Work-Life balance Part 1 Tutorial

Are you struggling to find harmony between your professional and personal life? In 'Work-Life Balance Part 1', discover insightful coaching tips that will guide you in achieving a satisfying balance. Explore generational shifts, the impact of societal pressures, and learn how to prioritize your well-being. Join us on this journey towards personal and professional effectiveness!

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Are you satisfied,

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successful with this balance,

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or are you constantly torn,

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running from one world to the other,

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feeling guilty for not being 200% present?

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In the next two videos,

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I will share my coaching tips to understand and balance

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your professional and personal life in a satisfying way.

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Keep in mind

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that your personal life goes far beyond your family.

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Knowing how to make time for yourself is a great challenge.

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Let's start with some generational observations on life balance.

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For older generations,

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careers,

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especially for men,

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were important.

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And structural people fulfilled their professional

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duties by being loyal to their company

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and then brought the money they earned home.

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The question of balance was not really an issue.

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The more women participated in the labor market,

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the more the question of life balance arose.

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Most of those women sought to balance their working lives while continuing,

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at least at first,

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to manage the majority of family and household chores.

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A double shift.

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Men have gradually agreed to take on more of the work at home.

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A new shift in outlook on life balance in the last 20 years.

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First of all,

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time is speeding up and seems to be lacking for many.

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Plus,

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professional success is not enough any more.

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You also have to be good parents.

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You have to be healthy.

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You have to have a cultural and social life.

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You have to have in leisure activities.

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Life ambitions have evolved.

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Happiness means ticking all these boxes.

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The balance of life is even more threatened by everything we have to do.

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In addition to professional and family duties,

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there is the duty to be fulfilled and happy.

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Life balance is an essential criterion for the younger generations.

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Work is not my life.

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It is an important part of my life,

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and as such,

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I want a fulfilling job,

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but it is not my life.

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I don't want the company to eat me like it ate

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my parents' life until the day they were laid off.

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Personal professional life balance is the number one

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criterion according to a Mazars study on the.

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Aspirations of the Y generations.

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Criterion 2 living life to the fullest.

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Number 3,

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to be financially independent.

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Number 4,

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to start a family.

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The professional success criterion is only ranked number 5 for Generation Y.

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When companies start to understand that the private work-life

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balance is the number one criterion for the satisfaction.

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Of the younger generation,

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they start to attach more importance to it.

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Recruiting and keeping talent requires taking into

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account this need with the great ambition

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of life balance.

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The ambition to have a satisfactory distribution

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between the time devoted to the professional

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and personal life without this inattention,

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without having to run,

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without feeling guilty.

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The ambition to also have time for yourself

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that is neither devoted to work nor to family responsibilities.

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50% of workers feel they lack time,

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and 55% of them are executives.

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50% feel they are not able to balance their

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private and professional lives as they would like to.

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One in two people alternates between feeling

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torn and feeling guilty about not reconciling

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everything.

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It should be noted that our current

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environment doesn't really help us to maintain control

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over this time that is accelerating.

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Economic pressure,

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companies are asking to produce more in a more

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qualitative way in less time with fewer employees.

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Second observation that working overtime is normal,

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especially for executives.

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Most of them work late and come home late.

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A third observation,

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new technology eliminates the moments that used to be breathing times.

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Information is just a click away,

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even at night.

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We are overwhelmed with information coming at us from all sides.

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We even work on public transport,

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making calls and writing emails.

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We bring our laptops home and continue to work at night.

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We sometimes work staggered hours with.

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Countries

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we are often supposed to be reachable 24 hours a day.

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We don't dare to grant ourselves the right to disconnect,

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the right to turn off our cell phones and not answer immediately.

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So

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how to remain the master of our time?

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Is it possible to have this ambition in such an environment?

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And on the personal side,

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time accelerates and gets filled to the brim as well.

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There is the social pressure of being super

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parents who are present every night for homework,

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who drive the children to the speech therapist,

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to the music lesson,

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to the shrink,

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to the soccer club.

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Your whole Saturday is spent on this.

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Societal changes have also led to an

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increase in the number of single parent families

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requiring the individual availability of the parent for the child.

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It is much more often women who find themselves with their dependent child

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during the week and for whom juggling tasks becomes a daily challenge

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for many reasons,

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including the issue of child care and the division of family and domestic tasks,

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the question of life balance is a top priority for women.

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Younger generations and women are therefore the first spokesperson

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for this need for balance.

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So we have explored the relationship of the different generations to life balance

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and the issue of lack of time in a very demanding socioeconomic environment.

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Now let's move on

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to the solutions that can be provided collectively

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and individually to facilitate this much desired balance.

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On a collective basis,

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collectively,

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the public authorities act on certain levers,

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the management of working hours,

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opening nurseries,

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financial assistance to higher nannies,

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childcare assistants,

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domestic staff,

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parental leave for mother and father,

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and care facilities for dependent people.

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Workers expect more from governments in terms of transport facilitation,

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more nurseries,

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better and longer paid parental leave,

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or a salary for stay at home parents,

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etc.

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On the corporate side,

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over the past 10 years,

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many branch agreements have been signed pertaining to work-life balance.

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They include passages such as managers will have

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to ensure a good work-life balance for employees.

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Hardly an easy task.

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These agreements are in line with the suggestions on the

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quality of life at work and the prevention of PSR,

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psychosocial risks and burnout.

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Some companies go further in this quest for balance and happiness at work.

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One

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thousands of chief happiness positions have been created.

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Some of which

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really do have the power to make things happen.

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Two company daycare centers.

