“I have to find a new job. The hours I am working now are wrecking my health and my home life.” - Shawna, Sr. IT GRC Manager
“I really want to get my MBA. My boss has offered some flexibility in my work schedule. Our daughter is now in school. I think I can finally make it all work.” - Zedi, Manager, Financial Analysis
“Getting more experience leading so I can move up into a more strategic role is what I am after. I asked for a stretch assignment, and I volunteered to take on our IT audit workpaper standardization project. It’s a lot, but getting promoted and making manager is really important to me.” - Tyler, Sr. IT Auditor
The names above have been changed; the people and their goals are real.
As a coach, my work is to help people reflect on what is most important to them in their work, their careers and their lives, and help them find a path or process for reducing stress, improving balance and achieving their goals.
Questions are always the starting point in uncovering what’s going on and why. And that’s where I want to start from in this piece about the holy grail of modern times: work-life balance.
First, take a minute to reflect on how your life and work are integrated right now. Are you satisfied with the harmonization of the various aspects of your life? What is working? What could be better? At the end of the article, take a minute and ask yourself these questions again. See if your thoughts have changed or developed further.
The idea that work hours were oppressive and workers needed an equitable amount of time for work, recreation and sleep—eight hours for each—was championed by a Welsh manufacturer, Robert Owens, in the 1860s. So, the concept has been around for quite a while, but it didn’t get a lot of traction until quite recently.
The idea was reintroduced in the mid-1980s, with an Industry Week article from November 1986 cited as the earliest published mention of the “work-and-life balance” phrase. In that article, the author quotes management consultant and author Dick Leider:
“It used to be that work-and-life balance was a boutique issue. You know, something that would be great to worry about whenever – and if – one had some free time. But imbalance is killing people! (Tom Brown, “Time to diversify your ‘life portfolio’?”, Industry Week November 10, 1986, https://wordspy.com/words/work-life-balance/)
A crazy era
Work in the 80s was crazy. The three preceding post-war decades, the 50s through the 70s, were “go-go-go” at work. Company loyalty and a do-whatever-it-takes attitude were championed in return for company paternalism, near-lifetime employment for many, and company pensions.
The 80s, 90s and early 2000s took that to a whole new level. Silicon Valley had Apple, Oracle, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and myriad other former start-ups coming into their own. The dotcom era followed. The tech ecosystem engendered a lot of mythology around long hours and the drive to make it. Wall Street and management consulting were viewed as apex jobs for new MBAs, and the culture of these sectors was definitely not attuned to work-life balance.
Generally, corporate cultures fostered dedication to work and the idea that success (money, prestige, lofty titles) was borne out of slogging, with management disregarding needs and lives of employees. Long hours, two-career families and latch-key kids were normal.
Popular culture is a telling barometer of society. Here are four major movies bearing witness to the lack of balance and the low level of personal agency people had at work in this era: “9 to 5” (Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda, et al); “Wall Street” (where we meet the iconic Gordon Gekko); “Wolf of Wall Street” (based on a true and not- so-unique story of the depravity of Wall Street in the 80s); and “Office Space” (as someone who grew up in tech, this is one of my personal favorites).
Work-life balance fell to the wayside, a near unattainable dream. Employees gave up balance. The scale was fully weighted on the side of work.
Pushing back
In the 2000s, many of us started pushing back. Stress. Health issues. Unhappy kids. No vacation time. Too much sacrifice. Not enough pay-off. No pension! Enough is enough.
Millennials had certainly had enough, having lived with Boomer parents who were in the thick of the work-life imbalance for much of their growing up. As workers, millennials pushed the needle on work-life balance and the need for a life. They are a big generational cohort of workers and business started listening – sort of. And then came the pandemic. If there was anything that put WORK AND LIFE into perspective, it was this recent earthshaking tragedy.
For work it was a watershed, enabling work-from-home for many on a scale that had never been tried or tested before. Even more importantly, it got many of us thinking hard about what is really important.
At the end of last year, I was preparing a talk for an employee affiliate group focused on developing woman leaders at a major US financial services company. One segment of my talk was about creating work-life balance.
I included the following quote from a talk given by TIAA President and CEO Thasunda Brown Duckett at Fortune’s “Most Power Women’s Summit” in October 2021:
“Work-life balance is a lie. That ‘S’ on the chest wasn’t for “Superwoman.” It was for “Spent.”
