Courageous Characteristic #3: Work, Family, & Self Balanced

I am a Courageous Leader… therefore, I strive for W?F?S Balance!

As Frost correctly points out, choosing the right path for you and your life’s goals is essential to achieving them.

As I wrote in an earlier article, when my first child was born, and as I looked into his newborn face, I swore a secret oath to myself that I would do WHATEVER it took to provide a better life for this tiny, new baby. As you can quickly surmise, such a promise required significant work on my behalf to achieve. Yet, I was also able to surmise, relatively quickly, that raising my children as a family was not achievable if I ignored them in the process. Concurrently, working myself to death to educate four children who would not know who I was did not spell “success” either. So, my wife and I purposefully created a W?F?S Balance that provided both the needed work hours and the family time.

Like many ideals, W?F?S Balance is an objective worthy of pursuit, but most often actually achieved in short glimpses. The gigantic W seems ever-present, sucking all-available oxygen from our other life priorities. We yearn for more F time, but often feel compelled to W, W, W to provide for our families. And the tiny S seems mostly ignored. However, those demonstrated facts do not absolve us from displaying the needed courage every minute of every day to achieve the appropriate W?F?S Balance.

No one category of W?F?S should be absolute, nor should any be non-existent. In the short term, one category may legitimately push aside the other two. But you must have the courage to evaluate on a regular basis if the short-term necessity still exists and not procrastinate getting back in balance. Life is a journey – not a destination. Thus, you must consciously avoid using “necessity” as an excuse to work for a lack of investment in family and self. For if you get to the “finish line” alone – you have not won!

Likewise, the relative size of the hours committed does not necessarily reflect the actual size of the priority. Almost without fail, if you are going to achieve break-out success in life, then you are going to have to work long hours, but not to the point of absolutely ignoring family and self.

Of course, W?F?S Balance legitimately modulates over time as requirements dictate. There will be periods of time when even the most disciplined courageous leader cannot control their commitments. In the early part of your career, when you are laying the foundation upon which the remainder of your life’s goals and objectives will stand, you should expect to have a gigantic W – but again – not at the absolute detriment of either Family or Self. And focusing on “self” is not selfish – even when you have a house full of little ones who possess legitimate, insatiable needs. For you are their “Golden Goose” and if you are not able to function – either due to exhaustion or illness or worse – then they will not have what they need.

One simple tool I use to achieve W?F?S Balance is to color- code my calendar with a different color for each type of activity. Work at my HQ is dark blue; work in the city is purple; work on travel is orange; community service is silver; Doctor’s appointments are pink; exercise is red; family activities are dark green; friend activities are light green; and so on and so forth. With this method, I can glance at my calendar to see my week-by-week or monthly balance.

As a real-world example of my personal struggles with W?F?S Balance, I offer an epiphany from my early career. It’s no secret that military families move around a lot. My family and I were no exception to that reality as we moved eleven times during our twenty-two years of service. In addition to these frequent moves, the military requires “up or out” as you must either get promoted or seek a career elsewhere. As such, you are continually seeking assignments that would keep you competitive for promotion while unpacking boxes from your most recent move.

In my case, the first of these experiential assignments and moves after we were married and had our first child was as a Drill Instructor in San Diego – which is a seven-days-a-week; 18-20 hours a day job; with at least one of every three nights spent sleeping at work. Regularly, during this time, I told my wife – “After this is done, things will slow down a bit…”

Next was a year-long college preparatory school that, due to the academic pace, required me to move out of our home and into the school house – just to survive. Again, I told her regularly – “After this is done, things will slow down a bit…” Then on to college in Seattle with the same priorities and promises – “After this is done, things will slow down a bit…” And then on to the Basic School in Virginia – but this is where the W?F?S epiphany hit me – we had moved three times in six years – and each time for an ever-increasing level of required work commitment on my behalf – and during a time in which I had largely ignored my wife and growing family.

How many times would I make the same unfulfilled promise of “slowing down?” Something had to change! And that “something” was me! From that day forward, I took great care to sleep on my own pillow as often as physically possible; move into our new homes – to include hanging pictures, emptying boxes, and installing curtains – within the same week as accepting occupancy; and arriving home for dinner at our table at 6:00 pm as the rule rather than the exception.

Gail Kelly, international businesswoman, author, wife, and mother of four – including triplets – epitomizes courageous Work- Family-Self Balance. Born in Pretoria, South Africa on 25 April 1956, she married her husband Allan in December 1977 – at the young age of 21 years old. They remain happily married to this day – a Work-Family-Self accomplishment all its own.

Her journey to becoming the 8th most powerful woman in the world (Forbes, 2010) started first as a Latin teacher in Rhodesia. Upon her return to South Africa, she then taught at a government high school. Gail began her career in banking in 1980 as a teller but, due to her strong performance, was quickly put into an advanced training program. To continue her Work-Family-Self journey, Gail started an MBA in 1986 – while pregnant with her first child. Just four years after entering banking, she was promoted to the lead of human resources at her corporation – just five months after giving birth to her triplets! In 1997, Gail was recruited and accepted a senior position with a major bank in Sydney. By 2002, she was promoted the head of the Customer Service Division where she was responsible for running the bank's entire branch network.

Her performance in this role led Gail again to be recruited as the CEO of another major Australian bank where she quickly improved its profitability. In 2007, she announced her decision to take the CEO role at Westpac bank – one of Australia's "big four" banks and the country’s oldest bank. As result of her leadership, Westpac 10 million customers, a 25% share of the Australian home mortgage market, with $108 billion funds under its control. In 2010, Gail published a goal to have women occupy 40% of the top management roles at Westpac – which was fulfilled upon her retirement in 2014.

Gail published her first book, Live Lead Learn: My Stories of Life and Leadership – which details her lessons and experiences from being a world-class businesswoman and mother of four. What a superb example she is for us all to strive for and achieve Work-Family-Self Balance.