When Michelle Obama moved in to the White House and declared her new role to be “Mom-in-Chief,” she delighted some people and horrified others. However, author Jamie Woolf, whose new book, Mom-in-Chief: How Wisdom from the Workplace Can Save Your Family from Chaos, is being warmly received by its target market — the U.S.’s 26 million working mothers — embraces the term as a real and prestigious one.

“My feeling is that the job of mom requires a sophisticated set of leadership skills that we demonstrate each day as we set an example, manage conflict, build a cohesive “team,” build trusting relationships, create motivating conditions for our kids to grow and reach their full potential,” says Woolf. “More often, our culture portrays motherhood as lots of drudgery (which it can be!) and not ‘real work’ at all. I say let’s give mothers the prestige the job deserves by calling us Moms-in-Chief!”

While most parenting books focus on child development, Mom-in-Chief focuses on mom and dad development. It takes leadership strategies that we learn in the workplace and shows us how we can put these to work at home in our families.

I have to admit that before I read the book, I got the giggles at the idea of sitting my kids down to a Powerpoint presentation in which I demonstrate Ways You Can Not Irritate Mummy, or How To Stack a Dishwasher. We could have board meetings in which we discussed how the person who left her sandals out in the rain had brought on emergency family budget cuts.

However, Woolf’s book is not this petty. One of the predominant skills she advocates is seeing the big picture. By articulating a goal and committing to it, she says, we focus our attention on the greater meaning and don’t lose motivation over frustrating details. Woolf says that readers are already responding enthusiastically to this particular message.

Author Jamie Woolf

“So far, readers tell me that they are able to lift out of the niggling details when they think of themselves as leaders who focus on the big picture goals of parenting. It’s far more motivating, they tell me, to think about our role in a purposeful way than merely getting dinner on the table and kids to their soccer practice.”

Mom-in-Chief recommends that we get to know our leadership style, or, as she calls it, “Mom Mode.” There are three main types of Mom Mode: the Achiever, who promotes achievement; the Connector, who builds relationships; and the Liberator, who fosters individuality. Dads have Mom Modes too, and an Achiever married to a Connector has the chance of running into conflict. By knowing what your partner’s and your modes are, you have a greater chance of finding a cohesive leadership style.

One of the overarching themes of Mom-in-Chief is respect for our children and their individuality. Woolf says, “Achievement by Proxy syndrome is alive and well with parents who view their kids as extensions of themselves or ego-gratifying little masterpieces that make them look good (or not!). We can unwittingly impose our personal agendas on our kids, forgetting that our primary task as leaders is to help them reach their full potential and find their uniqueness so that they find meaning and joy in their lives. This is what respect is all about, hard as it is to respect differences we see in our kids or accept that they are not little clones of our ideal selves.”

"Mom-In-Chief" Obama

This becomes even more vital when kids reach that thorny age — the teens. In Mom-in-Chief, Woolf dedicates a chapter to managing adolescence. She says that while teens want respect and power to influence their environments, they still want “connectedness,” and by stereotyping them as self-centered, irresponsible and disengaged, we thwart their chances of making those connections with us.

I asked Woolf if specifically focusing her book on the working mother, she was excluding that other large proportion of moms — the stay-at-home mom. She replied that, “My premise is that whether you are staying home or in the workplace, parents demonstrate acts of leadership every day, and we benefit by expanding the notion of leadership to parenting so that parents get the prestige deserving of the hardest job on Earth.”

The truth is, she says, that the US is not a society that supports families. Until working mothers get expanded sick leave benefits, equal pay, flexible work schedules and the kind of childcare subsidies that more enlightened countries provide, parents are going to battle. While the Mom-in-Chief in the White House and her husband may be working to change that, in the interim, any parents — moms or dads, working or staying at home — would benefit from reading Jamie Woolf’s well-written, amusing and enlightening book.

Book reading: Satellite Sister Lian Dolan will be hosting a Mom-in-Chief book event at Vroman’s in Pasadena, California on May 23rd at 3:00 p.m.