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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Combine the best parts of your personal and professional life to live the life you really want Balance is B.S. is an unflinching and honest look at the challenges today's working woman faces in balancing her professional and personal lives. In the United States, women comprise over 40% of household income. Increased gender diversity in the modern business landscape continues to have a positive impact on bottom lines and revenue reports across the economy, and offers significant benefits for ambitious women in the workplace. This increase of women in the workforce does present a serious problem--women are working longer and harder outside of the home, but their workload has not lessened inside of the home. While their career prospects rise, expectations of their family and personal lives remain flat. Women pursue the mythical "work-life" balance, and feel guilty for not reaching it. There is a better way. This insightful book provides working women with real-world advice, enabling them to blend their personal and professional lives, avoid burning out, and raise expectations of themselves and those around them. Every chapter presents practical exercises to identify values, and focus on what matters most. Following the path laid out by this essential guide, you will learn how to: * Blend business and personal lives together without compromising your values * Adjust expectations of yourself and others around you * Use practical exercises and effective techniques to combine work, social, family, and parenting lives * Stop feeling guilty about your work-life balance, and embrace the best parts of both Balance is B.S. is an invaluable resource for working women regardless of profession, experience, and status. Author Tamara Loehr draws on her years of entrepreneurial success to share her proven methods of merging work, play, and family to map out and reach the life you actually want to live.
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Seitenzahl: 363
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Table of Contents
Cover
Disclaimer
Acknowledgments
PART I: Balance Is Bullshit
CHAPTER 1: Rising without Compromising
NOTES
CHAPTER 2: The Myths That Keep Us Down
THE MYTH OF WHAT MAKES US WORTHY, ACCORDING TO OUR GENDER
THE MYTH OF “HAVING IT ALL”
THE MYTH OF “WORK-LIFE BALANCE”
NOTES
CHAPTER 3: Balance Is Bullshit: Blend Instead
NOTE
PART II: A Workbook for Rising Women
CHAPTER 4: “Moving Up” versus Rising
CATEGORIZE, DON'T COMPARTMENTALIZE
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
CHAPTER 5: V Squared
KNOW YOUR VALUE
NAVIGATE LIFE ACCORDING TO YOUR VALUES, NOT YOUR PLANS
HOW TO DEFINE YOUR VALUES
WHEN VALUES COLLIDE: BEING AN EMOTIONALLY SOPHISTICATED WOMAN IN AN EVER-CHANGING LANDSCAPE
BE A WOMAN, NOT A CHILD
CHAPTER 6: Vision Boards Are Bullshit
SETTING EFFECTIVE GOALS
MOTIVATION
IT'S NOT ABOUT THE GOAL
A LOCKED-IN GOAL IS A DANGEROUS GOAL
FREE YOURSELF FROM GOALS
CHAPTER 7: It's All About the Journey
THE BEAUTY OF SHARING YOUR BUCKET LIST
START YOUR OWN LIST!
NOTE
CHAPTER 8: Filling Up Your Soul
YOUR PERSONAL PIE
PEOPLE WHO GET IT
THINGS THAT FILL UP YOUR SOUL
WHEN YOU'RE STUCK
MENTAL WELLNESS
THE WEIGHT OF BEING AN ENTREPRENEUR
WARNING SIGNS
COACHING BREAK
NOTES
CHAPTER 9: Breaking Out of Your Bubble
GET OUT OF YOUR BUBBLE
GROW YOUR RING SIZE
UNDERSTAND YOUR LEARNING STYLE
CHAPTER 10: Choose Your Own Adventure
WORK AS A JOURNEY, NOT A LADDER
CHOOSING YOUR OWN ADVENTURE
DEFINING YOUR SUCCESS—AND GETTING IT
CREATING YOUR VOCATION
CHAPTER 11: Work-Life Blend
THE MYTH OF “WORK-LIFE BALANCE”
FACT: WOMEN GET PREGNANT
WORK-LIFE BALANCE MYTH #1: “JUST WORK PART-TIME!”
WORK-LIFE BALANCE MYTH #2: “JUST BE YOUR OWN BOSS!”
