It’s Not Business It’s Personal: The Ideal Work-Life Balance

Balancing work and life takes a physical toll on us. But it also affects us emotionally.

64% of consumers expect brands to be more human than business.

Simply put, business is personal; very personal.

Here’s a little back story.

I recently got contracted to work with a leader who had just lost a much-valued employee in his startup to a fierce competitor. He had invested a large amount of time in mentoring and training said person and had high hopes and expectations of what they could achieve together with the business. The employee was identified as a top talent within the company’s ranks, and what’s more, the resignation came as a complete surprise. Expectedly, the team leader felt let down as he recounted the events to me and in an attempt to downplay these feelings he resigned to this;

“I guess the conclusion I have come to,” he said, “is that I just mustn’t take this personally.”

Is It Business, or Is It Personal?

This is a sentiment we have all often heard in work contexts: “Don’t take it personally” or “Hey, it’s not personal; it’s business.”

I’ve heard it said about feedback, conflict, difficult conversations, restructuring, losing deals, collaboration, dealing with career ups and downs — all kinds of workplace and business issues. And yet I feel it’s an absurd idea. In an attempt to protect ourselves, we have gone on to breed lacklustre and ineffectiveness among existing and new startups.

In a 2018 article written by Lucy Brian of the six-vertical, she outlined the top five qualities of a successful entrepreneur which all happened to be “personal” qualities:

1. Resolute motivation and passion

2. Self-discipline

3. Risk-taking ability

4. Creative thinking

5. Persistence

If this is true of an entrepreneur, then it’s safe to say that taking things personally at work is the first step to maximizing capacity as an entrepreneur, leader or a team member.

Furthermore, work is the place where I’m going to spend the bulk of my waking hours — indeed, the majority of my life — and yet I’m not supposed to take it personally? I should accept the idea that the bulk of my life from my twenties to sixties is somehow not personal?

While I fully understand that by “not taking it personally” we are better able to protect ourselves in work contexts that can often be challenging, threatening, and relentless, there are benefits to making our work-business personal.

Efficiency

The first relates to success and well-being at work. Take a moment and think about the people you’ve encountered whom you consider inspired, energized, and successful. They probably take work personally. And the flip side is that the people who have depersonalized their work are probably not the people you have enjoyed their experience. Your own experience thus indicates that success seems to be linked to taking your work personally.

But this is not about nuanced language and personal psychology; it is also about real business results.

Consider the connection between engaged employees and business performance.

What is engagement if not “taking it personally“? And when we consider the low levels of reported workplace engagement, it becomes clear that “not taking it personally” can have real costs.

Consider these statistics curated from GetVoIP: 64% of consumers want brands to connect with them. This is to say consumers rely on you taking your work-business personally as this is the best way to connect with them truly, and that is a relatively high percentage. It would be disadvantageous to be on the wrong side of such statistics.

Most of these consumers have grown increasingly aware of the facade or faux commitment from brands and can almost immediately tell when a brand takes them personally.

Ethics

Then there’s ethics. “Not taking it personally” lies at the heart of many corporate ethics scandals, from embezzling and accounting fraud to issues of worker safety and environmental protection. It’s when executives and teams adopt the mindless notion of “it’s not personal, it’s business” that they absolve themselves of their responsibilities as social actors, custodians of the planet, and guardians of the well-being of their employees, customers, and communities.

For these reasons and more, it seems clear to me that if we are to fulfil our responsibilities and obligations as executives — and our potential as leaders — we need to take things deeply personally. Put simply; in a depersonalized workforce employees are likely treated poorly.

Now, of course, there is a big, big difference between taking it personally and not being able to manage your boundaries. There is a distinction between having a passion for your job and attaching so much self-worth to it. Not being able to protect yourself psychologically, taking every mishap and mistake to heart that it penetrates the core of your self-esteem isn’t a good thing. If work becomes too dominant a part of your identity, that can also be dangerous.

But surely, there’s an appropriate happy medium to be found; a place somewhere between workaholism and anesthetizing the spirit.

Making it Personal

Going back to our manager at the beginning of this article, I wish I had said a few things to him: 

1. Don’t beat yourself up. Don’t overly introject this as a failure that is a representation of your value and worth as a person.
2. Your life and your career are not defined by this.
3. But do be disappointed. Be frustrated.
4. Seek to understand what happened; to know if you could develop your management and leadership. Do seek to learn from this experience.

But please, please don’t drop that soul-crushing curtain of “it’s not personal.” because it is.

Losing an employee or a business deal is the same as losing a friend or a relationship you’ve invested. Being aloof doesn’t make you professional, in-fact being sensitive helps you relate better to employee and customer needs.

Yes, if you take work personally, you will get hurt along the way. You will be disappointed, be let down, and sometimes wonder if it is worth it.

But just like that other great mystery of life — being in love — what really is the alternative? To not love at all, to never be heartbroken? Surely not.

To not take it personally so as never to be disappointed? Surely not.

For your own sake, for the people who work with you, and for the sake of humanity, this is your life. Take it — all of it — personally.

SEE: How to Position Your Brand in the Mind of Your Audience.