Episode 26: The Myth Of Work-Life Balance
We've all heard the idea that people don't leave companies, they leave bad managers. And bad managers create toxic workplaces. I know you don't want that to be you.
It’s one thing to survive a toxic workplace but how do you prevent one in the first place if you are a leader?
Often, toxic workplaces start from the top of the organization and radiate down into the rest of the organization but there are micro-cultures inside of teams that you definitely have more influence over.
In this episode we cover:
6 ways you can prevent a toxic workplace as a leader
How you may be contributing to a toxic workplace and not even realize it
Full Transcript:
E26
[00:00:00] Welcome back to the Upgraded Career podcast. I'm your host Nicole Case, and today we are talking about a topic that is, I know, is so top of mind for a lot of people, particularly as we are going into, you know, summer vacations and things like that, and that is this idea of. work-life balance or rather this myth of work-life balance.
[00:00:22] Earlier today I was speaking at an in-person event, um, about upgrading your career and getting to that next level in, um, in your career, getting promotions, that kind of thing. And inevitably I get a question about, you know, how do we go about maintaining this work-life balance when we transition into a more demanding role or that next level role.
[00:00:48] and in our minds it's, it has to be more demanding and it just got me thinking like, I need to come on here and just do a whole podcast episode about specifically this idea of work-life balance, Oregon. Rather this myth of work life balance. I remember I had, um, a client, uh, several months ago. She was, um, she came to me, uh, she was ready to take on, um, her next role, her next challenge, but she was very specific about not wanting.
[00:01:17] to get to too high in the organization. She was like, I don't wanna get to vp. She was like, that's, she was like, I don't wanna get that high. She was like, that's too much responsibility. They work all the time. She's like, I just see all those people up there at that next, at that, at that big level, at that C-suite level.
[00:01:31] I don't wanna, I don't wanna do that. And as I dug into it a little bit more with her, I was like, really? Is that the only thing that's holding you back is just that you're concerned that your work-life balance is gonna get out of whack. And she's like, yeah, otherwise I, I would do it. And we have to have this conversation around this idea of work-life balance or.
[00:01:53] This is something that we get to control there. I get that there are deadlines that other people impose on us and customer escalations and all kinds of crazy things that happen in the working world and in our businesses that we don't always have control over, but we do have control over whether we say, yes, we're going to respond to that quote unquote emergency or.
[00:02:14] No, we're not gonna respond to that right now. I'm gonna put a boundary in place around that. I've talked a lot about boundaries before we've, we have several other episodes out there around these ideas of boundaries, but, . This idea of having a perfect work-life balance all the time, I think is what keeps us from actually being happy and fulfilled and actually having some re resemblance of balance because we keep fighting this idea that work-life balance has to be perfect all the time.
[00:02:44] So I like to think about this idea of work-life balance instead as going in going with the flow. It's not. Work-life balance. It's, it's not this, trying to find that perfect equilibrium all the time because that in and of itself is not something that we can attain and sustain long term. So I like to think about it as this idea of work-life flow or kind of going with the flow.
[00:03:13] Now, I'll tell you, this is not something that I just came up with. , you know, early in my career and I had it all figured out and I dealt with it all the time in this way. That's totally not true at all. It's only been maybe in the last two years or so, working alongside my own coach and working with my therapist around this idea of flow, what I am finding, what I found just in my own career, and especially now in my business, that.
[00:03:40] it's reminding me that business is cyclical. There's gonna be peaks and valleys, right? There's gonna be really busy times at work, and then there's gonna be times where you know, you're working on the back end on things, or there's gonna be really busy times in your personal life or, and there's gonna be times where things are chucking along really well.
[00:03:56] And once I. Finally stopped fighting this idea of perfection around my schedule or this perfection around, um, having this perfect balance in rest versus hustle and all of these things. Once I embrace that idea, things have gotten so much easier and I cannot overstate how much easier this has gone. My husband and I were actually just talking about this yesterday.
[00:04:23] You know, earlier this year, the first couple of months of 2023, really full, really full months for me. I was doing a lot of training. I was doing a lot of, um, you know, getting this podcast up and running and had a lot of new clients coming on board and things were just super, super full. April came around and it was a little bit quieter.
[00:04:44] It wasn't intentional in that way. I'd like to say I was be, I was super intentional with it, but it wasn't, it was just, it just kind of naturally worked out that I only had a couple of speaking engagements. I only had three trainings that were lined up and they were all virtual, which definitely cuts down on time around things, and I was like, you know what?
