Who are likely to be more successful: Those who focus on their work or those who focus equally on work / home/hobby?

Jan 24, 05

An interesting study by Ellen Galinsky of Families and Work Institute called ?Leaders in a Global Economy? on how men and women in 10 multinationals have dealt with primarily the following two questions:

  • ?In the past year, how often have you put your job before your personal or family life??
  • ?In the past year, how often have you put your personal or family life before your job??
  • The findings throws up some very interesting aspects of what is becoming a priority for people at work and who ultimately are more successful.

    While 61% of the respondents were what one would call ?work-centric?, nearly 32 % put the same priority on their lives on and off the job (dual-centric). Some of these could also be tri-centric (work, home and a third area- a hobby / community work)

    What difference does it make to be dual-centric?

  • People who put the same priority on work and their personal/family life?who are dual- centric?have the highest ratings for feeling successful at work.
  • Those who fall into the extremes; that is, put a higher priority on either work or family feel the least successful at work.
  • While Dual-Centric people actually work about 5 hours less per week compared to work-centric people, there is no difference to visible success indicators such as compensation, number people they supervise or their reporting level.

    In addition:

  • 26 percent of dual-centric people experience moderate or high levels of stress, compared with 42 percent of those who are not dual-centric.
  • Significantly fewer (31%) of people who are dual-centric find it difficult or very difficult to manage both demands than those who are not dual-centric (56%).
  • So what should organizations be doing?

    Be able to design appropriate ?work-life balance? policies and more critical, create an environment to encourage people to be ?dual-centric?.

    So, if multi-tasking was not enough, this age demands we be multi-focused in mutli-areas too! (with similar levels of competence!)

    Read the summary
    here

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