Back to Table of Contents Printable Version (PDF)

Resolving the Dilemma of Work-Life Balance
by Mark Hollingworth

Excerpt from the book by the same name, by Mark Hollingworth

Almost all HR surveys of managers and executives reveal that the number one issue in today's business environment is the achievement of work-life balance.

Some companies have taken up the challenge of trying to help their employees lead healthier, more managed lives. Others are simply using the guise of being a good corporate citizen to ensure that the targets set for the "days off due to illness" and "production per person" key performance indicators are achieved.

After all, why would an organization with increasingly demanding customers, who is facing competition from global competitors with low-cost operations in India or China, or who is polluting where environmental legislation is non-existent or poorly enforced, request its employees to seriously re-examine whether working 60+ hours per week is actually helping them achieve success or happiness?

Our society's almost universal definition of success - and the one often adopted by our friends, family, and peers - also does not help. Most of us accept the following formula:

Formula #1

Success at work --> Wealth & Possessions --> "Success" --> Happiness + Financial Security + Health + Friends & Family

Without going into many of the symptoms we see in our world today, the formula could perhaps read:

Formula #2

Success at work --> Wealth & Possessions --> ? --> Dissatisfaction + Debt + Ill Health + Acquaintances & Broken-Family

This may seem a radical or extreme viewpoint. However, one need only reflect on recent news stories about the current level of unhappiness, consumer debt, obesity among young and old, the divorce rate and the yearning for the feeling of community through internet groups to see that it is not as outlandish as it may first appear.

The reality is that most of us have blindly accepted society's definition of success (Formula #1) and have been only too willing to build a life in and around work. In many organizations and on the cocktail, MBA or Chamber of Commerce circuits, it is admired to be the one who is first-to-arrive and last-to-leave the office, the one who takes work home and who works at the cottage on weekends; it is admired to be the one whose life is completely out of balance!

We implicitly accept that Formula #1 holds even though all evidence supports Formula #2 as being the more realistic.

We can and do rationalize this behaviour in many different ways. But the reality is that there is only one person who chooses a life out of balance: you. You say 'yes' even though a voice inside you may be screaming 'no!' The pressure is too great to not follow the flock. The risk is too great to choose our own path.

Some organizations have recognized that a genuine win-win with its employees is important. But most of us work in organizations which will continuously demand more of us. The company will always state its case in very unequivocal terms as to what it requires from us for its "win." However, we can only start seeking a true win-win arrangement when we have reflected on what "win" we are actually seeking for ourselves. What is our "?" in Formula #2? What is our personal definition of success? Many of us need to take a step back, look at the lives we're leading and seriously consider whether they are "delivering the goods."

Over the past few years, I have worked with many individuals who have faced the challenge of turning around their lives to reconnect with enjoyment and happiness.

Out of this work came the concept of preparing Life-Maps - a process which allows individuals to define success on their own terms, revisit and map out their life objectives and to balance the work-life equation. It allows them to define their "win"!

What is a Life-Map? Until we complete it, it is a piece of paper containing empty boxes (see diagram on the right). A completed Life-Map is the outcome of a process that forces us to examine our lives to determine how we define success or happiness and how we can achieve it. It encourages us to make some difficult choices around the important relationships in our lives, how we manage our time (or self), the things we want or need to learn or master to improve our lives, and to examine the role of money and wealth in our lives. A complete Life-Map is a one-page document that maps our objectives in several dimensions of our life for the next few years. It's simple (it can be done at home) and easy to update. But, as with many life-changing decisions, it is not necessarily easy.

Are you ready to start preparing your Life-map? If so, the following outlines the Life-Map process, the key steps required in order to prepare one and examines some of the challenges you might just meet along the way:

The Preparation Process
Step 1: Defining Life Satisfaction Objectives
To draw a map you first need to know where you're going. The first step in completing your Life-Map is to define your personal success and happiness objectives which will give you greater life satisfaction. Although it can be argued that defining such objectives and life-meaning is a life-long process with outcomes that evolve with time, the following are a few simple exercises that you can use to get some accurate results quickly.

Identify Your 4Ls
Stephen R. Covey talks about the need for people to identify and satisfy their 4Ls. The Ls represent Live (how much money we really need to make to put a roof over our heads, food on the table, to finance our children's education...); Love (what type of social environments we need to work and live in to be content); Learn (what we want to learn next); and Legacy (what we want to create and leave for others). The 4Ls represent the essential elements of a satisfactory existence and everyone's are different. What are your 4Ls?

