Work Life Balance

Work/Life Balance

We take a slight risk in posting this picture to our blog … after all we are in our bathing suits!  So leadership is about risk and here we go …

But the picture is a literal and metaphorical example of work life balance, a challenge many of our high tech leadership coaching clients face. The obvious one is that work life balance does involve taking time out for fun and we recently came back from a vacation where we played on tubes in the water 🙂

The metaphorical one is how we rode this tube around the lazy river pool.  It took us an amazing amount of time to get balanced on the tube and while we look balanced in this picture, in fact our journey around the river pool was all up and down and side to side than completely balanced floating lazily along the river.

A lot of our clients think that work life balance is having everything balanced at all times on a daily basis. We think a more powerful metaphor is to think of work life balance as a paradoxical polarity that must be managed, but cannot ever be solved or fixed. We draw on Barry Johnson’s polarity management to help ourselves (and our clients) manage the tension.

If you focus too much on your work life, you will start to experience a downside to that focus.  It could look like too many hours at the office, increased stress, less enjoyment of work, complaints from your spouse, etc. Whatever it is, you need to put some focus on your personal life for a while.  If you start to focus on your personal life too much, you will experience a downside to that.  It could look like missed career opportunities, a disconnect with your colleagues, complaints from your boss.  That’s your signal to return back to your work life. Ironically, the early warning signals we most need to pay attention to are the ones we do our best to dismiss (eg. think spousal complaints 😉

And so it goes … just as Dave and I bobbed up and down on our raft, so too must people swing back and forth between work life and personal life. The trick is to not tip over, which can only be accomplished if we’re aware and open enough to those early warning signals. Sometimes I was perilously close to being dumped in the water and Dave was flying high … but we managed to get back to centre before either of us got too wet!