The short answer is life defies balance. Balance suggests some equality of focus and distribution of time and energy to each aspect of your personal and professional lives. Can't happen.
Each day brings opportunities of searching, struggling, and demonstrating skills, purpose, intelligence, and wonder. And it only takes on call, one accident, one person, to alter our priorities or comfort – making the 'to do' list meaningless. Is that right, fair, balanced? No, it's life. As someone in a leadership role, you must become better-equipped than most to respond to daily challenges and upsets with the intensity necessary to achieve and get back to the 'to do' list.
There are 7 components to our lives – familial, social, physical, professional, spiritual, financial, and intellectual. At any given point-in-time, one of these may take a priority position. In order to successfully deal with that issue, other things will (and should) take a back seat. Any parent knows the illness of a child is more important than any sales meeting or even closing a deal. IF it isn't, let me suggest you and the child will suffer in the long run. Should personal finances be strained, there is no doubt it will impact your conscious and subconscious energies to correct them.
And not to slight your career, IF a significant deal, opportunity, or meeting could launch your authority or purpose into another sphere, you owe it to yourself to give it your best. Translation: other things get ignored.
So everything is always in a state of flux and imbalance. Your job then is to blend the dimensions of family and work. Finding a means of being a 'total leader', able to move from one dimension to another, is critical. The trouble comes when one or several dimensions are continually focused upon and others go lacking. Working late isn't terrible unless it happens with a frequency that ignores family, health, etc. Conversely, never putting in extra hours may suggest an unwillingness to invest in your organization's gain under your leadership.
If you can't remember when (or it was some time ago) when you spent time and energy on each one of the seven components of your life – you're off-balance; you're out of whack' you're headed for trouble in some area. You can't avoid difficulties in your life, but you can minimize them and be ready to deal with them, by forgetting balance and think blending. So, family or work – which is more important? BOTH. |
