If you are struggling to maintain a healthy lifestyle because you work too much, don’t disconnect when you are away from work and/or have not had vacation time in far too long, the wise words of Kay Burnham may help you.
Kay Burnham
Burnham spent 30 years working on the administrative side of the entertainment industry prior to founding Perceiving Possibilities, which helps support leaders in up-leveling their well-being among other things. During her time in ticketing and entertainment, she came to understand and preach the need for what mental health professionals call “work-life” balance. Burnham has updated that terminology for today’s times and refers instead to the importance of “life-work” balance.
“Words have power whether we are conscious of it or not,” she says. “When we talk about ‘work-life balance,’ we are automatically putting work as the focus of the balance we are trying to achieve. If we put life first in that phrase, we are signifying to ourselves and others that our life is a priority.”
Putting your life first does not mean you are giving up your passion for all things ticketing. It also does not mean you are letting colleagues, friends and/or family down. Burnham says it is actually the opposite because nobody can help others unless they first take care of themselves.
“A lot of us look at life-work balance and think, ‘but I need to support others. I need to be there for others,’ so that's a priority for me. If your cup is not full on its own, you have nothing to give others,” she says, adding that she loves the sentiment behind something she once heard. That is, Burnham says, to “‘Recharge yourself until your cup is running over and feed others from that saucer.’ That's what life-work balance does for you. It allows you to fill your cup to the point where you are able to serve others.”
Health professionals have been telling us forever that spending too much time at the office, taking too much work home with you, putting off vacations and other similar habits can lead to burnout or even worse. Indeed, according to the World Health Organization, working long hours poses an occupational health risk that kills hundreds of thousands of people each year. Burnham says, “We require downtime to refresh and recharge and give our brains and our bodies a break.”
As Burnham states on her Perceiving Possibilities website, “I believe that awareness is the key to being a great leader, and the most successful leaders start with self-awareness. Using the principles of positive psychology coupled with mindfulness practices, I help leaders recognize and activate their unique strengths, develop their emotional intelligence, and create the life-work balance they desire.” That includes ensuring everyone takes their downtime, whether it be a long weekend, a vacation or even a sabbatical.
“Vacation time is definitely a part of well-being,” she says. “It is one of the five areas of well-being that I talk about and that can come in the form of mental health. Giving yourself that break and that time to process what you have been living is important. It also is physical health. Sometimes when we are on vacation, we are able to sleep better, and sleep is an important part of keeping ourselves healthy, both mentally and physically.”
Burnham says, “A company that I really applaud for their idea of time off is Tessitura because they are a nonprofit company. They could easily throw up their hands and say, ‘We are nonprofit. We do not have the staff; we don't have the time to dedicate to this.’ They actually have a sabbatical policy. [After every seven years of service] it is mandatory that you take a [paid] sabbatical [of seven weeks]. They recognize that for the long-term, well-being of their employees, that kind of downtime is critical, not only to their health but to their growth.”
Without taking downtime, Burnham says work performance will almost certainly be under par.
“Research shows that if you are out of balance, if you are headed toward burnout, your productivity is suffering, your creativity is suffering, and your job satisfaction is going down. Basically, your engagement is tanking if you are not paying attention to this, so it should be a priority for leaders to make sure their staff is taking downtime and is taking care of their life-work balance because it is a win-win for everyone,” Burnham says. “We live in a society that values productivity above everything else, and it is a trap. There is only so much time that any one human can be productive in a day. Society in general is not going to give you permission to put your life first. You have to do that.”
Burnham spends most of her time these days coaching leaders on the benefits of a good life-work balance, for themselves and their staff.
“There are lots of things leaders can do,” she says. “It depends on their level of authority in the company. If they are at the top, they need to be looking at their policies and their practices around paid time off and ensuring that it is supporting their workforce, but not all managers or leaders have that level of authority. Leading by example and speaking directly to your employees [is important].”
Case in point. During Burnham’s days in ticketing and entertainment, she admits to an “awful habit for so many years” of eating lunch at her desk. She was busy. She had a lot to get done. And she thought it was a good thing to do.
“I would actively tell my staff not to do this,” she says. “When I finally got my balance in check and started taking my lunch breaks actively, I noticed that even though I had been telling my staff, ‘Do not take your break at your desk, get outside, go, just go somewhere else,’ they were not doing it. Once I started doing it, more of my staff stopped taking their lunch at their desk. Now, whether that was conscious or unconscious, it was a definite shift that I noticed.”
Burnham says, “Little things in your behavior [like] not being the first one in and the last one out every single day, which sets an expectation for your staff, whether you think it is or not, that they need to be doing the same. Do not send emails after hours. If you do, schedule them, or have clear communication with your employees that you send emails at off hours and have no expectation that they will respond except during their working hours. You have to have clear expectations.”
As a result of COVID-19, many organizations leveraged digital technology and staff began to work remotely. Some still do. Others have left their jobs and the ticketing industry altogether. This can leave former colleagues with more responsibility which may lead to longer working hours. Burnham says leaders need to be conscious of this and try, as best they can, not to overburden employees.
“When you have less staff, when you have a lot of open positions, obviously, that work still has to get done, which means it is being put on the plates of other people who probably already had extremely full plates. Time off is a way to help counter the additional workload until you get those positions filled,” she says.
“It is also important to plan for shortages. I do not know anyone could have planned for this level of worker shortage, but plan for shortages [in general]. People are going to leave. This is going to come up. If you have not been backfilling, if you have not been making sure that there are other people in your department that at least know the basics of other jobs to keep them going, you are adding to the stress.”
Burnham says there could be an upside to this as well, depending on whether you have taught your staff to delegate responsibility.
“This could represent a great growth opportunity for some of your lower-level employees, people who are not in those [higher] positions yet, but you can give them a piece of it so that they can learn and grow. As long as you approach it that way and not like, ‘Hey, we need this work done, you do it,’ you can grow your employees while still dealing with a shortage and provide a way for others to take time off because you are redistributing the work.”
Some jurisdictions have started to pass “right to disconnect” laws that force employers to have policies around when it is and is not appropriate to contact employees after hours. It is part of a recognition that there should be some boundaries put in place, something that employees themselves are not always free to do.
“You may not have the ability to put in the boundary you really want, which is, ‘Do not contact me when I am not on the clock,’ so how do you create a boundary that works for you? Boundaries are not necessarily about saying no to other people. They are about understanding where you are in the moment and attending to it in a way that supports you. There are great books and workbooks that can walk you through the process of setting boundaries, but one of the best ways is to work with a coach, a mentor or a therapist to help you understand where your boundary issues are. Sometimes it is really hard for us to see that when they were in the midst of it.”
Ironically, all this talk about life-work balance might be enough to throw some people off balance. To avoid that, Burnham says it is critical to understand what it all really means.
“When most people hear the word balance, the first thing that comes to mind is a scale. You are putting stuff on both sides of the scale to make it balance, but that is a static view of balance, and life-work balance is an active and dynamic, ongoing process.”
She says, “In the moment when you feel like things are overwhelming, it does not mean you do not have life-work balance. It just means you are in the moment, and that moment might be long [and difficult], so you have to see where you can add balance back into your life. Easier said than done, absolutely, but that understanding of it being an ongoing active balance, like riding a bike, as opposed to a scale, can help reduce the feeling that it is unattainable for you.”
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