Certified career and leadership coach, and owner of Julie Cohen Coaching, LLC, Julie Cohen was kind enough to take the time to answer a few questions about her inspiring and hands on book Your Work, Your Life...Your Way: 7 Keys to Work-Life Balance and its handy and focus oriented companion workbook 7 Keys: Workbook & Journal.
Julie Cohen describes how people are often dissatisfied with the way their work lives overwhelm their personal lives causing stress, concern, and emotional concern over a lack of balance between work and life.
Thanks to Julie Cohen for her time and for her informative and thought provoking responses. They are greatly appreciated.
What was the background to writing this book Your Work, Your Life... Your Way?
Julie Cohen: After about seven years as a Career Coach, I wanted my work to impact more people. I stepped back and evaluated what issue did I see as concerning most of my clients. On reflection, I noticed that regardless of what my clients hired me for (support with career management, leadership development, professional effectiveness, career transition) just about every client also had concerns with his/her work-life balance. Most were not satisfied with the mix of their work and life priorities. I wanted to give people tools to make real and lasting change and help them create a more satisfying work-life balance.
You ask the provocative and challenging question "How satisfied are you?" at the beginning of the book. Why do you ask that question of your readers?
Julie Cohen: When making any change, it’s critically important to know where you are starting from so you can determine the most appropriate path you want to take for the future. In the specific situation of work-life balance, if you want to make changes in how you operate both professionally and personally, you need to know what is working well now, and what is not. ‘Satisfaction’ is a very personal state – I want readers to start out thinking about how they feel about their current situation so they can dive fully into the process of making real change in their work and life.
How do most people express their dissatisfaction with their current work and life balance situation?
Julie Cohen: This is as unique as the person who is expressing his/her dissatisfaction. What make anyone dissatisfied is based on a personal combination of ones values, priorities, goals and preferences. One of my clients is dissatisfied because she is not advancing professionally as quickly as she would like while putting a lot of hours in; another client is dissatisfied as he is not able to coach his daughter’s soccer team due to work commitments; and yet another is not happy as she loves her work but has had to sacrifice her desire to train for a triathlon. These are just a few examples that show the very personal nature of the impact of work-life balance dissatisfaction. And, of course, on the flip side, one’s work-life balance satisfaction is also unique and personal.
Do people change their goals and their level of satisfaction by sharing their preferred work and life balance?
Julie Cohen: I ask people to describe their preferred work-life balance situation so they have a clear picture or idea of the changes they need to make. If we know what we want to achieve regarding our work-life balance preferences (or any other preferences, really) we can then adjust our actions and choices to move us more closely to that preferred scenario.
You describe seven barriers to work and life satisfaction. What are those seven barriers?
Julie Cohen: Each of the 7 Keys to Work-Life Balance has a corresponding Barrier. They are as follows: 1-Problems With Prioritization, 2-Lack of Boundaries, 3-Inefficient Use of Time, Energy and Attention, 4-Unreasonable Expectations, 5-Incompatible Values, 6-Unbalance Organizational Culture and 7-Lack of Self-Care.
Julie Cohen (photo left)
Can these barriers be overcome, or as some people would say that people can't change?
Julie Cohen: Yes! Each Barrier can be overcome when the corresponding Key is applied to the situation. I believe change is possible in just about every situation. It requires a clear understanding of the current situation, awareness of the preferred situation or new behavior, reflection of what needs to happen in order to make the change, clear action steps and then a commitment to change. Any change occurs with small steps. The pace of change is determined by how quickly you take those steps. In my book, I provide over 30 ‘fieldwork’ exercises that support readers in understanding their personal barriers to work-life balance and shows them how to use each Key to make real change for greater work-life balance satisfaction.
It's often understood that people need to develop priorities. Why is this so difficult for many people?
Julie Cohen: I’ve identified three reasons why people are challenged with developing and maintaining priorities: 1) They don’t know what their priorities are. They haven’t taken the time to look inward and determine what is most important to them. 2) They don’t have a planning process. They may know what is important to them, but they don’t have a structure or process to actually DO or implement those priorities. 3) They let other things get in the way of their priorities. This is what I call “Low Priority Creep” and it affects most of us. It’s the annoyingly real phenomena of letting less important tasks leapfrog ahead of more important tasks on our ‘to-do’ lists.
Creating boundaries is very challenging for many people. How can boundaries be created and then maintained?
Julie Cohen: Boundaries protect important things in your life such as your time, your energy, your sleep, your workout, your time with your significant other – whatever matters most to you. So, before you start creating boundaries, you first need to define what is worth protecting. What uses of your time each week do you want to make sure you protect? Once you’ve defined what is most important to you, it is often easier to say “NO” to other things.
Boundaries need to be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-Based. Once you’ve defined your boundary, you then need to communicate it clearly to the person or people who may be asking you to give up what you’re protecting. This needs to be a continual process. The more you create and use boundaries, the easier and more natural it will be to continue doing so.
How can people manage their day more efficiently?