FINDING YOUR BLEND
DEFINING THE BLEND
INVITING PEOPLE INTO THE BLEND
STARTING SMALL
NOTES
CHAPTER 12: When Breadwinning Doesn't Feel Like “Winning”
WHEN BREADWINNING DOESN'T FEEL LIKE WINNING
TALKING TO YOUR PARTNER ABOUT MONEY
INVESTING IN YOURSELF
MY PERSONAL RULES AROUND FINANCES
FIRST, COVER YOUR PROMISES
TRACK YOUR MAGIC NUMBERS
GO AND PLAY
CHAPTER 13: “Thanks for asking”
SUCCESSFUL WOMEN INTIMIDATE MEN
SETTING EXPECTATIONS
CONDITIONAL AGREEMENTS AND UNCONDITIONAL LOVE
CARRYING YOUR OWN BAGGAGE
PROBLEM SOLVING
CHAPTER 14: “Mommy, don't go!”
GUILT, MYTHS, AND EXPECTATIONS
WHY YOU NEED TO STOP SAYING THE WORD “COMPROMISE”
REDEFINING SUCCESS AS A MOTHER
REDEFINING WORK IN THE EYES OF YOUR KIDS
REDEFINING GENDER ROLES
THE PROBLEM WITH PUSH DIAMONDS
NOTES
CHAPTER 15: The Business of Family
BUILDING CULTURE AT HOME
BE A PARTNER, NOT THE BOSS
EXPECTATIONS AT WORK AND HOME
HAPPY HOME, HEALTHY BUSINESS
MIXING BUSINESS AND PLEASURE
NOTE
CHAPTER 16: Territory versus Tribe
A NEW WAY TO EXPERIENCE COMMUNITY
FROM LIKES TO MEANING
BLENDED FRIENDSHIPS
FRIENDSHIP RED FLAGS
NOTE
CHAPTER 17: Why Blending Matters
CHARITY VERSUS LEGACY
LEGACY THROUGH BUSINESS
LEGACY FOR YOUR LOVED ONES
LEGACY BY LIVING EXAMPLE
LEGACY GIVES YOU LASER FOCUS
START NOW
NOTES
PART III: Keep Blending for Life
CHAPTER 18: Things to Do Because I Want To
THINGS TO DO BECAUSE I WANT TO: A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE
Conclusion
WHAT'S NEXT?
Index of Coaching Exercises
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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BALANCE IS B.S.
HOW TO HAVE Awork. life. blend.
TAMARA LOEHR
Copyright © 2019 by Mitara Empresa Pty Ltd. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.
Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is Available:ISBN 978-1-119-55040-2 (Hardcover)ISBN 978-1-119-55044-0 (ePDF)ISBN 978-1-119-55045-7 (ePub)
Cover design and illustration: Zoltán Nemes
To Flori and my girls:
Thank you for your unconditional love.
I am infinitely grateful for our life, the journey and adventures we share.
Disclaimer
In this book, I'm going to talk about my husband and kids a lot, because that's the world I'm in (and because I love them). But I don't want this book to exclude you if you're not married, or don't have kids. For a while there I thought I was going to be a single mom—I was 29, in the middle of a divorce, and looking up sperm donors on the internet. So no judgment from me if you haven't followed the same path I have.
This book is for women who are doing big things in their careers, but also want to manage their personal lives well—whatever that means for you. So I've got chapters devoted to marriage and parenting, because this is what personal life looks like for a lot of us, and that's where gender roles mess with our heads the most. But I hope if you don't conform to the “husband and 2.5 kids” model, you still get a lot out of this book. If you're a woman who wants to rise without compromise, you're one of us.
Acknowledgments
The following people made valued personal contributions to the book: Daniel Bonney, Emily Diamond, Monte Heubsch, Gina Mollicone-Long, Sue-Ellen Watts, Aaron Zamykal and, of course, Florian Loehr.
Thank you to Jeff Hoffman, Keith Abraham, Paul Dunn and Michel Kripalani for your inspiring work and for permission to use your words.
An extra-special mention to:
Kamina: Thank you for taking my journal rants and vision for this book and making it come to life. Your talent is admirable and our new-found friendship is treasured. PS: You were a blender before we met!
Emily: Thank you for your life/business coaching and dear friendship. You've transformed so many lives, mine included, so thank you for taking the time to turn your invaluable methods into two-page exercises for this book. Continue your path of positively impacting the world!
