This
morning I attended the Business Women's Leadership Group hosted by the
Boulder Chamber. The theme(fitting for Valentine's Day) was "Love
Yourself & Your Heart," and featured a panel of speakers offering
advice about heart health, stress management, work-life balance, sleep
and nutrition. People asked for advice about everything from "How can I
better prepare for an appointment with my cardiologist or GP to
maximize our time together," to "Why am I awake for an hour in the
middle of every night," and "How can I tell whether I'm just cranky
today or if I'm suffering from actual anxiety?" The speakers each had a
unique perspective with helpful tips about what it takes to feel
balanced and be healthy, but none of the advice they offered was
newsworthy or revolutionary. Sleep more, eat whole foods as much as you
can, and stay active(even a minute of walking around your house to
break up bouts of sitting qualifies as "activity!") All good reminders! Overall, I very
much enjoy BWLG events, and the turnout this morning was no exception.
However,
my experience of the whole conversation was shaded by an experience I
had yesterday, which I feel is an indication of why it's easy to bring a
group of 60 women together to talk about why we need more sleep,
healthy activity, and positive nutrition. I met with a client who
breezed into the conference room a few minutes late and looking very
flustered. As she settled down I offered to take a minute if she needed
some time to get centered, and she burst into tears. She had come from
a meeting with her director(also a female leader in her company), who
had just told her that she was not living up to her salaried position,
because she wasn't responding to emails after dinner, and hadn't put in
enough time on the weekends lately. This woman has a fierce work ethic
and more integrity than most I've had the privilege to collaborate with.
Hearing about someone being disappointed that she had been spending time
in the evenings with her husband and two small children instead of
responding to after hours work requests? My heart broke for her!
To
me, a salary means that I will put in as many hours as it takes to get
the job done. During conference weeks, I can easily put in back-to-back
17-hour days that are exhausting. But there are weeks during the
summer or in the middle of ski season when I don't have deadlines, and
get to take a half-day to go for a hike or spend a random Wednesday on
the slopes with my dad. Unfortunately, this is not the first time that I
have encountered a manager who has the expectation of "salaried"
employees to be accessible 24/7, and I think this is a sad factor contributing to our current society.