Time for some important takeaways: It isn’t so much that work-life balance is a lie, per se. What is a lie is that it truly is impossible to be the most amazing at your job, the most amazing as a partner, the most amazing as a parent, and the most amazing as a person doing things you like to do. It is important to remember that:
- Success is what you define it to be. It depends on your priorities – at a given time. It depends on your goals and needs at that time, and how you feel about all these things.
- External definitions of success and of what work-life balance should look like are irrelevant.
- You are the CEO of your career. You are the one casting the vision and executing on a plan toward your goals.
- When you get really clear on your vision, your goals and your plan, you can determine what the balance in YOUR life needs to look like.
In her talk, Brown Duckett went on to say that her goal was to “outperform this thing called life.”
“In any given minute, I many not be the best mom. But over time, I’m a really good mother. On any given day, I may not feel like I am operating at my best as a CEO. But over time, I think I’m a pretty good leader.”
So, how are folks in our digital trust community thinking about this and what are they doing to find a balance?
I reached out to my network and I was especially interested in talking with working parents who have built or are building successful careers because adding parenting to the mix complicates everything, and because we are in a time of change with regard to how employers and employees factor family considerations into daily work and career planning. Moreover, when school holidays arise, that adds yet another wrinkle and potential stress level to the whole calculus. In the northern hemisphere, we have summer and end of school arriving soon!
From an IT risk leader at a Fortune 50 company about how he built his career while being an involved dad for his three kids (coaching their soccer teams, going to games, the whole gamut):
“I prioritized kid time. I would start work earlier so I could be home in the late afternoon. When I think about the DIY stuff that was on my to-do list, I usually just waited until I had the time. Maybe I should have outsourced it. That would have reduced stress. I never really talked about my schedule at work; I just did it. But I was always there. Earning trust is about being there.”
From an IT advisory and consulting senior leader on how he thinks about setting boundaries:
“COVID made it really clear that there have to be boundaries between life and work. I took my email for corporate systems off my phone. My computer was only 20 feet away. I didn’t need MS Teams pinging my phone when I was watching a movie with my kids. If someone needs me urgently, they can text me. I don’t take calls before 9 a.m. on specific days. That is a boundary I have set. For me, it’s family first. There is nothing you are doing at work that is more important than a critical family matter, and if your employer thinks differently, you are probably working for the wrong company.”
From an information security manager in FinTech about fostering more acceptance of parenting and stopping the apologizing for parenting – particularly in high-performance work cultures:
“Whether you like it or not you are not going to work until 6 or 7 p.m. each night. That takes you away from the toxic work culture of working too long. Men are doing that now and people are celebrating that. It is a shift. I met another mom who had a baby about the same time as me. We talk about stuff like managing milk, who puts milk in which work refrigerator and about pumping (milk) at work. It’s great to have a friend in the same space. It’s about celebrating other people’s kids. Affirming that for people. Normalizing that. I do that because I want a culture shift. I want to stop apologizing for stuff I have to do for my kids.”
From an IT GRC senior leader in Big 4 Consulting on finding the confidence to talk about her family needs at work and how opening the dialog has helped her team find their balance and develop a supportive environment:
“I used to shy away from personal discussions about the care I needed to provide for our special needs child. What helped me get over that was getting my priorities set. As I grew in my career, I saw I was able to deliver. I realized that there was nothing to be fearful of. I had the confidence that I could deliver. You have to set expectations and deliver appropriately. I make sure I don’t take on more than I can handle.
“Now when joining a new team, I introduce my family, I show my team a family picture. By setting the example and being open, it has made it possible for team members to trust that they can be open, too. Everyone has been supportive of picking up the pieces for each other.”
From a chief audit executive at a major gas and electric utility company on how she developed her career, switched roles with her spouse, and co-managed the family team that includes five kids:
“I made very conscious decisions to do things that slowed down or accelerated my career at points in time. After Child #4, I took a pause in my career to stay home with young kids. Later, I wanted to continue my career so my husband and I decided we would switch roles. I don’t even know what “balance” means. I think it comes down to priorities. What are you prioritizing at various points in your career? Does benefit outweigh the cost? Sometimes you are in a sprint for the sake of your career, at other times not.
“My husband and I had conversations around clear expectations that for the sole earner, their job takes priority over a lot of things. So, family administration (calendars, doctor’s appointments, events, etc.) falls on the person who is not the earner. We decided early on that family representation was the key thing rather than which parent showed up. All of our kids tend to treat us as one entity.”