K (Kylie): Thank you for showing me what unconditional friendship looks like. You lift me up, make me laugh, never judge, and lead with such a big heart. Blessed to call you bestie.
Florian: Thank you for empowering me, supporting me, and being my rock and the best role model to our children: shared values, constantly evolving, creating memories, and being adventurous.
PART IBalance Is Bullshit
CHAPTER 1Rising without Compromising
I met Florian when I was 31.
At 31, I had a plan. I'd grown my marketing agency to be one of the top agencies in Australia. I'd been working as a singer/songwriter for 15 years and had a couple of hit singles and toured Japan. I'd been married at 22 and divorced at 30. Everybody thought I was crazy when we broke up, but I think the partner you're with should think you're the best thing in the world. He didn't. And I didn't want to settle any more.
My plan was to wait until I was 35 and then become a single mother. My best friend and I had looked up sperm donors on the internet. It wasn't that I didn't want to get married again, it was just that I didn't want to compromise. And growing up in a mining town, I had certain perceptions about what marriage was: it seemed like everyone I went to school with got married, got pregnant, and had no inspiration to leave town. So I'd made a different plan for my life.
Florian wasn't in the plan.
I was 31, and I'd decided to retire from the music industry. My last gig was in Morocco, at a festival in Essaouira. Then I was due to fly to Japan, but there was a typhoon in Japan so I got stuck in London for a night. I really didn't care for London (mainly due to the weather), but I was put up in this beautiful hotel. Florian was working at the front desk.
Florian's a real romantic. He'd just gotten back from his grandparents' 60th-anniversary party and he was working behind the desk at this hotel. He saw me walk in and thought “holy shit” and basically pushed people out of the way so he could serve me.
I handed my passport across the desk and he saw that our birthdays were one week apart. He took it as a sign.
I said to my travel companion, “I am going to give him my number because he's cute and we're having ‘butterfly’ moments,” and she said, “he's gay! Man, you can't even pick it any more!”
I gladly proved her wrong.
We started talking every day. He'd fly over and meet me and we'd rendezvous in wineries. I was scared to show him my businesses and my block of units, my real life. I had this stupid theory that successful women scare men away, so I tried to downplay it all.
When I met him, I didn't know he'd been raised by a working mother and a stay-at-home dad. I didn't know he had two sisters and admired strong women.
I didn't know that he'd see raising children as a job, not an afterthought, and it was a job he really wanted to do.
I didn't know that eight years later he'd be living with me and our two kids in our home in Australia. That I'd be taking him to business functions and getting used to men talking to him and ignoring me, assuming he was the entrepreneur and I was the trophy wife.
I didn't know he was perfect for me. I just gave him my email address and ran away.
****
So we did get married, and I didn't have to compromise. Instead, our family joined the ranks of statistics like these:
A 2013 study found that in 40% percent of American households with children under 18, the primary breadwinner was a woman. Of these, 37% were households where the woman was married and earned more than her husband.
1
In Australia in 2017, 52% of all women, and 57% of those who lived with a partner and no kids, identified themselves as the main earner. In couples with kids, 25% of them were supported by a female breadwinner.
2
There's been a huge shift in female earning, and it's happened really quickly. In the 1960s, for example, only 6% of US households had female breadwinners, as opposed to roughly 40% now.3 In Australia, women's real annual earnings have risen by 82% in the past 30 years, compared to only 16% for men, because women started from a much lower baseline.4 Women are not only earning more in general, but some of us are starting to earn more than our male partners. A lot more.
And those stats keep rising.
All of which is incredible for women. Yes, we have a long way to go with closing the pay gap. Yes, in general, there are still far fewer women than men in executive and board positions, across any country or sector you take a look at. But it's a changing game, and it's changing quickly. Female earning is on the rise. Rates of female breadwinners are on the rise. Females are rising through company ranks and taking on more responsibility, more prestigious titles, and more lucrative salaries.
This is not only incredible for women, individually and globally—it's really fucking good for business.
If you replaced all of the prime ministers and presidents of all the countries in the world with women, within a generation there'd be no war. Women's conflict resolution isn't to punch each other. Women being expected to behave like men in the workplace—therein lies the problem. If all we're doing is remaking women into the image of men, we're losing 90% of the value that they bring.
