Be courageous and ask for help, Meghan tells working women

The Duchess of Sussex has given her advice for working women on avoiding burnout: “show up and role model” and remember to say “I need help”.

Speaking on the second episode of her podcast about female business founders, the Duchess said that women must not only “intellectualise” techniques to avoid becoming too tired to continue working, but also “integrate” them.

“The courage that it takes for a female founder, for a woman, when you’re on this path, you’re on this grind, you’ve set expectations... The courage that it takes to say ‘I need help’ or ‘I need a pause’ is tremendous.

“And there’s no way to continue to show up and role model for these young women all the things that you aspire for them to have, that you wanted to have when you were a young girl, if you are not doing it with complete authenticity because you are so close to being burned out.”

The Duchess was in discussion with Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code and Moms First, who spoke of her health issues and how she had insisted on carrying on work after hospital appointments and miscarriage.

Meghan made reference to her own miscarriage, which she has previously written about, to say it meant “being OK to let something go that you planned to love for a long time”.

Of the problems facing women in such circumstances, the Duchess said that they were “not allowed to break, you have to keep smiling – all of these constructs that we’ve all been prey to and have projected”.

She said: “And at a certain point, I mean I often find too in advocacy work and showing up and wanting to, am I saying the thing but not doing the thing? And when can we start taking our own advice?

“When will that pivot point be, that inflection point where women – especially the ones who are leading in these movements and leading in this messaging – to actually integrate that advice?

“To not just know it and intellectualise it but integrate it?

“For you to say: ‘You know what, honey, I am going to clear the rest of my schedule after this appointment, please can you drive me and come with me?’”

She added: “How do we show that perfect doesn’t exist?”

On her top tip for finding investment as a founder, the Duchess said: “In those conversations, if you go to someone and you ask for money, they’re likely gonna give you advice. And if you go to someone and you ask for advice, they’re much more likely to give you money.”

The Duchess and Ms Saujani mentioned their first meeting, at Kensington Palace in 2018 for Girls Who Code, and how their lives have since changed.

Both of the Duchess’s children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, were ill with colds and flu while they were recording the podcast, she said, adding that she had been “up all night” rubbing their backs.

Of how work and motherhood can conflate, she said that in some meetings “I’m showing up for you in a sweatshirt because I’ve been up all night”.

Ms Saujani suggested that younger women in the workforce no longer wanted to follow in the footsteps of her generation, disliking what they saw of the work-life balance.

“Younger women are looking at us and thinking: ‘No thank you,’” she said, arguing that workplaces must become more family-friendly to retain talented women.

Speaking of her “most important title: mom”, the Duchess said: “I love being a mom. Oh my gosh, I love being a mom so much. It’s my favourite thing.

“It is the thing where you’re like ‘oh my gosh I just need a break, I just need a minute I just need a minute’ and then the second you step out of the room you go: ‘Oh let me scroll through pictures of them on my phone.’

“My husband’s like ‘my love, can’t you just give yourself a minute? Go work out, take a bath.’ I’m like: ‘I know, but I just want to cuddle!’”

The “parenting paradigm”, she added, is “so full on, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything” even though working and parenting from home “can feel incredibly overwhelming”.

She concluded that successful women have “tremendous self-awareness and desire to dig deeper”.

The second episode of Confessions of a Female Founder is out now on podcast platforms.