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WORK-LIFE BALANCE

Work-Life Balance Through Interval Trainingy Scott Behson

UNE 03, 2014

At a ThirdPath Institute conference a few weeks ago, a great discussion arose around the fact that workloads tend to ebb and flow, and it’s importan

now how to alternate between periods of peak effort and recovery. Before long, someone noted the analogy to high performance in sports, and use

hrase that piqued my curiosity: Corporate Athlete. I loved the term so much I jotted it down, thinking I might make something of it in my writing an

onsulting. Then I Googled it.

Oops. Apparently, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz have already made quite a lot of the term corporate athlete, having coined it way back in a 2001 HB

rticle ( I was only 13 years late to the party!) and explored it in a series of best-selling books about engagement, energy, and business success. So mu

or my plan to unleash it on the world.

ut I was all the more glad to find so much work already done on corporate athleticism, because it has a lot to offer my field: the challenges faced by

working parents.

oehr and Schwartz look at how the winners in the world of sports prepare for competition and then apply these techniques to managerial work. Th

rge executives “to train in the same systematic, multilevel way that world-class athletes do.” No, CEOs are not forced to run wind sprints (although

ome do). Rather, they are coached in a holistic program designed to help them attain – and sustain- the highest performance at their craft.

What strikes me most in the writing Loehr and Schwartz have done is their frequent use of the word “balance.” In particular, they see great athletes

orporate athletes achieving the right balance across three critical dimensions:

. Mind and Body

. Performance and Development

. Exertion and Recovery

Of course, people trying to succeed both at work and at home are constantly thinking in terms of balance. But perhaps Loehr and Schwartz have giv

s a more nuanced way of thinking about what needs to be balanced. Using their dimensions, how might someone go about becoming a superstar W

ife Athlete?

irst, let’s think about that mind-body balance. For athletes, the classic mistake to avoid is focusing only on preparing one’s body for the game. Gre

oaches equip their players to win the mental game as well the physical one. Executives, by contrast, are too likely to grind away at intellectual task

nd overlook that their bodies must be healthy if they are to have the energy to perform well on the job. As Loehr and Schwartz put it, a successful

pproach to sustained high performance “must pull together [many] elements and consider the person as a whole.” It must address the body, the

motions, the mind, and the spirit.

or work-life athletes, mind-body balance suggests that we should get enough sleep, eat reasonably well, engage in some exercise - and make room

ur lives for social interaction, “me time,” and perspective-seeking through reflection and meditation or prayer. You don’t have to be in perfect shap

e good at your job or effective as a parent. But if we neglect our bodies, or spirits, we may not have enough sustained energy for effectiveness in ei

http://thirdpath.org/https://hbr.org/search?term=scott+behsonhttps://hbr.org/https://hbr.org/http://fathersworkandfamily.com/2013/04/19/taking-a-break-from-parenting-benefits-everyone-or-in-praise-of-me-time-for-dads/http://fathersworkandfamily.com/2012/09/19/networking-for-fatherhood-or-in-praise-of-beer-fire/http://fathersworkandfamily.com/2013/07/25/regular-exercise-can-help-us-be-better-dads/http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=jim+loehr+and+tony+schwartz&tag=googhydr-20&index=stripbooks&hvadid=18834207149&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=14499608003987812247&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_68t1kq542m_bhttps://hbr.org/2001/01/the-making-of-a-corporate-athlete/ar/1http://thirdpath.org/https://hbr.org/search?term=scott+behsonhttps://hbr.org/topic/work-life-balance

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work or family, let alone both.

he performance-development balance also has a particular relevance to the work-life realm. Athletes know that the vast majority of their effort is

pent on development, preparing for the performance they must put in during actual competition. In business, it feels like the proportions are inver

very day executives must perform, and only a tiny fraction of their time is set aside for “professional development.” But actually, the athlete’s

nderstanding of the balance would make more sense for business people, too. Athletes in their development days focus on individual elements of

ame and build their capacity in the fundamentals; on competition days, they pull all the pieces together and push performance to the maximum.

ikewise in business, there are those high-stakes occasions when managers can only pull off what they are trying to accomplish by drawing on ever

ompetence they have; but between “big game” days, many assignments could be focused on honing particular fundamentals.

Now consider that working parents also have moments when their capabilities as work-life athletes are seriously put to the test and their performan

as the greatest consequences. In those moments, they too need to pull together all their resources and abilities to make the right moves. And ideal

hey would have prepared for those moments by deliberately developing individual elements in situations where the stakes were not so high.

Anyone who wants to sustain a performance edge needs to figure out how to keep developing new capabilities, and not just keep drawing on existin

nes. If this can’t be accomplished through daily tasks, then it requires regularly scheduled time to be set aside. Whether it’s protecting 30 minutes

very other day to read up on industry developments, listening to a language-instruction course during the morning commute, or trying a new recip

very week, turning off the performance pressure creates more openness to new approaches and heightens performance in the long run.

his brings us, finally, to the exertion-recovery balance that Loehr and Schwartz see great athletes managing so well. “In the living laboratory of spo

hey write, “we learn that the real enemy of high performance is not stress, which, paradoxical as it may seem, is actually the stimulus for growth.

Rather, the problem is the absence of disciplined, intermittent recovery.” For example, in weight lifting, one stresses muscles to the point where the

bers literally start to break down. However, after an adequate recovery period, the muscle not only heals, it grows stronger. Without rest, one ends

with be acute and chronic damage.

n business, demanding projects, with tight deadlines and stretch goals, can be great – but can’t be unremitting. Occasional overwork is a necessity,

work and in the rest of our lives, but chronic overwork robs us of our resilience. This reduces our performance over time, and causes damage in our

work and personal lives. Similarly, too many working parents go full-tilt, non-stop to tackle all they have to do without allowing themselves the

ecovery time needed for sustainable effectiveness. “Recovery” for the work-life athlete might not come when they jump from the demands of one

ront to the demands of another. It might require taking breaks from the jumping itself. A good start might be to arrange for some standing “no/limi

ontact” time slots with managers and coworkers (e.g., specifying that no one should expect a response to an email between 6:30 and 9:30 pm). Fo

matter, why not set “no screen” hours at home, when everyone stays off their phones, tablets, and other devices and is available to each other?

rom a management standpoint, we need to rethink the notion that non-performance time is wasted time. Instead, we need to see that recovery is

omponent of sustained high performance. This means we must resist continually increasing the time demands we put on our employees and expe

ur employees to be constantly “on call” even after hours. We need to encourage our employees to take lunch breaks, relax on weekends, and actua

ake their vacation days, unplugged (and also do these things ourselves). By helping to strike the right balances, we can build the work-life athletici

we need when the stakes are highest.

Scott Behson is a Professor of Management at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and the author of The Working Dad’s Survival Guide: How to Succeed at Work and a

Home. He writes about work and family issues for Time, WSJ, the Huffington Post and his blog, Fathers, Work and Family. A national expert in work-family issues

Scott was a featured speaker at the White House Summit for Working Families. Follow him on Twitter @ScottBehson.

his article is about WORK-LIFE BALANCE

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ennethfung 2 years ago

cott, the term “corporate athlete“was new to me too and it’s a good one. In particular, the need for recovery time which I think is absolutely essential particularly with

nowledge work. The brain simply cannot constantly analyze, create or synthesize. It needs both rest time and time to take on new information. One question Scott- who do

hink should be in charge of insuring our corporate athletes get into top condition – HR, managers, or executives at the top?

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