—Monte Huebsch, “The Google Guru @ Aussieweb”
As more women have started showing up on boards around the world, people have started questioning the impact—for better or worse—of higher female involvement on the performance of the companies. And study after study has found that companies with more women among their C-level staff outperform companies that have few or no women in similar positions.
A Catalyst study examined 353 companies that remained on the Fortune 500 list for four out of five years from 1996 to 2000. It found that
“companies with a higher representation of women in senior management positions financially outperform companies with proportionally fewer women at the top.”
5
CreditSuisse's 2014 CS Gender 3000 study, which mapped over 28,000 senior managers at over 3,000 companies worldwide, demonstrated that
“companies with higher female representation at the board level or in top management exhibit higher returns on equity, higher valuations and also higher payout ratios.”
6
A 2017 report by McKinsey assimilated 10 years of research into female participation in the workforce and concluded that “
closing—or even narrowing—the global gender gap in work would not only be equitable in the broadest sense but could have significant economic impact
… as much as $12 trillion could be added to annual global GDP growth in 2025, or 11% to global 2025 GDP.”
7
These are just a few examples. I'm sure emerging data will continue to show that female participation is good for business, both at the level of individual companies and at the level of global economic development.
It's not really clear whether more women in a business make the company run “better,” or whether “better” corporations tend to employ and appoint more women. It probably goes both ways and it doesn't really matter: the point is that gender diversity and good business go hand in hand. It's good for the world and good for us ambitious women. But all this goodness is giving rise to a problem that's really hard to talk about.
Across working households, women are working more outside the home, but they're not really working less inside the home.
In studies of couples where both the man and woman work full-time, the overwhelming finding is that the women do more housework on average than the men. Men are definitely doing more at home than they used to, but women still have a tendency to burden themselves with most of the household management.
This is before you factor in taking care of kids, which women also expect themselves to handle even when they're working full-time outside the home. What mother hasn't felt guilty when she has to go to work and leave her babies? That “mommy, don't go”—it breaks your heart. (This is twice as hard for single moms, who feel 100% responsible for their kids' emotional needs.)
And women always put their personal stuff last—self care, friendships, personal goals, fun—because nobody is hassling us or complaining if we don't get those things done.
We're lifting our expectations of ourselves in our careers, but we're not adjusting our expectations around our partnerships, parenting, and everything else we've got going on in our personal lives. We're compromising like crazy to try to “have it all” but we don't have all the things we really want.
We're all in pursuit of the elusive “work-life balance” and feeling guilty because it's impossible to get there. I'm here to tell you that the concept is faulty, not you. Balance is bullshit. There is a better way.
My dream is that this book will help you do these things:
Shut down the myth that work-life balance is possible, or even something you want to pursue.
Let go of guilt and blend your work and personal life in a way that doesn't burn you out.
Stop being disappointed by plans and live according to your values instead.
Learn how to have important conversations with key people in your life so that everyone's expectations are the same.
Get your shit together and write a strategy for doing the things you actually want to do.
That's the journey we're going to go on together in this book.
It's important to get this right, because those stats are going to keep rising.
So let's rise with them. Let's call bullshit on the myths that keep us down, and create a community of women committed to rising without compromising.
NOTES
1
. W. Wang, K. Parker, and P. Taylor, “Breadwinner Moms: Mothers Are the Sole or Primary Provider in Four-in-Ten Households with Children; Public Conflicted about the Growing Trend,” Pew Research Center, May 29, 2013,
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/29/breadwinner-moms/
.
2
. S. Richardson J. Healy, and M. Moskos, “From ‘Gentle Invaders’ to ‘Breadwinners’: Australian Women's Increasing Employment and Earnings Shares,” Flinders University NILS Working Paper Series No. 210, September 2014,
http://www.flinders.edu.au/sabs/nils-files/publications/working-papers/Breadwinner%20Women.pdf
.
3
. Wang et al. 2013, “Breadwinner Moms.”
4
. Richardson et al, 2014, “From ‘Gentle Invaders’ to ‘Breadwinners.’