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3 company agreements that may,

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for example,

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stipulate it is forbidden to hold meetings before 8:30 a.m. and after 6 p.m. 4,

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flexibility in working hours and 5,

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the facilitation of teleworking.

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I have had the pleasure to visit the European headquarters of Google in Dublin.

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More than 8000 employees

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here.

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The company takes so much responsibility for private needs

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that the boundaries between professional and personal spheres become blurred.

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Here are some of the services offered.

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Meals you can have breakfast,

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lunch,

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dinner free of charge.

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Hot and cold drinks,

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pastry sweets are available everywhere,

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free of charge.

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nap rooms,

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the ability to devote 20% of your time to personal projects.

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A swimming pool and a Gym with free on-site fitness classes,

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yoga classes,

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cooking classes,

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a soundproof room with musical instruments available for a break

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when you want to play the piano or strum,

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the guitar.

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There's a supermarket,

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a dry cleaner,

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a dentist,

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a hairdresser.

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I describe this to you with neutrality.

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Is it about support and service

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or about care and disempowerment?

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On the one hand,

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the employees are delighted to have so many services available and what's more,

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free of charge.

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That's very comfortable.

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On the other hand,

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the company gains by the increased presence of the employees

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and the motivation to work and stay at Google.

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Google is betting on that by facilitating parts of its employees' personal lives,

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everybody wins.

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Employees feel less of a tug of war between work and personal life,

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but in fact,

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the boundary is less clear.

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Personal life enters the company.

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It's a bit like being at home with your family,

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except there's no washing up.

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The younger generations aspire that their company

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like Google can provide them with organizational

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structures and services that facilitate the balance

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between their professional and personal lives.

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Is the future heading in this direction?

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Do companies have the financial means to do so?

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We have seen

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what is being done or can be done at government and corporate levels

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to facilitate the work-life balance.

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Now let's look at what can be done individually at your level.

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Many of those who complain about not being able to balance.

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And private life would like to have more hours in their day.

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They feel that they are running out of time because

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they would like to be more present on both sides.

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This imbalance is linked to an excessive ambition about what they want to achieve.

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The first piece of advice I will give

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is to stop trying to perfectly reconcile everything.

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Perfectionism is a poison when time is short and the to do list is loaded.

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It's time to let go of this ideal

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of wanting to balance everything perfectly.

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How to get out of perfectionism.

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This subject alone deserves a video.

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I will only talk here about two traps

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that prevent us from letting go of perfectionism,

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the sense of duty

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and the guilt that accompanies it.

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If you can't get your foot off the

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pedal on your family or professional investment time,

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chances are you're listening to everyone's needs.

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Do you want to satisfy your manager and support the team with quality work,

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and do you want to satisfy your children and your partner?

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When some of my coaches,

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especially women,

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say they want to balance their professional and personal life,

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they are not really talking about a quest for well-being.

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I notice above all that it is a question

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of reconciling their duties as well as possible,

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the professional duties and the personal duties that

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they have and that are incumbent upon them.

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Clara Gaynard,

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former CEO of General Electric France,

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mother of 9 children,

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appointed president of the Women's Forum in 2015,

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says she is tired of this repeated question from journalists.

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Clara Gaynard,

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how do you manage to reconcile your professional

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career and a home with nine children?

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According to her,

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the most surprising or annoying thing is that

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no journalist asks this question to her husband,

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who also balances his career and the paternity of 9 children,

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as if for him the duty to take care of his children wasn't that important,

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or is it believed that a man will find it

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easier to balance his career and family life perfectly.

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In any case,

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I have met many perfectionist men and women caught

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up in the spiral of wanting to perfectly reconcile everything

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because they had filled their schedules with a list of obligations.

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Life balance is not about being able to keep up with

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a smile to all the obligations that we have given ourselves,

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or that others have imposed upon us,

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and often putting our own desires last.

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Why all these obligations?

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Is it so important to be a man or woman of duty?

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Are you ready to devote all of your time to it while forgetting yourself?

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I invite you to read imperfect,

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free,

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and happy to go further on this subject.

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The real question is

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what risk would you take if you could no longer reconcile everything perfectly.

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By no longer acting like a man or a woman of duty,

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by being less perfect or by saying no,

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you risk being criticized and dissatisfied by both sides.

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That's where the problem lies.

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If you disengage from certain tasks,

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some people will not be happy about it.

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You will no longer have the recognition you had

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when you were handling everything at your expense.

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So what do you prefer?

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the balance of your life,

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even if you are criticized,

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or the recognition of all,

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although not always,

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even if you are exhausted.

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If you disengage from certain tasks,

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there will be a time when those around you will be dissatisfied.

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Do you have the courage to stand up for

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your well-being and also that of those around you,

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even if they don't yet know that they have everything to

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gain from you letting go of the reins a little.

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This leads to the second point,

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guilt.

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Letting go of guilt

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means first of all not taking on duties beyond what is possible.

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We only feel guilty if we impose duties

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on ourselves and obligations that we cannot fulfill.

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You were not present at this late meeting.

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It's OK.

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Don't beat yourself up.

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You came back later from work and couldn't have dinner with your children.

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It's OK.

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Don't beat yourself up.

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The guilt consists in making you pay double.

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Not only were you not able to be present for

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everyone as you would have liked because schedules were incompatible.

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And you had to decide,

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but on top of that,

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you blame yourself.

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It is impossible to perfectly reconcile everything.

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Continue to make choices that seem best for you first,

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then for others,

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and trust your choice.

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You have done what was best,

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and tomorrow will be another day with new choices.

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Trust yourself.

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After this first exploration on the issue of life balance,

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I'll meet you on the 2nd video

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to give you concrete advice

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about how to improve your work-life balance.

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See you soon.

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