Motherhood, Ambition, and the Skills That Make Women Stronger Leaders

Motherhood is often treated like a career detour, but what if becoming a mom actually strengthens the exact leadership skills today’s workplaces need most?

In this episode of Steel Roses Podcast, we’re challenging the outdated idea that motherhood slows ambition or weakens professional growth. Instead, we’re digging into how motherhood can build powerful leadership skills like decision making under pressure, negotiation, communication, prioritization, conflict management, adaptability, resilience, and time management.

This conversation was inspired by a LinkedIn post that stopped me in my tracks and the upcoming Maternal Strengths Report, which is putting real data behind something so many working moms already know: motherhood does not make us less capable. It often makes us stronger, sharper, more focused, and more effective leaders.

I also share my own experience of how motherhood changed the way I show up, especially the intensity that comes from fighting for more than just myself. We talk honestly about the hard parts of working mom life too, because deadlines can collide with school events, guilt can hit hard, and the pressure to “do it all” can feel impossible. But there is power in naming those tradeoffs and refusing to believe that not doing everything means we are not enough.

We also explore what children learn by watching working moms in real life, especially when work happens at home. They see the conference calls, the stress, the teamwork, the wins, and sometimes the breakdowns. Those ordinary moments matter. They teach resilience, ambition, communication, problem-solving, and perseverance in ways no lecture ever could.

If you are navigating working motherhood, career ambition, women’s leadership, or the messy middle of raising a family while building something meaningful, this episode is for you.

Listen now, share this episode with a working mom who needs the reminder, and subscribe to Steel Roses Podcast so you don’t miss the follow-up on the Maternal Strengths Report.

After you listen, check out the Maternal Strengths Report here: https://www.executivemoms.co/the-maternal-strengths-report

Then leave a review and tell me: What is one skill motherhood strengthened for you?

Transcript

Why This Podcast Exists

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello everyone, this is Silver's Podcast. This podcast is created for women by women to elevate women's voices. I hope you all are having a really, really amazing week. I saw a couple things very interesting that I wanted

The Maternal Strengths Report

SPEAKER_00 0:11

to share with you. So um I saw this post on LinkedIn. Very excited about it. So it was posted by Alexa Stark, and her post, I'm gonna read the whole post to you because it links into everything else I'm gonna talk about. She posts, I'm honestly blown away by the data coming out of the maternal strange support, because not only are working mothers reporting growth after becoming moms, we're seeing increases across every single leadership capability we measured, every single one. Not just empathy, not just patience, decision making under pressure, negotiation, communication, prioritization, conflict management, trust building, adaptability, resilience, leading scheme, strategic energy, look allocation, and time management. The kinds of capabilities companies spend millions trying to develop in leaders. And for years, the cultural narrative around motherhood has focused almost entirely on what mothers lose: sleep, time, ambition, momentum, dennity. But almost no one has stopped to ask what is motherhood developing inside Glomen? This report did. And the findings are impossible to ignore. And honestly, the increase in some of these skills are astonishingly high and gets me so excited because I know how capable working moms are. And now we're going to prove it to the world. I have talked about this a few times and I've raged about this a few times as well. Where becoming a mom for me, now, not everyone is going to be a mother. Not everybody desires to have children. That being said, that doesn't mean you have a deficit. You have a whole other set of skills that you've developed. Like this is not at all in any way, shape, or form to throw shade at people that do not have kids. This is not that. This is just specific to women who have kids and what our experience is and what it does to us. I specifically felt very much like having children made me a stronger individual, more determined individual, almost a better individual overall. My ethic, my drive, everything that I was before I had kids crippled after I had kids. Because now I'm not just fighting for myself. I'm fighting for them.

How Motherhood Changed My Drive

SPEAKER_00 2:05

And for them, I would fight harder than I would for myself. So it really put a whole different spin on things. Now, the maternal strengths report, I hadn't been aware of it prior to a week or so ago when I saw this post. Excuse me, two days ago. When I saw this post, it's supposed to be released on June 1st. I did sign up to receive a copy of the report. So I can just fill that down and give you guys the readout results on it. But this is massive. It's something that we've all known internally all along. Yes, yes, once you have a kid, you are, you know, going to be focusing on your child, you're going to be obviously focused on them. But even when you return to work, it doesn't mean that your focus is off your career. It really truly means you're probably going to hustle harder. And I've talked about that a few times because a working mom is a force to be reckoned with, especially like if you're really truly dedicated to like what you're doing, you will pull out all the stops. You will do everything. Now, there are times, and I will admit this, and I will talk about this very candidly. There are times that my kids have taken a back seat when I've had deadlines that had to be met and I've had to talk to them about that and face that. And that's a choice that I've made. Not everyone has to make that choice. Some of us don't want to make that choice. Honestly, I would love to not have to make that choice, but sometimes it does happen. So the report itself comes out on June 1st. I'm super excited about it. I'm going to sign up. I signed up for it already. I'm going to include the link to the report or to sign up for the wait list for the report in this episode. If you want to receive it, you can. I'm going to take it, distill it down, and I'll read it back out to you guys. Now, on this same vein of thought, motherhood, what does this do to you? Or what does it do to your children, right? So this particular report is specific to motherhood and what it does to the actual

