Make Your Work/Life Balance a Conscious Choice

Some family events this past weekend caused me to reflect again on work/life choices -- this time on the choices of three generations in my family.

Like most in their generation, my parents had a traditional marriage, in which the husband worked for pay and the wife worked at home. My father was a workaholic, leaving for the office before dawn each day. He was usually home for dinner, but worked a lot on evenings and weekends, and traveled frequently for his job. My mother took care of house and kids, by herself when she had to.

My husband’s parents had a situation like my parents, except they lived in a smaller town and my father-in-law could come home for lunch each day. But the realms of husband’s and wife’s responsibilities were as separate as in my family.

Like many in our generation, my husband and I struggled to find a path where we both worked and both cared for the household.  We had professional jobs in the same field, and each stayed with our firms for an entire career.

We divided childcare and home responsibilities in ways that made sense to us. We argued over who worked more, or didn’t do their share of chores. We scrambled to find time for everything, and often our time together was the first thing to go. But somehow managed to stay married till our children were grown and life returned to some semblance of sanity.

Our young adult children are now launched in their careers. I see each of them working long hours.  They have jobs they like, but they aren’t wedded to them. Each talks about moving on in a few years; whether they will or not, remains to be seen. And neither as yet has a spouse or children, nor prospects of changing marital status soon.

Three generations, three models, three sets of choices. The models don’t separate by generations – people in each generation have chosen each model. There is no right way to manage work and life.  After more than thirty years of trying to balance work and life, I don’t even think of it as work and life anymore; it’s simply life.

What I encourage my children to do – and what I encouraged younger employees that I mentored to do – is to make their choices consciously, and to re-think those choices regularly.

And so I encourage you, too, to make conscious choices.  Whatever you choose, make it a life that suits your values and leaves room for the discretionary things in life that are important to you.

A few months ago, Dr. Donald E. Wetmore published a post on AMA Net that listed seven things NOT to ignore in your work life balance: 

• your health

• your family time

• your financial health

• your intellectual development

• your social contacts

• your career path

• your spirituality

That’s a pretty good list, and fits well with the areas mentioned in the book Standing at the Crossroads: Next Steps for High-Achieving Women, by Marian N. Ruderman and Patricia J. Ohlott, which I have found helpful for self-assessment.

Where in your life do you need more balance?

Getting Things Done When You Are Not in Charge

The first business book I ever bought for myself was Getting Things Done When You Are Not in Charge, by Geoffrey M. Bellman.  At the time, almost twenty years ago, I was still in a staff job and hadn’t yet become a manager.  Bellman’s messages hit home with me, particularly his starting sentence: “You are not in charge.”

None of us is in charge of every aspect of our lives.  But we can all take charge of far more of our life than we do.

This post outlines Bellman’s model for success when you are in a support role (as we all are in some aspect of our life).  The questions to consider in each section are mine. 

1. Understand the job of helping others succeed. 

Recognize that you are not the person in charge, but appreciate the value and expertise you bring to your organization.  And remember that you are in charge of your life – you are responsible for making decisions that are congruent with your values. 

Consider:  What choices and decisions do you make to align your role with the business and the business with your values?

2. Lead when you are not in a position of authority

Just because you are not in charge does not mean you should not lead.  Your leadership grows out of your belief in yourself, in the people you work with, and in the value your profession brings to the business.  According to Bellman, you lead through vision, intuition, and appropriate risk-taking.  These traits are not limited to line managers – everyone in the business possesses them to some extent. 

Consider:  How do you use your vision, intuition and risk-taking to influence the business?

3. Understand and influence change

There are many models of change dynamics.  Bellman’s is a triangle of (1) who the players are, (2) what the players want, and (3) what the current state is – basically, how the players can get from what is to what they want.  Then Bellman puts YOU in the middle – how can YOU help the players get from where they are to what they want. 

This is a basic model of customer service – which is the function of any staff role.  And most line roles also have customers.

Consider:  What do the people who are your customers want? What is the gap between what they want and the current state? How can you help them get what they want?

# # #

This brief summary doesn’t do justice to Bellman’s book.  It only addresses the first of six parts of his book.

