Purposefully parenting with purpose
Future Work/Life is a weekly newsletter that casts a positive eye to the future. I bring you interesting stories and articles, analyse industry trends and offer tips on designing a better work/life. If you enjoy reading it, please SUBSCRIBE HERE, and share it!
I've heard from a few subscribers over the past few days that last week's newsletter provided some good food for thought. Thankfully, at least one isn't a parent so I'm glad to know this mini-series on the relationship between the future of work and parenting isn't ostracising a part of the audience!
As I've said before, many of the lessons in these newsletters are applicable whatever your circumstances and living arrangements; really it's all a just matter of staying sane and creating a sense of fulfilment in challenging times!
Becoming a parent was a big shift for me and empowered me to bring my real self to work much more than I had ever done before. The end result was my growing obsession with work-life design and my belief in the importance of aligning a career with personal commitments, which, for me, will always be the ultimate priority.
We all have our wobbles along the way, though, which is why I'm focusing again on how my skills in business and parenting can complement each other to help me get better. That was a long way of introducing what I'm about to try next, which perhaps you could try too.
Stew Friedman is one of the most insightful voices on the relationship between work and life. So much so that he came up with the phrase Work-Life Integration, which is gradually replacing the concept of Work-Life Balance in the public consciousness.
In Parents Who Lead, he and Alyssa Westring advocate taking a leadership approach that takes advantage of the mutual benefits of fueling your career and creating a 'richer life', through parenting 'with purpose'.
Last week, I discussed envisioning your future. In business terms this is considered defining your vision and, this week, I'll suggest one strategy on how to help realise it (if you consider your vision to be the destination, your strategy is how you're going to get there).
Values is a pretty good place to start. Much as putting systems in place can help provide consistency and incremental gains to your life, articulating one's values can help put our innate beliefs into words. They can also provide a measuring stick against which we can refer when we're unsure of the right next steps.
In respect of couples with children, this requires identifying the values that you aspire to embody in your career and the way that you parent. The easiest way to do this is to spend 30 minutes separately thinking about those that matter the most to you and fix on five.
To get you started, here are some examples given as part of the research:
Achievement: "A sense of accomplishment or mastery. I always strive to be the best I can be, and I respect others who do the same."
Adventure: "New and challenging opportunities, excitement, risk. I'm an entrepreneur at heart."
Collaboration: "Close, cooperative working relationships and being part of a team."
Courage: "A willingness to stand up for beliefs and to do the difficult thing despite any fears."
Generosity: "The one thing for which I hope I am remembered when I pass from this earth is my generosity - of spiritual and physical means."
Humour: "The ability to laugh at myself and at life."
Love: "I can't imagine anyone in the world is happier than I am when my kids run IP to give me a hug after work."
Responsibility: "My father was an alcoholic. As a result, I grew disappointed because of broken promises. Now, as an adult, I try to do what I say I will do, always."
Spirituality: "I'm a Catholic, and I believe there is something greater than human beings."
Achievement: "A sense of accomplishment or mastery. I always strive to be the best I can be, and I respect others who do the same."
Adventure: "New and challenging opportunities, excitement, risk. I'm an entrepreneur at heart."
Collaboration: "Close, cooperative working relationships and being part of a team."
Courage: "A willingness to stand up for beliefs and to do the difficult thing despite any fears."
Generosity: "The one thing for which I hope I am remembered when I pass from this earth is my generosity - of spiritual and physical means."
Humour: "The ability to laugh at myself and at life."
Love: "I can't imagine anyone in the world is happier than I am when my kids run IP to give me a hug after work."
Responsibility: "My father was an alcoholic. As a result, I grew disappointed because of broken promises. Now, as an adult, I try to do what I say I will do, always."
Spirituality: "I'm a Catholic, and I believe there is something greater than human beings."
Once you've both done that, enquire about your partner's values. Most importantly trying to understand why each of them is so important. You'll find you have some values in common and some which are unique - both are equally as important in the next stage, which is to craft your collective vision - the inspiration and guide for long-lasting behaviour change (and, as I said last week, the motivation to get through some of those more challenging days!).
For this, I'd suggest returning to the exercise I proposed last week, which is to simply discuss together how your lives look in 15-20 years time. What do you do when you wake up in the morning,? What's keeping you busy during the day? And how do you typically spend your evenings? If it's easier try to break down your commitments into four categories - work, family, community and self.
Do you see your future in a similar light or are there differences?
In this case, differences are not necessarily negative - this is an opportunity to understand the hopes and dreams of your partner because let's be honest, this isn't something we tend to discuss over the dinner table every night!
In fact, this all might seem very prescriptive and 'business-y'. But that's kind of the point. Much like being a parent has taught me to be more patient at work and to keep putting business challenges into perspective, here's an opportunity to approach your personal life as you would at work; as a leader.
What are the benefits of this approach?
"As partners, when you agree on where you're headed, you'll be better able to sort through the chaos of everyday life and work in the same direction."
Indeed, like many things, including my musings about work-life design, just writing stuff down helps crystalise things in your mind and commits you to a level just talking about it never can.
If you want to learn more about this process, I'd recommend listening to Friedmann and Westring on this HBR podcast or buying their excellent book. And I will, of course, talk about further techniques and processes that can help with articulating and tracking these types of goals in future articles.
In future editions, I'll return to this subject and cover some ideas on how planning and communication feed into a successful parenting strategy. Before that, here's why it's valuable to come up with and stick to a strategy with your partner.
"A collective vision...acts as a beacon in personal relationships. As parents working together to navigate careers and raise children, having our own individual vision is not enough. The creation of a collective vision allows us to imagine a future we are inspired to pursue together."
Thanks and have a nice weekend,
Ollie
Any Other Business:
I've said it before and I'll say it again...this sh!t is just creepy...
This startup is using AI to give workers a “productivity score” by Will Douglas Heaven in MIT Technology Review.
Disappointing to hear some top companies like Omnicom feel they have to surveil their staff and dress it up as improving productivity. As lawyer Cori Crider explains -
“Bosses have been seeking to wring every last drop of productivity and labor out of their workers since before computers,” says Crider. “But the granularity of the surveillance now available is like nothing we’ve ever seen.”
Wow.
This is more like it:
The workforce is fractured. This is how leaders need to bring people together by Katie Jacobs in Fast Company.
And finally, this is an excellent infographic from Vas Narasimhan and Steven Baert:
