Dr. Condren believes that women cannot, however, enjoy a real balance! To her, achieving apparent balance means that you are doing everything partially and nothing well. She is wrong — this is true not just for women but for every one of us who gets up at 6 or so, slops on some soap, and drones off to get a job done!
Work personality and life personality balance is real and is what the coming decade will be about. After 10 years of struggling, we can finally have our cake and eat it too. Read on.
Picture this: The guy kisses his wife, pats his teenaged daughter on the head, chucks little Timmy under the chin and ruffles his hair, and heads off to work, where he fills his role being Mr. Tough Boss. He yells; he screams; he is a hard-ass who pretty much spends his day wishing he could get home a little earlier so he would not have to continue being At Work Guy. He knows his employees hate him, but that is just the freaking way it has to be, and he wishes they knew he is more than Mr. Tough Boss.
He is desperately seeking to balance his work and his life personality, and he does not know how to do it because he is that guy. His career, he figures, depends upon him being MTB.
But there is no such thing as work personality and life personality balance. If you are maintaining any semblance of balance it is because you are still dividing yourself between two goals — it is too difficult to maintain a personality that is not your own. You will continue being unhappy and frustrated.
What Carl or Cindy C. needs to comprehend is that by removing the pressures of trying to achieve balance, we have a much clearer idea of what jobs are really right for us, and in which careers we should kill to excel. No matter what, it will be about moving up, because that is the meaning of aspiration.
In the new era, natural dispositions and personalities will point us to careers where we are fulfilled inside and outside of work — and act as the same person!
We need to maintain the same personality throughout our day. Instead of trying to balance our lives, why not find the right position or career in which we can truly be who we are and work to maximize vividly appealing, obvious strengths instead of constantly trying to minimize our faults?
In the coming period, one that will be better, I promise, we will need to move away from classic positions and traditional leadership roles. We will veer from the steady path toward positions that are more in tune with our self images. As baby boomers leave the workforce and Generation Zero gets off the elevator with an “I will try it for a few months, and if I do not like it, I will take my toys and go home,” attitude, you will see more and more workers — some skilled, some not–searching for the right position at the right company.
That position and company will play to individual strengths and allow people to work best within their personality type (if they do not find the right position, do not expect them to stick around for long).
This is indeed good – nay, great - news. It means that with some effort you can better manage your workforce, get higher levels of productivity from them (and you), feel like yourself while you whistle and work, and not pretend to be someone else. Gone will be harried days when Carl Corporate comes home exhausted and disgusted and in desperate need of an after work martini to help him shake off the day’s horrors. In his place will be a healthier, happier man who can be himself both in and outside of the office.
Boy I’d like to know him. And you, I think, want to be him.
twitter @laermer
Great post Richard,
ReplyDeleteYeah, I might describe the old way as the Mullet approach to work - business up front, and party in the back. Not a good approach. Life is much better with one personality, and not 2, 3, or more. Be yourself and do what you love. Life is way too short to do it any other way.
When you operate from a place of who you really are it works whether you are home playing catch with you kids or sitting at a board meeting at work.
ReplyDeleteGreat post.
Great post! People are tired of having to pretend they are someone else just to fit in and succeed! This duality is at the root of so much that is flawed in the corporate world. Glad its being held up in bright light. We have to be true to ourselves - at work and play. Cheers, Anita Lobo
ReplyDeleteI tend to think of work-life balance as to how much of your life you devote to one vs. the other.
ReplyDeleteBut this is an interesting take. I like it, because when I thought about it, I think I am the same person at work and at home- well, maybe with some minimal divisions.
2 things:
1- One still needs to address the time/priorities segment, even if the personality thing has been squared
2- Anyone out there disagree with this personality bit? Would love to hear arguments
I think the personality matching aspect is critical to happiness in your career. When you can be yourself at your job, it is far easier to meet challenges, excel, and generally to enjoy your work. Switching your persona when you arrive at work and return home can be taxing.
ReplyDeleteTo Doug's point though, the amount of time you spend on your personal life vs. your career is frankly, more difficult to achieve. Particularly in the tech sector, as technology continues to develop new ways of keeping us connected to the office and work-related things, work life tends to bleed into your home life.
Sometimes you simply need to make the conscious decision that "I'm going to close the laptop on the kitchen counter or put the smart phone away." Those minutes here and there add up.
(Seeing as you disabled the comments on the Mike Hendricks post, I've no choice but to post here.)
ReplyDeleteI want to agree with the many other responders who were appalled by Richard's arrogance and lack of ethics. I've been in the PR industry for 8 years, and did find Mike's letter a bit demeaning. But Richard: Your attitude is reprehensibly arrogant; and your decision to post Mike's name (and only his name) is completely unethical.
This will be my first and last visit to your site.
I hope things truly do change after this go 'round, but we as a nation seem to never learn from our mistakes. We're wedded to the same policies, tactics, etc. even if they've been proven not to work. We approach knowledge-based businesses just like we did when we were an agrarian society a hundred years ago. There's no reward for efficiency.
ReplyDeleteI think people are honestly scared to talk extensively about balance in the workplace unless their employer does it first -- and few do.
Work-life balance for me has always been a matter of time. There would be a lot of people who could balance work and home more easily if salaried workers had to be paid high base pay (for instance, $60,000 annually). Then we'd see people who are now in salaried, low-paying supervisory jobs, such as fast-food restaurant managers, getting better pay to compensate for the horrendous hours they put in. An employer shouldn't be able to get 55 hours of work a week out of someone who's paid less than $30,000 or $40,000 a week, as many women are.
ReplyDeleteIt isn't ambition as much as a problem of economic inequality -- there are employers that have a "hazing" approach to employment, where people who don't put in long hours don't get advancement. Working under that pressure can change a person's personality, but the problem is with management style and compensation.