By Amélie Moncel | Mindset & Identity Coach for Working Mums and their Leaders

This might sound like a wellness conversation. It is not. It is a performance conversation.

The most engaged employees I have ever worked with, the ones who show up consistently, contribute proactively, take initiative, and stay, share one thing in common. They feel like themselves at work.

Not all the time. Not without friction or difficulty or days where everything is harder than it should be. But fundamentally, at the level of identity, they feel like they belong in the room they are sitting in. They trust their own voice. They bring their real ideas, the unedited ones, not the versions they have pre-approved for palatability. They feel seen as whole people, not just as contributors to an output.

That experience of being yourself at work is rarer than it should be. And for working mums, it is rarer still.

What Happens To Identity At Work When You Become A Mum

The transition into motherhood is one of the most significant identity shifts any person will go through in their lifetime. Research on matrescence, the psychological and identity process of becoming a mother, describes it in terms comparable to adolescence: a fundamental reorganisation of the self, of values, of priorities, of who a person understands themselves to be.

What almost no workplace accounts for is that this reorganisation does not stop at the door. It comes to work with her. Every single day.

She arrives back from parental leave as a different person inhabiting the same role. And in the absence of any acknowledgement of that transition, any space to integrate the new self with the professional self, something begins to erode. Gradually.

She stops trusting her own judgement in meetings the way she used to. She starts prefacing ideas with "this might be wrong, but..." and "I'm not sure if this is relevant..." She declines the stretch opportunity because the calculation of risk feels too heavy right now. She says she is fine, and she means it in the way that means I am managing, which is not the same as thriving.

The confidence gap that the parental leave experience creates is not visible in performance reviews. It does not flag in engagement surveys. It looks, from the outside, like someone who is settling back in, which is exactly how she has learned to present it.

But underneath, she is running a performance that costs her more every day. And the organisations that do not address it lose her eventually. Not dramatically. In a slow, steady withdrawal of the full version of herself.

Three Things Leaders Can Do Right Now

The first is to ask a different question. Not "how are you settling back in?" but "who are you now, and what do you need to bring that person fully to work?" That question asked genuinely, in a real conversation, not a performance review, changes the dynamic entirely. It signals: I see you as a whole person, not just a resource returning to a role.

The second is to notice when someone has gone quiet about themselves. Not disengaged from the work, still delivering, still present, but quiet about who she is. That specific kind of quietness is a signal worth investigating. It usually means she has learned that there is no space here for anything beyond the professional surface.

The third is to invest in coaching. Not as a reward for high performance or a response to a crisis. As infrastructure. As the thing you put in place for working mums at every stage because identity work, done properly and early, prevents the erosion that leads to withdrawal, presenteeism, and eventually resignation.

What I Offer

I work with organisations across New Zealand to make this investment practical and impactful.

For individuals: You Again is a ten-week identity and confidence programme for working mums. Five minutes a day. A private community. A 1:1 coaching session to personalise the journey. → https://ameliemoncel.com/youagain

For organisations: The Confident Return supports both the returning mum and her leader through the transition. Thriving as a Working Mum is available as an in-house workshop — online or in person — for teams who want to address this at scale. → https://ameliemoncel.com/employers

For leaders: The free toolkit is a practical starting point for managers who want to have better conversations with the working mums on their teams. → https://ameliemoncel.com/free-ebook-employers

The most engaged employees are the ones who feel like themselves at work. You have the power to create the conditions for that. And the return on doing so, in retention, in performance, in the quality of leadership that emerges when women are fully themselves, is significant.

Let's talk → https://links.ivorey.io/widget/bookings/clarity/calls

About Amelie Moncel

Amelie is a Mindset & Identity Coach for working mums and the leaders who support them. She helps organisations and parents navigate transitions with confidence, balance, and authenticity.