Redesigning Leadership

Over the past few years ThirdPath Institute has begun addressing work family issues as they pertain to leadership, both in the for-profit and non-profit world. Just as families provide a leverage point for change, so do leaders. In fact, it is our belief that organizing male and female leaders to share their stories and learn from one another, is a crucial way to create 21st century organizations that truly support all employees, at every level, to live more balanced lives.

Why focus on leaders? As one of the leaders we have been working with said, "Ultimately, significant change around work-life balance will depend on senior managers' willingness to lead by example. Not only to permit and encourage the parents among their direct reports to use family-friendly policies, but for the fathers and mothers who are senior leaders to take advantage of those policies themselves."

Our Institute has been learning from the pioneering leaders we have been working with that these new "integrated leaders" (leaders who work while also making time for their lives outside of work) can play a transformative role in promoting wider change in their organizations.

Organizations gain from redesigning work. Thanks to changes in technology and other factors, tremendous new options around how, when and where work gets done exist. Increasingly, research demonstrates that both organizations and their employees win from adopting these more flexible work options. Integrated leaders have become experts in redesigning work.

Families are motivated to create change. People are often deeply motivated to make change when their family's well-being is on the line. Focusing on parents - both mothers and fathers- who have already tested work redesign experiments, becomes a highly effective way to create the blueprints for supporting workers at all points in their careers to effectively balance work with other responsibilities. Integrated leaders, more often than not, advocated for work redesign changes because of their desire to stay actively involved in their families.

Leaders benefit from balanced lives. People at the top of organizations are as eager to live balanced lives as everyone else. They also provide powerful role models. Furthermore, ThirdPath Institute has a growing body of research that demonstrates some unique advantages leaders who live balanced lives bring to their organizations. However, in order for more leaders to model this change, systemic issues that make it challenging for leaders to lead balanced lives will need to be addressed.

By launching our "Redesigning Leadership" project, not only has ThirdPath confirmed how much leaders have the authority to significantly relieve the stresses many families experience at the workplace, we have also been able to document how their actions provide a powerful vehicle for modeling new norms throughout the organization.

Throughout this project we have also learned that there are many progressive leaders deeply committed to creating meaningful, long-lasting change across society - in families, communities and organizations alike. However, in order to harness this passion we had to begin by addressing the issues senior leaders face when tackling their own work and family concerns, including the voices, stories and perspectives of male leaders. Significant change around work-life balance will not happen without the inclusion of both male and female leaders. Once included, we have seen leaders become a powerful voice for change.

ThirdPath has been designing a series of events to further understand these systemic issues and to continue to expand our support to leaders to live and model more balanced lives. To learn more about these activities, email us at time4life@thirdpath.org.

To read about some of the integrated leaders we have been working with, click on any of these stories:

*Jim Sandman is a former Managing Partner at Arnold & Porter. With his permission, his name has not been changed in the account he has written, "Excerpts from Remarks for the Working Mother WorkLife Congress."