Be your own coach
Studies, books and podcasts talk about the value of journaling. It works. Writing – and for many, writing with a pen and paper – is an excellent way to reflect and gain new perspectives. It allows us to dig into those questions about how we are thinking, what we really want, what actually makes us happy.
What follows below is a process that will allow you to create a data set over three months that will allow you to better see where you are, where you want to go, how you want to spend your time.
Here’s how:
Set a timer. Write for 15 minutes. Tackle any one of the questions that you considered at the beginning of this column, or just one of them that feels important, weighty, or scary.
- What fires you up?
- What give you joy?
- What is causing stress or dissatisfaction?
- What does success in your life look like – now, and later?
- What are you prioritizing?
- What things can give a little now so you can achieve your most important current goal?
- Where are you stuck with moving forward?
Over the next 60 days, write for 15 minutes, three times per week. Continue working with the questions above or just let the words flow. (It takes 60 days to create a habit, so this piece gives you a good shot at establishing journaling as a tool in your career toolkit.)
Reflect on your three pieces of writing at the end of the week. What themes are emerging? New insights? Write those down as your weekly wrapup. At the end of the first month, review all your highlights. Go back to writing that resonates with you. Write down your first month’s insights. Repeat this for months two and three.
Now you have a data set!
Review your data set of 36 journal entries at the end of the 60 days. What are the big themes? What has resolved? What are you still wrestling with? Most importantly what are the goals and priorities that have surfaced and endured over the three months?
Be your own coach – next steps
Everyone among the people I spoke with for this article talked about the criticality of setting goals and prioritizing work and life activities as a way of finding their own ideal balance.
The CAE at the utility company offered this amazing work-life hack:
“One of the things I have practiced since the beginning of my career: I start my day with a priorities list. I flag both personal and work items in buckets of urgent; need to be done soon but not emergency; and long-term strategy things. I handwrite my list. There is a certain emotional component to the time it takes to handwrite it that helps me absorb what I have written. I visit my priorities list at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day. Did I get done what I absolutely needed to get done? How do I adjust what needs to get done tomorrow? This is about really being mindful.”
This has been a very valuable process for her and one that she says helps her create headspace and balance, as well as helping her achieve success on her own terms.
I urge you to try this out, using the data that you gathered from your self-coaching work above.
Breaking it down:
- Identify your most important goals – personal and career
- Make a plan to take one step toward your goal each day. Keep track of your progress daily!
- Find a “Goals Buddy” with whom you can share your goal and your journey – and you’ll share theirs. This is a way of holding yourself accountable, similar to the way a coach holds you accountable.
- Reflect each day:
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- Did I get done what I absolutely needed to get done?
- If not, why not?
- How do I adjust what needs to get done tomorrow?
- What steps am I going to take?
- What resources do I need?
- What help do I need? Who can I ask for help?
Reflection, knowing our own priorities, goal setting, making a plan, and holding ourselves accountable for execution: these are powerful steps you can take to regain agency and control over your life and how your time is spent, at work and at home.
For most people I have coached over the years, it has been the realization that they are no longer at the mercy of others that has given them back a sense of balance – recognizing that they can set appropriate boundaries that enable them to align their work and the other important aspects of their lives in the percentages that suit them. Sometimes it’s a 50 / 50 split; at other times not.
A critical realization is that goals and priorities change. That certification, MBA or promotion that wasn’t a goal last year has now risen to the surface of your goals list. Or, you now have the time and the ability to do a career sprint to accelerate your growth toward a leadership role. Or maybe you have come to the realization that your community work or personal passion needs to take the driver’s seat, and you’re happy to have a job that you can do well, without stressing over the day-to-day.
Case in point, our eldest daughter, a senior data analyst with a consumer products company, called to say that she had been contacted by a recruiter from a software company about a very cool job. She has been planning a six-month long #vanlife trip up the Pacific Northwest Coast for months now. She can work remotely for her current employer. She does her job well; her company values her. The prospective new job with the software company? The career piece sounds intriguing, but she is not going for it. Right now, her goal is to live her #vanlife adventure. This passion will be her life sprint. The work sprint can wait for now.
Leaving you with this: you are the CEO of your life and your career. You call the shots. Find your balance by finding your true vision of success and executing on YOUR plan.