Dear Reader, 

Over the last few weeks, lots of clients have been asking me for coaching around what you might call “work/life-balance” issues.

Maybe it’s the time of year? In any case, I thought it might be a useful topic for this week’s message.

One of the things I’ve learned from coaching so many different people over the years is that what looks like great work/life-balance to one person can sound totally wrong to somebody else. So while I understand that it might be necessary to protect some groups of workers, I don’t really think that the prescriptive working-time-directive type approach is the right solution. Instead, we should educate people in how to take responsibility for their own work/life-balance - whatever that looks or feels like to them.

Assuming you’re the kind of person who (a) wants to be successful in your work; and (b) is capable and resourceful enough not to need ‘protecting’ from some unscrupulous employer, here’s my top three tips for improving your work/life-balance:

1) I’ve observed that the people who seem to be able to sustain success over the long-term only give about 80% of their productive capability to work (remember Pareto?). Too much more, and it maybe that you’re not investing in your own health and growth. Too much less, and it maybe that your work is missing some motivating factor for you;

2) I’ve also found in working with so any people that if you are consistently having to give more than 80% to work it is quite likely that there is something new you need to learn. It’s possible that this will be a new skill, but more likely to be a managerial or leadership issue which needs to be bolstered-up by some improved emotional intelligences. The solution will almost certainly NOT be to try harder (see above!)

3) When you’ve already achieved a degree of success at work, something that can often happen along the way (especially as we become parents and employers) is that we forget the “life” part of the equation. Why when we can have career plans and business objectives do we assume that the “life” part of work/life-balance needs no planning or designing? Design the life AND work that you want - in that order!

Please write a comment in the box below or by clicking “comments” at the end of this message.

With best regards,

Executive Life Coaching for smart, motivated people.

Dear Reader,

I had one of those lightbulb moments last week.

Although I can be a bit nerdy and generally like doing techie-type stuff, writing this message is about the only techie thing I do myself these days. And for various boring reasons, I had been writing my email message in one programme and then cutting and pasting it on my blog-page, so that people can leave comments and reactions for others to see. But that cutting and pasting was a fairly difficult task, because all kinds of rubbish html code was getting transferred over and then required editing.

Only took about ten minutes a week - but ten minutes I’d rather spend doing something more interesting and productive.

And my lightbulb moment came when I wondered to myself: “how would it be if I did it the other way around?”

Bingo - problem solved, no tedious editing required, job done almost instantly!

So, over to you.
What is there in your work or life that might get a whole lot easier if you switched the sequence around?

As usual, please leave a comment - scroll down and click “comments”, or if you can already see it, please write in the box and click “Press me now”.

With best regards,

Executive Life Coaching for smart, motivated people.

Dear Reader,

I’m picking up again this morning on points you raised when I turned my blog over to you last November. And I thought I might begin with this one from Paul (click here).

It’s a great point this, about how things get changed by somebody further up the line, so you get that situation where: “it’s not the boss, it’s the bosses bosses who have changed their minds”.

This is one of the (good) reasons cited for making organisations flatter, so that communication chains are shorterened and this kind of thing (in theory) should happen less. Trouble is, of course, as levels of heirarchy have been removed, so the “span of control” (i.e. the number of people who report to each manager) has grown much wider. And you get the same problem but for different reasons!

There’s been lots of writing in recent years about the optimal size for groups and communities - research by the evolutionionary anthropologist RIM Dunbar gets quoted a lot (in books like “Tipping Point“). Dunbar’s research on apes seemed to suggest that a maximum group size of 150 was possible/optimal - so long as the groups’ members spent 42% of their time grooming each other.

So does this mean, if we are experiencing a block or breakdown in our communications, that we’re not doing enough groooming of the people involved?

As usual, I welcome your comments - please scroll down and click “comments”, or if you can already see it, please write in the box and click “Press me now”.

Dear Reader,

I just came home from a few days away and my son Alex (5 and a half) does his usual flying leap to greet me - “Dad, dad, I’ve made my symbol!”

Which turns out to mean that he’s designed for himself the kind of symbol/logo that all his favourite cartoon characters (Power Rangers, “Super Robot Space Monkeys Hyperforce Go” etc) have on their costumes.

Alex describes his symbol as an upside down ‘V’, and it’s drawn in his usual dynamic, freehand style. I love this symbol, because it is such a good representation of him. He greets you like a flying V, and Alex doesn’t so much experience the world, rather the world experiences him! I don’t know what his inspiration for that symbol was, but I really am blown away by how it expresses so much about his essence.

Years ago my friend Rob, a graphic designer, and his partner did a logo for my coaching business, when it was called “Spindrift”. I still like that logo, because it has a harmony, balance, light ‘n’ dark, dynamic motion yet solid and ‘planted’ kind of thing about it. Here’s the symbol part of that logo.If I was to use this as a symbol for my essence now, I still think it’s pretty apt, but I’d maybe change the colours to have more danger and electricity about it, maybe pink, yellow, electric blue and black, like a tropical fish or a cool wetsuit (sorry Rob!).

And how about you?

If there was a symbol or a logo which described something about your essence - about how the world experiences you, what might that be?

If you would like to share your thoughts on your own logo or symbol, please scroll down to leave a comment. I can’t quite figure out how to let you upload images, but try cut’n'paste  - and also feel free to include hypertext links.

With best regards,

Executive Life Coaching for smart, motivated people.