[00:05:04] April is, you know, not gonna be such a full month. And you know what I'm gonna do? I'm not going to try to overstuff it just because I have white space. I'm gonna just allow the the month to unfold how it is. I'm not gonna purposely go out there and be like, oh, I've got some extra time. Let me try to drum up some additional business, or let me try to.
[00:05:24] do a bunch of extra stuff or pick up, add additional training opportunities or anything like that. I was just like, you know what? I'm just gonna let things unfold naturally, because I knew coming up in May, June and July, things were gonna get ramped back up again. So I just kind of allowed myself to. ease into that flow of a little bit less of, of a busy period.
[00:05:47] And I got some stuff done behind the scenes. I did a bunch of podcast episodes. I rested a lot, which was great, knowing that I was gonna ramp, ramp it back up in May, June, and July. And that's okay. And then we'll see, you know, the second half of July my sister comes to visit. So we'll have a little bit of downtime then.
[00:06:06] And you know, I'll be able to then get it back into the swing of things in the fall, just recognizing that. Again, this whole idea of a balance isn't really real, but what is real is business cycles, is, you know, busy seasons. There are things just in nature. If we think about looking in nature and looking at planting, planting crops, or, um, you know, just the, the growing seasons, like there are seasons when you are tilling the soil, you're working really hard, you're working that soil, you're making decisions about.
[00:06:41] what seeds need to be planted in what soil, what fertilizers you need, how much sun it needs, how much water it needs. Like you're doing all of these things to do the planting in the spring and in the summer, and then you kind of sit back and you let it do its thing. You let its, you let it kind of grow, and then you get into a harvest season and then you're out there like really, you know, picking all of those crops that you just spent all that time in the spring and summer planting and cultivating and nurturing, so it would grow.
[00:07:10] Now you're out there. , you know, trying to pick it all as quick as you can, you know, at the peak of ripeness. So it's not too ripe. It's not under ripe. You're doing all that work there and then you go into a winter season where things are dying off, you till the soil and you let it, you let things, um, kind of naturally, you know, go back and get you, we rest.
[00:07:33] That's what farmers do in the wintertime. They do a little bit more rest or maybe they're doing some other projects around the farm. We're doing some other things other. Maintenance things that need to be done in order to prepare for the spring planting season. It's all a cycle, and that's super normal.
[00:07:49] And for whatever reason, we feel like we have to. Go, go, go all the time. And but then we're also given these signals and these messages that we also should be resting too. And so how do we figure out the the right formula? And I'm certainly not here to tell you what your formula is for you. I know that when I work with my clients or I'm thinking about myself and I'm talking with my therapist, or I'm talking with my coach about kind of where I'm at and what I need, it's just.
[00:08:17] That changes sometimes week to week, month to month about, you know, how I'm feeling and about where my energy levels are, what else is going on, um, in my life. Do I have trips coming up? Do I have vacations coming up? Is there just something stressing me out, just kind of in general that's causing my energy?
[00:08:33] To feel a little bit low or just have my attention just, you know, a little bit distracted for some oth from some other things. And with that, that's when I need to adjust, you know, kind of how much rest that I need and how much kind of go, go, go that I need. Cuz I will say I am definitely somebody that likes to go, go, go.
[00:08:51] I like staying busy. I like having things to do. I like making an impact. There is nothing wrong with that. So if you are out there and you're like, you know what, Nicole? This whole idea of work-life balance, this conversation makes me really uncomfortable because I really like to be busy and do a lot of things and have a full calendar.
[00:09:07] I'm so right there with you. I absolutely love having a full calendar and being out there and visiting with friends and traveling and all of this stuff. I actually really, really love that. too many days for me, too many down days for me, or too many days that I don't have a whole lot, um, structured and going on.
[00:09:26] I actually get really energy depleted as a result of that, but I've realized over at least the last probably year or so, I. that I can go for about 10 days straight, and then I need like two days rest and then I can go another 10 days and then I need two days rest. And now that I'm headed into just kind of a really full season, I'm taking on a bunch of new clients right now and I have a lot more, um, , um, training that, that I'm gonna be doing and traveling for that, I just, okay, now I need to be just really intentional and making sure I am baking in those periods of rest, you know, time to binge watch, uh, a TV show with my husband, or just going and sitting by the pool for a while.
