Reclaiming Your Life(RYL) 4 Work-Life Balance is BS

A look at Dr. Melba Nicholson's article from Fastcompany.com about what we really mean by work-life balance and how to be adjusted to our work and personal lives in the post-pandemic world. 

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Welcome back to education matters New York. I'm your host, Wayne Ackles. I'd like to welcome you back on this April day. And just a quick reminder, before we hop into today's content that we will be going on a little bit of a hiatus, the new additions will be showing up on the podcast probably mid June. Taking a little hiatus for a couple of reasons. One is, things at work have picked up quite a bit. And also, I'm going on a little bit of a vacation coming up here in the next week that kind of will delay things as well. Also, I know this is a busy time of the school year. And I want to make sure that people have a chance to listen, when things slow down and have some episodes ready for them as they start to head into summer and maybe have a little more time on their hands. So with that in mind, I'm going to open up today's episode about reclaiming your life episode, in which I'm going to look at an article from one of the magazines that I check out on Flipboard, which is called fast company.com. And again, it's one that I've used as a as a guide for managing. And also it gives insights for entrepreneurs in terms of running their companies, etc. The article that I'm referring to today is called why this psychologist says finding work life balance is BS. And it's written by Dr. Melba Nicholson from fast company.com. And I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by the article, I was a little surprised at the direction that it went because I really thought it was going to go in a direction that frankly, I've felt for a long time that this notion that you can have you know that that you can have it cool all with career and family, etc, was nonsense. And to a degree, I think that's still is the case. But what Dr. Nicholson is talking about here is really something that I thought was interesting in the sense that she talks about a work life blend mindset. And the article probably is really targeted toward managers and company owners. And what she gets into is the idea that since the pandemic, that blend of our work in our personal lives has become blurry for those of us that set up and zoom from home over the course of the first six months of the pandemic, let's say. And for some of you that are working in other professions, some of that Zoom time has gone longer than the first six months. In fact, my I was just on a teams meeting the other day, and that really has become the norm as people have found the convenience for that. But let me get into the article a little bit more and talk more about what her her premises are, and where I think she's on solid ground and some other areas where I think it's going to be a little bit harder for managers to probably get on board with. But as the work landscape changes, these might be practices that are able to be adopted in some situations. So I want to go through this with you. And this, this episode will probably run a little longer than our typical five to six minute reclaiming your life because I think it's worth the time. So she says four different really tenants to this idea of this work life blend mindset. And what she says And again, this is largely targeted toward managers and owners of companies is the first thing she says is that you need to trust your employees and create a culture that values transparency. She then goes on to talk about how open communication is important with this as well. And finally, the last piece of this, she gets into his ownership I'm sorry, I said four things. It's really three main tenants to the argument. So let's dive into these a little bit more closely to examine them and really this three legs of the stool argument that she has here again with trust your employees, open communication, ship and ownership. I would say the two that she goes into the most and makes the I would say the the best arguments are in the trust your employees and ownership piece and so I'll spend a little bit more time with those two. One of the things again, as she says, you know trusting your employees is creating a call Culture of values, that values transparency. And so one of the things that she likens it to is she said that employers have to become more comfortable with the idea that someone that goes to pick up their kids at school to drop them off, or to get to a doctor's appointment that, you know, this is not something in the past, we would closely monitor, you know, was that a partial day that they took, especially in this world of PTO, for those of us that are in the private sector, that's more of a thing. I know that that's creeping more into school life as well. But really, the idea that she's getting at is that there has to be this balance that now I've gone and said balance, and really she's talking about blend, and creating a value of transparency, that someone will get their work done if they go and they do drop their kids off, because they're likely to work outside of the day, with the work that they have. Now, she goes on to say, and this is the part that I struggled a little bit as a manager, former manager with, and I think a lot of managers would struggle with. And she says that someone has to, or a manager would have to value the 30 minute bike ride, or catch up with a friend time as as important as the kids doctor's appointment or getting them back from school. I took a breath as I read that, and found that that might be a little bit hard. And I'm speaking for myself, probably more than anything. I think there is something to be said for work time being work time. Because there are things that have to be done in the in the timeframe that we have. But I understand what she's saying that as the work lines become blurrier that it's important to recognize that work doesn't always happen, say between quote nine to five, you know, those of us that have been in teaching know that it rarely happens just between those hours that happens before that, and long after that. So I think it's definitely an idea whose time has come in a lot of respects, I think there has to be still boundaries, as with anything, I think you can have transparency, and and that should be something that shouldn't be valued. I said something once when we were negotiating a contract when I was much younger, during the negotiations, I said, Why don't we stop making people liars about how they're using their time, and basically said, instead of sick days or personal days, just said, here's a block of days, and probably it was in some ways a forerunner to what we talked about with PTO. It's this is your time that you can use to get