Men, Women, and Balance

When Arianna Huffington introduced Marcus Buckingham as a new blogger she wrote that she was particularly interested in how women achieve balance. I am too. Much of the work I do is with men: In fact, 98% of the executives I assess (all executives I assess are for senior management roles) are men. The one study I performed on successful CEOs of private equity funded ventures found that their wives played pivotal roles in their success as executives and in their sense of balance.

The choice of wives was no accident: No developmental psychologist could view it as such. The CEOs generally came from intact, upwardly mobile families with each parent playing a distinct role. The fathers were ambitious and hard working, and while they supported the family, the sons characterized them as distant. The mothers stayed at home to raise children and were described as the emotional center of the family. As the first born or first male child, the CEOs identified closely with their parents' values while seeking to actualize their fathers' aspirations in terms of status and wealth. This is an important source of the son's motivation to achieve. I believe that the CEOs' needs for achievement and integrity had their roots in their nuclear families and the surrounding cultural milieu.

The importance of the early nuclear family was manifest in the kinds of families that they created as adults. All described themselves as having successful marriages, with family life vital to their happiness and emotional equilibrium. They did not, however, describe themselves as having important household and child-related responsibilities. These were handled by their wives, whom they characterized as capable and independent. The CEOs married well-educated, intelligent women who devoted themselves to their families. To the extent the wife sacrificed her career ambitions in favor of her children and husband, we hypothesize that this becomes a powerful source that allows the CEO to achieve his own career ambitions.

The CEOs thus appeared emotionally nourished by the connection to a loving wife and family, while being free to devote themselves to work and career. Such a family life is important for explaining, in part, the career successes they have enjoyed. Competent but nurturing wives, who have primary responsibility for children and the household, become a means for the CEOs to recreate the psychological and emotional circumstances of their own upbringing. From this perspective, the CEOs use their wives to play a role similar to the one their mothers played, leaving them psychologically free to pursue career goals, much as their fathers had done. Such sharp distinctions between roles enable ambitious executives to focus on their careers while still meeting their basic developmental needs.

It should be noted that in the sample there is only one female CEO who was married to a successful executive but she had no children, a fact that liberated her time to devote to her career. Given our findings, though, related to the men's needs for nurturing wives, one would need to embark on a separate study investigating female CEOs to determine what familial constellation of personal lifestyles might contribute to the success of the CEO. Women might have very different dynamics for how to structure their lives.

Private equity investors would do well to consider whether a potential CEO of one of their portfolio companies has a private life arranged to support his career ambitions rather than having it be a distraction or a source of guilt or anxiety. We find that more experienced investors have learned to give the circumstances of a CEO's family life appropriate consideration when making hiring and funding decisions.

But what about women? How can their lives be arranged to avoid the guilt created by striving to be engaged parents, achieve career success, and support their husbands? Society has a long way to evolve before such balance can be achieved.

 

Comments

[pmearshe]

So true, so true. If we all had personal assistants 24 hours a day to attend to our home and family needs, we could all do great things professionally. But alas, that is not the case.

[Lisa Earle McLeod - Huffpost Blogger]

I've been searching for 20 years to find a woman who is at the top of her field (A CEO, best-selling author, surgeon type) who has children and is still married to husband number one.

I have yet to find that role model woman, so I've decided it's just going to have to be me.

Heavy sigh, why is it that when a woman diverts her attention to her work, it sucks energy out of the family,

It's almost like there's an energy spot in the home that can only be filled by the mom, and when she's not there to do it, the whole thing falls apart.

[Suzanne Venker]

For a fresh look at this subject, Google "No Bull Mom."