PRACTICE 4
HAVE YOU EVER FOUND THAT SUCCESS IN ONE AREA OF YOUR LIFE COMES AT THE EXPENSE OF ANOTHER AREA?
If so, you may want to consider
PRACTICE 4: PLAY YOUR ROLES WELL.
When you don’t play your roles well, your room may feel like Sartre’s hell because:
• You constantly feel out of balance and guilty.
• You may neglect an important role for so long that you cause severe relationship damage.
• Life is ultimately unrewarding.
Years ago a good friend of mine, Rachel, went through a divorce. Her ex-husband left her with a mountain of debt that was mostly owed to people she knew in her community. This single mother of two teenage girls had an immediate need to become the family’s sole provider. Her father recommended that she consider declaring bankruptcy, but she felt strongly about honoring the commitments that had been made to people she respected. To make ends meet, she took on significantly more hours at her job and gave up whatever free time she had enjoyed before. She was out the door every morning by seven, having made sure her daughters were off to school, and rarely returned home before seven in the evening. After a quick dinner and check-in with her children, she would continue to work late into the night. Her daughters also worked minimum-wage jobs at a local fast-food restaurant. After a couple of years at this pace, along with being exhausted, she was growing distraught about missing important events in her daughters’ lives.
One Sunday night while preparing for another marathon workweek, Rachel realized something had to give. She announced to her daughters that she would cut back on a few work projects, recalibrate the rate at which she felt obligated to pay back debts, and commit to being home for dinner by five-thirty each night. One of her daughters replied, “It doesn’t matter when you come home, Mom. It seems like even when you’re here, you’re not really here.”
• • •
Like my friend, I can’t think of anyone who isn’t challenged by trying to balance all the critical roles they play in life; but I know many people who make a deliberate choice to identify their most important roles and pay attention to the contributions they want to make in each of them. As a result, they are rewarded with a greater sense of balance, purpose and, most important, they build richer relationships.
When I say “play” your roles, I don’t mean you perform them or fake it, using a written script. Playing a role well means expressing your most authentic and deepest value system through what you do and say. Even when actors are given a fictional part to play, it’s only when they bring an authentic part of themselves to the role that they can touch a truth within the human condition. This sentiment was echoed when I had the chance to see one of my favorite plays recently, noting that a critic had given the actress a five-star review. It read, “She authentically embodied the most important qualities of her character.”
Even though the majority of us aren’t professional thespians, the metaphor of the actor and the stage can still be useful when we evaluate how to play our roles well. William Shakespeare famously wrote, “All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players; / They have their exits and their entrances, / And one man in his time plays many parts . . .”
Reflect on the many roles you play in your life: leader, neighbor, team member, child, parent, friend, coach, sibling, and so on. Imagine if we actually had the opportunity to read a review of our performance in the important roles we play. How many stars would we get? Consider the four people below and how they rate in their various roles.
Maria throws herself into the role of leader with enthusiasm. She’s driven to win, and it shows in her dissatisfaction with the status quo. But in her hard-charging approach to achieve results, she often misses the subtle clues from team members who need her to slow down and invest in them.
Allison commits to bring an appetizer to a friend’s dinner party. Everyone but Allison arrives on time. Because this is a pattern with Allison, her friend has already prepared a backup appetizer. While Allison is kind and likable, she has a reputation of being unreliable.
Because of immediate deadlines, it would have been easy for Sarah to shut down her business partner who wanted to develop an app in addition to their core product. But instead, Sarah sat down and took time to hear her out. To her surprise, the partner had a connection to a creative, inexpensive team outside of the country who ended up helping them solve a core-product issue while developing the app. Sarah excelled in her role, putting aside her own biases to consider another point of view.
William is the father to three young boys, who treasure their time with him. Driven to compete with the success of a co-worker, William accepts a promotion he doesn’t really want and that requires longer hours and significant travel. His choice hits home when William is alone in a hotel room, unable to reach his son on his birthday.
While critical reviews of our roles on a regular basis would be helpful, too often it’s only at life’s most meaningful milestones (birthdays, funerals, graduations, and so on) that we sit back and take stock. Bronnie Ware experienced this reflection in a unique way as an Australian hospice nurse. She spent several years caring for patients during the last weeks of their lives. She had numerous conversations with them as they took a final look at the various roles they had played. Ware detailed these experiences in her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, noticing that people in the last stages of life expressed similar patterns of regret. She lists the top five deathbed regrets as:
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
While waiting for an interview with someone like Bronnie is one way to take stock of our roles, the benefit of doing it much sooner allows us to actually shape the outcome. To get better at playing your roles well, you need to first identify them, then determine the real contribution you want to make in each one.
