The Identity Myth: ‘You should be someone other than the person you want to be, or fitting in with others’ expectations and desires will bring you happiness’

• The Identity Myth relates to all aspects of our existence and implies that we are unduly influenced by others’ expectations and demands and somehow out of touch with the myriad of choices and options available to us.  Those influences come from personal, social and cultural expectations and are often subtle, resulting in us believing we don’t have any choice at all. 

• In relation to work-life integration, it implies that these influences are so strong that we allow fashion, consensus, culture and social expectations to choose for us.  We might thus believe that work as we experience it now – the linear career of 9 – 5 and beyond, five days a week in a physical location is the only option.  It also implies that the balancing act inherent in work-life balance holds its own solution.  For instance, one has to focus on one or the other and life shifters, down shifters, and sea-changers choose one side and those committed to career and corporate success choose the other.

• Work can be enormously powerful in forming an individual’s identity but when it takes up too great a proportion of one’s time and energy at the expense of other aspects of one’s life, ill-health, imbalance and ultimately burnout result.  The costs to both the individual and an employing organisation are enormous.  It results in individuals leaving organisations and seeking more family-friendly organisations or staying and often suffering the ill effects of imbalance. 

• The International Labour Organisation study of Mental Health in the Workplace in Germany, Poland, Finland, UK and US (2000) indicated that as many as 1/10 staff suffer from burnout, anxiety and depression.  3 – 4% of GNP is spent on mental health problems in the European Union.  In the US, the national spend associated with depression is US$30 – 44 billion each year.

• Amanda Sinclair in the Australian Financial Review said that there are two sides to stress in the workplace.  The first is the Toxic Workplace and by this she included a culture which exacerbates and even encourages burnout and secondly ‘The devil within us who allows ourselves to be defined by what we do, how much we earn and the hours we put in….’.

• The costs for employers are reduced profits, low productivity, high rates of staff turnover and increased costs of recruiting and retaining replacement staff.  With increasing skills shortages in the developed world, organisations will have to become attractive to employees and the most attractive ones will be those who take work-life integration seriously.  This is not a choice – it is a business imperative and individuals will increasingly be able to choose a more integrated life.  In the meantime, it is valuable to make changes now so that your behaviours do not become so ingrained that it is more difficult to change in the future. 

For many people, raising the issue of work-life integration in their organisation will be problematic.  Dave Ulrich, a management consultant and prolific author of leadership previously worked for General Electric and raised the issue of Work-Life balance with the senior executives.  Jack Welch, the CEO at the time was not present at those discussions but later heard that work-life balance was being discussed.  Upon learning that it was Dave Ulrich, he fired him on the spot, without discussion or consultation – merely for raising the issue of work-life balance as a topic worthy of management consideration.

This does not appear to be an isolated case.  Jeffrey Garten, the Dean of Yale University School of Management in 2001 interviewed 40 CEOs of the world’s largest companies including AOL, Time Warner, General Electric and Toyota.  He concluded that none had grasped what he considered their real role despite their global control.  In particular, many considered their mission solely as the maximisation of profits.  Rupert Murdoch told Garten  ‘It is dishonest to pretend otherwise’. Thus many organisations are slow to understand the business case for greater Work Life Integration.  As an individual it is hard to change organisations, even when we hold management positions.  Thus change must begin with questioning your own values and expectations and clarifying what is important to you. To not do so can result in the ill effects of imbalance and living a second hand life which, upon reflection, was not as fulfilled or as broad as one might have liked. 

The phrase ‘’No-one on their death bed ever wished that they had spent more time in the office’ is a potent phrase that reminds us to question how we spend our most precious currency – our life.