Becoming the Chief Life Officer (2/10)

As we approach the end of 2021, we feature 10 handpicked nuggets from the Play to Potential Podcast over the next few days to help you pause, reflect and take on 2022 with renewed energy, clarity and commitment. Hope you will find them helpful. We also use the opportunity to share some of the related content from our Podcast Archives (which now has 84+ guests and 850+ pieces of content). This is the second article in the 10 part series.

Becoming the Chief Life Officer

Over the last 20 odd months, Covid-19 has really brought the discussion around the interplay between Work and Life to the forefront. It has precipitated an brought to the fore, several issues that were often brushed under the carpet. Issues around physical and mental health, parenting responsibilities, work hours, digital habits, dual careers and home responsibilities and much more. In this article, we share a few perspectives on how we should think about our life and the interplay with our work.

The starting point is that while we all have a title at work, do we own our lives in the way we deliberately move it forward. In that context, I quite like the term used by Lloyd Reeb of the Half-time Institute. For several decades he has worked with leaders who hit often a point of material success but struggle to get onto the journey of significance. And this journey is wrought with all kinds of trials, tribulations and uneasiness. He speaks about each one of us becoming our own Chief Life Officer in a holistic way and speaks about that in detail. One of the simple yet profound distinctions he makes reminds me of the Mastercard commercial of the old. He does go on to say that we often we end up missing on the small daily priceless moments in the pursuit of the valuable. In this extract below, he illustrates an interesting episode which speaks about the interaction between his Wife and some of the members of his YPO group which touched upon this distinction.

If you want to explore further, you might like the Curated Playlist on Work and Life at the Podcast.

We must mention that we are possibly the only podcast in the world that breaks down a conversation into bite sized nuggets which are further re-organized into specific themes. We do this because we care for your time and attention. Hope you find this of value.

The notion of managing Work-life is something that we have discussed quite often at the Podcast. The anchor framework I find most useful comes from Stew Friedman of Wharton who has been leading the Work-Life Integration project for several decades now. There are a couple of insights from him, that have stayed with me.

Solving the 4 piece jigsaw

The first insight is the fact that it is a 4 piece jig-saw and not a two piece one. Let me elaborate. Very often we think about our Work and our Family and try to deal with the two. Stew says that we need to think about how we give time and attention to our Self, our Work, our Home and our Communities. He says that if even if we ignore one of them, there could be a suboptimal outcome. To take the last 20 months as case in point, I came across several leaders who were trying to make Work and Home happen but ignored the Self and that led to a Burnout situation a few months down. Several others focused on Self, Work and Home but I noticed that there was a sense of hollowness and incompleteness given the pain and suffering in the communities around.

The second insight from him that I find helpful is that he says that this is not a zero sum game where we need to allocate time and attention to these water tight compartments. He says that there is psychological spillover from one domain to another as we transition contexts. He says that smart leaders find a way of building some buffer between their various initiatives and carry positive energy when they move from one domain to another. He also says that smart leaders find a way of having osmosis across the various domains and pursue initiatives that tick multiple boxes concurrently. I.e Undertaking a Community drive with work colleagues rather than engaging as a solo-philanthropist. Fitness with family is another theme some leaders pursued. Over the last few months, I derived a lot of energy from recording songs with my wife and two kids rather than sitting alone in a room practicing my guitar. I felt it really brought us together and helped us navigate the tough few months of complete solitude when we had a full lockdown in India while creating memories for the future.

How do you spend your time and attention on these domains? Where is there resonance and where is there dissonance?

100 year life and its implication on choices

Lynda Gratton is the author of the book 100 year life and I find her work tremendously insightful and it has helped make some crucial choices. She says that given advancements in Healthcare, we all are likely to live much longer and likely to work through our 60s and 70s, if not longer. She says that that has a profound implication on how we think about choices. Of the various things she says, the one that has resonated the most with me is about choosing the intensity with which we work. Very often, I notice that the intensity of our work life is a residual variable that we just "suck it up" as part of the package deal of working in a high-calibre, high octane environment. I have nothing against intensity but I do not think we can ignore the simple physics here. The pace at which we run a Sprint is different from the pace at which we run a Marathon. We cannot delude ourselves to think that we can run a Marathon at the pace of a Sprint. This is what I see a lot of people doing. We can run occasional bursts but don't think we can fundamentally run the long term at the pace of a sprint.