5
. Catalyst 2004, “The Bottom Line: Connecting Corporate Performance and Gender Diversity,”
Catalyst
, January 15, 2004,
http://www.catalyst.org/system/files/The_Bottom_Line_Connecting_Corporate_Performance_and_Gender_Diversity.pdf
.
6
. M. Curtis, C. Schmid, and M. Struber, “Gender Diversity and Corporate Performance,” CreditSuisse Research Institute, accessed June 6, 2018,
https://www.calstrs.com/sites/main/files/file-attachments/csri_gender_diversity_and_corporate_performance.pdf
.
7
. J. Woetzel et al., “The Power of Parity: How Advancing Women's Equality Can Add $12 Trillion to Global Growth,” McKinsey Global Institute, September 2015,
https://www.mckinsey.com/∼/media/McKinsey/Featured-Insights/Employment-and-Growth/How-advancing-womens-equality-can-add-12-trillion-to-global-growth/MGI-Power-of-parity_Full-report_September-2015.ashx
.
CHAPTER 2The Myths That Keep Us Down
In the earlier stages of feminism, women were told they could not be whatever it was they wanted to be. After women became those things anyway, then society said, “All right, you're now a lawyer or a mechanic or an astronaut—but that's only okay if you continue to do the work you did before—if you take care of the children, cook three meals a day, and are multiorgasmic until dawn.”1
—Gloria Steinem, journalist and activist
Before we can rise above, we've got to tear some things down. There are myths we believe without even realizing that we can opt out and live a different way. There are scripts that play in our heads and tell us that if we just tried a little bit harder, we'd get it all right.
“Women can have it all!”
“I can't have it all.”
“If I'm successful at work, I must be failing at home.”
“I'm missing out.”
“My husband is missing out.”
“I just need a work-life balance.”
The idea that you can find the perfect balance is the biggest myth of all. Even when you find a rhythm that works for you, you won't get it right all the time. I don't.
But you can shut down the voice in your head that says you have to do things a certain way, provide a certain amount of time to your family, and be a certain type of person at work in order to have a good “work-life balance.” I think the balance we're chasing is bullshit, actually. But we'll get to that after we've talked about some of the biggest myths that get in our way.
THE MYTH OF WHAT MAKES US WORTHY, ACCORDING TO OUR GENDER
Sensitivity around traditional gender roles seems highest in couples where the woman not only has a career outside the home, but earns more than her husband does. One study on gender identity and income came to this unbelievable conclusion about couples where the wife is the higher earner: “When the wife brings in more money, couples often revert to more stereotypical sex roles; in such cases, wives typically take on a larger share of household work and child care.”2
A larger share!? Who's got time for that?
The economists justified it like this: “Our analysis of the time use data suggests that gender identity considerations may lead a woman who seems threatening to her husband because she earns more than he does to engage in a larger share of home production activities, particularly household chores.”3
In her feminist memoir The Fictional Woman, Tara Moss elaborates:
One posited explanation for this seemingly illogical phenomenon is that the division of housework and the effort put into the performance of the traditional good wife role is a conscious or unconscious strategy by one or both spouses to avoid criticism for the woman's choice to have a high-powered career, and the fact that the man's choice, or circumstance, means he does not occupy that expected breadwinner role … basically, she has to be seen as not neglecting her wifely duties (See, I'm still a good wife! I'm still a good mother!) and he doesn't want to risk further deviating from gender expectations by taking on “feminine” duties.4
So the woman in this scenario is doing more work at home to make up for the fact that she's contributing more money to the household than her husband. Like a huge apology. What the fuck.
We're culturally conditioned to value men according to how much money they make, so if we make more money than our husband, we feel like we're taking away his worth. And we feel so guilty about it that we try to act super-feminine—by doing extra work at home, because that's apparently what makes us a woman—to build up his masculinity and reassure him that his role hasn't disappeared.
Not only that, but we've been programmed to value ourselves according to how much our husband makes, instead of how much we make. So as our capacity to outearn our husband goes up, our feeling of worthiness goes down.
