by Lisa Cybaniak
How well are you managing the struggle and juggle of business and pleasure? Are you running around in circles chasing the elusive work-life balance, constantly feeling guilty for not always being able to be present at home with your family because of the demands of your work, and vice versa?
Today we’re talking about the shift that is necessary in order to create a happier working day, and a deeper sense of thriving at life in general, leaving the guilt far behind us.
Gemma Leigh Roberts is a chartered organisational psychologist, executive coach, performance psychologist, author and speaker. She is also the founder of Career Compass Club, a career coaching business that helps individuals transform their careers.
Meet Gemma Leigh Roberts
Gemma has extensive experience working with individuals and groups at all levels within organisations such as Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Disney and Starbucks to manage career transitions and create career success. All this and she’s a mum of two small baby girls.
Gemma is like many working mums and dads out there, struggling and juggling being a parent and businessperson. She knows exactly what it takes to create a happier working day, and she’s sharing her top four tips with us today.
This episode covers so much to help you leave aside those feelings of guilt so you can come into your own, both personally and professionally.
So, let’s dive right in!
Personal Values
Gemma says your first step needs to be understanding your personal values and how they interact with your working life. Do you have the same values as who you’re working for? If your organisation clashes with your values, then it may be time to find a different organisation who is more congruent.
Even if you work for yourself, is your business in alignment with your personal values? When you’re an entrepreneur, you must identify your ideal client to work with. Make sure you’re working with clients that match your own values.
Personal Strengths
What are you really good at? Knowing your development points tends to be easier than knowing your strengths, according to Gemma. That’s because your strengths tend to be things that come naturally to you, so you assume everyone can do them.
If you struggle to identify your strengths, ask those around you who know you best, both at work and at home. Often, they are the ones who see your skills when you don’t.
Gemma suggests once you have your strengths identified, try to use them more in your working life. Your development areas are always important as well, as improving these helps us grow and learn. Aim to focus 70% of your time on your strengths and 30% on development areas.
Sense of Purpose
Having a sense of purpose in your work is vital. No matter what type of work you do, or what industry you’re in, the work you do has value. You are helping others, whether directly or indirectly.
If you’re not feeling that sense of purpose, what changes can you make so that you do? Is it just a matter of making a list of all the ways you help yourself and others – the difference you are making? Perhaps it requires a more substantial change in what you’re doing or who you’re doing it with.
Gemma suggests you connect with that sense of purpose and bring more of that into your working life. Just make sure you set some boundaries so you don’t burn out.
In my entrepreneurship, I’ve had to claw back my available hours and plan out what one weekend I’m willing to hold a workshop or run a book club, 6-8 weeks apart. This is a far cry from the regular weekend work and late evenings I was pulling, leaving no quality time with my family – the very reason I had become an entrepreneur in the first place!
Productivity & Performance
Are you using your time at work in the most effective way for you? Gemma recommends you first identify your desired outcome – what you want to achieve. This includes your performance at work as well as your personal well-being.
Identifying your outcome for any project or undertaking is the first step. Now you can break it down into the smaller tasks you need to accomplish in order to reach the desired goal. And in each step along the way, you can be assessing whether you’re being the most effective and productive with your time, using your strengths, building upon your areas of development, and are in line with your values, increasing your sense of purpose.
For example, are their changes you need to make to the way you’re reaching your goal, rather than changing the goal itself?
More from this episode
Creating a happier working day is possible. But we mustn’t lose sight of the passion and sense of purpose we have at home in our personal lives as well, whether that involves children and a partner, or not. Burn out is real, as is the possibility of spending half our day doing work that doesn’t make us happy. We deserve to be happy, don’t we? That’s why Gemma’s four tips for creating a happier working day are so important.
But Gemma doesn’t stop there. In this episode she talks about how to manage being a businesswoman and mum, why we’re ditching the work-life balance concept (and what we’re replacing it with), and the biggest obstacles people are overcoming in their work lives.
The greatest take away I have from this episode is the key role acceptance and flexibility have to our resilience, and therefore our sense of thriving in life. Gemma said it best, “Be fixed in the goals you want to achieve but be flexible in the ways you reach them.”
Press play on the episode above – you don’t want to miss this!
Follow Gemma Leigh Roberts on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. You can also check out both her businesses, Career Compass Club and Resilience Edge.
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Get more information about Chris Atley’s amazing course for coaches: The Coaches Code
Have a look at the planners that changed my life, and business: Dailygreatness
Get your hands on my Shifting your Mindset Guide with Workbook
Voice over credit: Shari Vandermolen. Shari is offering a free download of one of her songs to the fans of the Life Like You Mean It podcast! Just visit www.GiftFromShari.com and tell her where to send it. Shari’s debut album is available for streaming on all the major platforms including Spotify and iTunes.
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