[00:10:05] I know I'm gonna need some of those things. So as someone who is just naturally inclined to be a go, go, go person. , I know that I need to just be more intentional about baking those things in. And then who knows, maybe in a couple months, again, I'll have a little bit, a couple weeks breather where I don't have a whole lot scheduled and I will ease into that flow as well.
[00:10:29] So what are some strategies for you to just kind of figure out what this whole work-life balance or flow looks like in your own life? Well, one, I'll just say that most of us out here, again, are not saving lives. Most of us are not listening to this podcast. If you are out here saving lives, I applaud you.
[00:10:48] Thank you so much for everything that you are, you are doing for, for everyone else out here, saving our lives. But I can tell you that unless you're a first responder, a doctor, a surgeon, a nurse, you know someone out here that is again, truly physically saving lives and recognizing that urgency, we can probably take us down a notch, right?
[00:11:10] We can probably just take it down. , just a moment. That email can probably wait to throw tomorrow. That phone call can probably wait until next week. We can, we just, let's just not take ourselves so seriously for a moment. Right. Let's just take it, let's just take it on down a minute and then we just really need to like sit, sit down and.
[00:11:30] and really just reflect on what's going on in our lives. Are you in a season where you've got, you know, babies at home and like little, little kids at home and they really, really need you? in terms of survival and safety and all of those things, and that's where a lot of your attention is. Maybe you've got kids kind of, that are older, elementary, middle school, high school.
[00:11:51] We've got a lot of friends that are in that season right now, and I'll tell you, they are at the ballpark. all nights and weekends. There are the travel teams, you know, they're back and forth and traveling with their kids doing sports. That's just the season that they're in. And I can tell you that they are not able to do girls nights as often.
[00:12:07] They're not able to just go out and have dinner or grab drinks or anything like that like they used to. And that's okay. That's just the season that the, that they're in. That season will pass and we'll circle back, right? It'll be okay. And then I've got other friends and colleagues who are just. Super heads down in their business.
[00:12:26] It's a or super heads down in their careers and they're really driving towards that next level. And that's really where a lot of their focus is. They're going to networking events, they're going to conferences. They are just again, really, you know, reading lots of business books and those are a lot of the conversations that we're having when we, whenever we get together, that's the season that they're in and that's okay.
[00:12:46] Again, that'll probably shift and change over time, but what we have to do right now, . I sit down and just really recognize where am I at in my career? What are the things that are important to me, and how do I make sure those get prioritized? So for me, for example, I'm not someone who has children that I have to cut.
[00:13:06] I, I'm not navigating that type of season, those personalities of life, but I am navigating. You know, personalities in my business, just, you know, where I'm at with my age and my health and just other priorities that I have in my life. And I've sat down and I've said, you know what? Working out moving my body in the mornings are really important to me.
[00:13:28] I have found over time that working out at night in the afternoon really doesn't feel as good for me. It doesn't just, it just doesn't work for me. So I prefer to work out in the mornings. Okay, so how do I make that happen? , you know, 2, 3, 4 days a week that I'm making sure that I'm getting some type of movement in my day it first thing in the morning, what it, what needs to happen in order to make, enable that, right?
[00:13:54] If you are someone who it's important for you to. , make sure you are home to get your kid off the bus, what needs to happen in your career, in your business, or just other places in your life to make sure that that happens. But we have to first sit down and identify those kind of non-negotiables, super high priority items, and make sure those get scheduled on the calendar first.
[00:14:18] So if date night with your partner, on Saturday night is really important to you. You gotta bake that in. I have a girlfriend of mine. It's important. It's important for us to get together and have lunch at least once a month. So what do we do? We schedule it. We have a recurring me meeting invite on both of our calendars, actually, for every other week because.
[00:14:40] it typically needs to get moved or typically gets needs to get pushed, and we know that at least one of them will probably work out. It'll probably happen, but we have to calendar them. It's important to us to stay connected and to sit down and have a nice long lunch on a Friday where we can have a glass of wine and just not feel like we're rushing.
[00:14:58] So we calendar it. We've made that a priority in our relationship and in our lives. So we've calendar it, calendared it, and everything else gets scheduled around that. So again, sit down and figure out what are some of these non-negotiables that are in your life right now that we need to make sure are accounted for, and then we can bake everything else around that.