It wasn't all that long ago that many women were valued solely by the size of the money their fathers could contribute as a dowry, or by the size of their husband's wealth and the value it brought to their families.… If we married “down,” we were literally worth less (or “worthless”) in the eyes of our culture—shunned, chastised, devalued. If we married “up,” however, we were worth more, having served our appropriate role as currency in the negotiations of men seeking to build wealth and power.5
—Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin, founder of the Gaia Leadership Project for Women's Leadership
We're kicking goals and making amazing shit happen in our businesses. We're providing for our families, maybe even earning more than our husbands. But we don't relax and enjoy those wins—we feel ashamed of them.
The craziest part in all of this is that most of us haven't even checked in to see if our husbands feel the way we think they do. Nobody's actually asking us to earn less or do more at home. We're assuming that's what he wants and putting it all on ourselves, and we haven't even had the conversation. (We'll dig deeper into that in Chapters 13 and 14.)
THE MYTH OF “HAVING IT ALL”
We're told that women can have it all. So we put pressure on ourselves to achieve that. Now that we've managed to break into the business arena, we don't want to mess it up by admitting that we have to make some compromises. So we tell ourselves it's possible to be 100% invested and kicking goals at work and 100% present at home as a wife and mother. It must be possible! We're supposed to have it all!
The reality is, 100% investment in every area all the time isn't possible. It's never going to happen, and when we try it and fail we just feel guilty. So the script in our heads is telling us that we can't really have it all, even while we keep pretending to try. It's a recipe for more guilt, more shame, more overwhelm. Instead of celebrating our high-powered, high-earning careers, we're worried that our husbands feel threatened and our kids feel neglected. Instead of enjoying our marriages, our children, and our social lives, we're half-thinking about work all the time.
But I think women can have it all. I feel like I do.
It's just that “having it all” might look different than the picture we've had in our heads. It might look like taking your husband with you on your business trips and enjoying kid-free time on the plane. It might be encouraging your employees' personal goals outside of work, to build a culture of reminding people in your company (including yourself) that they're human. You might choose to employ people you're friends with so that you can spend more time with them day-to-day.
You might just have to be more choosy about where you invest and when, and make the decision to get over anxiety about missing out on the things you're not investing in right now. I like to say you can have it all, but you can't always have it all at the same time. I can “have it all” in terms of having everything I want right now, today, but that doesn't mean I want everything all at once.
THE MYTH OF “WORK-LIFE BALANCE”
The concept of “work-life balance” carries a whole mess of problems.
Firstly, “balance” is usually talked about as a female problem, not a male one. When's the last time you heard a man talk about “work-life balance” or “having it all”? It feels normal for a man to work and have children and a social life; nobody praises that guy for managing to “have it all.” So let's shut down this bullshit about women needing some type of special balancing skills (that men apparently don't) to achieve a basic level of satisfaction both personally and professionally.
Secondly, the term work-life balance is designed to make us feel shitty about work. It implies that “work” isn't really part of “life,” but just a thing you have to get through to enjoy the rest of your time. Excuse me, but I actually love my work. I love my kids, my husband, and my home, too, but it's not one over the other. I'm not trying to get the “balance” right so that I can spend as little time as possible working.
We're told what work-life balance is supposed to look like: We're meant to switch our phones off during family time, take regular vacations, and refuse to look at work emails after hours. But what's waiting for us when we get back? The emails and task list don't go away, so the work piles up. The thought of this gives me anxiety!
The problem is that most entrepreneurs aren't made for that kind of balance. We want to do everything well, all the time. And our business identity is so closely tied to our personal identity that it isn't easy for us to just switch off work mode. Work is part of who we are when we're flourishing. Work is part of life; they're not opposites.
If we try to compartmentalize our time, we just end up feeling guilty all the time. When we're at work, we feel guilty for our families. And when we're at home, we feel the pull to be involved with what's going on at work. The truth is, we love them both. And we try to make them incompatible with each other when they shouldn't be.
I'm calling it: It's bullshit. Balance is bullshit.
So what are you going to do about it?
NOTES
1
. G. Steinem, “Gloria Stenem's Commencement Speech to the Class of 1988,”
Wellesley College Commencement Archives
, May 27, 1988,
https://www.wellesley.edu/events/commencement/archives/1988Commencement/commencementaddress
.
2
. C. Rampell, “U.S. Women on the Rise as Family Breadwinner,”
New York Times
, May 29, 2013,
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/30/business/economy/women-as-family-breadwinner-on-the-rise-study-says.html
.
