Back from parental leave, into a bigger role

Where she was

Marisol ran operations for a regional logistics company before her second child was born. Fourteen months later she was due back, and she was nervous. Her team had been reorganized, her stand-in was well liked, and she wanted to work four days a week without it being treated as a step down.

The call

She booked with six weeks to go. “I just want to walk back in without feeling like I’m asking for a favor,” she said. We agreed the sprint was the right size: three sessions, one clear ask, and a plan for the first month back.

What we worked on

First, what had changed while she was away and what hadn’t. She talked to two former colleagues and her old manager before her return date, informally, over coffee. That gave her a clear picture: the company had grown, the operations team had no lead, and two projects she’d started had stalled.

So the ask changed. Instead of returning to her old role, she proposed a new one: operations lead, four days a week, owning the two stalled projects with a clear 90-day goal for each. We wrote it as a one-page proposal and rehearsed the conversation with her manager twice, including what she’d say if the answer was “five days or nothing”.

The move

Her manager said yes to the role and to four days, and asked for a review at six months. She’s now leading a team of five. The first stalled project, a new routing system, shipped in her fourth month back.

What was harder than expected

The guilt, she says, on both sides: about the day she wasn’t at work and the four she wasn’t at home. Coaching didn’t fix that. What helped was deciding in advance what “a good week” looked like at work and at home, and checking against that instead of against everyone else.