Writing a 60th Birthday Speech
Writing the 10-minute speech you would like your best friend or spouse to give on your 60th birthday is also a revealing exercise. What would you like people to say about you? How do you want people to describe and remember you? Even more challenging is to actually sit down and write your own obituary. The results of these exercises are always fruitful and rewarding, if daunting, to undertake.

These exercises, among others, will help you define what you need to do in life over the next few years in order to be happier, more satisfied, or successful in your own eyes. Each one provides a slightly different perspective. Together, they allow you to complete the first line of your Life-Map and to define your Life Satisfaction Objectives - things that you will need to be, do, or possess in the next three to five years in order to increase your level of life satisfaction and happiness.

Even after having only completed this first step, many people begin to see why they are experiencing such stress trying to balance work and non-work related objectives: they have been measuring their success using the wrong metrics and prioritizing in the wrong areas. They realize that what society has projected onto them as being indicators of a successful person do not match with their own personal definition. They want something different.

Step 2: Identifying Relationship Objectives to Build Win-Win Relationships
The next step is to examine your relationships with others and see what changes need to be made and what Relationship Objectives need to be set in order to allow you to achieve the Life Satisfaction Objectives you have just established. Some of your relationship issues will have been recognized during the 4Ls exercise or while writing the birthday speech and can be identified immediately. Therefore, often only one more exercise is required to really examine relationships and that is one I call Identifying Your VIPs.

Identifying Your VIPs
This exercise forces you to identify all the roles and relationships you have, whether they be as a son, mother-in-law, friend, member of a sports team or religious community and so on. On a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high), rate the quality of each of these relationships now. Next, rate what you would desire them to be in order to be happier, more successful or better satisfied. Having identified discrepancies between the desired and actual states ask yourself these questions: What is the cause of the discrepancy? Who are my VIPs? Which relationships will help me achieve my Life Satisfaction Objectives? Which are hurting me? What steps am I willing to take now to deal with these situations? These are difficult questions and ones we generally prefer to avoid dealing with. However, choosing one thing often means saying no to something else. The same goes for building and managing win-win relationships. The challenge here is to identify the Relationship Objectives you need to establish to build win-win relationships that will allow you to move towards your Life Satisfaction Objectives.

Step 3: Self Management
The Self-Management step challenges us to re-examine where we invest those most valuable and limited resources: our time and our energy. Examine your new Life Satisfaction Objectives. Where should you be directing your efforts in order to attain them? What do you need to do differently? What activities do you have to cut back or eliminate entirely? What do you need to start doing or do more of? Refer to some of the exercises previously done, for example, the Identifying Your VIPs exercise. Identify how you need to change your behaviour to achieve your objectives.

This step of the Life-Map is perhaps the most important. Your past behaviour was not irrational. It was being rewarded in very real, tangible ways with rewards that you may have valued highly. However, some of those same behaviours were also hurting you. In adopting new ones you will gain because they will all be aligned with your Life Satisfaction Objectives. However, you will still have to give something up - something you have valued very highly in the past. Therefore, there may well be withdrawal symptoms - and resistance!

Step 4: Learning & Growth
The Learning & Growth step of the Life-Map sets objectives in terms of the learning that will be required to allow us to achieve all our Personal Objectives, professional or otherwise. It may include activities that give us pleasure and facilitate relaxation. Perhaps you need to take up gardening, investing, Tai Chi, or swimming courses. Perhaps you need to learn and start doing home renovation projects, to re-start learning how to play the musical instrument that has lay in the basement for 40 years since you stopped playing as a child. Sometimes objectives can include work-related learning that allow us to pursue a work interest that we've always had, to advance our understanding of a subject that particularly interests us, or to help us make a career change or start a small side-line business in the future. It may just allow you to pursue a hobby. Alignment with our personal Life Satisfaction Objectives and achieving life balance are the guiding principles when preparing these objectives.

Step 5: Achieving Financial In-Dependence
Financial in-Dependence does not mean we can retire tomorrow. It does mean that we are no longer vulnerable to the day-to-day stress and anxiety caused by living beyond our means and being driven by the insatiable urge for more. Hence, Financial in-Dependence is achievable by one and all.

Fortunately, having reflected on your definition of success, the first of the 4Ls, and what it will take for you to be happy in the coming years, you may well have established Life Satisfaction Objectives that do not necessarily require a lot or even more money. Having a better relationship with your sister, setting time aside for your parents, the scout troop or spending one day per year at the local drop-in centre does not require more money. Neither does eating healthier, watching less television or spending less time on the internet.

