Work-Life Integration: What Helps a Leader Stay Steady?
Photo Credit: Amber Fabian via Unsplash
We are collectively exhausted because of our inability to hold competing parts of ourselves together in a more integrated way.
— David Whyte
What happens when your work is deeply meaningful, but also extraordinarily demanding? Or when everything at work just feels hard? Or when you’re barely holding things together? What helps you keep your feet on the ground through it all?
Our CEO, Carol Zizzo, recently shared a story about a leader she coached who was doing some of the most consequential work imaginable, addressing complex global public health challenges. What Carol observed about this leader’s steadiness under enormous pressure opens a valuable question, one that poets and organizational researchers have both spent decades exploring.
What helps a leader stay steady through demanding seasons is often a living connection to what matters to them beyond work, an experience researchers call work-family enrichment, in which what we draw from one part of life strengthens the quality of another.
Staying Steady When the Stakes Are High
I had the remarkable gift of being the executive coach to a global leader in immunization and vaccines. When she retired, people around her knew an era was coming to a close. Whether she was in a team meeting or negotiating terms with the Nigerian government, she consistently brought respect, deep expertise, and thoughtful responses.
She navigated extremely complex dynamics and challenges, both on the ground and across political landscapes, with pragmatism, an even temperament, and bold commitment. She knew how to hold the line without losing relationship. She held fierce opinions and got angry when there was waste, foolishness, or, as she called it, navel-gazing.
She was committed to pursuing professional development to become a better leader in service of her people and the mission, rather than ruminating on what was wrong and engaging in disempowering self-reflection that led nowhere. Because she kept her eye on the big idea, she was able to stay steady in the face of political attacks from her own government, outbreaks of polio and measles after years of progress toward eliminating these diseases, and social media coverage that reflected poorly on an organization she had represented with historical pride.
What Kept Her Feet on the Ground
I was often amazed at what she was able to accomplish, and what kept her feet on the ground throughout was a clear sense of purpose and staying connected to what mattered most to her: her husband, her children, her farm, lambing season, which was one of her greatest restorative practices, her pigs, and walking their property.
Unlike her job, all that existed on the farm was hard, straightforward work. I had the opportunity to meet with her there and witness how being outside in her knee-high rubber boots and work gloves, tending to the land and animals, provided her with a sense of steadiness and sensibility.
Those basic connections allowed her to make the difficult decisions and address the complex global challenges she devoted her professional life to meeting with positive and profound impact.
— Carol Zizzo, CEO, Henley Leadership Group
What Helps Us Keep Our Footing?
What stands out in Carol’s story is the way this leader’s life on the farm and her life in global health seemed to hold each other up. Her professional work already carried enormous purpose, and she was deeply committed to it. The farm became one of the quiet reasons she could keep carrying that commitment across a long and demanding career.
There is something striking in the contrast. Her professional days involved extraordinarily complex global challenges, yet she found her steadiness in the immediate, practical demands of tending animals and working her land alongside her family. Those responsibilities connected her to the physical world and to the simple, comforting rhythms of everyday life.
Researchers who study recovery from work would recognize what was happening. In a review of the field, Sabine Sonnentag and her colleagues found that the psychological benefits of recovery appear to be enhanced in natural environments. Their earlier research showed that mentally stepping away from work during time off helps protect well-being and engagement, even when job demands stay high.
Her story raises a larger question about the place work occupies in our lives, particularly in a culture that places so much value on achievement and professional success.
What Is the Difference Between Work-Life Balance and Work-Life Integration?
The English poet David Whyte, who has long made his home on Whidbey Island north of Seattle, has spent much of his life exploring the relationship between our work and the rest of who we are. In The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship, he describes the central commitments of a life as marriages, each one a serious vow that asks something of us and shapes who we become over many years. He also questions the familiar idea that these commitments are separate accounts, competing for the same limited time and attention.
Whyte suggests that each of these marriages is nonnegotiable at its core. He invites us to notice how they converse with one another and how each might sustain the others, so that part of the work of a life becomes bringing these parts of ourselves into a single conversation.
For the leader Carol coached, that conversation between her professional work and her life on the farm ran in both directions. Both mattered deeply, and both asked a great deal of her, and each helped sustain the other through years of political pressure and unpredictable setbacks.
Organizational researchers have a name for this. Jeffrey Greenhaus and Gary Powell, writing in the Academy of Management Review, describe work-family enrichment as the degree to which experiences in one role improve the quality of life in another, and they set out the conditions under which work and family become allies. The resources travel across that boundary in both directions. Patience learned in lambing season, or perspective gained walking a property at dusk, can find its way into a difficult negotiation the following week.
This is the heart of the distinction between balance and integration.
Balance tends to picture the parts of a life as competing claims on a fixed supply of time and energy, divided as fairly as we can manage. Integration begins from a different place. It asks how those parts might strengthen one another, so a leader can find profound purpose at work while drawing strength and perspective from the people and inner life that sustain them beyond it. Over time, the aim becomes recognizing how each part contributes to a more complete and grounded sense of self, and perhaps to a steadier, sturdier leader.
When work becomes difficult or uncertain, what else in your life helps you stay grounded?
Leader Reflection
What place does work occupy in your life today? Has this changed over time?
What things outside work give you a sense of purpose or connection? How do they influence your experience of work?
Think about the different commitments in your life. You might even want to make a list. In what ways do they affect one another?
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A leader’s relationships, personal interests, and commitments outside work can provide perspective and a sense of purpose. These connections can influence how leaders respond to pressure, make decisions, and relate to others. What happens outside work can be just as important to a leader’s steadiness as what happens within it.
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Work-life balance generally focuses on managing the time and energy devoted to work and personal life. Work-life integration recognizes that our professional responsibilities, relationships, and personal interests influence one another. Rather than keeping these parts of life separate, integration considers how they can coexist and sustain us.
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Yes. In a study of zookeepers published in Administrative Science Quarterly, J. Stuart Bunderson and Jeffery Thompson found that a strong sense of calling gave people deep meaning in their work while also making them more willing to sacrifice personal time and comfort for it, a pattern they called the double-edged sword of deeply meaningful work. Recovery research by Sabine Sonnentag and Charlotte Fritz adds that people who struggle to mentally detach from work during their time off tend to experience higher strain and burnout.
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Leaders who stay steady under pressure often hold a clear sense of purpose and stay connected to whatever restores them outside of work, such as time with family or hands-on work outdoors. Research led by Sabine Sonnentag shows that mentally stepping away from work helps protect well-being and engagement when demands are high, and that recovery appears to be enhanced in natural environments. Executive coaching can help a leader name what keeps them grounded and protect it during demanding seasons.
What Helps You Stay Steady as a Leader?
Through one-on-one executive coaching, including solo strategic retreats, we help leaders across Seattle and the Pacific Northwest explore what matters most to them and what keeps them grounded amid the extraordinary demands of leadership right now. When a whole team is carrying a heavy season together, our team off-sites and retreats give people real distance from daily pressure and time to find their footing together.
If you’re wondering what this could look like for you or your team, we’d welcome a 30-minute conversation.