so I had a little bit of time to step back and really just reevaluate, really look at what is it that I wanna create and how can I create this in an intentional and aligned way.

And so that is where leadership and motherhood came from. And by the way, you'll hear me talking about this all the time, about the importance of taking time for ourselves, stepping back, zooming out the lens. I think it is so important. I think it makes everything so much better. And I think you're gonna see that in this new podcast because I have had the opportunity to.

Step back, zoom out the lens, look at the content, look at the backend operations, and really shore everything up and create something that I feel really proud of and really excited about. So what is leadership in motherhood? Leadership and motherhood is a movement. The podcast is one part of it. My vision for leadership and motherhood consists of three main things.

Elevate women's voices redefine motherhood as a leadership advantage and inspire women to create the lives and careers they truly desire. Okay, so let me tell you a little bit more about each one. So number one, elevate women's voices. I think this is something that we did so well with the executive coach for mom's podcast.

We had 46 guests, all women, and they were just so amazing, so inspiring. I get requests almost every day were people are emailing me or filling out forms on my website. And pitching me to come on the podcast, which is such an amazing compliment. It also gives me the opportunity to really vet the people who are.

Wanting to come on the show because there are so, so many of them. So the women who come on this podcast are really, really high caliber, I mean, just amazing, inspirational women. And I always say, if you ever wanna have a conversation with amazing people. Start a podcast like it's the best excuse for someone to come and have a great conversation with you.

But it is really important to me to elevate women's voices and to give us a platform to share our experiences because I think they can kind of get drowned out in the noise of the workplace. I come from a very male dominated industry of tech, and we just didn't really have these conversations as much, especially because I was usually the only woman at the table, or there were maybe one or two others.

But you know, we were all kind of like, well, we don't wanna stand out too much or like, bring attention to what we're thinking about here too, too much because. It seems to like only affect us and there's only a couple of us, so maybe we shouldn't bring that up. And hopefully that is not how everybody's feeling, but I just remember feeling that way sometimes.

So having a platform where we can hear from women about issues that probably often face everyone, you know, men and women alike, but that are. Definitely facing women. I think that's amazing. So that's number one, to elevate women's voices. Number two, to redefine motherhood as a leadership advantage. And when I say redefine motherhood as a leadership advantage, I wanna explain what I mean.

When high achievers become moms, we often struggle because we're so used to succeeding and excelling at everything we do. And then we end up starting a new job as a mom that we've never done before that maybe we think should be easy or come naturally. And it doesn't always, and we often feel like.

Failures because we're so used to being good at everything. And then we start this new thing and we're like, I don't know what I'm doing. I just believe I'm doing terribly at it. And then when we add to that, when we return to work. A lot of times then we also feel like we're failing at work because we feel like I can't show up.

How I used to, you know, I used to work 60, 70, 80 hours a week, and now I can't do that anymore because I have this baby to take care of. And if we're breastfeeding, we're literally like our body. Their lifeline, like keeping them alive. And so we struggle there as well because we are questioning our identity.

We're questioning our value to the workplace where we may have always defined it as being a really hard worker and always producing at a very high output. And we might not be able to do that anymore at the same level that we used to. And then on top of that, we have our society and we have workplaces that were set up by men for men.

Most of those men, you know, if they had children, they had wives at home taking care of those children, managing the domestic load and everything in the household, scheduling all the doctor's appointments, covering sick days, and so the workplace policies that were created. Weren't really with us in mind.

And so whenever we are advocating for those policies, it can feel like we're going against the grain or that we're asking for something special or so far above and beyond. And that can really put us in a head space where we feel like we are less than or where we feel like we're kind of below the bar.

Then I think there are just like our cultural beliefs, our beliefs, that women are less dedicated or have too many responsibilities to prioritize work after kids. Whether or not we believe that we internalize those beliefs. If we've heard them before, I definitely heard them at the boardroom table and I'm sure many of us have as well.

And we may have even bought into them at some point. Before we knew the reality of it. And so I think that what is true is that we still have the ability to contribute in profound ways, especially if we refocus on what we bring to the table now, knowing that it might be different than what it was before.