Julie Cohen: There are many ways to do this, but the first step is to identify where you are being less-than-efficient. I call this process “Identifying Your Leaks.” “Leaks” are activities or lack-of-activities which drain your time, energy or attention. Some examples of “Leaks” are multi-tasking, responding to email as soon as it arrives and getting sucked into online social media. Once you’ve identified a “Leak” you need to create a “Plug” which is an activity that stops that leak. A “plug” for multi-tasking is called time-boxing – doing only one activity at a scheduled time. As with each Key to Work-Life Balance, you need to examine how you personally operate and make changes that are appropriate and supportive of you.
How can we design reasonable expectations, especially when many people have no idea what is or is not reasonable?
Julie Cohen: Reasonable is a very subjective term so the first step in designing reasonable expectations is determining what reasonable means to you in the context of your work and personal situation. Remember, that we each have expectations of ourselves, and others have expectations of us. When we look at ourselves, reasonable expectations should feel manageable and supportive of what we want to accomplish. “I want to be promoted to Vice-President of my company in three years” feels much more reasonable than “I must make Vice-President in 9 months or my entire career will have been a waste.”
When expectations involve others, such as our boss, our spouse/partner, colleagues or community members, you need to create what I call ‘shared, reasonable expectations.’ This involves dialogue with another person so that both parties involved are clear as to what ‘reasonable’ means.
How can values be re-prioritized?
Julie Cohen: This is a very active and at times challenging process. Again, the first step involved is awareness – know your core values. I provide a ‘fieldwork’ exercise to define your core values. Once you know your core values, you may see more clearly why you feel conflicted regarding your work-life balance. For example, one of your core values may be ‘leadership’ and you act on this value by working 60 hours a week, by being very involved in your professional association and by writing monthly articles for a trade magazine. This value may be conflicting with your value of ‘time with family’ as it is keeping you away from attending your son’s music recitals and being a more active spouse/partner.
A values re-prioritization requires you to shift the focus away from one value to another, and to make choices that reflect that. So, in the example above, if you choose to re-prioritize ‘time with family’ above ‘leadership’ for now, it might mean you would attend your son’s recitals and participate in a hobby with your spouse/partner while cutting back attending conferences and professional writing.
Often the culture in which people live is itself unbalanced in one direction or the other. How can this problem be navigated successfully?
Julie Cohen: This is a very challenging situation. The first step for navigating an unbalanced organizational culture is to determine how much change you’re willing to make and how much risk you’re willing to accept. Then you need investigate the organization (whether employer, volunteer organization, professional association or even family) and determine if there is a possibility for change. If you are comfortable with possible outcomes, then you can experiment with different methods to attempt change – speaking up, finding an advocate, testing new behaviors without permission, setting an ultimatum or maintaining the status quo. Each of these options has pros and cons. When you experiment with an organizational culture you need to be comfortable with a wide range of results.
You suggest engaging in self care. What do you mean by that?
Julie Cohen: Self-care is doing whatever YOU want which refreshes, rejuvenates, relaxes and/or reinvigorates you. Again, it’s a very personal choice. To me self-care means going to a yoga class, playing my piano or spending some quality time with my husband and son. For someone else it may mean taking a hike, engaging in a political discussion or an evening out dancing. Self-care is critical to work-life balance as it is the fuel to keep us energized and able to do all that we want to do. Like a car that is given regular maintenance, self-care keeps us operating well so we don’t break down in the middle of our journey.
There is also a companion workbook for the 7 Keys. How important is maintaining and following the workbook?
Julie Cohen: To achieve the results from the 7 Keys to Work-Life Balance it is VERY important to do the fieldwork exercises. Change happens when we commit to it in a deliberate manner. The fieldwork walks you through that process step-by-step. The workbook provides the reader with a space to do the work, and to record reflections, progress and challenges. It also enables you to keep this important work handy whenever you have a few minutes to work on it. You can also create your own workbook with a blank book or journal, so the workbook is not necessary - it just makes the process easier for the reader.
Once begun, how can the momentum toward a more preferred balance be maintained?
Julie Cohen: Maintaining momentum, progress towards your preferred work-life balance, happens by putting time towards the process in a regular manner. Whether it’s doing the fieldwork as you read along, or checking in every month on your progress, work-life balance, and creating a more optimal experience with it, takes diligence. It’s not a quick-fix, fad diet – it’s incorporating a new way of living. So, I encourage my clients and readers, after they’ve finished the initial fieldwork exercises in the book, to create a regular interval (monthly or once a quarter) to check in on their work-life balance satisfaction and make appropriate adjustments based on the 7 Keys.
What is next for Julie Cohen?
Julie Cohen: Now that the book is finished, I am spending my time sharing the 7 Keys concepts with clients, readers and audiences. I offer live and virtual workshops and group coaching to support participants in creating their more preferred work-life balance.
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My book review of Your Work, Your Life...Your Way: 7 Keys to Work-Life Balance by Julie Cohen.
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