[00:15:20] We also need to look at just our jobs and even in, even in our personal life too, just what are those tasks that need to be done? A hundred percent, 110%. And then what are those tasks that really only need maybe 80%? Bright. Not all tasks are created equal. Not all tasks record re require 110% of you. I know this might feel blasphemous for some of you out here.
[00:15:51] I recognize that being a. , highly driven, highly ambitious, you know, just focused on excellence, sort of performer like you are. This can feel really difficult. To back off on this a little bit, I was talking with a woman this morning at this in-person event, and she was just telling me about, you know, I'm not a perfectionist.
[00:16:12] I'm not a perfectionist, but. . And then she goes on to say, but I just, I just want things to be done really well, and I want things to be done on time and, and all of these things. And I totally get that and I respect that. And we should still be showing up and doing high quality work and showing up in the way that we wanna show up.
[00:16:30] But again, not every task. requires 110%. So for instance, if I'm downstairs folding laundry, I've got towels in the dryer right now. So right after this, right after I'm done recording this episode, I'm gonna go fold those towels. I do not need to make really fancy, like. towel animals out of my towels or fold them in a really fancy way, right?
[00:16:56] With all these really crisp corners and things like that. That is what the lovely people at hotels do and resorts do. That's what those folks do. I don't necessarily need to have super, super fancy folded towels. Do I fold my towels in a particular way? Absolutely, I do. Do I fold them? In, you know, the same way every single time.
[00:17:18] Have I figured that out? Figured that out. How they look best and fit best into the cabinet and the bathrooms. Absolutely. I have, but I've also not gone so far to be like, oh yeah, I need to create a little towel elephant. Every single time we have guests come over to the house and I prop it up on the bed or something like that for them.
[00:17:37] Again, if that was the type of experience they wanted, they can go to a hotel. Right? So that's like an 80% task. , the towels are clean, the towels are dry, the towels are folded in a nice, neat, consistent way, and it looks aesthetically pleasing in the bathroom counter, but otherwise I'm not taking it to that next level.
[00:17:56] Right. Same thing in your job or in your business. And one thing that kind of comes to mind for me, there is like PowerPoint presentations like. . And again, this is totally gonna depend on your role, so I'm just throwing this out here as an example, but do your PowerPoint presentations all need to have really fancy colors and fonts and animations and transitions and you know, all of these really extra things.
[00:18:21] Like does that, is that really necessary in your role? It might be. Now, don't get me wrong, it might be, you might be. In a marketing role or in a role that that makes sense for you to spend that 110% effort on that particular TA on that particular task. But I guess, I guess probably for the vast majority of the rest of us out here, I.
[00:18:41] Our clean, crisp, clear, concise PowerPoint slides that doesn't have a bunch of distracting transitions and wizbang things going on, it's probably okay. That's probably an 80% task, right? What I personally would rather spend more time on when I'm out there. presenting to groups is again, having very crisp and clean slides that aren't distracting.
[00:19:07] That add to the, that add to the talk, to that add to the experience. But there's actually not a whole lot on my slides, and one of the reasons is because, . I don't wanna spend a whole lot of time on it. I really don't. I just don't have the patience and the skill and the bandwidth to spend a ton of time on my slides.
[00:19:26] Now, maybe someday I could hire somebody to help me with that perhaps, but I'd rather spend my time and effort. On ensuring that my actual presentation skills and my communicating, the message that I'm trying to get across really lands with my audience. So I'm gonna spend more time practicing my talk, making sure that talk is, you know, custom, customized appropriately for that particular audience.
[00:19:53] That's where I'm gonna spend the 110% effort. Versus the 80% effort of pulling together some really simple but effective PowerPoint slides. Again, just as an example. But once again, your not every task requires 110% of your effort. And I think that if you find, if you go through what does my day-to-day look like?
[00:20:15] What are the various tasks that I'm working on? What meetings am I in, can I, can I, you know, notch those, that meeting back from an hour to 30 minutes, does it really need. a whole hour. Does this even need a meeting at all? Can we spend a little bit of time creating a template of some sort and then just have people send their updates that way?
[00:20:39] Or are there again, just certain tasks that maybe you shouldn't be doing it doing anymore? Would I often find, um, with people who have just recently got a big promotion? The big promotion's scary, right? You're, it's this new role. There's, we have to figure out this new, this new learning curve, right? And just what it looks like to be at this next level.
