Written by: Marguerite Thibodeaux, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Employees can buy gym memberships without an Employee Assistance Program. But they can’t perfect their work-life balance without supportive leadership. Nor can they grow in their career without leader support. Making meaningful connections will be a challenge too, without collaborative cultures spearheaded by leaders.
Have you ever taken a step back to check if your leadership style encourages work-life balance? Are you mindful of how your personal life and your work overlap, intertwine and diverge? If not, maybe it’s time to start. Your team notices, even if they don’t mention it. Work-life balance isn’t just about warm and fuzzies. Effective leadership focused on work-life balance yields tangible business results, too: higher retention and engagement.
Things You Can Do as a Leader to Encourage Work-Life Balance 1. Lead by Example
Your teammates will likely follow suit if they see you walking the talk. It’s harder for your teammates to draw the line between work and personal time if you, as their leader, are also sending emails beyond work hours or while on vacation. Due to your position of power, they might feel like they don’t have a choice but to reply immediately to your messages. To lead by example, strive for clear boundaries about when you are and are not available.
Dinner time with the family sacred? Great, you are not available between 5:00 and 8:00 pm and anyone messaging you about work after hours knows they’ll have to wait until 8 pm at the earliest to hear from you.
Need to hit the gym over lunch for your sanity? Mental health is an important ingredient to effective leadership. Don’t feel guilty holding this time as sacred on your calendar. Folks will learn that any lunchtime requests will just have to wait an hour or two, and that’s ok.
On vacation? As a thoughtful leader, you set up your team for success before turning on your OOTO reply. They can handle anything that comes their way for a few days while you enjoy a book on the beach or that jungle adventure.
2. Reinforce Your Team’s Boundaries
As a leader, empower your teammates to do the same by understanding their boundaries and reinforcing them when you see them slip. In your one-on-ones, talk to your teammates about the importance of taking time off. Share your own stories about personal interests and how you balance them with work. Create a safe space where they can talk about their interests and obligations outside work, too. Knowing about your teammates as whole people helps you identify when coaching could help them better balance their work obligations with other activities. For example, need to write an email after hours because you took the afternoon off for your daughter’s recital? Either make it clear in the subject line that this is not an urgent request and can wait until the morning, or use “schedule send” to have it delivered to your teammate when they usually start work in the morning. Coach your team on how to prepare for their personal time off in advance, and help them protect that time once they’re out. For example, get an email from a teammate while they are on vacation? Reply with a simple message: We have your back. Go enjoy your vacation!
3. Ruthlessly Prioritize
Sometimes, work gets overwhelming, because murky priorities make everything feel urgent. Set a regular schedule to review goals and track progress against them with your team. This will help you and your teammates prioritize what is truly most important. Done frequently in short standups a couple times a week, these touchpoints can help you easily put out small fires before they balloon into issues requiring overtime and blurred boundaries.
4. Renegotiate Unreasonable Expectations
Sometimes, it feels like your team is treading water with no end in sight. When your team cannot reasonably accomplish everything on its plate within working hours, it’s a leader’s responsibility to renegotiate team expectations with senior leadership. Often, this is simply a clarifying conversation similar to ruthlessly prioritizing with your team. With murky priorities, everything seems urgent. If senior leadership insists all the current priorities and timelines are necessary, this is your opportunity as a leader to push on how. Can you pay for additional resources to cover the gap? If overtime is needed, when will you be able to give your team a breather? It is our duty as leaders to model a healthy work-life balance and advocate for our teams.
About the Author: Marguerite Thibodeaux is an executive coach and talent management consultant dedicated to changing our relationship with work. Work should be a place where each of us gets to enjoy the challenge of contributing to something bigger than oneself. She focuses on helping leaders at all levels create habits, skills, and environments that empower teams to thrive.
Every leader deserves support.
Follow her on LinkedIn for leadership tips and discussions.
Check out her website for free leadership resources like a Professional Development Roadmapping Worksheet and Attrition Risk Matrix.
Want one-on-one help adapting these strategies to your team? Book a complimentary call with Marguerite. Every leader deserves support.
Read more from Marguerite!
Marguerite Thibodeaux, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Marguerite Thibodeaux, an leadership coach and talent management consultant, helps leaders and organizations bring the best out of people with courage, compassion, and clarity. After building development programs and leading a talent transformation at a Fortune 100, she became increasingly aware that not all leaders had access to a Fortune 100 Learning & Development team. To do something about that, she started Magnanimous Leadership, a leadership coaching and consulting firm that's on a mission to make resources and support available to every leader.
