Career Advice Detail

Life Balance – Time to Get Real

Articles by Dr Andrew Bass

Andrew is a consultant and speaker who helps ambitious firms and individual professionals to realize their potential. He has worked with leading professional service firms including KPMG, DLA Piper and Pinsent Masons.

A colleague recently told me this story. Her friend is a somewhat macho deal-maker. A recent completion meeting coincided with his son’s 5th Birthday party, to be held on a Sunday afternoon. His wife managed, through a mixture of powerful interpersonal influence tactics (!), to extract a promise that he would be at back for the party at 3pm. As the appointed hour neared, the dealmaker interrupted the flow of the meeting, and the accompanying background chorus of BlackBerrys ®, to announce proudly that he was going to his son’s birthday party. He rather enjoyed the raised eye-brows, feeling he had made a stand for “work life balance and all that” (although he did assure everyone he would be back later).

When he arrived, at 3.30, the party was in full swing. His wife greeted him at the door with a rather judgemental glance at her watch, turned and shouted to her son “It’s Daddy for you!”.

The little boy ran to the telephone…

Because this is an article about life balance, you might expect that I intend criticism of the lawyer in question. But maybe this guy is managing life pretty well: after all, his wife and family are living in a beautiful house, can afford excellent education, healthcare, holidays, and big birthday parties. It’s a trade off.

I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s a lot of nonsense talked about work-life balance. The truth is you really CAN’T have it all, and anyone who says otherwise is being disingenuous.

Read or watch interviews with successful business people and it will be pretty obvious that they work very hard. Some gurus say “Work smarter, not harder.” Sounds good, but even if you can, won’t you be at a disadvantage compared to someone who works smarter AND harder?

So what do you do? I think it’s important to get real:

• Accept that you have to make trade-offs. You are not likely to make partner in a good firm by working 9 to 5, but you will get to spend more time with family, friends and on outside interests. What is more important to you?
  
  
• Get clear on your priorities. This is often the nub of the issue. If you are going to make wise trade-offs, you need to be clear on your values, but most people give this little thought. If you think that work is all that matters, then some might disagree, but it’s up to you. If you think it’s more important to see your kids while they are young, even though that’s when your competitors will be making their mark by working late, then again you should draw your conclusions and have the courage to act on them.
  
  
• Understand your own energy levels. Boost them if you can, but work intelligently with what you’ve got. You can be successful with both high and low energy levels, but you have to understand yourself and act accordingly. Some people just can’t work 14 hours a day. They may be as intelligent, diligent, professional, conscientious as someone who can (indeed they may be more so).
  
  
• Be business-like, not busy for the sake of it. Focus on activities which win business and produce results that clients will pay for. A lot of time spent in offices is spent on meetings which magically fit into a full hour, excessive checking of work, making sure you are still seen to be present when the boss works late .. i.e. activities which add little or no value to any client.
  
  
• Take a rational approach: ask yourself what your ideal weekend in six (or ten) years would look like. Will you be with family? With friends? On a city break? Pursuing an expensive hobby? Walking in the Lake District without a BlackBerry? Then, work backwards. Ask yourself where you will have to be in terms of time, relationships and money in order to experience that kind of weekend on a regular basis. Now you will have a set of goals that are meaningful to you, not just based on living up to other peoples’ expectations or keeping up with the Joneses.

Compare two people who end up looking back and wishing they’d decided differently in some areas of their life. Both of them worked to the point that it affected their personal lives, and both achieved professional success. But here is the difference: the first person made all their choices based on their own priorities and values – even though that might have created some inner conflict at times. The second one simply fell in line with the expectations of others.

Hindsight is wonderful and both of them may rue some choices - but which one would you rather be?

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For more information about coaching and consulting to boost both individual and organisational performance, contact Andy Bass:

Tel: 00 44 (0)121 427 7217
Email: andrew@bassclusker.com
Web: http://www.bassclusker.com