Work-Life Balance Isn’t a Luxury—It’s a Leadership Skill

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B2B, bringing you strategies and inspiration for auto care success.

Welcome back to Ratchet and Wrench Radio. I'm your host, Editor Christine Schaffrin.

Auto repair shop owners carry a unique weight, long hours, constant responsibility, and the

feeling that if they're not available, everything might fall apart. But what happens when work

starts to crowd out everything else? In this episode, Margaret Light, licensed marriage

and family therapist, and owner of Equilibrium Therapy Services, discusses work-life balance

and leadership. She offers practical insight on setting boundaries without avoiding responsibility,

redefining self-care as a tool for optimal performance, and building a healthier relationship

with work that supports both the shop and life outside of it. Let's hear what she has to say.

Hi, Margaret. Thanks so much for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me back. Margaret Light

licensed therapist of Equilibrium Therapy Services. So tell us briefly what that big,

long title means. So I am a licensed marriage and family therapist in the state of Minnesota

and Wisconsin, and then Equilibrium Therapy is my private practice that I own and run.

Fabulous. And today, we are going to be talking about work-life balance and why it's so important.

Can't really take care of our employees unless we take care of ourselves, and that includes

mental health. So to start us off, when people in demanding roles like business owners or managers

talk about work-life balance, what does the term realistically mean today?

Yeah. So, I mean, kind of on an obvious level, right? It's the amount of time we're spending at

work and the amount of time we're kind of spending in our personal lives, and does that balance out

over time, right? So every day might not be balanced, but sort of like over the course of life or

over the course of the month or the year, are we kind of striking the right percentages maybe,

where we're showing up in life the way we want to, and we're showing up at work in the way we want to,

and one is not completely dominating the other. Now, from your perspective, why is a work-life

balance particularly challenging for business leaders, owners, people who might be higher up the

chain, if you will? Yeah. So, I mean, if you own a business inherently, you have more responsibility

for the business than anybody else, right? And so by definition, with increased responsibility,

there's increased demands on your time, increased internalized pressure to be doing certain things,

there can be an increased sense of urgency around, I need to complete certain things on a deadline,

right? And so it's easy for work than to really dominate your personal life,

especially if you really feel that pressure. And how have you seen it of all the overtime? We all

have this obsession with our technology, right? It makes it hard to quote-unquote clock out at the

end of the day and tune out of work. How have you seen this evolution? So, technology has created

really blurry boundaries between the professional and the personal. And so there are some obvious

ways that happens where, right, employees can maybe text you, email you, it might be alerting on

your phone, they can call you, you know, they could call you any time of day, right? I think back to

when I was managing and assisted living, I could get phone calls at 2 a.m. And so it's just a,

it's very blurry. And so are you ever really off the clock, right? It's also really easy then if

you're sitting at home, maybe the kids are watching TV, it's pretty easy to pull up a laptop or pull

up your phone and oh, I'm just gonna do some work real quick and pretty soon, right? Like you're at

home, but are you? Yeah, you're right back in it, right? Yeah, work is every mile. Yep.

Dude, have you noticed any generational or cultural shifts in how people view productivity,

rest versus personal time? Yeah, so broadly, millennials were actually as a group less likely

to work overtime than previous generations. Our Gen Zers have a little more willingness

broadly to work overtime than millennials did, but it's still less than previous generations.

The trick with that is, you know, we're talking about group averages there. So we still have people

who are going to really prioritize work over other things in those generations, but broadly,

it's kind of declined how much people are willing to put into work over their personal life.

What are those most common thought patterns or beliefs that prevent people from developing a

healthy work-life balance? Yeah, so there can be a lot of perfectionism, right? It needs to be done

a certain way. If I don't do it, nobody else will or they won't do it the right way, right? There can

be a lot of anxiety and fear being a business owner, right? And it's not always a fear that other

people will do it wrong, but right, there's this like anxiety tolerance thing that needs to happen

of, yeah, I don't actually know what's happening, right, at the shop when I'm not there. And can I

tolerate that? Can I be okay with that? There can also be some black or white thinking of, well,

if I'm working, that means I don't or if I'm not working, that means I don't care or

some different things with kind of catastrophizing, right? Oh, well, something bad and irreversible and

like a crisis will happen and nothing will be okay. And so I have to always be available.

And what do you tell people in that those people who, you know, if I don't do it, it won't get done

and that kind of reel goes through their head. What's your recommendation for, we all sometimes

have that loop that, you know, plays in our head that, yeah, I've really got to get this done and

some people more excessively so than others. What would you recommend? So first we need to fact check

it, right? And we kind of have to put it into context. So there are certain tasks we do indeed

need to do, right? That's true. But the second part of that question is, does it need to be done

this instant? And there's a lot of tasks where yes, they need to be done, but they do not actually

have to be done by 11 o'clock, right? Or at midnight. And so, okay, maybe that's a tomorrow

task then, right? And there's also a question of, but is it true that it won't get done? If you've

delegated this, I mean, you know, employees can actually be pretty good at getting things done.

They may not do it exactly when you want them to do it. But if you give them a deadline and they

get it done by then, maybe that's good enough. And then what about those who have that guilt when

they feel like they should be at the office or the shop and they might step away for a personal

matter, whether it's their kid's baseball game or whatever. And as soon as they, you know, touch

a toe out the door, that guilt sets in. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question. So the guilt is usually

linked to some type of personal belief. And that might be a belief that it's selfish to take personal

time. Or then I'm not contributing or being productive and that's bad. Or there might be a

concern about other people will think that of me. And I don't want to be thought of as that person.

