Work/Life Balance

Wade J. Finner
Leadership and Change BMGT 365
July 7, 2002

Work/Life Balance The Balancing Your Life workshop contained in James Clawsons Level Three Leadership offers a set of exercises designed to allow us to evaluate the current behavioral allocation of time and how the allocation matches our personal definition of success. It should be noted that Clawson makes not representation that any particular use of time or behavior pattern is better than any other. Rather, he establishes a core concept that we can be aware of our current choices of time and energy allocation and to make adjustments that point us toward our personal definitions of success.1 The exercises are based on the following fundamental assumptions: 1. We all have a limited, but equal 168 hours per week of time. 2. We all have some freedom in choosing how we spend that time. 3. We all have some talent to apply to the time we have. 4. We all have various dimensions to our lives that we choose, consciously or unconsciously to develop or ignore.2 We are then guided through the following exercises, to achieve the awareness the workshop is seeking to give us: 1. Clarify your personal definition of success. In one or two sentences, we are asked to define what it means to be successful, not just in ones career, but in life. 2. Assess your current level of development. We are asked to rate our assessment, one a scale of 1 to 10, in sixteen areas of personal development: Recreation, Professional;, Financial, Material, Other, Sleep, Physical, Intellectual, Emotional, Familial, Marital, Parental, Social, Societal, Political, and Ecclesiastical. These ratings are then plotted on a wheel style diagram, to assist us in understanding our perception of (y)our lifes developmental balance at this point.3

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3. Assess your current allocation of time. Using a table, we are then asked to indicate in an average week how much of the 168 hours we have are taken by each of the 16 categories mentioned above. The (slightly paradoxical) suggestion is made that If you have time, you may wish to actually keep track of your time for a week4. A diary style table is provided for this purpose. The author notes in this section that there will be some overlap in categories, using the example that if one plays golf, that is obviously recreation, but if one plays golf with ones spouse and children this creates overlap, or shadow time in the familial and marital areas. 4. Create a profile of your current time allocation. Using either the same wheel style diagram used in 2, above, or the graphical tool of our choice, we are asked to plot the time allocation determined in exercise 3. This simply provides a visual representation of our time usage which can then be compared to our assesment of our developmental maturity in each category 5. Compare and reflect. Finally, we are asked to consider the relationships between our assesment of our development and the actual time spent in each area. One key question asked by the author in this area is What will be the impact of your current time allocation on your development over the course of your life? 5. This question implies that, as the author references in the introduction to the exercises, we may spend the bulk of our working life sending our time in a pursuit that is not, in the larger picture, important to our personal vision of success.

Work/Life Balance Does this workshop have any impact on the study of leadership and change? Is there a relationship between work-life balance and individual or organizational success? I submit that there is an impact, and that a relationship exists both on an individual and an organizational level. From an organizational perspective, it has been shown that employees who have a healthy work-life balance experience less absenteeism, greater productivity, and are less likely to change jobs. The Labour Program of Human Resources Development Canada, in their article The Business Case for Work-Life Balance, cites several studies that bear this out. In the PriceWaterhouseCoopers 1999 International Student Survey, 57% of students stated that work-life balance is their primary goal, and dont believe this competes with long-term career development and personal growth goals.6 In AONs Canada @ Work 2000 a growing number of respondents (29%) rank work-life balance as the first or second most important factor in taking a job.7 In a 1999 study by Health Canada, it reported 40 percent of working Canadians say they experienced high levels of work-family conflict.8

From an organizational perspective, it becomes clear that it is to an employers advantage to encourage employees to seek a healthy work/life balance and enabling this through programs in the workplace, including flexible hours and telecommuting. Overall goals will be better met if absenteeism and employee turnover is reduced, and productivity is improved.

Work/Life Balance But what of the role of work/life balance in Level III leadership? It is obviously important to recognize that leaders are people too, and that by having a healthy balance we as leaders will be at our best in providing guidance and direction to our followers. A core principle of Level III leadership is an understanding of our followers VABEs, and an empathetic approach to our followers emotional commitment. An organization that has a real commitment to enabling and encouraging work/life balance paves the way for its leaders to achieve a Level III relationship with their followers, by demonstrating a genuine commitment to their overall personal success. This will also allow

followers to more readily embrace organizational change, as those with a healthy work/life balance are less likely to perceive change as a threat.

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References
1. Clawson, J.G., Level Three Leadership, Upper Saddle River, NJ; Prentice Hall, 2002 pg. 311 2. ibid pg. 311 3. ibid pg. 313 4. ibid pg. 314 5. ibid pg. 317 6. The Labour Program of Human Resources Development Canada, (2001) The Business Case for Work-Life Balance http://labour.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca/worklife/businesscase-en.cfm 7. ibid 8. ibid

Bibliography
Hiemstra, T., (2003), Why Does Your Company Care About Life Balance, Futurist.com http://www.futurist.com/portal/creating_your_future/crf_company_life_balance.htm Khirallah, D. R., (2002), The Tug Of More, Information Week, http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20020405S0003