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The Myth of Work-Life Balance

24 febrero, 2021/en Business, Leadership, Reflections, Wellbeing /por paola

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels.com

Ohh yes! come to me, work-life balance. The mantra we hear over and over again. Everybody that has corporate, industrious kind of job, knows that this is some sort of aspiring living style… a promised land of balance, prosperity and well-being.

Where does this idea came from? Although it appears to be New Age, the reality is that it is a concept that already was used as back as in the late 1800s. At the time, this movement was mainly targeted for women as a way to integrate them into the labor force. Women’s role as primary caretakers of children and home was still the norm, and so in order for them to join the workforce more flexible schedules and maternity leave schemes were needed (ncbi.gov).

Nowadays, the work-life balance concept is applied by professional men and women in general, with exception of some “critical” professions like doctors, nurses and other jobs which need constant permanence due to it’s life critical nature. The idea to have a work-life balance holds the key belief that working only a limited permissible amount of hours and not more, will allow you to have more time for family and leisure; at the same time, it will increase productivity, job satisfaction, and an overall reach of higher levels of well-being.

In the late 20^th century, the so-called work-life balance transformed itself from a nice intended concept to gain more “flexible” work hours, to a multi-million dollar industry. Now you can have all kinds of services that help you reach this goal: consulting companies, coaches, online programs, health courses, and all other sorts of products.

But what is really behind the idea of having a balanced work-life? Why to separate the “work” and the “life” as if they were different entities? If you are working, then you are not living?

Something behind this idea is a bit bogus.

I believe that when you have a job that you enjoy, that you love, you are living it. Our life is a continuous stream of decisions, and one can decide at every moment what to do and how to spend your valuable -and limited- time on this earth.

If you have a soul-destroying job that gives you zero satisfaction, or the only reward you get is a paycheck, then I can imagine you need a “scape” from this dreadful job. You need a check -in, check out card and when the time comes to check-out you basically numb yourself out of it. You go home, have dinner, play with your kids, watch TV, read the news, go for a drink…. you do all the things people do when you have some “free time”. No wonder why Sundays are so scary to most people. You come from the wonderful free weekend time, spent on hobbies, family and leisure… back to the draining week routine of the 9 to 5.

But let´s imagine for a moment, that work-life balance would not exist. Let’s assume you enjoy and have passion for what you do. How would your life look like? Would you still want to work on your life project only limited hours? Would you still fear the Sunday evenings?

I imagine a world without work-life balance like this: You wake up every morning cheerfully and full of energy, because you know it is another day you will work on what you consider your life-duty. You don’t need specific hours to start or to end. You merge your family time, your leisure time, sport time and work time into one harmonic life-event. There are no week- days and week-ends, just days. And when it comes to perform your job, you enjoy it so much that you could even think this is really your hobby time. There is no work-life balance needed, there is just life.

Now let´s imagine you have no such thing as work-life balance, and you don´t really love what you do, but you do it for a paycheck. You are obliged to work endless hours in exchange of some coins. Isn´t that a form of slavery anyway? No wonder industries had to come up with something smart as work-life balance to give some incentives for people to take such jobs.

If you are a parent, you might agree with me, that our parent job is a 24-hour duty. As a parent, there is no fixed schedule to follow. Raising kids is a life-long shift, 24 hours a day, every single day. There are no holidays, no paychecks, no rewards, and no visible material benefit. So why on earth do you decide to become a parent?

We do it because of Love. Love is our metaphysical metric. Love is something you cannot quantify as a material value (at least, not yet) and try to obtain a benefit from. It is a life- giving energy. We are parents because we commit and decide to bring offspring to the world to love them and take care of them; because is also a way to leave a mark in the world. Every person wants to leave a legacy whether with his work or his descendance… or both!

I want to live in a world where work (i.e the action of doing, creating…) becomes my primary reason of living. Why do I want to live for, if it is not to pursue some meaningful and creative work that fulfills my soul? Whether I decide to become a successful business woman, a mom and home administrator, a writer, a painter, a cooker, a plumber, or a teacher. I don’t want to be afraid to be labelled as “workaholic” or “not caring about my family” because I spend more than the “standard” 8 hours a day in my work.

