We shouldn’t have to choose between our careers and our lives

For a while now, I’ve felt like I’m in a season of life where my heart is being pulled in so many directions at once.

On one hand, I’m a bonus mom to my 10-year-old stepdaughter, and I often think about what it could be like to have children of my own. And at the same time, I want to spend as much time as possible with my parents. They’re getting older—my dad just celebrated his 75th birthday—and I want to treasure every minute I have with them. I visit them as often as possible and squeeze everything I can out of our time together.

On top of that, I have a career that I love, which also takes a lot of my time and focus. I can’t ignore that sometimes, work is all-consuming, and sometimes, I love that. I want to make an impact on the world. My work is a huge part of my life and my identity, and I genuinely love what I do. I want this aspect of my life to continue to remain a priority.

But if I’m being really honest? It’s hard to juggle all of these priorities that mean so much to me. It feels like everything is happening all at once all the time: My bonus daughter is growing up, my parents are growing older, and my business is growing fast.

I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. My generation—millennials—is in a tough position. Those of us who want children are reaching peak childbearing and child-raising years as we are also reaching peak earning potential. Older generations in the workforce are beginning to retire, which means that valuable leadership positions are opening up, and we’re eager to take over. Our parents could outlive their retirement savings , which means that many of us may be called upon to become caretakers—whether we planned on it or not—and some will care for younger and older generations at the same time. Those are a lot of demands on our time and attention. And even if only one or two of these things ring true for someone, it’s still a lot.

I know that I could never possibly choose to focus on just one of these very important parts of my life. As the leader and owner of a company, I can control my time, and I’m still overwhelmed sometimes when I’m pulled in these different directions. If I’m feeling this way, what must it feel like for people who don’t have that kind of control? How overwhelmed must they be?

I believe that, at a minimum, people need flexible schedules, generous paid time off, and supportive teams in order to find harmony between their lives at work and outside of it. I’m lucky to have that, and I know that there are some amazing organizations out there that want their teams to have thriving careers and priorities outside of work, and they actually take action to show they mean it. I also know people who juggle their personal lives and careers brilliantly, even when their workplaces aren’t supportive. But the fact remains that not everyone has the control over their work schedules and the support they need from their workplace to manage huge demands on their personal lives. And I think that’s so unfair. I can’t imagine having to choose between caring for kids or your aging parents and taking the next step in a career that you’ve worked so hard to build. I can’t imagine being forced to choose between a career that matters to you and a family that you love dearly.

Not everyone will become caretakers, of course, but I know that no matter what path we choose for our lives, we will all go through seasons where our lives outside of work pull focus from our careers. And when that happens, I believe that our organizations should support us however we need so that our work can work with the other priorities in our lives. And I don’t think that’s a far-fetched idea.

We’ve talked a lot about this on our all-female team. Each one of us is dealing with at least one of these pulls in life: One person has a young child and would like to grow her family in the coming years. Two of us definitely do not want kids, but we all have aging parents we may be called upon to care for. I’m juggling co-parenting while also being there for my own parents. And at the same time, we all have jobs we love. We have been upfront with each other about our priorities outside of work, and we often talk about our fears and the challenges that come along with it all.

From these conversations, one thing has become clear to us: We want to do everything we can to support each other through these big life moments. And because we’ve been so open about what we need, we’ve been able to be proactive about figuring out what that support can look like. So that’s what I want to share with you today: Our ideas for how we as leaders and teams can support each other when someone’s focus needs to shift to a priority outside of work:

Create intentional space to be vulnerable and share about what is happening in your life. On our team, we talk about our lives outside of work a lot. At the start of every meeting, we give both a personal and a professional update. It helps so much to hear about what other people are going through. For example, Monique, our Chief of Growth, is the mom of a toddler. When her son was born, she opened up to us about what it was like to be a new mom and how tough it was for her to find a new rhythm between work and life. We would never have known that if we didn’t give her the space to share, and it helped us understand how much capacity she really had for work. It takes a willingness to be vulnerable to share things like that—but that’s what we need. I believe that in order to be and feel seen, you have to let people in. And you have to have people on the other side who are willing to ask you what you need and how they can support you.