[00:21:01] That sometimes people will slide back into old habits or old tasks that they were familiar with, that they were comfortable with, that they knew that they could do really well. and that what that's doing is that it's taking them away from those higher level tasks or those strategic, more strategic tasks that they should be focused on at this new next level.
[00:21:25] This is actually what I see really trip people up in their, um, in their new roles once they get promoted, is that they get pegged as someone who's not very strategic. Who's not moving the noodle, who's not being as effective as they could be in this new role as quickly as they could, because they're still so focused on previous things that they've done in.
[00:21:47] you know, in lower level positions that they were in. And this is true whether they got promoted internally or they've gone external to a new company. Again, it's scary. So it, it can make some sense, right, why someone might find comfort in doing some tasks they previous, previously did. But if you are able to like really recognize, okay, these aren't the things that I need to be focused on anymore.
[00:22:07] I need to either delete, delay, or delegate those to someone else that is gonna free you up to have more white space to free you up to feel like. , okay. I can breathe a little bit and I'm finding a little bit more balance or flow or waves or whatever. Whatever word you want to use with it. And then the final thing that I'll, that I will say here is that I.
[00:22:32] you are not going to be successful at this next level. If you are not prioritizing your own mental and physical health. You're just not. Right. I've seen, again, so many people, you know, get to that next level or strive to get to that next level, and they end up burning themselves out along the way, and you're not gonna be able to perform at that peak level like you know you're capable of and that you want to perform at.
[00:22:55] We want to perform at our top level, right? But we're not gonna be able to do that if we are not also prioritizing our mental and physical health. And if we look at athletes, you know, athletes are a really great example of this. So athletes have off season, they have by weeks when they're not, um, that they're not playing in a, in a particular week or a couple of weeks, right?
[00:23:19] They, and then whenever they do have practice during the season, they're often not practicing full on out. In the middle of the season because they need to preserve their energy for game days. And I don't know what your opinions are necessarily about Tom Brady, but I'll tell you, I'm from, I'm originally from north of Pittsburgh, so it's a requirement there to just hate Tom Brady, but you have to respect what he has done, you know, in football, right Over his career.
[00:23:53] He has been. One of the most highly decorated. Quarterbacks and just football players of all time, and he has been playing well into his forties. The vast majority of quarterbacks do not play that long. The vast majority of any athlete, regardless of what, um, regardless of what sport typically doesn't, don't, does not play at that level for that long.
[00:24:18] So you have to wonder, what is Tom Brady doing? Differently and he'll tell you if you ever listen to podcasts or interviews that he does. He always is referencing, you know, his workout routines, his resting, his meditation, yoga that he does, and just, and also just fueling his body with. With foods that not only taste good, but also just work well for what he's trying to do.
[00:24:41] Right? So we also have to think of ourselves a little bit in this way too, that I'm gonna have off seasons. I'm gonna have, I can be at practice and I can continue to be putting in effort, but it doesn't have to be at 110%. I wanna save that for game days and when on the days that I'm not practicing are the days that I'm not in, you know, actually, Performing.
[00:25:03] I need to make sure that I'm resting to give my muscles and to give my body time to recoup from all of that work that we just. that we just did. So again, this whole idea of work-life balance, I actually really hate this idea. I don't even like calling it work-life balance. A, it's overused, and B, it's just not realistic because it again, is sending us, particularly as women, this message that we need to be all things to everyone.
[00:25:29] We need to be, you know, you know, crushing it at our jobs, crushing it with our friends, crushing it with our health, and with our families all over the place. and it's really hard to find that sustainable balance. So I offer to you to lean into and embrace what I like to call waves or just life flow because the more we battle it, the more we resist it, the wor more we fight back against it, the more it's gonna continue to cause us angst and anxiety and overwhelm.
[00:26:05] Let's. all just agree here today and agree here now that we are going to embrace the natural flows in our life and in our business and just ride those waves. That's what we're going to do. So thank you so much for tuning into today's episode and listening to my rant about my dislike of the phrase work-life balance and this idea of having to keep it consistent and perfect for all time, cuz that's just not realistic.
[00:26:35] So again, thank you so much. Head on over to my website and Nicole Case speaks.com/newsletter if you like to see more of this. Type of information in your email box every single week. I'd love to have you on that list and make sure you say hi as soon as you get signed up so I can shout you out. So thank you so much for joining me today.
[00:26:57] Come on back here, I'll see you again, same time, same place next week. But in the meantime, remember your career deserves an upgrade.
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