However, to gain Financial in-Dependence, you do need to face up to the financial issues that you'd perhaps rather avoid addressing and answer questions that will require some real changes to be made in your spending habits.

The ideal process of re-evaluating and adjusting our financial habits is to identify how we should earn, invest and spend money based on our Life Satisfaction, Relationship, Self-Management, and Learning Objectives. Compare these ideal financial habits with the ones you currently have. Identify your "fit" and "mis-fit" habits. Establishing your Financial Objectives is then relatively straightforward - although I do not say easy to achieve. Old habits die hard. However, now that you know what you need to do to be successful and happy, why spend money on items or activities that are not taking you towards your goal? Old dogs can learn new tricks when there is a clear reward in doing so.

Measuring Progress
"Everything that is important can be measured" is a phrase often heard in organizations. However, when preparing Life-Maps, there is often little added value in measuring Personal Objectives or the measurement is implicit in the definition of the objective itself.

For example, if one of my Self Management Objectives is to be willing to work long hours in the week but not at all on weekends then, I can either plan and discipline myself to do so - or I do not. This objective does not need a unit of measure. My Life-Map will clearly point out to me why it is in my overall interests to do so - and the price I will pay in terms of my life satisfaction if I do not change my behaviour.

However, if I have an objective such as: "Spend more time with aging parents," it is too qualitative and vague to force a real change in behaviour. I need to establish some way of measuring my change in behaviour. How could I do that? Possibly by measuring the number of times I telephone them per month (e.g. Target: 4) or the number of weekends spent together with them per year (e.g. Target: 6) and so on.

The guiding principle with measurement is that if it helps you to know whether you're on track to doing what you intend to do and to achieving your overall Life Satisfaction Objectives, do it. If not, don't.

The Challenges of Preparing and Using Life-Maps
Most people are trying to follow the same or similar routes towards society's commonly accepted definition of success. Once we have invested the time and energy to determine our personal definition and have prepared our Life-Map to get there, by necessity, we begin to stand out from the crowd, to be different and behave differently. This leads us to face certain challenges:

1. Learning more about yourself and finding the right path - your unique path in life - is not easy and making mistakes is an integral part of any learning process. It takes resolve to see the difficult periods through.

2. You can only achieve more balance by giving some things up. Feeling some withdrawal symptoms during this period is natural but nevertheless unsettling.

3. Friends, family and peers may all question your ambition, motives and challenge you to return to the "flock." The pressure to conform is always there - through advertisements, films and TV programs, social gatherings, etc.

4. Many people pass through their lives never questioning who they are and what they want to achieve. Having prepared a Life-Map, you will know what you didn't know before. You cannot turn the clock back.

A Final Word
Life is short. Many of us end up accepting what we believe is a win-win relationship with our employers only to discover, late in our lives, that we were really accepting a lose-win - and that we have lost "big-time!"

Some people are lucky and encounter a divorce, redundancy, illness or "burn-out" early enough in their lives so as to find a new direction and the chance to build their life on their own terms.

Preparing a Life-Map is by no means a panacea; however, spending some time today preparing one may help you to take a fresh look at your life, the direction it is taking you and maybe it will inspire you to make some change and redefine your life on your own terms. Renewal, whether it be for an organization or an individual, often only comes following a period of crisis. Are you waiting for a crisis? Or are you ready to take that first step today?




"In many organizations...it is admired to be the one who is first-to-arrive and last-to-leave the office, the one who takes work home and who works at the cottage on weekends; it is admired to be the one whose life is completely out of balance."

Click to download pdf of Mark's Life-Map template.
..............................................................................................................................................................................

To subscribe to Fieldnotes: go to http://www.shambhalainstitute.org/world/contact.html

Why Fieldnotes? This newsletter arose from the inspiration to make visible what is otherwise invisible — the rich field of connection, dialogue, and activity that is arising around the Institute's Authentic Leadership programs. This field now extends far beyond the programs themselves, in both time and place. This newsletter also provides a forum for people who are pioneering the emerging field of what could be called "authentic" or "transformative" leadership. It is published bi-monthly.Would you like to be featured in Fieldnotes?.The editorial team invites your feedback, letters, and submissions. The submission deadline for each issue is the 15th of the previous month. We reserve the right to edit for clarity and space. Please include your daytime contact information.

Many thanks to Barbara Bash for her beautiful masthead calligraphy.

Fieldnotes is a publication of the Shambhala Institute for Authentic Leadership, based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The views expressed in this newsletter do not necessarily reflect those of the Shambhala Institute.