Workplace skills can improve family life
Workplace skills can improve family life
Partnering helps achieve balance, lower stress
The growing popularity of work/life programs is testimony to the acceptance of the strong link between home life and the workplace and the importance of achieving a balance between the two in the search for optimal health.
But a new book by Suzanne Saxe, EdD, and Virginia LaGrossa takes this approach to a new level. The book, The Consultative Approach, asserts that skills normally thought of as peculiar to the workplace can also help improve relationships at home, thereby enhancing work/life balance and employee health.
The most important of these skills is the ability to partner, asserts Saxe, one of the principals of Advance Consulting, a Tiburon, CA-based professional development organization that helps working professionals learn to work as consultants and business partners, internally and externally.
"Partnering involves the balance of achieving optimum results given the specific situation," Saxe explains. "When problems arise, the breakdown almost always happens in people’ areas. People don’t complete assignments, or they don’t fulfill what they say they will do."
Partnering involves the building of trust and commitment simultaneously, and then integrating them. "You can’t do one without the other," Saxe explains.
Where does health come in?
Partnering not only leads to greater success, says Saxe, but it significantly reduces stress.
"Most of us would like to be similar people at home and at work," she says. "People really don’t want to have two faces to the world; that’s very stressful. One of the ways [to eliminate the problem] is to look at yourself as a partner in both places."
A lot of people possess good partnering skills at home, but they don’t bring them to work and vice versa, says Saxe. How can they be at their best — and build trust and commitment — in both places?
"One tool that is most critical is the work agreement," says Saxe. "It not only describes what you will do, but how — what your expectations are of how you will interact with each other. Projects often break down because of the how.’"
At home, for example, you may be planning a vacation. What are your common goals? What’s important to each family member? How and when will you interact, and when will you need time to be alone? If there are conflicts, how will they be resolved?
At work, the dynamics are the same. "Any time two or three people work together on a given assignment, they should have a work agreement," Saxe advises. "For example, if someone is going to travel a lot during the next couple of weeks, they need to let their partner know what they will and will not be able to do, and when they will be available. Most people talk about the scope of their work, but not their goals, their vision, and how each member of the team fits in." (For a more detailed discussion of work agreements, see the box on p. 58.)
This approach serves to relieve stress, Saxe asserts.
"If you have a common goal and a work agreement, everyone knows what’s expected of them," she explains. "One place stress comes from is people not knowing what’s expected of them; they’re always guessing. Now with a work agreement, at least you know what you’re working toward, which relieves stress."
Another source of workplace stress that links the home with the office is our tendency to "re-create our family" at work, says Saxe. "We do that in many situations," she notes. "People at work become a pseudo-family. Maybe we choose to work with people we are familiar or comfortable with. Or, we may play out a family conflict at work or respond in a certain way to a family problem."
How can an employee deal with these issues?
"People need to understand what’s going on for them, and then refocus: What is the goal, and what do we want out of it?" she advises. "Stress comes from not having the tools to respond differently."
Partnering also bolsters productivity
Partnering, building commitment, and trust can also bolster productivity — at work and at home, says Saxe.
"You need to agree on what success looks like; be it at a party or on a team project," she explains. "As you agree on this and come to understand each other, that begins to build the trust. If you know what goes into success, you can begin to look at what you must do."
Partnering also provides the opportunity to work together and learn from each other. "We need to ask, How can we get the most value from what we do?’ Take, for example, a family dinner. Maybe it should be used not just to eat, but to get to know each other, to understand each other’s values. Once you feel involved and connected, you tend to be more committed," says Saxe.
Improving your partnering skills at home and at work will contribute to an overall sense of well-being, she says.
"The notion is that you face the world with a philosophy and a way of being in the world — a value system. You really try to be a partner in all you do. There are many ways to be a partner; you can even partner with your dry cleaner!"
The bottom line, she says, is that dealing with all life situations from the same starting point will make your life less stressful and more productive.
"Why should you split yourself in half when you can use the same approach at work and at home?" Saxe concludes.
[For more information, contact: Suzanne Saxe, Advance Consulting, 582 Virginia Drive, Tiburon, CA 94920. Telephone: (415) 435-3009. Fax: (415) 435-3007. Web site: www.advanceconsulting.com. For more information about The Consultative Approach, contact: Jossey-Bass Pfeiffer, 350 Sansome St., Fifth Floor, San Francisco, CA 94104-1342. Telephone: (415) 433-1740. Fax: (415) 433-0499.]
Subscribe Now for Access
You have reached your article limit for the month. We hope you found our articles both enjoyable and insightful. For information on new subscriptions, product trials, alternative billing arrangements or group and site discounts please call 800-688-2421. We look forward to having you as a long-term member of the Relias Media community.