WORK LIFE BALANCE
Remember,
Your Job Isn’t Your Raison d’être
In
climbing the ladder of professional success, people often ignore family and
friends. And that is a grave mistake, cautions ex-Lehman CFO Erin Callan
At
an office party in 2005, one of my colleagues asked my then husband what I did
on weekends. “Does she kayak, go rock climbing and then run a half marathon?”
she joked. No, he answered simply, “she sleeps”. And that was true. When I
wasn’t catching up on work, I spent my weekends recharging my batteries for the
coming week. Work always came first, before my family, friends and marriage —
which ended just a few years later. In recent weeks, I have been following with
interest the escalating debate about work-life balance and the varying positions
of Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, Marissa Mayer of Yahoo and the academic
Anne-Marie Slaughter, among others. Since I resigned my position as chief
financial officer of Lehman Brothers in 2008, amid mounting chaos and a cloud
of public humiliation only months before the company went bankrupt, I have had
ample time to reflect on the decisions I made in balancing (or failing to
balance) my job with the rest of my life. The fact that I call it “the rest of
my life” gives you an indication where work stood in the pecking order. I don’t
have children, so it might seem that my story lacks relevance to the work-life
balance debate. Like everyone, though, I did have relationships — a spouse,
friends and family — and none of them got the best version of me. They got what
was left over. I didn’t start out with the goal of devoting all of myself to my
job. It crept in over time. Each year that went by, slight modifications became
the new normal. Inevitably, when I left my job, it devastated me. I couldn’t
just rally and move on. I did not know how to value who I was versus what I
did. What I did WAS who I was. I have spent several years now living a
different version of my life, where I try to apply my energy to my new husband,
and the people whom I love and care about. But I can’t make up for lost time.
Most important, although I now have stepchildren, I missed having a child of my
own. Sometimes young women tell me they admire what I’ve done. As they see it,
I worked hard for 20 years and can now spend the next 20 focused on other
things. But that is not balance. I do not wish that for anyone. Even at the
best times in my career, I was never deluded into thinking I had achieved any
sort of rational allocation between my life at work and my life outside. I have
often wondered if I would have been asked to be CFO if I had not worked the way
that I did. Until recently, I thought my focus on my career was the most
powerful ingredient in my success. But I am beginning to realise that I sold
myself short. I was talented and energetic. It didn’t have to be so extreme.
Besides, there were diminishing returns to that kind of labour. I now believe I
could have made it to a similar place with at least some better version of a
personal life. Not without sacrifice — I don’t think I could have “had it all”
– but with somewhat more harmony. I have also wondered where I would be today
if Lehman hadn’t collapsed. In 2007, I did start to have my doubts about the
way I was living my life. Or not really living it. But I felt locked in to my career.
I had just been asked to be CFO. I had a responsibility. Without the crisis, I
may never have been strong enough to step away. At the end of the day, that is
the best guidance I can give. Whatever valuable advice I have about managing a
career, I am only now learning how to manage a life. Erin Callan / NYT News
Service ET130323
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