What strategies can Career Development Coaching use to improve employee work-life balance?

Its all about confidence & working with your career coach in understanding what fills you with joy v what fills you with dread. It is about finding the power & self belief to look at all possibilities and to take a leap of faith - anything is possible, if it is something that interests & can challenge you

Career development coaches can help an individual quickly assess the situation when it comes to work/life balance. It's important to understand the external constraints as well as to challenge clients on what is internally holding them back.

I think the most important point for career coaches is to understand the core of the problem in career life, as it should be at the core of coaching. After understanding the core problem, tools can be used to increase the client's awareness. Current situation analysis, advantages and disadvantages, strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats through personal SWOT analysis can be used to see areas of development and resources. Brainstorming can be used to plan strategies and targeted action steps and to go over issues related to work-life balance. Awareness is the most important issue for drawing boundaries.

Understanding where you are today, how that is working for you within both work and life, what's good, not so good and then assets that bring you joy or friction. It further helps to gain insight into any internal and external factors that may be influencing your perception, thoughts and feelings about the current situation - for example, the potential blockers or enablers you see, other peoples expectations or needs, your own expectations of your self and your needs - so for example if you are feeling stuck, identifying all the contributors to that feeling, however small.

When coaching clients I tend to focus a lot on values, and when thinking about work/life balance this is key. Using tools like the VIA Signature strengths/ Gallup awareness can be created of top strengths/values. This can be used to help prioritize and create the boundaries one is looking for.

Often I find clients struggle to define boundaries and priorities, feeling they are not always in control of those. Defining your priorities and boundaries and understanding you CAN be in control may well be an iterative process as you build confidence in setting and holding your priorities and boundaries. Often drawing on situations where you have not met your own priorities, boundaries or values have been compromised can really help clarify what matters to you and exploring your reactions to those situations helps you draw the picture of what a good situation around priorities and boundaries can look like. The visualisation process can also start to help shift underlying beliefs, limiting beliefs and established patterns

When coaching individuals, I want to create big lofty goals. However, we must be reasonable and hence a work-life balance plan will have to be both realistic and flexible.

Creating and visualising what the ideal situation could look like for you is a good starting point. Designing this without allowing the ifs, buts and maybes to deflect you (note these on post it notes and come back to them) can really help you identify what you'd truly like - from there you can work backwards and assess the feasibility before building steps, who or what you need to help you get there and then look at the timescales as well as how you can track your progress and stay on track or adjust the course slightly if things come up

I use the phrase work life blend rather than balance as we all will move through phases of life when the external and internal factors influencing our plans will change so we need to be able to adjust our road map to continue the journey. Assessing at the previous stage - what does good look like helps you understand if you are on track towards your planned outcomes and an accountability partner or coach is also a great way to reflect your progress and provide feedback

I always like to call this work-life harmony. As in most cases, they are intertwined. As a coach, one of the ways I help my clients achieve this is to have different SWOT analyses. In most cases, these analyses reflect different aspects of their personal and professional lives. This helps at a glance to know where improvements, adjustments and fine-tuning can be made. The need for having a work-life harmony can not be overemphasized because, how you do one thing is how you do everything - whether at work or in life.

The initial plan will likely not be the final one. It's important to monitor what is working well and tweak it regularly up front. Thereafter, the cadence can be decreased.

As a CEO I always used to leave the office before 5.30 and always ended the day with an empty email inbox. I encouraged everyone to do the same - there was never any expectation that people had to work crazy hours. My inbox tip is to create folders and, if you can’t deal with whatever the email requires, file it away but make a written note so that it doesn’t get forgotten. An empty inbox at the end of the day gives a rewarding feeling of a day well spent and a day’s work completed I also encouraged everyone not to look at emails when on holiday - senior execs were contactable by phone but only in the case of emergencies and that rarely happens I balanced my work/life and I expected others to do the same. As a result the company thrived