As yet another eventful year draws to a close and we’re on the threshold of a brand new one, it is time to look at the years behind us to craft our paths ahead, looking to a more wholesome phase that harmoniously integrates professional and personal spheres. While some senior executives tell us work/life balance is at best an elusive ideal and at worst a complete myth, there are leaders who make prudent choices about which opportunities to pursue and which to decline, engaging meaningfully with work and family, and neither losing their foothold on success nor depleting themselves while achieving that.
This write-up draws on the findings of five years’ worth of interviews conducted by 600 second year students of Harvard Business School’s Managing Human Capital course, covering 82 senior executives attending a Harvard Business School Leadership program and interacting with almost 4000 executives worldwide.
Meticulous planning, deliberate choices, and unflinching commitment to both spheres don’t guarantee complete control. Life sometimes takes over. Ailments, accidents, mishaps, catastrophes come without ringing any bell. Many executives manage to maintain their work momentum despite life’s stumbling blocks, while their families continue to be the fountainhead of their well-being. A common thread unites their stories. By and large, their lives are built around the following key determinants of success:
Understanding and Defining Success for Oneself: While leading a major project, just as one defines what a win would look like, similarly it helps defining and having a vision of success from early on in life, accepting of course that it would evolve over time. Definitions of professional and personal success range from the tactical to the conceptual – individual achievement, working with a good team in a good environment, ongoing learning and development opportunities, financial success, rewarding relationships, happiness among others. Some intriguing gender differences emerged in the interviews though. In the question of work and family responsibilities colliding, men laid claim to the traditional socio- economic narrative of being the good provider and measured themselves against it. Rarely viewing themselves working for their families in the way men did, women emphasized how important it was for their kids to see them as competent professionals, with both work and home being equally significant to them.
Managing Technology Judiciously: While it is critical to corral emails, text messages, voice mails and other forms of communication for professional reasons, deciding when, how, and where to be accessible for work is an ongoing challenge. When it comes to using communications technology to be in two places at once, more than a third of the surveyed executives viewed it as an invader that can eventually erode performance and motivation levels. Quite a price to pay for constantly being plugged in! A wise professional simply learns to view technology as a good servant but a bad master, multitask only up to a point without burning out, and be available but not too available!
Building Vibrant Support Networks: Managing family and professional life requires a strong network of behind-the-scene supporters. Emotional support is equally essential for even the top bosses to vent, to bounce ideas, and to gain fresh perspective on a problem or a decision from a personal network, as team members always do not have the distance to be objective. Men tend to prefer separate networks of colleagues and friends, more so to counterbalance work. A senior executive put it aptly, “If all of your socializing centers around your work life, you tend to experience an ever-decreasing circle of influence and ideas”. Some people simply want to protect their personal relationships from the churn of the workplace.
Traveling or Relocating Selectively: Discussions about work/life balance usually focus more on managing time, less on managing one’s location. When leaders decide whether to travel or relocate (internationally or domestically), their home lives play a huge part. Several executives have their careers side-tracked or derailed because a partner or spouse needed to relocate. Women are more compelled to cut back on business trips not just for their child- bearing and rearing responsibilities, but also because of restrictive gender roles in certain cultures. It goes without saying, ambitious young executives should decide early on if they find travel undesirable. That way they can avoid getting trapped in an industry or organization that doesn’t mesh with their preference.
Collaborating With One’s Partner: Many leaders emphasize the importance of compatible and complementary relationships, valuing their partners’ emotional intelligence, big picture thinking, capability to provide guidance in making the right choices – in short whatever cognitive or behavioral skills balance out their own tendencies. Apart from lending emotional support, partners can be the best sounding boards, honest critics, and help in developing the other’s potential effectively. An interesting though uncomfortable insight gained is – while male executives praised their partners more for making positive contribution to their careers, women thanked them more for freeing them from traditional household duties, or simply not for interfering!
Finally, while it can’t be predicted what the workplace or the family will look like in times to come, or if the two institutions will coexist, there will always be multiple routes to and definitions of success. Life will continue to take its own twists and turns, and men will have to concentrate their efforts, accepting that of the many paths of success none can be walked alone.
December 2015
Based on Harvard Business Review South Asia March 2014 ‘Manage Your Work, Manage Your Life’ by Boris Groysberg Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and co-author of Talk, Inc.