Dads In Business are collaborating with researchers from the Management School at the University Of Sheffield to build a research project around the many roles of Dad. The aim of this project is it to better understand the experiences of Dads, including barriers and support, in order to develop the tools to help Dads in management and leadership roles to successfully manage their many roles.

This free to attend 90 minute session will be a fantastic introduction and support to the research project. This will be a small group of professionals who can contribute to important topics around the roles of Dad.

About The Focus group.

To start the research project off, we will host a small focus group in a safe online space for Dads to discuss how they experience and manage juggling multiple roles. We will explore how we as Dads might have an intention to focus on one area of our lives but how our attention may be drawn elsewhere. We will discuss perceptions or stigmas that surround Dads in the workplace and particularly in leadership positions and ask what prevents us or supports us in achieving the balance between intention and attention.

Sharing your experiences in this focus group is highly important and valuable as it will input into the next stage of the research project which involves interviews. Your input will help guide a well-rounded research project and contribute to shifting the conversation and focus to Dads and their needs. The ultimate aims of this project are it thus to initiate a sustained conversation and make recommendations as to how organisations can support Dads.

This is a safe space conversation and we encourage openness and trust and a willingness to share successes, struggles and your perceptions of what being a Dad in the modern workplace means for you. Our facilitators are experienced running conversations with Men and Dads since 2017 through the men’s mental health charity Men Up North.

The topics for discussion will include

These topics will be discussed in person and also offered as pre work in the form of a Google doc to collage text based answers to these questions.

Sometimes it can be tricky to juggle work and family responsibilities, while other times things run smoothly. Can you share your funniest experience where work and family responsibilities clashed?

1. Dads can wear multiple masks, such as the mask of the employee, leader, Dad, husband, friend etc. Sometimes, experiences in these roles are beneficial for other roles such as when being a father makes one a better Dad. Other times, spinning too many plates can be stressful as we have limited time to wear all these masks at the same time. How do you experience wearing multiple masks/ how have you experienced this in the past and how does this show up at work and home?

2. How do you feel when challenges from work appear at the same time as challenges and pressure at home?

3. What is expected of you as a working Dad?

4. Do you think it is possible to wear multiple masks and, in an ideal world, what type of Dad and leader would you be?

5. What prevents your from realising your perception of the ‘ideal Dad’

6. What strategies do or have you used that help you successfully juggle work and family responsibilities?

7. How do you manage ‘me time’?

8. What support do you receive from your family to help you perform at work and to provide the ‘me time’?

9. What support do you receive from your work to help you be the best of you at home and to support your personal ambitions?

10. Does your workplace or business actually know what you want to achieve as a working Dad both at home and at work?

11. Does your close relationships (partner, spouse, close friends) fully know what it is you want to achieve at work and at home?

12. What’s missing?

About you.

You will be a Dad who is in a position of management or leadership at work or in business working in the UK.

You will have kids at home and be prepared to listen and share your own stories and we invite you to answer the questions posed both in written form prior to the session and in the live session itself.

So what’s in it for me?

The focus group is a space to reflect, exchange and hear different perspectives and strategies of how Dads successfully manage their different roles in the 21st century. The focus group will contribute to the development of a toolkit and organisational best practice recommendations which will be shared with you as a thank you for your participation.

About Dads In Business.

We provide spaces and forums to enable honest & open conversation around the roles, responsibilities and pressures that come with being a Dad in Business.

Our sessions are informal yet structured. All are welcome and encouraged to share individual experiences with the aim of improving themselves, their business, their family, but also that of the others in the group.

We will be utilising structures that’s been trialled and tested from MEN UP NORTH.

You are in safe hands.

rob@dadsinbusiness.co.uk

www.dadsinbusiness.co.uk