Aha, the perception. Aha, right, exactly. And so then I need to exert all this energy to try and

make sure nobody ever thinks that about me. Now, what's the difference? Obviously, there's boundary

issues there. So what's the difference between setting boundaries and simply avoiding responsibility?

That's an excellent question too. So boundaries are things we set for ourselves. They are what we

are or are not willing to do and they actually help us define ourselves, right? And so a boundary,

for example, would be, I'm not willing to talk about this issue with an employee

at 6pm when I'm trying to walk out the door, right? Avoiding responsibility would be,

I'm not willing to have the conversation ever. Okay. And so boundaries help us kind of keep

it between the lines of here's when I'm willing to do this, here's when I'm not, for example.

Okay. And there might be some tasks where, no, truly, I'm not willing to do that for you,

but as a business owner, those would be tasks that don't affect the business or are not business

responsibilities, right? So if your employee, let's say, has their car breakdown and they can't come

to work, well, yes, it will impact the business if they don't come, but it fundamentally is not

your responsibility to go pick them up. This is true. And so then you're not avoiding

responsibility or just this is a reasonable boundary. Setting healthy boundaries, but still

addressing the person and letting them know that obviously they're still important.

Makes sense. When it comes to self care, you know, even the word self care can feel a little vague

or selfish to leaders. How do you define effective self care? Why is it essential instead of optional?

So self care has kind of gotten this reputation of like, it's the extra things we do for ourselves

to make ourselves feel good. And I actually don't operate according to that definition. So

to me, self care is it's the things we do to keep ourselves functioning optimally.

And I want to highlight that because there's a difference between functioning and functioning

optimally, right? I can function on three hours of sleep. I am not functioning optimally.

And so self care for a lot of right business owners and leaders is about what do I need to do

to take care of myself and all aspects of myself where I can function optimally not only at work,

but at home or in my friendships or right, I'm showing up as a well rounded person.

So what does that balance look like for someone running a business? You know, it doesn't have

to be perfection. But we have to look realistically at what people can, you know, afford to put on

themselves. What does that look like? So it's a thing that can change over time, right? I think

a lot of us hear the word balance and we sort of think of like a straight line we have to figure

out and like walk down this exact balanced position. And that's not realistic. So sometimes the image

I gave is think about bowling with bumpers. You're going to kind of fluctuate, right? So there are

going to be times where maybe you're spending more time at work or doing work things and then it's

going to kind of shift back to okay, this is personal time or maybe I have a vacation this

month and so then there's right, we're going back the other direction. And so we want it to sort of

balance out over time. And your bumpers in this analogy are so that you're not veering off and

like living at work, right? Or you're just like not showing up to the shop for weeks on end because

now we've strayed way far off course. And what do you say to those people? Because there are people

who can't seem to, you know, separate or tear themselves away from work. How do you help them

to, you know, see that they need to take care of themselves? They need to mentally take a breather?

So the first step would be to really assess how is this impacting me and the people I care about,

right? I'm going to kind of go out and make what I think is a pretty safe guess of if you are

spending all your time at work, even if it doesn't bother you, there are people in your life who are

really upset about this. And so then your relationships are suffering, right? And I think

that assessment of how does it impact me and the people I care about can really help us start to

sort out. Oh, maybe there's an issue here. And maybe this is a thing I need to kind of look at of

how can I balance this out a little more effectively. So if your husband or wife is giving you those,

you know, dropping those not so subtle hints that they're spending too much time at work,

I guess it's time to sit up and listen is what I'm hearing you say. Yeah, I mean, they might be

giving you really valuable information, right? And I will throw out there, you know, responsibility

plays into this too, right? So there's a lot of responsibility to the business, but you still

have responsibilities at home. If you're over functioning in one area, the odds are good that

you're under functioning in another. If there was one mindset shift or small habit, you'd encourage

listeners to try this week to try and strive for a better work-life balance. What would you recommend?

I would ask people to consider how much of who they are as a person is dictated by work.

Interesting, right? Is is the professional version of me or is my work my identity?

Or are there other aspects to me? And how well developed are those?

And if the answer was that my life is defined by work, what would be your next step?

Then I would do the A, how does that impact me and my relationships? And if I realize this,

are there other parts of my identity I'd like to develop? Are there things I'm interested in?

Are there different skills or different interests and would having a little diversity actually

help me show up more effectively at work? I like that. If somebody had questions about

work-life balance or where to get more information, where would you direct them?

So, I mean, there's a lot of good books about it in the world if you kind of want your own thing,

right? I think definitely a therapist can help folks with work-life balance, especially if it's

really extreme, right? If you're feeling really locked in or really entrenched or I just can't

let it go, I'm ruminating about this for hours, that's actually a pretty good sign therapy might be

necessary. And also think about, I really love mentorship, right? So, whether it's another business

owner or some other professional in your field or a coach or whoever, if you have someone or you

know of someone who looks like they maybe navigate this pretty well, they could be a fabulous resource.

So, it doesn't necessarily have to be any formal kind of intervention, if you will. It could just

be a matter of stepping up with another colleague and having a conversation about where you're at,

where they're at, and trying to find a better way of operating for both of you.

Right, yeah. I mean, this is a huge spectrum, right? How stuck people are, how much this impacts them,

and so there's going to be lots of people who are maybe on the end of the spectrum where

it's a thing they want to work on or a bit of a problem, but yeah, they don't need formal

intervention in order to start doing that. And if you kind of go the informal route first,

if you feel like you're not making any progress, that might be a sign of needing something additional

or something else. Time to step it up a little bit. Right, right. Well, thank you so much for

stopping by. It's always a pleasure having you. Thank you again for having me.

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Work-Life Balance Isn’t a Luxury—It’s a Leadership Skill

work-life balance

bowling with bumpers

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