Chapter 12: Finding a Meaningful Balance Between Work and Family


Overview

Paradoxes reside in many passages, but the paradox of balancing work and family is especially challenging. (We use the term family to refer to any meaningful support system, including partners and friends.) Much has been written on this subject and on the related issue of balancing the professional and the personal, but unlike many leadership educators and coaches, we don’t believe balance is possible. If your goal is to strike an equal, ideal balance between work and family, you’ll fail. If you attempt to give your company forty hours of your time every week and your partner and kids forty hours, you’ll probably end up satisfying no one. In fact, if you choose to be a senior executive in most large global companies today, because of the nature of competition, real balance is prohibited by your choice to accept this challenging assignment. The paradox is that a real balance isn’t possible, but a relative one is.

In today’s world of work, one area of your life is going to suffer. At times, you’ll make certain sacrifices for your career and organization, and in other situations you’ll make sacrifices for your family. Imbalance is the norm. The key, therefore, is to achieve a meaningful balance, a dynamic balance—one that is flexible and situational. In other words, you and your family reach consensus about what’s required for your job and what’s required for your family, and you try to adhere to these guidelines as best you can. You may be spending an inordinate amount of time in the office during strategic planning and budgeting or conducting year-end reviews, but you’ve discussed this issue in advance with your family, and they accept a temporary suspension of the rules. You may also decide to limit the amount of time you spend on work and accept that this might limit your career.

A meaningful balance is meaningful to you personally. Joe and his family may be willing to accept that he’s going to be traveling extensively during the next ten years and will miss some birthdays and anniversaries and kids’ baseball games, whereas Janet and her family are unwilling to accept as much travel or as many missed events. Families need to define “balance” together.

This passage is an opportunity to arrive at a definition of balance. Most of the time, people enter it because a life or work event has caused them to turn inward and focus on the meaning of family and work. Perhaps their spouse has asked for a trial separation, or they’ve been terminated, and they’ve asked themselves, “Why am I doing what I’m doing?” and “Is my career really worth it?” For many in the United States, the events of 9/11, 2001, created this type of self-reflection and stock taking.

To make sure this passage is a time of growth and learning, we’d like to give you a sense of what takes place internally and externally as people deal with these and other questions.




Leadership Passages. The Personal and Professional Transitions That Make or Break a Leader
Leadership Passages: The Personal and Professional Transitions That Make or Break a Leader (J-B US non-Franchise Leadership)
ISBN: 0787974277
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 121

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