Can Leaders Have a Career AND a Life? Part I
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.”
Albert Einstein
Perceptions of stress at work are quite high with several studies and our own research with our stress/health assessment StressScan suggesting that 20% to 65% of all employees rate their jobs as being very or extremely challenging ((Nowack, K. (2006). Optimising Employee Resilience. Coaching to Help Individuals Modify Lifestyle. Stress News, International Journal of Stress Management, Volume 18, 9-12)).
A 2002 survey by TrueCareers found that 70 percent of employees do not think there is a healthy balance between their work and their personal life. Of the 1,626 respondents, slightly more than half (51 percent), reported that they were considering looking for a new job as a result of difficulties juggling both their personal and professional responsibilities.
Of the individuals who report a negative balance between their work and personal life, 43% reported working too many hours as the major contributor. Over 36% also reported that worrying about work when not on the job added to work-life imbalance.
It seems pretty obvious that involvement in non-work roles and responsibilities (the “balanced worker”) would have less time to devote to work increasing the likelihood of promotions to those who are work and not family focused.
In a new study using self-ratings, manager and peer ratings of 9,627 leaders in 33 countries found that managers who were rated higher in work-life balance were rated higher in career advancement potential than were workaholics1. This trend was particularly pronounced in women in high egalitarian cultures (men are not expected to be the sole breadwinner and women are not expected to be the sole caregiver of children). This study did not answer the question of whether more balanced managers who were perceived more likely to advance actually did (this would require a longitudinal study).
What makes this study so interesting is the size and number of countries included. The most consistent finding of this study is surprising in light of the common impression that a single focus on work above family, hobbies and outside activities would seem to be a good predictor for potential advancement. This study certainly challenges the prevailing viewpoint on work-life balance and is the one of the most comprehensive studies to suggest that balance might actually be related to positive career outcomes for men and women leaders.
Hey, none of us has enough time but it’s weird to remember that all of us has all that exists….Be well…..
Technorati Tags: stress, burnout, selecting talent, work life balance, balance, career success, leadership, talent development, executive coaching, performance, mastery, expertise, kenneth nowack, ken nowack, nowack, envisia, deliberate practice
- Lyness, K. & Judiesch, M. (2008). Can a manager have a life and a career? International and Multisource Perspectives on Work-Life Balance and Career Advancement Potential. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 789-805 [↩]
