Latest / The Comeback Career Podcast with Fexingo: Returning After a Gap, Stay-at-Home Re-Entry / How a Career Gap Makes You a Better Manager
Transcript
- Lucas: So you take two years off to raise kids or care for a parent or just reset. You come back and the first thing a hiring manager says is, 'How do we know you still have it?' Luna: Right. The assumption is you've fallen behind. Lost your edge. Especially if you're going for a management role. Lucas: But what if the gap actually makes you a better manager? Not just 'not worse' — actively better. That's what I want to dig into today. Luna: I love this angle because I think we've all worked for someone who clearly never had a break, and you can feel that burnout, that impatience. Lucas: Exactly. There's a 2025 LinkedIn survey — and I'll caveat this is self-reported data — but they found that managers who took a career gap of six months or longer had team satisfaction scores twelve percent higher than managers who never took a break. Luna: That's a striking number. Twelve percent. Is that correlation or causation? Lucas: The report tries to control for industry and tenure, but yeah, correlation isn't causation. Still, the pattern is consistent across multiple studies. A 2023 Harvard Business Review piece called it 'quiet leadership' — the idea that time away cultivates patience, perspective, and a lower tolerance for performative busyness. Luna: And I suspect it also forces you to get better at delegating. Because if you've been away, you can't just muscle through with brute hours. Lucas: That's exactly what a marketing director named Sarah told me. She took two years off to be with her kids, came back to a senior role leading a team of twelve. She said her biggest insight was that before the gap, she managed by doing. After the gap, she managed by trusting. Luna: That's a beautiful reframe. 'Managing by doing' is basically just being a really busy individual contributor. 'Managing by trusting' is actual management. Lucas: Right. And she said the gap taught her that most things don't actually need an immediate answer. She'd sit on a question for twenty-four hours, let her team marinate on it, and come back with a better decision. That patience is a muscle you build when you're not in a fire-drill environment. Luna: So is she now a better manager than she was before? Does she think so? Lucas: She said — and this is her quote — 'I was a good manager before. Now I'm a calm one. And calm is more valuable.' Luna: That's a great line. So for listeners who are re-entering and worried their gap makes them look rusty, what's the concrete advice? How do you sell this in an interview? Lucas: You don't just say 'I developed patience.' That sounds like a platitude. You tell a story. Sarah's story is: she had a team member who was struggling with a client presentation. Pre-gap Sarah would have rewritten the whole deck at midnight. Post-gap Sarah asked the team member what they thought was the weakest slide, coached them through one revision, then let them present. The client loved it. Luna: So the gap gave her the emotional distance to not rescue, but to empower. That's a concrete skill. And it's directly transferable to any management role. Lucas: Exactly. And there's research backing this. A 2022 study in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that leaders who scored high on 'perspective-taking' — that's the ability to step back and consider others' viewpoints — had teams with thirty percent lower turnover. And perspective-taking is something that naturally develops when you're out of the daily grind. Luna: Because when you're not in the building, you can't assume you know what's happening. You have to ask. You have to listen. Lucas: Right. And that's another skill parents develop in spades. You think you know what your toddler needs? No, you learn to read cues. Same with a team. Luna: So the gap can actually be framed as a management development program. Unpaid, but highly effective. Lucas: That's a good way to put it. And here's a practical tip for anyone preparing for interviews: pick one specific moment from your gap — a parenting decision, a volunteer project, caring for a relative — and map it to a management competency. For example, negotiating bedtimes becomes negotiation skills. Planning a family move becomes project management. Handling a medical appointment chain becomes stakeholder coordination. Luna: That's a great exercise. And it forces you to articulate the value instead of just saying 'I was a stay-at-home parent.' Lucas: Right. And I'd add one more thing: don't be afraid to name the gap in your cover letter or LinkedIn summary. A 2024 study by the job platform Indeed showed that candidates who proactively framed their career gap as a 'strategic reset' received thirty-five percent more interview callbacks than those who omitted it or explained it defensively. Luna: So the narrative matters. And if you're listening and thinking, 'I don't have a Sarah-level story,' start building one now. Volunteer for a leadership role in a nonprofit, or take on a complex project in your personal life. Lucas: Exactly. And if today's episode helped you think about your gap in a new way — maybe even gave you a concrete story to use in an interview — honestly, that's worth a coffee to us. If it was, you can find the link at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure, just a way to keep the show ad-free and focused on real, usable advice. Luna: Yeah, we really appreciate that. And it's listeners like you who help us keep digging into these overlooked angles. Lucas: So back to the research. One last data point I want to share: a 2025 report from the management consulting firm Korn Ferry found that executives who took a sabbatical of at least three months scored higher on 'emotional stability' assessments than those who never took a break. And emotional stability is one of the strongest predictors of leadership effectiveness. Luna: So the gap isn't just a neutral. It's an asset. And the more we normalize that, the better for everyone. Lucas: Absolutely. Next episode, we're going to talk about how to negotiate your starting salary after a gap — because that's another area where people often undervalue themselves. Luna, any closing thought? Luna: Just that your gap doesn't erase your experience. It adds a layer. Own it. Lucas: Well said. See you next time.