Reflect on the pace of your life? How sustainable is it if you want to play the long game? What adjustments can you make to make the pace reasonable?

Cannot have it all

I also recognize that this framework of harmonizing across domains may not apply to all situations and we have to be true to what we are passionate about what we care about. Successful lawyer Zia Mody speaks about here journey and says that given the context in which she was trying to establish herself in the Law profession, she didn't have the luxury of solving for some of the personal elements while trying to shatter the glass ceilings along the way. She goes on to say that sometimes we cannot have it all. I notice the same phenomenon in some situations where I see young founders who get married as they are doing a Fund raise for their start up. The number of concurrent transitions can be overwhelming. I guess, the key is for each one of us to be truly honest about what we truly care about and prioritize accordingly and manage the expectations of the people around us proactively. If that conviction doesn't come from a deep place, then it is bound to lead to friction and burnout.

Impact of Life on Work

Late Chandramouli (Mouli) Venkatesan is the author of two books - Catalyst and Get Better at Getting Better. He unfortunately passed away last year but some of his thinking is finding its way. His third book - Transform - Ultimate guide to leader and manager has been recently published posthumously by some of his friends and well-wishers. He speaks about how some of our pursuits in other domains inform the quality of our work. I can attest to this insight from personal experience. I learn the guitar over the weekends and I find that some of the Coaching inputs I receive in music help me become a better Coach. As an example, my teacher would have given me an assignment to practice a certain scale and build proficiency in it. I would work hard through the week and when I would perform for him, he would point out something in my blind spot. Either my foot tapping would be off or my thumb position might be off. Net net, something I wasn't paying attention to when I was busy doing the practice. It has informed the way I think about offering feedback to the people I work with. I notice that very often it lands in their blind spot and that often opens up new possibilities.

"Impact of work on life is lesser that the impact of life on work. Albert Einstein, in his biography, says that he was a great scientist possibly because he played a lot of violin" - Mouli

What are some of your personal pursuits that help you get better on the professional front?

Working with the leader as a whole

We recently published our conversation with Rajiv Vij, a leading Executive Coach based in Singapore. He is the author of the recently published book - Inside Out Leadership - 16 radical insights successful leaders wish they had discovered sooner. He speaks about working with leaders as a whole when he coaches them. Something that I am beginning to realize in the Coaching work I do as well. I notice that at senior levels who you are being in one domain fundamentally impacts how you show up in some of the other domains of your life. I find it helpful to get to know the leader as a human being and speak to some of their family members, friends and other individuals from adjacent ecosystems to understand them better. If they play to their full human potential, more of then than not, professional potential is often taken care of.

As one of my earlier guests, Tenzin Priyadarshi says, Covid has been a massive time out for humans. God has sent us to the quiet corner to sort out our lives. As we wind down 2021, it is worth asking the question - How do I think about work and life and where are the opportunities to rebalance that portfolio.

One final thought here. I find that it is helpful if we start measuring the tangibles and the intangible assets in our journey. It can help us redirect our attention to things that matter. I notice that our default is to measure financial flows. But if we can direct our attention to stock and to non financial intangibles as well, it can help us make course corrections. The slide below has some pointers for your reflection.

What does your personal Dashboard look like? What do you measure? That might tell you a thing or two about what you are giving importance to.

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This is the 2nd note in a series of 10 year ending articles capturing some of the lessons I learnt in 2021 from the Play to Potential Podcast (including reference to some of the insights from the archives). Other articles in this Year ending series include 1) Reflecting on our identities 3) Developing your Highlights Reel 4) Baby steps towards a habit 5) Dealing with Lifequakes 6) Multiple levels of listening 7) Unlocking more women leaders 8) Our relationship with time 9) Driving Psychological safety 10) Opportunity for a fresh start.

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