When I stayed home to take care of my kids and was looking after them day and night, nobody called me a “momaholic”, but if I decided to stay a few hours more working on a personal or business project, I was suddenly a workaholic. Like if being a mom is not really a job and everything else that produces something is.What a joke!

Everybody that has a dream, and has enough work-ethic to follow it, will find the way to pursue his or her life integrating everything that is important for them.

I consider my life as a daily 24- hour mission. In this mission, I schedule work, family, exercise and everything that makes my life complete. I don’t believe in separating work and life. I believe in a complete, integrated, fulfilling life where you do meaningful activities that are in line with your center, with your heart. Life doesn’t need to be easy, but definitely needs to be worth living.

It is a God given right. Work-life balance is in my opinion, a deception invented by big industries as a way to keep people productive and a little bit happier in what we know is normally a soulless dreadful factory, a boring office job.

Don’t aspire just to have a work-life mediocre balance. Aspire for more! Aspire to take back your whole life, aspire to be a whole person, and not just the half!

“It’s in responsibility that most people find the meaning that sustains them through life. It’s not happiness. It’s not impulsive pleasure”. – Jordan Petersen

The Coach-Leader: Empower Others to Become Leaders of their Own Life

17 marzo, 2020/en Business, Leadership /por paola

When you think about the word «Leader» what comes to your mind?

The classical style of leadership has taught us that leaders show us the way: They represent a common goal, vision or ideal, which people identify with and therefore they follow the leaders call for action.

One type of leadership that hasn’t been the most popular in the business world is the coach-leader where the leader is not necessarily leading from the front. In fact, the leader is not really leading: Her job consists in sitting on the back, observing, listening and letting the others find their own way of doing things by asking questions and staying curious, fully focused on the person in front of them.

Although Goleman (2013) presents us with diverse types of leadership which can be applied according to specific circumstances, there have been numerous studies which show that the power of coaching can bring invaluable benefits to organizations, since the essence of being a coach-leader relies on helping others while unlocking their potential at the same time. It is a Win-Win for both the organization and the employees (Bungay 2016).

I have spent more than 10 years in the corporate business environment. During this time, I came across a number of bosses and leaders from all types: From the very directive and autocratic ones, all the way to the charismatic, democratic and laissez-faire ones (Goleman, Boyatzi, MkFee 2013).

I´m trying to recall when did a boss really caused an impact for me and my career. I realized that I could count them with one hand and I would even have many fingers left.

The reality is, the concept of leadership has been quite a misleading one for me. When I reflect on what is it what made a boss or a leader to have a real impact on me, the answer that comes to my mind is quite clear: I admire those leaders that trusted in my capabilities and guided me on a way that I felt I was developing and growing.

I appreciated those conversations that were not just about getting things done and describing timelines and having to prove to them how I am capable to solve certain problems. I admire a leader with a vision, but normally a vision is something that comes from one-self and your own belief systems. When a leader is interested in my vision of the company and of the way of doing things, gains automatically my respect and admiration. Therefore, coaching for development rather than coaching for performance (Bungay 2016) is something that really made a difference in my professional life.

As Goleman (2013) describes in the coach-leader style: “In a time when more and more companies are finding it difficult to retain the most talented and promising employees, those companies that provide people the nourishing development experiences provided by good coaching practice are more successful in creating loyal employees”. The coaching style might not scream “bottom-line” results, but ironically it is one of the styles that more delivers results”.

Based on a publication on the Harvard Business Review by Boyatzis, Smith, Oosten (2019) showed studies whose results proved that people tend to achieve more in a more prolonged and sustainable way when they feel physically and psychologically motivated and in a positive state. To bring people into a positive kind of mindset requires the ability to coach with compassion. When the leader shows genuine care and concern for the other person, so that at the end a reciprocal “resonant relationship” is built. Some of the key strengths of the coach-leader is their capability to display curiosity, asking exploratory, open-ended short questions that help the person recognize their personal vision, which becomes the basis on working together towards the shared goal.