When you consider the roles you currently play at work and home, pay attention to how many you take on. If you’ve ever watched a one-woman or one-man show, it’s a treat to see a single, talented actor seamlessly perform the various parts. But what the actor can’t do, no matter how gifted, is play all of them well at the same time. Unfortunately, we wildly overestimate our ability to effectively focus on several things at once. The only thing that comes from working on too many roles at the same time is mediocrity. For instance, I can work on a critical email in my role as project leader while I pretend to listen to an employee on the phone as he or she pours out his or her heart to me, but who am I kidding? When I try to multitask, neither role gets my full attention or authenticity. And the others involved always sense it.
Some of my most important roles are father, son, grandfather, leader, spouse, community volunteer, and business coach. Some examples of other professional roles might include team leader, writer, accountant, assistant, teacher, software engineer, marketing manager, attorney, counselor, and so on. Personal roles might be sister, soccer coach, spouse or life partner, hospice volunteer, artist, swimmer, friend, or world traveler. You get to choose which roles need the most attention at any given time. Remember, it’s not about spending equal time in each role (most people will spend more hours at work each week than they will on a hobby or an important relationship), but it is about regularly keeping your most important roles top of mind and ensuring you have an overall balance in the long run. Realize that some roles stay with you for a lifetime (parent, partner, friend), and others may change over time (jobs, community volunteer positions, and so on). Quite often our long-term roles turn out to be where we experience the most character and relationship growth.
Choosing meaningful roles isn’t something someone does for you; it’s something you do based on your value system. Sometimes, especially around career choices, we end up in roles someone else has prioritized for us.
A good friend of mine grew up watching her dad, Paul, run a successful family-owned bakery. The bakery business is a time-intensive and physically demanding job. Paul woke up every morning at four, six days a week, to drive to work and heft twenty-five-pound bags of flour around to measure the ingredients and knead the dough before the bakery opened at seven. After the morning rush, he would clean the ovens and kitchen and prepare for lunchtime customers. Throughout the day, he would make trips back and forth between the hot ovens and the freezers, preparing ingredients and freezing dough, only to completely clean the kitchen from top to bottom one more time (including all the various bowls, mixers, and utensils), just to start the process over again the next morning. Most of the work was done in isolation—with only one or two employees assisting him or helping customers at the front counter. As a married man with two small children, Paul felt an immediate need to provide for his family and be there to watch over his aging father who had worked hard at keeping the business alive. While it was important to contribute to his role as husband and son, Paul wasn’t happy working in the bakery.
Not only was the work grueling and tedious, but the long hours meant he was spending little time with his family (and when he was, he was too exhausted to do much). Paul was also an extrovert who loved being around people. The isolation of the bakery job didn’t allow him to express his innate social gifts. As the years dragged on, Paul became more tired and depressed. Being a good husband, father, and son were part of the values that meant the most to him, but he realized he’d lost the proper balance. The bakery had become all-consuming, leaving little time and energy for anything else. He made a radical change in midlife: He sold the bakery and took a job as a paper salesman. On the surface, this switch seemed like an odd career choice, but Paul was suddenly much happier than he’d been in years. He worked regular hours, left the physically demanding aspects of his previous job behind, and started using his friendly, extroverted people skills to create a successful new professional path. Most important, he was more fulfilled at work, and therefore more available for his spouse and family. When the roles we play slip out of congruence with who we are, then it’s worth making a change. Remember the number-one regret from those at the end of their lives: I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
On one end of the continuum is focusing on too many roles at once. On the other end is becoming too myopic—excelling in one role at the expense of others. For instance, a colleague of mine, Ruben, shared his own struggle with this practice as a young executive. Having accepted a new role, the nearly crushing weight of the sudden responsibilities had overtaken his life. He spent his days, as he put it, “Putting out fires and slaying dragons.” Working late one day, an appointment reminder interrupted Ruben. He looked at his calendar and saw that he was scheduled to meet his wife and children for a family picture. He knew his wife had signed up for a package that allowed for several group sittings, so he decided to cancel this one. He called his wife, despite the fact it was short notice, and explained that he had too much to do at the office and that she needed to reschedule the appointment. She replied that she understood and would take care of it. With his calendar now cleared, Ruben went back to work, grateful for the time he had managed to reclaim.
