The Work Alibi: When It’s Harder to Go Home

Summary of an HBR article The Work Alibi: When It's Harder to Go Home by Fernando Bartolomé

Although most executives’ private lives are not in terrible shape, there are some unresolved personal problems, which their devotion to work prevents them from attending to and it produces a feeling of guilt, indicating that they are at least partly responsible for these situations through neglect. There are three main cases when work is to blame for issues in private lives:

·         Negative emotional spillover resulting from a stressful work situation

·         Workaholism: escapism in work through overinvolvement

·         Being a “prisoner of success”: fallen in love with the job and the rewards it brings

Even though most executives do not confess and state differently, the time that they have available for private life is roughly equal to, if not greater than, the time they devote to work. Thus, it is not the lack of time to blame. The author identifies four factors that hurt private lives:

·         Incorrect assumptions. Most common incorrect assumption is that family life is easy. However, most people neither have full awareness of the problems that can arise in a marriage nor the skills necessary to establish an intimate relationship that is intended to be exclusive and last a lifetime. Hence, we need to learn them over time in a persistent way, which takes energy, commitment, and the gradual development of necessary skills.

·         Fear of confronting conflicts in marriage. While most people who have problems in personal relationships will state that they avoid difficult conversations because of fear of being rejected or focusing on the potential negative consequences rather than analyzing the possible benefits, the real fear comes from the fact that people don’t know how to go about conflict situations with their loved ones. The reasoning many people use when trying to decide whether to explore difficult issues openly often looks like this:

·         Legitimate distractions. Work and children are dangerous distractions from dealing with marital issues because they are such legitimate, right, and perfect excuses.

·         A “mañana” attitude. We cannot recover the relationship that we did not have (with our children, parents, etc.) and the experience a person misses today cannot be had tomorrow. People, who forfeit the present, risk the quality of their future private lives.

Even though it is not easy changing habits of thought and behavior, there are potential solutions to the above-mentioned problems:

·         Avoid saying “mañana”. Thinking of family life as a chore makes people find excuses to stay longer at work. Executives need to develop creative, appealing ways of being with their families and realize that they need to enjoy their private lives. However, there is a caveat that they need to be cautious and take a step at a time: closing emotional gaps too quickly might scare others off, even though they are your closest family.

·         Deal with conflicts. Both must believe in the idea that the marriage can be improved and determining what works and what does not in their relationship is the first step. Emphasizing the positive will create an atmosphere of warmth and trust, and in addition to that people need to learn two fundamental skills of dealing with conflict:

§  Continuous dialogue (not ad-hoc venting of accumulated emotions), which involves giving both positive and negative feedback

§  Dealing with persistent and deeper conflicts. “Buried” (latent) conflicts will constantly reemerge in fits of reciprocal blaming, explosion and withdrawal.

·         Become authentic. While not all relationships can be revitalized or launched anew, reawakening a sense of excitement and pleasure in a relationship is achievable. It involves (1) clarity in demands from each other, (2) learning both to get rid of excessive fears and unconscious fantasies and to be authentic, and (3) talking. Hope and trust are basic virtues that people have to develop (E.Erikson), which are impossible without transparency between the partners. Finally, when people are candid, communication might be painful but it is not in itself difficult.

It is never too late to begin, and the opportunity costs might be much higher (remember “mañana”!). To start with, it is important to abandon two incorrect assumptions: (1) having a good private life is easy or that people can easily acquire the necessary skills, and (2) personal relationships are too complex and difficult to handle, and therefore you should not even try. Then, you need to set clear and specific goals, which would talk to these questions:

-          What do I want my marital relationship to be?

-          What do I want my relationship with my child(ren) be?

-          What are my self-development goals?

Further, select one or two improvement projects at home (redecoration, family trip, improving relations with a family member, etc.), which must be modest (not revolutionary), measurable, pleasurable and must involve at least one other person. Results are more important than speed, hence improve “small” things first.

Finally, suspend your skepticism: small changes can make a significant difference!

Must Success Cost So Much?

Summary of an HBR article Must Success Cost So Much? by Fernando Bartolomé and Paul A. Lee Evans

Many people who reach executive levels in organizations do so at the expense of their personal lives. Success at work does not guarantee a well-functioning private life, and for women balancing home and career can be more difficult than for men. While all successful executives are characterized by professional commitment, they deal differently with emotional spillover – overflow of positive or negative emotions from business into private life. When individuals feel competent and satisfied in their work, negative spillover does not exist, but the manager who is unhappy in his work has a limited chance to be happy at home. All of us experience spillover in our careers, but we must be aware of not being trapped into a never-ending spillover. The effects of such are twofold: fatigue (physical) and emotional tension, such as worrying. Feelings that spill over from work are acted out at home, expressed through psychological absence (withdrawal) or even acts of aggression. Partners are children are often prime victims of such behaviors.