The Underrated Characteristics of the Coach-Leader

When we talk about leadership characteristics, certainly there are the typical keywords that verybody knows: Charismatic, Influential, Powerful, Confident, Communicative, Problem Solver. However, for a leader to become a good coach-leader, they require other virtues that are not often related to Leadership.

Patience

In a world where information flows fast and the need for quick results is the norm, the art of patience seems to unfit with the desirable characteristics of a leader. However, by observing the main traits of the greatest leaders of our history, we can find in many occasions that one of the fundamental characteristics they had is mastering the art of patience. As Michelangelo would say “Genius is eternal patience”.

To develop patience, it requires a great level of self-awareness. Patience is defined by the common language as the capacity to accept and tolerate any kind of problems, and situations that do not develop as expected. It is done so without anxious feelings and therefore you remain emotionally stable. Leaders that show greater patience are as well the ones that end up succeeding on long term objectives and ideals.

Examples of extraordinary leaders which mastered the art of Patience were Ghandi, with his practice of non-violence ended up setting India free; Benjamin Franklin, who regarded patience and tranquility as one of the 13 virtues of a Man, virtues that he developed over time and which helped to define his character. Nelson Mandela´s patience and determination made him resist any obstacle and pay a condemn of 27 years of prison in order to see his dream come true: The eradication of the Apharteid era in South Africa.

Active Listening

Listening is the master of the skills. Unfortunately, it is as well one of the most underrated ones in leadership in the highly competitive business environments. Listening is often associated with being quiet and receptive and assertive characteristics that do not resonate with strong and assertive characters expected on leaders. However, active listening it´s a very powerful tool, that if used with enough awareness, could bring people to higher levels of understanding and unity. In your role as a leader, it is of most importance to develop exceptional listening skills, which is the ability to be able to fully focus your attention on what the other person is saying without getting into distractions. Great listeners enter into a trance, where nothing else exists outside the mutual conversation happening on the Now.

Research has shown that when active listening is present in the organizational culture, the levels of trust and cooperation are much higher than in organizations where employees feel that their opinions and ideas are neglected.

Silence

One might ask, how can silence benefit a leader in any way? In western cultures, silence has had a bad popularity on the business arena. Silence is associated with weakness, with fragility… perhaps with lack of knowledge or inability to express. However, in ancient cultures, silence is regarded as one of the highest faculties of wise men. James Allen, one of the pioneers of the field of Self-Development back in the 1800s, says it beautifully in his book As a Man Thinketh (1903): “Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. It is the result of a patient effort in self-control. It´s presence, it´s an indication of ripened experience, and of a more than ordinary knowledge of the laws and operations of thought”.

In a coaching conversation, silence is the space where actually the magic happens. Silence allows the coachee to tap into his mind and reach for the solutions and answers he has been struggling to find in the “outside”. Although externally silence appears to have no content per se, actually, it is the space where everything is created. As a leader, giving people the space needed to think, reflect and answer calmly will allow for more meaningful and valuable inputs, as opposed to erratic non-sense responses triggered by a reaction to talk.

Franz Kafka, the Austrian philosopher, perfectly acknowledged it: “You need not to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not to even listen, simply wait. You need not just to even wait, just learn to become quiet, and still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you unmasked. It has not choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet”.

The problem solver vs the curious explorer

It is a famous fact that leaders see themselves as the problem-solvers by excellence. This is the one single quality that everybody would agree it belongs to a leader. It is the one single quality most people get paid for. The bigger the problems the leader can solve, the bigger the economic rewards she receives, and the bigger the recognition. However, when it comes to really understanding the reality of organizations and the real underlying feelings of the people, providing the answers to all of their questions and giving advice would rarely surface the root causes of the real problem.

