To mark National Work-Life Week, I was invited to talk at the Working Families conference about talent pipelines and ‘what good looks like’ at the top. 

To some, the link between work-life balance and business leadership may not seem immediately obvious.  The idea that good leadership means sacrificing personal priorities in order to be available 24/7 is so ingrained in the way we think that ‘work-life balance’ is rarely associated with leadership teams and seen only as an option for the relatively unambitious.

The problem with this attitude is that it is massively damaging the pool of talent available for our leadership teams.  It plays to a stereotyped and rather masculine image of leaders as charismatic, conquering heroes who dominate through omnipotence, huge self confidence, fast analysis, and snap decisions. However, this is an outdated model which fails to take into account the changing demands on businesses and their employees.  

The business landscape has undergone huge shifts in the past decade. In today’s environment we are required to deal with complex and interdependent issues that cannot be solved through the knowledge of any one individual.  A different, more subtle set of skills are needed to navigate businesses through these times. For example, the ability to facilitate groups to arrive collectively at new insights; to live with ambiguity and look for new answers rather than pushing for immediate solutions; to invest in relationships with their employees, board and stakeholders in order to get results.  

In persisting with our outdated model of leadership, we are filtering out talented employees who have this more subtle skillset but who find the current pattern of senior organisational life unattractive. 

In particular we are filtering out too many women from leadership roles.  This is something that has been repeated often in recent months but must continue to be repeated until businesses make the seismic shift necessary to bring career paths and working practices up to date with the modern demands of employees who are balancing career ambition with family commitments.

To do this we need to ask some fundamental questions about what careers really need to look like today.  What is a part time job in a 24/7 economy? Why do we all schlep into town to work Monday to Friday when this en masse commuting is killing the planet and the technology is available to support virtual working? Why do we have career expectations for people that require them to be peaking at 35 when we will all be working into our 70s?

To fuel the ambitions of a more diverse talent pool, we must challenge the assumption that work-life balance and leadership ambitions are mutually exclusive. We must develop transparent talent management systems and introduce leadership career models that flex to meet different needs.  Coaching and mentoring is extremely important, as is role-modelling and challenging the culture of long hours at all levels of the corporate ladder.