3
. This and the previous note are referencing M. Bertrand, J. Pan, and E. Kamenica, “Gender Identity and Relative Income within Households,”
The Quarterly Journal of Economics
130, no. 2 (2013): 571–614,
http://www.nber.org/papers/w19023
>.
4
. T. Moss,
The Fictional Woman
(HarperCollins Publishers, 2014), 143.
5
. E. Cronise McLaughlin, “I Used to Be Ashamed of Making More Money Than My Husband. Not Anymore,”
Huffington Post
, January 27, 2015,
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/40-percent-and-rising/i-make-more-money-than-my-husband_b_6467552.html
.
CHAPTER 3Balance Is Bullshit: Blend Instead
Whenever I do a speaking gig somewhere nice, I take my family and we have a mini holiday.
At the end the MC always says, “I'm sure everybody in the audience has lots of questions, so are you happy for people to come up to you?” And I unapologetically tell them where to find me if they want more: “No problem, but I'm here with my family so if you want to speak to me I'll be in the pool playing with them. You're welcome to come up and ask me anything.”
And they do. And I answer what I can, to these guys in suits hanging around the pool, getting splashed by my kids. I'm pretty sure I'm the only entrepreneur at the conference giving business advice in her bikini.
****
That old idiom that you should keep business and pleasure separate is dead.
You're human. Your colleagues know that. If I weren't friends with the people I work with I'd never have any friends. (My friends joke that the best way to get me to spend time with them is to go into business with me.)
It doesn't make you unprofessional to admit that you're answering a work call from home, or during the school pickup run. You don't have to find a quiet corner and pretend to be in an office when somebody “important” calls. And you don't have to feel guilty for taking that call on the weekend. You love your work, don't you? Sometimes it needs you, just like your family does.
In the same way, you need to give yourself permission to have some availability for personal things during work hours. There's plenty of evidence that allowing people to be more “human” at work actually benefits the organization and increases productivity, not the other way around. So cut yourself some slack. If you duck out early some days to do the school run, you're going to impact your day's work about 5% and improve your family-related guilt about 1,000%. So go for it.
It's just not realistic to manage your personal life and run your business or career well without this flexibility.
So what's my answer to work-life balance? My friends and I call it blending.
We're all familiar with the picture of “work-life balance”: It's a woman standing with her arms stretched out on either side, work stuff balanced in one hand and personal stuff in the other. Or a set of scales with career on one side and personal on the other. Your job is to get both sides to balance each other out.
What if you just threw away the scales and chucked all of it in a blender? And depending on your priorities and what you feel like at any moment, you're allowed to blend in anything you want.
Depending on how I feel today, maybe I'll blend afternoon drinks with my friends with a discussion about the business projects we're across together. Or I'll blend the school run with a work call (and if I call you from the car with my kids, they'll be saying hi to you on speakerphone).
It's important to respect people's time and ask for permission, but their having to put up with a bit of background noise and a quick hello from the kids often outweighs them having to wait until tomorrow for an answer or some direction.
It's all about giving attention to what's important right now, without worrying about whether you're on the clock or not. It's about managing your commitments so that everything you want to do gets done, without forcing yourself to conform to “work time” and “personal time.”
In Part II of this book, we're going to get into every area of your life and talk about how you can blend across them all, so that you're always giving your energy to what's most important.
Here are some examples of what makes it work for me:
My executive assistant knows
everything
about me. Her job description is totally blended, personal and professional: She's across everything. Having an assistant who's on top of everything in my life is the only way I can make it work.
In my organizations, we don't have any meetings before 9:15 a.m. or in the evenings. We do daytime meetings and lunches only, so that people can drop their kids at school and be home with them at night (or I have the team around for a barbecue and we talk business while the kids are playing). On the other hand, if a staff member is at their child's soccer game and they get a work call, I'd encourage them to take it if they can. My staff know it's fine to say, “I'm at the kids' soccer game. I can talk for five minutes.”
If I have to go away for two weeks or more for work, the family comes with me. When I do go away by myself, I extend the break for half a day per every day that I'm away, and spend some time with the family at the beach or somewhere away from home once I return. I go back to work with my batteries recharged.