The reality is, there is never a one simple side of the story, a solution that fits-to-all, like most businesses like to think about. The issue with the problem-solving minded people is that in the urge to jump into action, they neglect to see the full picture, and to step back and try to understand what is really going on. Assertive personalities do not hesitate to act and although action is important, if applied in the wrong direction can lead to less desirable results.

What would happen if instead of jumping directly into the solution mode, as leaders, we would simply stay open and curious, and try to discover the real causes by maintaining an explorative mind?

In a research performed by students in the University of Oregon, it was found that people who showed strong curiosity traits on personality tests performed better on creative tasks than those that did not showed a strong curiosity trait on the test. Also, people who scored higher in having interests for exploring unfamiliar topics and learning something new, were more likely to come up with creative solutions to solve problems (Hardy 2016).

After all, curiosity and problem-solving are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, a curious and open mind, will often lead to a better capacity to solve all kinds of problems. The key is not to get trapped on the egoistic self- rewarding solution mode, where the emotional need of control is bigger than the willingness to really understand the truth of things.

How to become a coach-leader?

We have been discussing so far about the benefits of becoming a coach-leader and the valuable but often underestimated traits that such leadership style requires in order to be able to truly serve the purpose of the people and the organization in the role.

Now the question is, how to become one of them?

Although one could go on and investigate and read books extensively about leadership and coaching and how the one complements the other, my conclusion is that the real starting point is when there is an inherent need of a leader to truly be able to master his own self first.

A coach-leader must demonstrate that he is able to control his own emotions when it comes to dealing with all sorts of complexities in the organizations they serve. As in the process of becoming a coach, one must observe oneself first, and work on developing the fundamental skills and self-awareness required to become an effective leader. It is an ongoing, self-development and self-mastering journey, which never ends.

“A leader. . .is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.”– Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

Attention and Effort: How would you recognise bias in your decision making?

30 agosto, 2018/en Business /por paola

It never stops to amaze me the brilliant human mind. As I grow older and go through life, I always wondered how we are able to make decisions in our daily lives. We make thousands of decisions on a regular day, sometimes we are able to make them fast, in a fraction of a second, and other times, we need to go through a rigorous process of self-reflection, involving as well other people; We research and look for all available sources of information that we can process in order reach a meaningful decision.

What is going on inside our minds while we are processing all this information? Do we use the same mental faculties when we do fast and slow decisions?

I heard it many times. This advice is out there everywhere…you get it from books, movies, entrepeneurs, leaders, church, family and colleagues… use your intuition and use it fast! it NEVER lies!

I believe in intuition and its power but then, why so many people who trusted in their initial intuition failed at their jobs, marriages, business ideas, you name it? Where is this intuition coming from? how do we differentiate an intuition from the automatic impulses of the brain retrieving memories of the past, connecting them together to build a clearer mental picture of the situation and taking the decision based on the past self experience on it?

Can we really trust our intuition as professionals, when making decisions at work? Are we really consciously and deliberately looking for the best possible solution to a problem, or is our mind generally more lazy and prefers to go with that gut feeling, trusting that we have enough capability and experience to reach an important decision?

Photo from: Pexels.com

Interestingly enough, Economists somehow have often neglected the «intuition» factor and for many decades, the Max Weber´s theory of Rationality has been widely used to explain and model the social and economic behaviour with the main premise that an individual has definite preferences among a series of alternatives where – by using the available information, probabilities and events available – would then act consistently in chosing the best decision.

Rationality has been used as a main assumption and it has been the most used cost-effective method for decision making and policy making in a range of fields like Political Science, Business, Philosophy and Sociology. This theory, assumes that people make choices to maximize their happiness or utility and they choose them consciously and using their logical reason; it is the sum of choices made by individuals what makes the total «behaviour» more predictable.

Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics and the author of the famous book «Thinking Fast and Slow», together with Amos Tversky, are one of the main critics of the Rationality theory and in 1979 they released the «Prospect Theory» approach, which states that people mainly make choices by adding weights to the alternatives depending on the level of risk they assign and the sense of gains and loses. Certain biases in our thinking are then created because often the fear of regret or loss predominates – a hurtful emotion-and this plays a big role in influencing the outcome of the decision.