Individual and organizational interests can be in harmony, while executives who fail to manage the emotional side of work achieve professional success at the expense of private life. Healthy professional life is a precondition for a healthy private one, and we will look at three ways of managing spillover:

Issue	What is it about?	What to do?
Coping with a new job (after promotion, reorganization or moving to another company)	Tension following a job change is natural and necessary, spillover effects will eventually fade away. Still, top managers often fail to assess correctly the magnitude of change, allowing minimal psychological availability in their family for up to a year. However, sometimes such challenges are positive and bond the family.	·  Analyze the change carefully with your family before the move ·  Negotiate the decision with them; ·   Openly express the problems you will all confront ·  Do not promise what you cannot deliver Most partners will understand and accept.
Taking the right job. Job misfit occurs in three dimensions: competence (absence of skill), enjoyment (dislike for the job) and values (moral misfit, values clash). Continuum: perfect fit to total misfit (none of the conditions fulfilled).	People take the wrong job for four main reasons: external rewards (choosing rewards over fit), organizational pressures (since management pays little attention to anything else other than the competence fit), inability to say “no”, and lack of self-assessment or self-knowledge (accurately recognizing one’s strengths and weaknesses).	·  Realize that personal life will inevitably suffer from job misfit ·  Analyze thoroughly the intrinsic characteristics of the job and the extent to which it fits them ·  Assess consequences and make right but tough decisions, learn to say “no” ·  Learn from past experiences, find a mentor, and strive for total job fit.
Learning from disappointments.	Disappointments are inevitable particularly as the career flattens out below the expectations level. Inability to recover from severe disappointment leads to being stick in dead-end jobs: self-esteem drops, while both professional and private lives become hollow and empty.	Two conditions to cope well with disappointment (A. Zaleznik): ·  Ability to analyze own emotions; ·  Capacity to deal with disappointment objectively. Those who effectively compensate for their disappointment by enriching their present jobs (e.g. being a mentor) or developing leisure activities, regain their enthusiasm and self-esteem.

Although it is individuals who are primarily responsible for managing their own careers, management in organizations bears the responsibility for practices and policies that might facilitate maintaining the work and life balance in four ways:

·        Broaden organizational values: encouraging a commitment to what interests employees themselves rather than a blind commitment to their companies. Organizations ideally need a few ambitious and talented high-fliers who fit their jobs and a majority of “solid citizens” rather than many “jungle fighters” striving to get to the top.

·        Create multiple reward and career ladders: solely the managerial ladder is not appropriate for all – differentiated reward models are necessary to motivate various categories of employees. Edgar H. Schein distinguishes five “career anchors”, i.e. motivational factors: managerial, technical/functional expertise, creativity, need for security and need for autonomy.

·        Give realistic performance appraisals: managers help their subordinates best when they honestly discuss their (subordinates’) strengths and weaknesses. Such candor might create short-term unhappiness and even make them leave the company, but in the long-term lack of candor about a subordinate’s chances for promotion can be most destructive.

·        Reduce organizational uncertainty: managers can help reduce unnecessary stress and uncertainty by protecting their subordinates from worry about events over which they have no control.

Thus, even though many might claim that an executive’s private life is none of the organization’s business, interference between the two is inevitable. Responsibility for job fit and adaptation is shared between the individual and the organization, and companies need to face the need that more integration efforts need to be done, particularly due to changing values and increasing numbers of dual careers.

Managing Yourself: HBR on Breeding Engagement

The featured article in September's Harvard Business Review is about managing yourself. Empowered team = improved performance, hence personal greatness is key to engaged team around you. HBR claims one can reach that in 6 steps:

1.  Be modest
2. Listen Seriously and Show It
3. Invite Disagreement
4. Focus the Agenda
5. Don't Try To Have All the Answers
6. Don't Insist That A Decision Must Be Made

While it feels just like another "10 easy steps and you'll have a flat stomach" silver-bullet management mantra, I always appreciate the personal stories and real-life examples shared  by the authors. What always frustrates me about these "how-to" life lessons is that it is common sense, logical and understandable, and tantalizingly difficult to implement :(

Read the full story here:

ManagingYourself: How to Cultivate Engaged Employees

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