With the year winding down, it is typical for busy executives to pause and reflect on what has transpired in their businesses. What worked well? What could you do better next year? Where will our new opportunities be in the coming year? What do we need to do to be prepared to capture those opportunities? While these questions certainly have value in helping plan for the most effective use of time and resources going into the new year, these questions are not the only ones – probably not even the most important ones – that busy executives should be asking themselves at this time of year.
These days, with the challenges of global markets and an uncertain economy driving stress levels ever higher, executives must learn to look at life holistically. Successful executives are always looking for ways to become more effective and productive at doing their jobs. However, very few people consider their jobs to BE their lives. For most of us, our jobs are what we do to help us secure the things that make our lives richer and more meaningful. By focusing only on business issues when we do these end-of-the-year assessments, we send a message to ourselves and those around is that work is the only thing that is really important. This can result in a serious degrading over time of everything that really makes life meaningful and worth living. No wonder many executives achieve a high degree of professional success, only to see other areas like relationships and even physical health slip through their fingers. The best way to avoid such tragedies is to achieve a balance between work and the rest of life.
Take a moment to study the graphic below:
The Whole Person Concept was originally articulated by Dr. Mortimer Adler, a 20th Century American professor of philosophy and religion, and founding member of the Board of Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. Adler framed his theory this way: "Whole Persons are engaged in a lifetime quest to achieve balance and congruity in all aspects of their lives and continually seek to develop their full human potential.” The Whole Person Concept has since been adapted and promoted over the years by organizations as diverse as the US military and the Million Dollar Round Table.
The Whole Person Concept as it is commonly applied today helps us dig a little deeper into all the rich and diverse aspects of living a balanced life by asking us to evaluate the quality of our experience in eight categories:
Self – This is a pretty broad category that can apply to anything from health issues like weight and overall conditioning, to mental health and emotional outlook. The fundamental question to address here is, “how do I feel about me?” Do you like the way you look and feel? Is your outlook on life positive? Do you have plenty of energy to get through the day? Are your cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar levels under control? Does stress keep you awake at night and disrupt sleep patterns? These and other questions go to the foundation of your ability to function as a healthy person. Often people use work as an excuse to not deal with some of these issues (“Too busy, deal with it next week, not that big a deal,” etc.).
Family – In matters related to work-life balance, this is the area that tends to suffer the most. The demands of work are relentless, and the easiest place to borrow the extra time we need to satisfy those demands is from family time. Working late, working on weekends, extensive travel away from home – it may all seem justified in the name of providing for the financial needs of the family, but you must remember your family has other – and often more important – needs that can’t be satisfied by dollars. Your family needs you to be present in positive, caring, affirming ways as you give and receive love with them. Also, whether you realize it or not, you have those same needs in your own life, and they will only be met in the context of being present with your family in meaningful ways. Also, being present goes beyond simply coming home on time. If your work issues leave you so exhausted and distracted that you don’t have anything to invest in family relationships when you do come home, your family will suffer and so will you.
Love/relationship – This may seem to be related to the previous category, but not exactly. For one thing, what if you are single and seeking a relationship? How is that working out for you? Making progress? Gave up a long time ago? Buried in work to compensate? Countless studies indicate that those who have love/relationship deficiencies in their lives experience more physical and emotional problems leading to poorer quality of life and shorter life spans than those who have found satisfaction in this category. But this goes beyond being single and searching; many married persons experience high levels of dissatisfaction in this area, often because they lack the necessary skills to nurture a healthy, loving partnership. These people also often resort to spending extra time with work, so they won’t have to think about how unhappy they are at home.
Friendship – Much could be said about this topic, but it comes down to this: we all need people with whom we can be our true, authentic selves, and know we will be accepted and supported, sometimes in spite of ourselves. Certainly this quality should be present in marriage and family, but most of us also need a few other people in our lives we can lean on and trust to be there for us when no one else will be. Relationships related to our work and career often tend to be superficial; they may contain lots of banter and busyness, but they are usually lacking in genuine openness, honesty, and vulnerability – a singular set of qualities that can be summed up in one work: intimacy. You can bury yourself in work, be surrounded by colleagues and co-workers, and still have few if any real friends.
Financial – This category is not so much a quality as it is a goal. Some people are motivated by money and some people are not, but we should all have realistic goals where financial security is concerned. If the economic instability of the past few years has taught is anything, it is that true financial security is much more elusive than we have been led to believe. Therefore, it is all the more important to set goals and pursue them in a wise, balanced way. It is not necessary to become obsessed with financial matters, but it is important to care about them and have a plan that makes sense for your family and your life.
Personal Growth – This category includes things like hobbies, education, certifications, vacations, community involvement, and anything else you can think of that helps you to become a more fulfilled, more rounded, more interesting and more interested person. Your ability to maintain a healthy continuum of personal growth not only enables you to offer extra value when you are at work, it also provides a powerful level of meaning to your life so that you don’t want to spend any more time being at work or thinking about work than you absolutely need to.
Spirituality – While this topic means different things to different people, it usually refers to having a sense that the universe is bound together by Someone or Something that is bigger than you. Step Two of the 12 Steps of AA perhaps says it best by referring to coming to believe in a Power greater than ourselves that can restore us to sanity. For some people this means uniting with a vibrant religious community and for others it means finding ways to achieve peace and harmony with self and others in more private ways. A lack of spirituality robs us of the ability to love, to trust, to be trustworthy, to behave ethically and responsible in the human community. In a spiritual vacuum, there is nothing left to fill the emptiness except self-interest and, sometimes, self-loathing, which can lead to an intense drive to succeed professionally in order to compensate. That may explain why Spirituality is one of the first casualties of being too committed to work and career.
Work – Finally, we are back where we started – at the issue of work and how much we can or should focus on it. To be crystal clear, work is important. Work creates value for you and your family, and it also creates value for the world around you. Early leaders of the Christian Reformation celebrated work as one of the best ways for spiritual people to bring good to their communities and glory to God. The purpose of this article is not to vilify work but to keep it in balance with the rest of life. It is good to be passionate about your work, to see in it meaning and value and purpose that goes beyond the money you bring home. It is also important to have professional goals to help you map out your career and continue to excel. If you are stuck in a dead-end job, you should have a plan for how to jump-start your career and pursue something you can be passionate about. Just don’t forget that there are at least seven other categories that help to bring meaning and joy and purpose to life. Work is only one spoke in the wheel, and if the other spokes are not in balance, it will be a very bumpy ride.
1. Review the Whole Person Concept diagram on the opening page. Take a moment to consider your overall level of satisfaction with the quality of your experience in each of the categories on the spokes of the diagram.
2. Now, with 1 representing being extremely dissatisfied and 10 being the highest level of satisfaction you could ask for, plot your level of satisfaction with your life in each category by placing a dot along the spoke at the point that best identifies the level of satisfaction you are experiencing.
3. Now, connect the dots. Does the shape of the figure you create from the connected dots resemble a nicely proportioned “wheel” that would provide your life with a smooth ride, or do you see a need to rebalance the wheel of your life to achieve something that will bring you greater joy and satisfaction?
4. Identify at least three steps you need to take in each category over the next six weeks to help you begin to balance your life for a smoother ride.
Walter Rogers is the President and CEO of Baker Communications. Baker Communications is a sales training and development company specializing in helping client companies increase their sales and management effectiveness. He can be reached at 713-627-7700.
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