So I can no longer give an organization 80 hours. I guess I could, of course it's always a choice, but I choose not to, but instead. I have a whole new skillset to share with an organization that I didn't have before, or maybe I have, but I have enhanced those skills so, so much through motherhood. So I want to change the conversation from looking at motherhood as a hindrance to output and productivity in the workplace, and instead looking at it as an enhancement to contribution.

Motherhood makes us more efficient, more empathetic, more capable to show up as the leaders that we wanna be. It enhances our leadership skills. I always say motherhood is the best leadership development opportunity out there. It is better than any class or course or immersive retreat that you could ever do, and I want us to be talking about that.

I want that for the women who are leaders in the workplaces so that. You are thinking about that all the time and redirecting your brain whenever it's trying to tell you that you're not enough or that you don't contribute enough, or that you can't do what you used to do. I wanna redirect that to what you can do now and how amazing that is in many ways is even better than what you did before.

You know, you might not be able to do what you did before, but instead of treating that like a problem, let's look at what it is instead now, and. Let's make sure that we feel really good about that so we can show up with confidence in our workplace and say, Hey, this is what I bring now. Yeah, it's different, but it's better.

That's what I mean by redefining motherhood as a leadership advantage, and that is a huge, huge goal of this movement. And third is to inspire women to create the lives and careers they truly desire. So this is so important to me because I believe that this is how we truly tap into human potential is where we can help people to find what it is for them.

Like what is the reason that you're here on this earth? What is your purpose? What are you here to do in this? Time that you have. And I especially wanna help women find that because I think that we have so many expectations and limitations piled on top of us over time that it, I think it can be even harder for us sometimes to realize that full potential because we have to like clean up so much of the muck.

But I believe that the more. People who are living lives that really light them up working in careers where they believe that they are making an impact and contributing, and where they just love what they're doing. So they want to spend that time, that way. That raises happiness, it raises engagement. It helps us to show up better everywhere we are, whether we're at work or at home or in our communities.

It helps us. Most importantly, in my opinion, to show up better at home and set an example for our children of what's possible so that they can also realize their potential and create lives and careers that they truly desire. Because it's a lot easier to do that when you've seen it modeled in your own home.

And so it is really, really important to me to help more women feel inspired to go out and create the lives and careers of their dreams because we have this one and only precious life. Like, why not live it the way we wanna live it? Why not enjoy it? Why spend. Anytime doing stuff we hate and feeling like we're on a hamster wheel, feeling like we're just being dragged through life and that we have no control over it, it's not true.

We have control over it. And so I like doing that by helping you, by sharing mindset tools, and helping to refocus your brain back to possibility and potential and contribution rather than on lack or. Limitations or roadblocks. And also, I love having guests on the podcast who are living lives and careers that they love.

It's so important for us to see that. Just like it's important for our kids to see that. For us, it's also important that we see that so that we know that it's possible. Because if we're telling ourselves it's not possible, I can't do it because of X, Y, and z constraints. And then we hear story after story of women who have created, it starts to create some cognitive dissonance within our brains, right?

Where we say, okay, well if it's possible for all those women, maybe it could be possible for me. And so that is why it's really important to me to have these conversations because I do not want any woman working so hard to. Be everything she needs to be at work, be everything she needs to be at home and constantly feeling like she's not enough, and then getting to the end of her life and looking back and having regrets and wishing she had spent it a different way.

That is not how I want any of us to leave this earth. I want every woman to understand the immense value that she brings to her workplace and to her family and to everywhere she shows up. I want that for you. I want that for everyone listening. So that's why I created Leadership and Motherhood, and the podcast is the first part of this initiative.

There is more to come, so make sure you are subscribed to this channel. Make sure you are tuning in as I'll be sharing updates. Connect with me on LinkedIn as I'll be sharing updates on there as well. I am so excited. I don't know if you can hear it in my voice, but I am genuinely so excited you're here.

I'm genuinely so excited to be launching this initiative. I truly believe that it's gonna change the world. Let's do it. I'll see you next week. Thank you so much for listening to leadership and Motherhood. I genuinely hope you're walking away with something helpful that will positively impact your life.

If this podcast resonates with you, it would mean the world to me. If you'd support the show by leaving a five star rating on Apple or Spotify, sharing an episode you love with someone you care about and or by following the show, I hope you'll join me again next week. And until then, I'm wishing you all the best in this season of your one and only precious life.