When making new policies, ask for feedback from those who will be affected by them. A great example of this is parental leave. I believe that people should not be financially punished for choosing to have children, and I believe that parental leave policies should support parents—regardless of gender—needing time away from work to take care of their families. We can’t allow our organizations to contribute to inequalities in the division of household labor by giving moms more time off than dads (or biological parents more time than adoptive parents, etc.). It’s also not a one-size-fits all kind of thing. We didn’t talk about a parental leave policy in-depth on our team until one of us got pregnant. At the time, we asked the expectant parent what might work best for them, which helped shape our first policy. But when another person on our team was expecting a child, we learned that what worked for the first person didn’t necessarily resonate with the second person. We ended up asking that person more reflective questions to help shape and improve our policy and make it more flexible for the future. Let’s bring those who are impacted by these policies to the table and hear their perspectives and needs. There is no way for us to know what the best version of these policies looks like without asking.

Create inclusive policies. As I mentioned earlier, not everyone on our team wants to have children, so they will not have a built-in reason to take several months of paid leave. A member of our team brought this up, and it got me thinking about a couple things: 1) Taking time off because you’re having a baby isn’t the same thing as taking a leave of absence to go on an extended vacation, and 2) I want my team to be able to take extended time off work for whatever reason is important to them, regardless of their desire to become parents. So, I asked my team how we could make our leave policies more inclusive and equitable. We are exploring the idea of sabbaticals: Granting extended paid time off to anyone who would like to pursue learning or passions, care for loved ones, etc. The question then became: How can we make sure that our company continues to thrive when someone takes extended time off from work, no matter the reason? Our answer was the same as it is when someone takes parental leave: We begin preparing as far in advance as possible (usually more than six months). We choose the things we can put on pause, decide who on the team takes over what responsibilities, and share the workload so that it doesn’t fall only on one person and everyone on the team feels supported.

Model and create accountability for time off. What our teams see us doing is what they will do. Are we working until the wee hours of the morning, burning the candle from both ends, and never taking a break? Or are we prioritizing rest, taking time off, and setting boundaries? I have learned that the most powerful way to hold my team accountable to taking time off is to model it myself. In doing so, I give those around me implicit permission to do the same. For example, I recently took a week off to be with my parents and sister to celebrate my dad’s 75th birthday. I knew that this was a moment I could never get back if I missed it, so even though it was in the middle of a busy time, my team supported me taking leave because they understand how important spending time with my parents and family is to me. Because I chose to do that, I know that others will feel safe to put their families and other priorities before work when they need to.

Results > hours worked. On our team, what matters to me is that the work gets done—not how many hours it takes to do it. Each of us creates our own work schedules, and that means that we decide when and how many hours we work. That allows us to shift our schedules to accommodate our personal lives whenever we need to. For example, when someone has a child, they can adjust their work schedule around their child’s needs and sleep schedules, which often change. This has also helped when a member of our team had to care for a sick parent: They were able to give us a heads up and rearrange their work schedule to align with this priority.

People often ask me why it’s so important to me that we talk about our lives outside of work at work. Some see it as an invasion of privacy or oversharing—and I get it. Your coworkers don’t necessarily need to know every detail of your personal life in order to work well with you. And that’s not what I’m advocating for here. What I want you to take away from this is how important it is for the people you work with to be able to support you when you have something big going on in your personal life and vice versa. Our work policies should allow us to take the time we need to focus on whatever it is we need to focus on outside of work. Imagine it: What would it look like if people no longer had to choose between their work and their personal priorities? What would it look like if our organizations supported us through every season of our personal lives? What would it look like if we could choose the lives we wanted to live without fearing how it would affect our careers? If we have open and honest conversations about our priorities and lives outside of work, we will feel less alone.

It’s special to walk alongside people as their lives change and evolve. And as leaders, we can have such a big impact on those we lead simply by choosing to be part of their journeys instead of obstacles to them. When I look at our team, I don’t see employees. I see people with full lives. I see people with partners and parents and dreams and fears. I see people who will go through births, deaths, celebrations, and disappointments, and I know that I will be with them every step of the way—and that they will be with me every step of the way. I believe that it’s my responsibility to ask myself: What can I do to help? And how can I ask for the help that I need?

I hope this gets you thinking about the ways we can show up for each other. It takes all of us to bring about the change we want to see, one conversation at a time.

Big hugs,

Kristen