Combine Bellman’s three-part model for success in a staff role (any role where you are not in charge) with the concept of discretionary time I wrote about several weeks ago, and you have a roadmap for taking charge of your life.

Are you interested in learning more about leadership in a staff position?  If so, please let me know in the comments below. 

I’d also appreciate any comments answering one or more of the questions posed in this post.

Work-Life Balance and “Opting Out”

ForbesWoman published a thought-provoking piece on February 28 by Meghan Casserly titled “Why Is ‘Opting Out’ a Bad Word for Women?” 

I published a comment to that article shortly after it was posted, but the issue haunted me all last week.  Here’s what I think at the moment about the notion of women “opting out” of the workplace:

1.  Women choose whether to quit working for pay for many reasons. Usually it is a mix of work and family reasons, and a very difficult decision. 

I managed to continue working in a 60 hour a week professional career throughout the years my children were at home.  When my children were young, I got advice from family, friends and colleagues that it would be easier if I quit my position and took a “nice, part-time job” somewhere.  These comments made me mad, and I stayed through the worst of the sick kid years because I was stubborn.  No one was telling my husband to get a “nice, part-time job,” and I earned as much as he did and liked my job better than he did.

2. Women who receive significant positive reinforcement in the workplace are less likely to opt out.

I stuck it out while my children were at home, but I retired early.  By that point in my career, the psychic and monetary rewards I got from working were less important than the goals I wanted to accomplish in my life outside the workplace.  Had I still been receiving developmental opportunities and not had to deal with so many jerks at the office, I might well have remained.
So, yes, my decision was voluntary, but it was in part based on reduced job satisfaction.  Could my company have kept me?  Probably.  But only by satisfying my terms, which wasn’t going to happen.

3. Women have more choices than men.

Women are viewed negatively in the workplace when they opt out, but men are viewed even more negatively if they take more than a few days or weeks right after a baby is born.  This is just as unfair as the business assumption expressed in the ForbesWoman article that women are more likely to opt out, therefore, businesses don’t have to spend as much to develop them.

4. Both “staying in” and “opting out” are rational decisions, and they are very individual decisions. 

Each person will choose the best path for herself and her family at the moment the decision is made.  While it is human nature to impose our own values on another person’s decision, doing so doesn’t help.

5. Businesses do not accommodate family life.

This is true for both men and women, but in our society women get less push back for “opting out,” though I know many men who also have “opted out.”

It is rational for businesses to invest less in people they don’t think will stick around, but it becomes a chicken and egg problem. Women are less likely to stick around if they do not see the benefit to themselves – and investing in their development is certainly a huge benefit and a way to keep women engaged in the workplace. If businesses don’t invest equally in women as in men, why would women stay?

So are women (and men) making truly “opting out” on a purely voluntary basis, or are they being subtly directed toward the option that is easiest for business? My answer to that varies moment by moment.

The better question is:  How do we instead make work and home life both attractive options for women?

And the best question is:  How to we allow everyone – male and female – to create a rewarding life that balances work and family?

Discretionary Time: Making a Difference at Home, at Work, and in the Community

I believe in finding inspiration wherever we can. Earlier today, I tweeted an article on leadership using Tim Tebow as an example. This afternoon, I found this post in Legal Rebels by Patrick Lamb, which also struck a chord with me.

As Lamb asks, “What are you going to do about your personal situation? About the world’s?” We each have an obligation to make a difference to our families and friends and colleagues, and also to the greater community in which we live. We all have endless possibilities in how we conduct our lives – at home and at work. And the choices we make are what defines us.

I remember learning of the concept of “discretionary time” about twelve years ago. A diversity consultant was talking to my management team about how improving diversity in our firm was up to each of us – if we didn’t spend time on diversity-related activities in the workplace, no one else would either. And each of us, no matter how big or how small our job was, had some time that we could control, some time to spend on what was important to us.

I’ve tried to apply the concept of discretionary time each day since then. I try to spend some time on an activity of my choosing. Not what my boss wanted me to do, not what my subordinates asked for, not what family members thought I needed to do.

Even if it was just fifteen minutes reading an article on a topic where I needed development, or stopping by a colleague’s office for a casual discussion, or attending a community event, I did something that showed what I thought was important in my life.

What can you do with your discretionary time? Please comment below.