Obviously your blending choices aren't going to be the same as mine, because your life isn't set up exactly the same as mine. You might be reading this and thinking “good for you, but I couldn't do those things.” That's fine—what could you do?
Take a second now and imagine how blending might work for you. What kind of freedom could you create if you let go of the idea of work-life balance and started blending instead?
What would change if you stopped apologizing to your husband and kids for giving attention to your work, and instead showed them how much you love it? Or invited them to be involved?
How empowered would you feel if you started setting boundaries unapologetically around work, and managed your time according to what you
know
serves your productivity best, instead of what makes you look like a hard worker?
How free would you be if you stopped switching between different versions of yourself and started being the same person all the time—whether you were with your family, on a date, drinking with your girlfriends, or talking to your colleagues?
All of that is possible. You just have to know what you value most, promise not to compromise, and live unapologetically in line with what's most important to you. It isn't always easy—it's bloody hard sometimes—but that's why I'm writing this book. I'm inviting you to become part of a new wave of women, a community committed to rising without compromising.
I read this great story about Sallie Krawcheck (who was at the time the CEO of Citigroup's Smith Barney division), told by her colleague Anne Greenwood:
About six months into Krawcheck's tenure, the company announced an all-office conference call. “It's very unusual to have all 600 managers from all offices call in—not unheard-of, but you don't do it that often, because a Wall Street firm doesn't want to freeze everybody.”
The call begins and Krawcheck starts talking. Suddenly, she interrupts herself, Greenwood recalls. “She says, ‘Everyone please bear with me, I have to put the call on hold.’ We're thinking, okay, the head of the Federal Reserve Board must be calling. Something huge has happened in the world economic space.”
Ninety seconds later, Krawcheck comes back on the line. Greenwood remembers what she said next as if it happened yesterday. “She says, ‘I'm so sorry, you guys, that was my daughter and I promised her that she could always reach me. I made a deal with her that if I take this big job, no matter where I am, what I'm doing or who I'm with, I will take your call. The funny thing is, she couldn't find the pink nail polish. I'm the only one who knows it's in the upstairs bathroom.’”
“Immediately there was buzz among the few women in elite positions around the firm,” says Greenwood. “I couldn't believe she was so honest about what had happened. Never in a million years would I have told a male workforce that my daughter couldn't find the pink nail polish.”1
If one of the most senior women on Wall Street can do it, so can you.
NOTE
1
. Anne Greenwood quoted by A. Jones, “Sallie Krawcheck Wants to Take Women to the Top of Business,”
Newsweek
, December 23, 2014,
http://www.newsweek.com/2015/01/02/sallie-krawcheck-wants-take-women-top-business-294332.html
.
PART IIA Workbook for Rising Women
CHAPTER 4“Moving Up” versus Rising: How to use this book to lift up every area of your life
People are always talking about “moving up in the world.”
“Climbing the corporate ladder.”
“I upgraded my man.”
No, no, no. I don't want us to “move” up. I want us to rise up.
Rising up doesn't actually mean achieving success in a traditional sense. It means rising above: Rising above stereotypes. Rising above learned behavior. Rising up the level of your self-worth. Rising up to become a version of yourself that's aligned with your values. Making no compromises.
Rising is about having more choices and more clarity. Having higher personal values that complement each other and don't get compromised. It means having the relationships I want, and making them amazing. Having the type of vocation that I want, the kind of physical life that I want, expressing my emotions the way I want to. Not settling, not juggling, not climbing.
Once you've got the foundations right and adopted a “rising” attitude, the other successes will follow:
You'll get clarity in your business and know which activities to invest your energy in to get the best results.
You'll feel less mommy-guilt because you'll set your life up to spend time on what's most important, and unapologetically ditch the shit that doesn't matter.
You'll know how to communicate constructively with your partner about how to run your lives together.
You'll surround yourself with people who are a good fit for you and instinctively create a culture in your workplace that fosters positivity, productivity, and flow.
So how do we make it happen?
If you want to rise, there are some rules. The type of woman I'm talking about—the type of woman I try to be, and I want you to be—has a few key qualities:
She's flexible.
She's strong.
She's responsive.
And she knows a few things about herself:
She knows her
value
and she knows her
values
.
