Men and Women Fighting for Change
In this blog post ThirdPath celebrates the men and women who participated in our 2017 Pioneering Leaders Summit.
Together, our pioneering leaders have begun to put the pieces together for a world that supports success at work and success in our lives outside of work – it’s also a world that will profoundly improve the lives of fathers.
Healthy family systems need time to recharge…
Families need money, families need care, and families need time to recharge. With over 15 years of working with individuals, leaders and families, ThirdPath has also learned that organizations gain when men and women learn how to set thoughtful limits at work so they have time and energy for their lives outside of work.
The male and female leaders at our Summit took many steps over the course of their careers to achieve this. All of them also created a “team at home” to better manage both domains.
Increased demands on families, means less time to recharge…
This year’s Summit focused specifically on the “new family” stage – a time when many families feel stretched thin – and many also fall into gendered patterns at work and at home.
Instead, the fathers at our Summit shared stories of rearranging their work schedules to pick up children from daycare. Or they became the primary parent designing work around family. Or they broke new ground by having both parents work reduced schedules to share in the care of their children.
Add to this one job – or both jobs – requiring more than full time work, and it can lead to chronic overwork and gendered patterns at work and home…
Listen to our May Thursdays with ThirdPath webinar (above) for a quick recap of the Summit and to learn how chronic overwork is bad for organizations and bad for families. Or click here to learn how overwork is contributing to a widening gender gap. Unfortunately, the gendered patterns around chronic overwork are no surprise to ThirdPath. When parents balance work and family, the aren’t just balancing work and caregiving, they are also looking for ways to decrease their family’s financial risk. And when organizations are more likely to reward employees who overwork, it should be no surprise that this plays out in a very gendered way.
That’s why men and women need to work together to redesign work, family, and to push back at norms around overwork.
Check our our “Redesigning Leadership” page to learn more. Or are you ready to take the next step towards creating a more integrated approach to work and life? Join our next Overwhelm Mitigation Group – learn how to push back at overwhelm, get more efficient at work, and have more time (and energy!) for life.