Riccarda Zezza: drawing inspiration from parenthood to be a better employee

What if businesses looked at parenthood as a training model and were empowered to do good in the world with an ethics-first approach? Learn how Riccarda Zezza, founder of MAAM, is aiming to do just that. Based in Milano, Italy, MAAM is the world’s first and only digital training program turning parenthood into a masters in key skills for business. 

Riccarda herself experienced first-hand negativity at work when she had children. She had dedicated her working life pre-children to doing good work for the business she worked for, but found herself discriminated against when she came back from maternity leave. 

“I was very surprised when I became a mother for the first time. And I realised that it was a weakness for my workplace. Maternity is an anomaly in the perception of a linear life cycle of work”.

She also realised that the current training providers were teaching soft skills through artificial means, whilst her real life was providing exactly the kind of experience that she needed to develop the soft skills that would benefit her at work. 

“I thought ‘how come I have to spend time in a classroom flying a flight simulator, to learn about crisis management, when I have my two year old daughter at home, which is a perfect training ground for crisis management, daily, for free?’ ”

Life based learning

The great thing about Riccarda’s life based learning program is that it helps make life simpler by allowing you to be you. It’s not just about being a better manager, or a better professional, but it’s about being a more relaxed parent – not feeling guilty about being with your family, and conversely, not feeling guilty when you’re in the office. 

The life based learning program allows you to feel better about achieving a work life balance.

Becoming a parent is mastering soft skills

“When you become a caregiver, nature provides you with all the resources you need to succeed, because being a caregiver for nature is very important. The human species wouldn’t survive if it wasn’t for caregiving”.

75% of employees are caregivers because we are a care giving species. If we weren’t capable of taking care of each other, not just within families, but also with strangers, our species would not survive. 

We have to remember that we have a very strong, innate template that refers to our capability of taking care of each other. We have to recognise that is very noble cause and is key to human survival. And we need to bring it back not only to families, but also to society.

Motherhood and leadership

Research about women in positions of leadership show that women tend to use motherhood as a metaphor for leadership and as a training ground for leadership. Because when women become leaders, they have to be strong leaders in order to change perspectives surrounding women and leadership. To do this they change the words around leadership, they change the vocabulary, and they mention being a mother as a different way of being a leader.

“We’re trying to transform knowledge into active programs that actually enable people to have this kind of awareness and become, themselves, change makers for it”.

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