In order to better explain what is going on in our minds when confronted with a situation that requires a decision, Kahneman introduces us in his book to two characters that «live» inside our minds: System 1 which is the one that is in touch with our daily happenings, and the one that continually interprets our current «reality» by constructing a coherent interpretation on what is happening in our lives, and System 2, which mainly deals with the effortful mental activities that demand increased attention, like for example when trying to solve a complex mathematical problem. This two «Systems » are of course fictitious characters, but on this way, it makes it easier for us to recognise the two main functions of our thinking.

So what are the main functions of our «System 1»?

Generates impressions, beliefs and inclinations
operates quickly and automatically
creates a coherent pattern of ideas that are in our associative memory
neglects ambiguity and surpasses doubt
focus on existing evidence and forgets absent evidence
is loss averse: responds more strongly when losing than when winning something

System 2 operations are more effortful but one of its main characteristics is laziness, therefore it will be reluctant to invest more effort than strictly necessary. Activities that impose high demands on System 2 require a high degree of self-control, and self-control can be for many exhaustive and unpleasant, so our mind tries to avoid it. Therefore is evident that in our daily undertakings, we tend to use much more our System 1 than our System 2, exposing ourselves to many bias in our thinking than we are actually aware of.

Some of the main biases that we experience in our daily and professional lives, identified by Kahneman and Tversky are:

Planning fallacy: This one is very common in business. This is related to the phenomenon of taking false predictions of the estimated time it will take to complete a specific task. This is often the result of overconfidence in knowing results on similar projects due to past experience and overestimation of actual tasks versus estimate at completion. The subsequent effects are, as project managers well know, an overrun plan often leads to sunk costs and benefit shortfalls.

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Priming effect: Mechanism of association between words, concepts, feelings and situations. Most of the time, people is not really aware that their actions are influenced by events that they associate in their memories unconsciously. (e.g. Think about BANANA and VOMIT… did you temporarily felt a rejection of eating a Banana right now?) this is a great tool for Marketers!

Cognitive illusions: Illusions of thought and the famous Müller-Lyer illusion. What do you see? is the horizontal line on the bottom longer than the one on the top?

Illusions of remembering and illusions of truth: The Psychologist Larry Jacoby describes this phenomena in great words » The experience of familiarity has a simple but powerful quality of ‘pastness’ that seems to indicate that it is a direct reflection of prior experience». Something to watch out for, is that this is an effective way to make people believe in false information via frequent repetition, because often familiarity is not easily distinguished from the truth.

We deliberately look for causes and intentions: Our brains don’t like the randomness of life, therefore, we are looking automatically for causes and explanations that make sense, and this often shapes our thinking about certain situations.

What you see is all there is: As our brain capacities to retrieve information are finite, we look consistency in the information we have available in order to make a good story of a situation, regardless of its completeness. Combining limited information with cognitive ease (i.e. familiarity), make our story come across as true. This is mainly why according to Kahneman, we are able to think fast and how we make sense of our complex world with only partial information.

Overconfidence: The level of confidence that a person has in their beliefs relies on the level of quality of the stories and how well they explain what they see, even if what they see is just very limited information.

Framing effects: Different ways of showing information can change our decision and how we think about a situation. (e.g. if you are on diet, and you see two products, one saying » 80% fat-free» and the other saying «contains 20% fat» you will most likely choose the first one even if the information is exactly the same). A similar situation can happen when you see two advertisements; one with bold letters and one with blurry or small letters. Because the brain can pick up more quickly the bold letters, you will refer this statement as true as compared to the other.

Substitution and heuristics: When we are asked a particular difficult question like: How happy are you now? our mind substitutes this question with something like «What is my mood right now? For our mind, it is easier to generate quick answers by replacing the difficult question with a simpler one without making our lazy System 2 work too hard.

This story becomes more interesting, when you add the phenomenon of «intensity matching» to the equation. If you would put a dollar value to the intensity of your feelings, you will probably be willing to spend more money on things that will increase the feeling of being in a good mood which will increase your belief that you are becoming more happy with that transaction.

