BALANCING LEADERSHIP AND LIFE

 The notion of balance for performance

Creating balance in your life allows you to function at maximum effectiveness. when you attain this
balance you are at ease with yourself, relaxed, able to give the best of yourself and, by doing so, bring out the
best in others.

It can be healthy to gain insight from time to time by reflecting and taking stock. You can also consider
how the balance (or lack of it) in your life fits how you want to be.

A common trait of those that lead with ease is a sense of having balance in and between all aspects of
their life.

David’s system for ensuring balance

David is the leader of his own precision engineering business. He manages his time using a diary. The
system that lies behind his diary is unusual: it must be small enough to fit in his pocket; it must have a month
to view; no more than 4 things are entered in a day; routine stuff doesn’t get listed. David uses a system of
colors to point up entries. He is going for a balanced rainbow with clean white space on weekends that are
reserved solely for his family.

Holidays Very Important Personal development & Weekends

important things meeting up w/friends with
things Family
Penny’s choices

Penny Hughes (30) is the President of Coca-Cola Great Britain and Ireland. She worked from 9:00 am until
6:00 or 6:30 in the evening and never took work home or worked at the weekend. She stated; “Those are my
rules. If ever I have a job that takes more time I´ll probably pack it in. It is so important to enjoy life. In fact, I
believe that it is this confidence and stability that allows you to do your job.”
 Creating balance through recognition of values
 David values balance in his life and has a visual system of diary management that allows hi, to check and
adjust the balance he needs.
 Penny has clear values about where work starts and finishes and she communicates these clearly to
others so there is no room for different understanding of her “rules”.

Both have identified their values and know how to achieve what they want. They understand the rewards
this balance gives them.

It may be that most facets of your life feel great and yet there may be one facet that concerns you or
don’t feel quite right (your weight or fitness, a relationship, finding a way to relax, etc.). You will know in your
mind which factors are a concern for you and know that there is a part of you that wants to pay attention to
the balance you have in your life. Different people values different things in their life. There are no universal
rules, no formulae only what feels balanced to you. Values are things that you hold important to yourself.
They are what tell when we are in or out of alignment.

Your values are how you calibrate happiness or contentment. If you can match someone at a values level,
you will be able to generate solutions to conflicts, agree new options to satisfy your needs or develop a sense
of mutual belonging with the other person. However, if you try to impose your beliefs or values on another,
this can cause a real conflict.
 Once you have identified your set of values you will tend to sift everything through it, to check whether it
fits your way of thinking and if it fits in with what matters to you in life. Our values are unique to each of us
but where there are commonly held values these came together to frame communities and societies we live
in. These became shared values. They cannot be imposed they have to be lived by the people in that
community.

The development of values

Values are developed as we grow up. Our first 7 years are characterized by “imprinting”. At these stage
others can imprint on us values that they held, and we are most likely not to question but to adopt them
wholeheartedly. Development in the years 13 to 18 can be typified as “experiment”. This is when you test if
the values hold for you and push to find boundaries. In adulthood, you refine your values. When you can
work, own things and have standards, you know you have begun to lay out your initial set of values against
which you judge whether things are important to you or not.

You may find that you have different values for different segments of your life. The following technique
provides a way to check firstly the balance you want between different segments and secondly the particular
values in each segment.

Life pie

1- Draw your current balance in a life pie with the labels for each segment according to the time you invest
in each of them. Be honest to yourself.
2- To find your desired balance think about how you would like to invest your time in the future to balance
your life as a leader. Do it to what you really want rather than what you think others might expect of you.
3- Ask yourself the questions that support change:
 What would it take to achieve this change?
 What stops me from changing?

What gains and rewards do I get in the current balance and how could I have better rewards in the new desirable
balance?

Values within a segment of a life pie:

This technique allows you to determine the values you ascribe to any segment of your life pie (work,
career, family, etc.)

1- Name the segment of the life pie you are talking about (X).
2- What is important to you about (X)?
3- What has to be there for (X) to be great?
 4- If you had all those is there anything else that would cause you to leave?

Once you have your list of values ready you must put them into an order. Begin with the question:
5- If you could have only one of this values on the list, which would it be?
6- Now cross-check. Is A more important than B, more important than C and so on, until you have been
through the list.
7- Finally, invent two job. The first will have a mixture of the top half of the list of values, and the second job
offer will have a mixture of the lower half. If you choose the first job, it’s likely that your list is accurate.
 Shiny sides and dull sides

Most of our behaviors have a shiny side and sometimes a dull side. An attribute can also be a weakness.
For example, enthusiasm can also be seen as overbearing. Reflection can also be seen as withdrawal. There
may be a shadow that follows your success in leading. At times the shadow may be so well hidden that we do
not recognize its existence. You may hide issues well in your shadows and deprive them of light, even deny
their presence at all and yet know they are there. A hidden secret; a denied occurrence, a lie; an action that
was cowardly, or a cover up.

So why is it important to address the shadow in your life? When you have the alignment right, you may
feel energy from what energy from what you are doing, rather than feeling drained. The energy it took to
remember the untruth would be considerable and may have been better spent doing something braver and
truthful.
 Cycle of renewal

RECOGNIZE WHAT IS THE SHADOW: being clear about what your goal is – focusing on what you want life
to be like when it is balanced. Know what that will feel like when it is free of the shadow.
STEP BACK: a healthy dose of quiet thinking and strategic vision applied to yourself would aid you in
achieving the balance you may desire. At this point, you will have a clear picture of how things look at the
present.
INSIGHT TROUGH RETREAT AND TIME TO THINK: explore the doubts, fears, age-old patterns that do not
serve you well, together with the needs and gifts that lie below the surface and beyond everyday
recognition. This process can give you the deep insight you need to make the changes you want.
MATCH TO INSIGHT: sustaining the changes you want to put in place will involve sustained application of
the new actions and behaviors you know are needed to succeed in your goal.
ENJOY THE DIFFERENCE: celebrate the changes you have made by rewarding your efforts with the people
that are really important to you.