Leadership for wellbeing: navigating relationships at home and work

Andrea Taylor-Cummings talks about four habits that foster healthy and balanced relationships

In this new hybrid environment, the success of leaders rests heavily on their ability to lead with compassion and confidence, nurture relationships long distance, maintain productivity, and support wellbeing, while managing their own personal circumstances. The need to connect on a more human level and model a life of productive work and balance has never been greater.

At Sciana: The Health Leaders Network,  Andrea Taylor-Cummings, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of 4 Habits Consulting, explored three key issues that leaders must address to create psychologically safe environments, foster open, honest conversations and discover a more sustainable rhythm to work, home, life, and balance.

“As the pandemic highlighted, relationships are the glue that keeps families together and organizations healthy and resilient. Where relationships are strong, people work together to innovate and solve problems even through uncertainty. Where relationships are broken or weak, people themselves can become the challenge”, explained Andrea Taylor-Cummings.

No one has a definitive answer to what the workplace will look like in a hybrid environment. However, each action leaders takes can shape the culture of "boundaries" set at work and spills over at home. According to Taylor-Cummings, there are four fundamental habits that over the years have distinguished successful relationships from unsuccessful ones:

•    Be curious, not critical
•    Be careful, not crushing
•    Ask, don’t assume
•    Connect, before you correct

These principles are supposed to be a roadmap to weaving more honesty, empathy, authenticity, respect, and trust into relationships. 

During this webinar, Andrea decided to focus on the habit of “ask, don’t assume”, by exposing the three assumptions that are barriers to honest and open relationships, as well as the three vital conversations that leaders should be having. 

Creating healthy boundaries

The most common cause of stress, as there is a need to be available at all times, because “whether their boss has said it or not, there is this assumption that if they are not seen on the screen, people will think they are not working”, said Andrea. This causes feelings of exhaustion and presents risks of burnout and mental health issues. “As a leader, this is where you can make a difference because when you create and model healthy boundaries, you give people permission to do the same. No one can respect the boundaries you don’t set, and if you don’t set them, nobody else will.” Setting healthy boundaries for oneself also helps develop more empathy and respect for others.

In the same vein, other experts, such as Joan C. Williams and Marina Multhaup in the Harvard Business Review article How Managers Can Be Fair About Flexibility for Parents and Non-Parents Alike,  also encourage leaders to recognize that people might need to create boundaries for different reasons. Being “reason-neutral” around work-from-home policies, or having cameras off can avoid creating hierarchies between situations, such as mourning the death of a pet or taking care of a sick child.  

The need for a new “social contract” at work

When boundaries have been set, there is an opportunity to have better conversations about the organization of work and life. “Because of COVID-19, and hybrid working, things that used to be excluded from office conversations, like your partner or your hobbies, are now on full display. That has given us permission to be human and acknowledge publicly that we do have lives outside of work.” The topics that leaders need to address now are how work is delivered, core work hours, key tasks, deadlines, how performance is going to be measured differently, and how to be more creative about mentoring people.

When asked what challenges they face when having conversations at work, network members felt like working remotely could prove more difficult for youths who started their careers remotely, since they have not had the time to build social capital over the years. This challenge calls the need for a new “social contract”, and for companies and leaders to be more intentional about the onboarding process and the experience new employees get in that hybrid environment.

Revising the division of tasks at home the “CALM” way

This is a conversation that has created bias in terms of career prospects and income levels according to gender. The question that arises as partners is: how can we share the load and be mutually supportive of each other in a way that doesn’t make us feel overwhelmed or with an unfair split?

“Research shows that women still bear the brunt of the workload at home. In the overwhelm of juggling work, childcare and household responsibilities, many women are cutting back on hours and leaving the workforce altogether. This means that all the progress that we have made in gender equity and closing the gender pay gap will be set back.” As an organization and leader, that would mean losing valuable talent. 

During that conversation, the experience of women came through. Even as senior leaders, bringing up the topic of the division of tasks at home still remains difficult, as it may feel like it could jeopardize the relationship. Andrea Taylor-Cummings agreed that it is “not easy, but essential.” Her advice to have these difficult conversations? “Do it the CALM way. Be very Clear on the goal and what you are asking for, go in Assuming that there is a way forward, Listen to understand and not just to hear, and Manage emotions from both sides.”

Revisiting work/life balance through periods of life

As leaders, the question to ask is: how can you organize work in a more socially responsible way? 

Andrea Taylor-Cummings reaffirmed that creating balance at home and at work isn’t static, but instead it is a dynamic process that changes depending on where you are in life. The kind of balance that works for a person at the start of their career might not be the same as someone with a family and other responsibilities. She then went on to advise on a few pillars that might help with that balance, such as incorporating more fun in your routine. 

Several companies and philanthropies are seeking to overcome ridged work cultures, such as the LEGO Foundation. In partnership with Salzburg Global Seminar, they are seeking to identify ways to bring play to create thriving workplaces with sustainable and societal impact. 

With these tips, Andrea hopes to help leaders to be “authentic and aligned, to be more resilient and to maintain our wellbeing so that we can work well and be well, and surround ourselves with strong relationships at home, at work and in life.”