Success secrets for women - work-life balance - Building Gender Balanced Business

In the second part of our weekly series on the ‘success secrets for women’ provided by the coaching and leadership company Aspire, we focus on work-life balance. The secrets are drawn from the Aspire survey “Women Who Make it Work – The Secrets of Success for Female Leaders” in which 600 senior business leaders (mostly women) responded.

Ask! If you want to work more flexibly, you never know, you might be surprised. Say “no” to tasks if you are over-loaded. Plan your work and stay focused. Think “what is the one most important thing for me to achieve today?” – and do it!
(Manager, Banking/Financial Services).

Have access to emails and work at home so that you can leave when you need to and pick up where you left off later on. This doesn’t mean you have found a balance in your life but it will enable you to continue to deliver when you can’t be as flexible with your time. It’s all about choices – you can rarely have everything so you have to constantly reassess what it is you really want. In this way, you can remind yourself of this when you have to make trade-offs.
(Senior Manager,Banking/Financial Services).

Treat work and home commitments in the same way. Have one diary for both work and life commitments so that you can manage any clashes easily and see what your commitments are in one shot.
(Senior Manager, Accountancy/Taxation).

Have exercise classes booked at a specific time so you know you have to leave at a certain time. That will provide the deadline impetus to get things done. Have a list of domestic duties to do every day – e.g. errands to run at lunchtime, and do what you can during the day so it’s not all left to the evenings.
(Senior Manager, Public Sector/Government).

Make yourself visible by picking up and re-routing your work phone number when you are working from home and send out emails first thing in the morning on “work at home” days. Then everyone will know you’re working. You shouldn’t have to do it – but it seems to work. Advise key contacts where you’re working each day and refer to it as your home office rather than saying you are working at home.
(Senior Manager, Banking/Financial Services).

• How to communicate effectively (Secrets 1-5)

Aspire is a coaching, leadership training and consulting company that specialises in working with women leaders. It has a team of highly experienced coaches who devise and deliver innovative coaching-based programmes to global organisations as diverse as BDO Stoy Hayward, The Walt Disney Company, PA Consulting, Kroll and the Commission for Racial Equality. Dr. Samantha Collins, the founder and CEO of Aspire, has been recognised by the UK newspaper, The Independent on Sunday, as one of the top ten coaches in the UK and by HRM the Queen of England as one of the top 200 women to impact business and industry. Aspire’s purpose in focusing primarily on women’s leadership development is based on the belief that increasing the number of women leaders exponentially improves an organisation’s ability to innovate, collaborate and improve the bottom line.