A couple of months later, on Christmas Day, he sat with his family and opened gifts. Ruben was handed a present with his name on it, and upon unwrapping it, found a beautifully framed family portrait. But there was something missing from the picture—Ruben! His wife, with only good intentions, had decided to keep the appointment after all. As he stared at the picture, noting his absence, he realized his focus on his work role was starting to come at the expense of his roles as husband and father. The picture, minus him, was a not-so-gentle reminder that his priorities were off. “I had forgotten what mattered most,” he shared with me in retrospect. “Work would wait. Being part of my family’s life would not. I never wanted to be missing from a family picture again.”
Ruben shared that he’d also failed to realize the impact of canceling the appointment just thirty minutes before the scheduled sitting. With three daughters under six, his wife had spent the preceding hours getting the girls bathed, doing their hair, dressing them in newly purchased clothes, then trying to keep them in their pristine state. My friend had failed to take a step back, to consider the larger picture, and to account for how a singular focus on one role was about to impact several others. The family picture still hangs in his office as a reminder.
It might be tempting to believe that work is always cast as the bad guy when it comes to prioritizing our roles. I firmly believe and have seen that you can be contributing, engaged, and highly productive in your career, as well as exceptional in your personal roles (five-star reviews in both). It’s a matter of prioritization, and it may mean giving up a hobby, the night out with some colleagues, and so forth. In the end, you have to sacrifice somewhere, but being mindful of balance is key.
Once you’ve identified your most meaningful roles, you’re able to determine how and when you want to show up in those roles. When it comes to prioritization and focus, consider how an air-traffic controller lands an airplane. At any given moment, there may be dozens of aircraft in motion—taxiing, taking off, or landing. Each one is very important and the controller must be aware of all the planes on the radar, yet it would be a mistake (and impossible) to focus on all of them equally. At the critical moment of landing, only one plane warrants the controller’s full talents, attention, and expertise. To serve all the planes and their passengers with excellence, the controller must focus on and land just one airplane at a time. So it is with our most important roles: We should never lose sight of them on our radar, but we should also be prepared to give our full attention to the one that needs it most at any particular time.
Because we have any number of tasks to perform each day, it might be easier to start thinking of roles in terms of to-do lists. But that is a mistake. Roles go much deeper. Our roles are never just about what we do but are ways through which we express our values and who we are at our core. Roles require much more than to-dos. They require “to-bes” as well. A to-do is a task that usually has a beginning and an end. A to-be is an ongoing value or a character quality we’re striving to become or at which to get better. Consider our imaginary critic writing a review as we go about performing our roles. How would that critic describe who we are—our character qualities? Are we self-serving or selfless? ambitious or amiable? egotistical or egalitarian (or two other opposing words that start with the same letter)? If an outside observer can’t connect our actions to our values, we’re doing something wrong. In “Practice 7: Think We, Not Me,” I share the power of taking time to consider intent, both ours and others’. We can do something similar when we prepare to work within our various roles by drafting what is called a contribution statement. Doing so helps us stay grounded in our values and works to ensure that we are doing the things that matter most: building and nurturing our most important and meaningful relationships.
A contribution statement about how we want to be in each role lays the foundation for what we call a “personal mission statement.” It expresses our purpose and values, and becomes the standard by which we measure everything else in our lives. Consider some of the following role contribution statements and how they relate to each person’s fundamental values.
Parent: I will create a place of unconditional love, safety, and empowerment so my children can express their potential and become responsible adults.
Engineer: I will find new ways to provide safe drinking water for everyone in my community and help make policies that dramatically improve how we recycle so that our planet will thrive.
Manager: I will be the leader who develops our company’s next generation of leaders.
Architect: I will create an artistic legacy in my city.
Friend: I will listen patiently without judgment and look for ways to support, forgive, and help.
Musician: I will ensure that the arts remain central to the lives of people in our community.
Teacher: I will strive to identify and unleash the passion for reading and learning in my students.
Project Manager: I will be the one people come to when they want it done right.
Adult Child: I will be patient, kind, and considerate when caring for my aging parents and dedicate time to visit them each week.
Business Coach: I will view everyone I coach as capable, resourceful, and whole—not someone I need to fix—so that they begin to experience their own potential.