Affect heuristics: Judgements and decisions are directly guided by feelings of liking and disliking with little deliberation or reasoning. This is easily observable in the political scene. It is very likely that your political preference determines which arguments you find more compelling. If System 2 would enter into the picture, you would have to do a thorough research of all arguments, make comparisons, build probabilistic scenarios and choose the most «rational» argument regardless of the candidate.

Sampling and «Small numbers» effect: In the professional and scientific worlds, we know for a fact that when doing research, larger samples are more reliable than smaller samples. However, in our daily life, we tend to ignore the sample size and let our intuitive mind make a conclusion. If you read a business report that says: «Out of a questionnaire made with 200 young customers, 80% loved our product». Your immediate interpretation would be that the product is successful among Millennials. You could change the number to 2,000 or 20,000 and you would probably remain indifferent, because you are more interested in the story you just interpreted from the statement and less conscious about the sample size.

Availability and affect: What is it more likely to happen, that a person dies by having diabetes or by a car accident?

In a famous study made by Paul Slovic, Sara Lichtenstein and Baruch Fischhoff, and cited by Kahneman, revealed that public perceptions of risks were heavily influenced by media coverage. In our previous example, death by accidents was judged to be 300 more likely than death by diabetes; however the death by diabetes is actually 4 times bigger! Of course, you hear more often about car accidents in the media than from episodes of death by diabetes.

Our perceptions of risk and our limited ability to deal with small risks makes us either ignore the risk all together, or put too much attention on it. This results in that we are often prone to exaggerate the consistency of coherence of what we see!

So, how can we detect which situations make us more susceptible to «go with the flow» in System 1 mode rather than activate a more conscious System 2 approach?

When we are multitasking
when we are in a good mood because of a thought of a happy experience
when we possess a moderate knowledge about a specific topic but this is the area we have more experience, so we trust our knowledge gained instead of asking true experts
when we are naturally inclined to believe our faith and intuitions
when we are made feel powerful or important

Does that mean that we have to be in an alert and depressive mode all the time to make better decisions? Should we ignore our faith and gut feeling?

Is there really «no cure» for our biased thinking?

If subjective confidence is not to be trusted, how can we evaluate the validity of a judgement?

According to research done by Gary Klein, the higher the unpredictability of the events to forecast, the more the failures we tend to make. So when we acquire sufficient skill in an environment that is sufficiently regular to be predictable and if we get the chance to learn the skill under prolonged practice in this predictable environment, it will reduce significantly the probability of biases and mistakes. The gut feeling can be generally trusted, when it is done in an environment that has been thoroughly studied and where we know we have sufficient knowledge and capability to respond in that specific environment.

It is important that we learn to take a better self-control and maintain an alert mind to potential biases when doing important decisions at work and in our daily lives in general. If we pick the wrong choice in an unpredictable environment, most likely our learning experiences will be also biased.

Although it is inevitable that we fall in the trap of our own bias, which are invading our conscious mind everyday, there are some things that can be done to improve the way we make decisions:

Keep a critical mindset. Even if you are an expert in your area, make an effort to verify and validate all possible information available
avoid relying in the past to look for solutions. Most of the times, those solutions are already obsolete. Focus on opening new alternatives and envision the Future
forget about the «Sunk costs»- They are gone! Don´t stay in a failed project, bad marriage or bad job because of the «Investment done so far»- Move on!
be humble, and open to new ideas and perspectives
try to look for a collective decision-making, even if it takes more time,when very important decisions have to me made and where many people will be affected by the outcome
if you have a strong belief or intuition, try to find sustainable information supporting your belief, before making the decision
avoid the temptation to be «right» at all times and stay true to the facts

Biases in our decisions does not affect our intelligence. Most of our actions and judgements we make are appropriate most of the time, but being aware of the existing conscious bias and acting upon them will definitely increase the quality of your decisions!

«Thinking is the highest and most powerful faculty given to Humans» B.Proctor