We received the following email this week:
“I have a question. Is it wrong of me to want to scale down instead of up in my employment? I don't think I want to work full-time right now. I'd like to start out part-time and then perhaps go full-time. I want some time to work on myself and my family but not working is not an option. I'd probably go stir crazy after a while of not working. I need to work. But I need to balance family time as well.
It's confession time:
1. I want time for myself. (Selfish, I know.) But even when I'm not at work I'm worried about work. Can't seem to separate the two. Mostly because I feel like I owe it to my job to worry about it like it’s part of my family.
2. I need to come up with and implement ways to cook healthy, exercise and get the kids doing the same thing. How do I do that when I don't have the time? I think I need time management courses.
3. Sarah isn't doing very well in school. I want to help her but from 6 – 10 I'm catching up on laundry, doing dishes, putting away everyone’s mess that they leave lying around.
4. I want to save money. Can't save money we are not making and if we are making the money we aren't saving it. urrrrgghhh!!!
I tried to talk with my boss about going part-time; he has given me only two options: Quit or stay. I quit because he advised that he would not be giving me a raise; as well he told me that if I had to look for other work he would understand.”
How many of us can relate to some variation on this theme? We hear countless versions of the above situation from the employee and employer alike. The clash between the “either / or” mentality versus those trying to think in terms of “and” is unfortunately commonplace. The boss won’t clarify: Is the issue that he can’t afford to go without the man(woman)power? Or is he struggling to decide whether she is valuable enough for him to reconfigure her job so it provides the work/life balance a mother needs? The crime is, she quit. And he let her. And the irony is, he still hasn’t replaced her because naturally he doesn’t have the time to slog through the hiring process. And the heartbreaking piece is, it didn’t need to end that way.
Without the Honest While Respectful Conversations™, unnecessary suffering is inevitable.
When people work together as a performance-driven team that considers unconventional passages of action while making decisions together — they learn to operate from a place of value when struggles rise. The process of working together as a team helps create leaders who foster a safe, approachable environment, an atmosphere of possibility and growth. And that place, in turn, produces the defining moments that uplevel the whole game.
So I would argue that the question that sparked the demise of a team, a great team, wasn’t “Is it wrong of me to want to scale down instead of up in my employment?” If a safe place of possibility was present, the question really could have been turned into a win/win along the lines of “How can we create a role where I support the firm in reaching its goals, while allowing me to create a work/life balance?”
Molly L. Hall, Co-Founder, Lawyers with Purpose, LLC, and author of Don’t Be a Yes Chick: How to Stop Babysitting Your Boss, Transform Your Job and Work with a Dream Team Without Losing Your Sanity or Your Spirit in the Process.
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