things done. And again, this is a little bit different than what she's talking about that maybe someone who's running to get their kids and then either returning back to the office or going to continue to do that work from home. The next thing that she talks about, and this is the area that I thought really didn't add as much to the article as the rest of it did. You know, she talked about open communication. And I think that helps with creating those transparency values. And that's good policy to have. Anyway, she mentioned an interesting statistic, though, and I think this is something that I've seen is with my own children, is the idea that they they interviewed 84% of millennials, and they said that they had difficulty communicating with their, with their bosses at work. That piece of the article was interesting to me in that I think this is something is this generational divide over being able to communicate not sure exactly why that is. But I think that was an interesting piece to this article in terms of creating, again, a more blended work life. environment. So communication, I think is always key, regardless of what culture you're trying to communicate and communicating those as a manager. I think one of the things I always tried to do was to show both with my own actions in terms of time that I took or didn't take, or telling people and then following through when they said hey, I need to run and grab my kids. I rarely said no. In fact, I don't think I've ever said no. And again, I don't think of a time where someone took advantage of that. And as you communicate that and people share that. You know you create that culture. Now the last thing that she taught talks about and I thought this was probably the most interesting piece to the article. And I really think this is it, it feeds the idea of trusting your employees and valuing transparency. And that was ownership. And she says, If members aren't empowered to take ownership, none of this is going to work. And she goes on to say that micro managers will often create employees that feel they have to confirm details. And she contrast that with working asynchronously on things. And what struck me is interesting with this is that I recently heard an article on, I'm not even sure what I was listening to at the time, where they were talking about, you know, the return to the workplace, and how managers have to be careful not to waste people's time with meetings, I am not a fan of meetings. But meetings do have a place if they are scheduled thoughtfully, and with people's time and energies in mind. So that, that they are organized in a way that they are efficient. Because if people sit in a meeting for an hour, or heaven, Forbid, an hour and a half and walk away and say, Oh, my gosh, that could have been sent out in an email, then that's a waste of everybody's time, including the managers. And one of the things that I remember from my administrative work was, we did a look at a book called mining group gold. And it was written by a former Xerox executive. And one of the pieces that stuck out for me from that book, is this fairly simple exercise, which is to take the employee salaries that are in a meeting with you. So let's say that you have your principal, and you have maybe three assistant principals, if you're at a larger district, and you're in a meeting, there's four of you in the meeting, and you each have a salary, and you divide that salary by the per hour cost, and then multiply that per hour costs by the four of you in their meeting. And that's a pretty good indicator of how much money you spent on that meeting, take that with a faculty meeting. And now you have even larger numbers that you're working with. And is that meeting worth the money that was spent. And I think it's something that is critically important for managers to think about, we often feel like we have to have a meeting for the sake of having a meeting. Not a big fan of that and never have been, especially if information can be sent out in other forms. But getting back to Dr. Nicholson's take on this, she said that employers who trust that work will get done, even if it is in a more innovative and flexible way, are going to be ahead in this in this new world. And I think that that's an important piece to this, which comes back to this notion from the beginning of her article of of transparency and trusting your employees. That is one of the things that I tried to stress with young administrators, when I was working with them and my administrators in different roles is that you have to trust people in terms of getting their job done, you cannot hover over them, there's too much to do. That is not to say that you don't intervene if someone is not performing as they should be or anything like that. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, is that you you cannot micromanage professionals and expect everybody to get their work done, including you as the manager, slash administrator. I think that's important as we go forward. Not only that, I would be saying this, even if it wasn't post pandemic, I think this is trust. We want educators who put trust in their kids, some of what we have to show as administrators is trust in our teaching staffs. This is not just trust without accountability, or guidance. And I think that's important as well, I think you have to establish the values that your institution believes in and how work should be performed. And also when people don't live up to those values, that you have to intervene and hold people accountable, because that's important for that culture. And we've talked a lot about culture on here. Part of that trust comes with accountability. And so with that, I'd like to wrap up this week's episode again, the articles name is why the psychologist says finding work life balance is BS. The author is Dr. Melba Nicholson, I would really encourage you to take a look at it again on the fast company.com website or if you're on Flipboard you should be able to find out there as well. Just a reminder again, we'll be on a short hiatus probably until mid June. And we'll look forward to hearing and talking to folks again then have a great continuation of spring as the good weather continues to move in. Also a Happy Easter, Passover and Ramadan. I can't remember a time when all three holidays fell at the same time of the year. And finally, I just wanted to remind folks about the SkillsUSA competition happening April 28 at the Syracuse fairgrounds, so check out those upcoming competitions that many of your students may be participating in. And also a shout out to the Fingerlakes Community Schools resilience and equity conference, May 17, to the 20th at Falk college and Syracuse University. Again, this is Wayne Ackles. Your host for education matters New York. Have a great rest of the day and take care