"Ignore them, and send them my way."

I consider myself a champion of work-life balance. I will push my team members to schedule time off and tell them to unplug while they are out. I'll even threaten to disconnect them if they keep working while they are supposed to be out of the office. I'll talk to them about the need to recharge, the value in stepping away and also help them coach other leaders and employees on why this is important. There are mountains of evidence showing that taking vacation time or a break makes you more productive and allows for efficiencies, improvements in performance, improved mental health and reduced stress levels. There's even data that ties success at work to those that took their vacation time vs. those that did not.

As someone in my role, I know this stuff and I know it to be true.

But it's hard to practice what we preach and we've heard every reason why unplugging can't happen.

"There's a lot going on right now"

To that, I would tell someone, "There's always a lot going on. Be grateful for that, we have exciting jobs and we're never bored. That's why you need this time off. Go recharge. All of this will still be here when you return. Enjoy the break." Alas, on my last vacation, I didn't start with heeding my own advice. Preach lacking practice...

"I have just a few things to tackle, THEN I'll be done and sign off."

What I know is, I never close my laptop and think: "Wow! I'm done. 100% done. There's not one more thing that I could do better, work on - NOW I can unplug." The reality is that we are most likely never truly done. You've seen this movie before, a few things turn into a full morning and then the afternoon creeps up with a couple of check-ins on email responses and guess what, you didn't take the day off after all. You worked from a different location and with the ability to work remotely, you only didn't signoff but you confused everyone while you were "doing a few things" because everyone thought you were out of the office. On my last vacation, I even used that line. Once again, preach lacking practice.

"I'm just sitting here, I can catch up on our slack thread. Where's the harm?"

Then I commented, saying I was sorry to have missed a talk that was happening during my time out of the office. Here's what I got:

Wait, what?

Then I got the message below via text because clearly, my manager is clairvoyant and knew what was going through my mind:

"If anyone is emailing you about _____, ignore them and send them my way.... I'm on it. Focus on tennis.... go have fun and enjoy it all."

The above messages were from my manager, Katie Burke. She was going to make me practice what I preach to so many others. The first message's undertone was, "Hey, what are you doing here? Go take the break" Second message undertone "I got you, take the break!"

In that moment, I realized, what was true. I wasn't helping anyone, let alone myself by not stepping away. The gentle kind push that it is ok to step away was exactly what I needed at that moment. When you love what you do, it's hard to take a break from it. I needed a supportive reminder, and she knew it.

I unplugged. I turned off slack notifications on my phone and committed to not checking email until my return. Finally, preaching practiced.

The result of this discipline was that the ones that matter the most to me, my young boys and husband had me present, engaged and lacking distractions. I soaked them up and realized very quickly the benefit on all sides this unplugging was going to balance. Myself. Family. Work. My tennis game still needs help, but Rome wasn't built in a day.

Today, I'm grateful for the nudge as I returned recharged and ready to tackle the week and beyond.

How do you ensure your team members recharge? Do you give them the runway to take time away from work? How do you support work-life balance for yourself, but also the people that you support?