Self: I will consistently set and keep commitments to my physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being.
Notice that I added self as a role. As we continue to explore Sartre’s notion as to how we approach our relationships being the key to hell or happiness, we should be mindful of ourselves as well. The reason airline safety procedures direct you to put on your oxygen mask first in an emergency is not because you’re more important than the people around you, but that you can’t help anyone else if you don’t take care of yourself first. Without taking care of yourself, you won’t be able to show up for anyone else. Your wholeness will not be there. Take time to deepen your knowledge of yourself—your dreams, desired contributions, character qualities. Also keep in mind the health of your body, mind, social/emotional condition, and spiritual life.
No one can tell you how to live your roles or which contributions you should make. They will be unique to you. After a late-night flight to Chicago for an early morning client meeting, I was a feeling a little foggy when the meeting began. We met in an ornate boardroom, complete with a large mahogany table and red leather chairs. There was an air of formality about the room. As our clients filed in and we introduced ourselves, I noticed one gentleman—a gray-haired executive in his early fifties—carrying a bright orange notebook. Now, I don’t mean to suggest this notebook had a subtle hue that represented the cusp of some new fashion sensibility, but rather the kind of bold, bright, triumphant orange perfectly suited to a safety vest. Given the old-world stylings of the room and buttoned-down nature of the meeting, the notebook might as well have been a flashing neon sign.
As we took our places around the table, my eyes kept drifting to the notebook’s cover; it had to signify something, or was I reading too much into it because of being a little jet-lagged? I mean, who was I to judge if the man liked radiant orange? I then watched as this distinguished gentleman removed his cellphone and placed it dutifully next to the notebook—a phone wrapped in an equally brilliant orange protector.
After the meeting concluded, I approached the man and thanked him for hosting us. And because I couldn’t help myself, I motioned toward his notebook and phone. “That’s kind of a unique color,” I prompted. The man smiled in return.
“Yes, it is.”
“Does it have some meaning, if you don’t mind my asking?”
The man nodded. “As a matter of fact, it does. It reminds me that no matter what I’m doing at the office, no matter how rough things get at work, I have another role that’s even more important.”
The answer from this seasoned executive surprised me. He smiled at my reaction, something he was probably practiced at, then continued: “Ever since my daughter was a child, she’s loved this color. I can’t really explain it, but she’s attracted to anything with this color orange in it. She loves it so much that my wife and I allowed her to pick one section of her bedroom wall and paint it construction-sign orange. We did it over a weekend together, and it’s one of my favorite memories. So I found a notebook and cellphone cover in the same orange and now carry them everywhere I go. And no matter how overwhelmed I may become with numerous problems at work, I always see these and they remind me of my family. It’s just a simple thing, right? But it helps me to never lose sight of what matters most in my life.”
I was impressed. This executive had found a unique way of reminding himself of his important role as father. And I’m assuming from this simple yet meaningful symbol, he also focuses on balancing all of his important roles, both personal and professional, to ensure he plays them well. Although we were brought in to help the organization solve a problem of theirs, I couldn’t help but think I may have gotten the better half of the deal. It reminded me of my friend Rachel and her struggle to balance the roles she was playing in her life.
• • •
One Sunday night while preparing for another marathon work week, Rachel realized something had to give. She announced to her daughters that she would cut back on a few work projects, recalibrate the rate at which she felt obligated to pay back debts, and commit to being home for dinner by five-thirty each night. One of her daughters replied, “It doesn’t matter when you come home, Mom. It seems like even when you’re here, you’re not really here.”
The reality of her daughter’s comment invited Rachel to step back and examine the other important roles she needed to play. The role of mother had taken a hit. As a result, she took time to evaluate her approach. Like the analogy of the air-traffic controller, Rachel realized she was in a critical moment for prioritizing one role (that of being a mother) while not losing sight of the rest. After some soul searching, she had a brilliant idea. She convinced the girls to quit their fast-food jobs and work for her part-time in an administrative capacity. Since her employer regularly hired hosts and registrants to work the various events she led, she asked if her girls could take those responsibilities on. Over time, many of the long days apart became time working together, and the family bonded and grew in remarkable ways. Because my friend had focused on her role as a provider when it was necessary, she managed to weather a serious financial storm. Additionally, she took the time to step back and assess the other roles in her life. When the moment was right, she made a meaningful change and found balance through strengthening her relationship with her daughters.