What Kids Learn From Working Moms

SPEAKER_00 3:50

mom. I saw a post recently that I wanted to um point out to all of you. This one was on Instagram, and it's regarding um daughters of working mothers. Study, a study finds that daughters of hardworking moms are the most resilient women you'll ever meet. It's not just about money, it's modeling. Girls watch everything. Here is why. Employed mothers are more likely to earn higher salaries, hold supervisory roles, and stay in the workforce longer. Example becomes expectation. When a mother shows up every day despite stress, despite exhaustion, and despite obstacles, that teaches resilience. Hardworking moms model discipline, independence, persistence, and problem solving. That shapes identity. Daughters don't just hear be strong. They actually see it. Resilience isn't loud. It's built in kitchens and car rides and late nights and quiet sacrifices. I quite often think about this. I work from home. My kids see all of it. They see the conference calls. They see the mental breakdown. They see me break down. They see me get very stressed out. They see, they see me worn down. They see my success. They see how excited I am when something goes well. They see the praise that I give my team. They see how I treat my team. They see how I treat my colleagues. They see how I talk to people. They see how I articulate things. They hear how I talk to my clients. They hear how I engage with and troubleshoot and problem solve with my colleagues and my team. They get to observe all of that from here. They see it all real time. They hear my conference calls. They hear my status calls. Sometimes they pop in on those status calls, which I will say sometimes successful depending on who the client is. They get to see it all. Now, I've talked a lot about my communication skills with my kids, regardless of the fact that I press on their communication skills pretty significantly. I do deeply believe that because they see my presence as a professional, that it impacts how they all behave. Now, some things that I see are their ability to multitask, their ability to try to problem solve on their own, their ability, obviously their articulation skills. We've heard me talk about that a few times. But there's already some rules that I see now at nine years old and ten years old, not just my daughters, but my son too, that they have already picked up on because they observe it. They also observe when I lose my temper and um curse all over the place. And that is an unfortunate side effect of the fact that I work from home. Nevertheless, they get all of it. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Now, I do distinctly remember when I was growing up, it was very much like for a kid, stay in your lane. This is grown-up business. You know, we're not gonna talk to you about this, and we're not gonna expose you to this. We don't want you to hear this, that, the next thing. Yes, there's things that I want to protect my kids from. Absolutely, there's things that I don't think they need to hear right now. And I'm gonna protect them and wait until they're older for certain things. Transparency is key, you know, making your children aware. Let them see you struggle, let them see you frustrated. Let your daughters and your son see you vulnerable. Do not swallow those tears. When you're frustrated, let them out. Let them see that because it's showing them this is okay. It's showing them that I'm still your mom. I'm still the, you know, your your wife, the wife, your, you know, whatever. I'm still a professional. I can still do these things. Is it hard? Absolutely. Absolutely. Hardest thing that I've done in my entire life is being a working mom. Hands down, the hardest thing. I have felt the brunt of the bag with it. I have felt my kids come to me and tell me, you know, I'm not around enough for school functions. Why can't I go on the class trips? Why can't I go into the school for the special events during the day? Why can't I volunteer for things? I can't. I physically can't. I can't put that kind of strain on me when I have the deadlines building up on myself. Now, when I can show up, I do. And I do make it happen. I try to show up as strongly as I can, but I it's impossible for me to do it all. And yes, I feel a tremendous amount of guilt about that, but I also feel very empowered to be able to talk to my kids and say, I can do this, but I'm not going to be able to ever do that. I apologize, it's just not going to happen. And it's going to be disappointing, and it is disappointing, and they don't they don't love it. But my kids are really wonderful and supportive in that sense. And they um, because of the community way I communicate with them, they do have a deeper understanding of what it is that mommy does and why mommy does what she does. So all that in a nutshell, I do think it's beneficial that my kids get to see everything that I do. I do think it's beneficial that they know that I have a podcast. For Mother's Day, my daughters filled out profiles about me. And one of my girls said, My mommy is amazing, or my mommy is cool because she has a podcast. How cool is that? That your own child thinks highly of something that you're doing. It's wonderful. It's, I mean, it's such a wonderful thing. And it does show that they're watching all the time because I'm not recording and podcasting, you know, every single day like I used to. I keep it pretty much to the side. I do it when I can. And, you know, I talk about topics like, you know, like this, but it picks up with them. They know about it and they're aware and they're proud of it. And that makes me proud to do this and to be here. So, yes, it's tough life, but it's a beautiful thing. And it is gonna make a positive impact on your children. Now, they might turn around and say, you know what, I don't want to be a working mom. That sucked. You know what? At least they got the exposure to it. They saw it, they got to see real time their mom trying to do it all. They can make the choice for themselves, whether they decide they want to take that path or not. Um, and that's the beauty of it all, right? Is that I've actually told my kids that I'm like, if you don't like something that mommy and poppy are doing, you have the ability to change this when you grow up and have your own kids. And I've started to plant that seed because I'm not doing everything perfectly, neither is my husband. We're just doing the best we can. But guess what? You have a choice. You don't have to do this when you get older. You have children, you can do it your on your own way, and you don't have to worry about this. So it's all the things basically.

Report Link And How To Reach Me

SPEAKER_00 9:53

So working mom stuff. Yes, gonna be coming soon. I'm gonna have that report June 1st. Um, I'll distill it down and I'll translate it back to all of you. Um, if there's anything you guys would like to hear episodes on, if there is anything that um any topics or anything, or even if you just want to reach out and engage and you know, if there's something that's going on that you need some support with me, you need to spitball, I am here. Please feel free to email me at steel um it's still rosespodcast at gmail.com. Um, you can also find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. So I appreciate you all hanging out with me today. Super excited about the report coming out, all the stuff in women's health happening in 2026 is like very exciting. Um, so more to come. Thank you so much for being here with me today, and I will catch you on the next one. Take care.