PODCAST | Modeling An Effective Work-Life Balance (Feat. Kristin Fry)

Resources:

https://www.vanderbloemen.com/culture-wins-book

https://www.vanderbloemen.com/culture-tool

Christa Neidig:
Welcome to the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Christa Neidig, Manager of Marketing and Business Development here at Vanderbloemen. In today's podcast, our COO, Jennifer Paulson, sits down with a consultant Kristin Fry. They discuss the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance. Kristin shares some of her personal tips to prioritizing a strong mental capacity while also maximizing her work efficiency. We hope you enjoy the conversation.

Jennifer Paulson:
Hi, it's Jen. Nice to be here with you today, Kristin.

Kristin Fry:
Jennifer, I love that we're actually going to have this conversation right now.

Jennifer Paulson:
I do too. We've spent some time together actually doing work-life balance, and now we get to talk about how we do work-life balance. I once worked for a boss who said that he did not believe there was any such thing as work-life balance, that it all just blends together and it's about getting comfortable with knowing that there's things that are going to be happening in your personal life that are work related and vice versa. I'm just wondering if you have any initial thoughts on that concept?

Kristin Fry:
You know what? That's a really interesting statement and I think I have to say that I disagree with that. I think that there really is a thing as work-life balance, but it's not how I think people tend to define it. I don't think that balance means you do 25% of this thing and 25% of this thing and 25% of this thing and everything is all split up very equally. And there you go, balance. Nothing in life is that cookie cutter, give me a break.
But I think, I don't know, gosh. I just think that balance is so much more about the energy and the mental capacity that someone has and your emotional capacity, and that's going to look different for everybody. I know that looks different for me, just the way that I can invest in certain areas of my life, it's going to be different than probably how you can invest in certain areas of your life. And so balance for you will look different than balance for me. But there is still such a thing as keeping those areas of our life separate. It doesn't all blend into each other. I mean, I'm curious what you think?

Jennifer Paulson:
Yeah, well I was going to say, something that you just said really sparked an idea in me, which is that you may be at work, but you might be thinking about non-work related things. Because you were talking about mental capacity, you were talking about what's going on in your brain. I'll give you an example of this. I used to work for a cosmetics company and I manage a bunch of managers. And we had some managers who were like, "I'm just working all the time. I'm just nonstop." And if you look at their punching in and punching out, they're working 40 hours. The difference is that they're thinking about it all the time. They go home and they're thinking about it, they're driving and they're thinking about it, they're with their friends on the weekend and they're thinking about it. I think that goes to what you're saying about the mental side of this is that part of what you have to be doing is you have to be, I guess strengthening your mental capacity and being able to mentally set aside space to relax, decompress, and separate from your work life.

Kristin Fry:
Ooh, that's such a good point. You are 100% right. I am a firm believer that balance is not about hours spent, but it is about your mental and emotional capacity, the end.
I'm curious what this looks like for you, but even as we're having this conversation, it makes me think, well, okay, we'll take fitness, we'll start there. For me, fitness and being active is a very huge part of my life. And the reason, because yes, there's the physical benefits, anyone who's an athlete understand that. But that's honestly what it's not about for me. It's about that is my time for one or two hours every day that my mind is turned off from what's broken in my house, from what's happening in my job, from the oil change that I have to do on my car and the plants that need to be watered. But it's a time for all those things to mentally go away and for me to be just mentally engaged in being physical. Because you know, when you are engaged in physical activity, you actually cannot think about anything else. I don't know why our brains work like that. So for me, if I don't have that, then I'm out of balance, because I'm not giving my brain a chance to turn off ever. And that, to me, creates more imbalance than anything.

Jennifer Paulson:
Oh, I have so many things to say to that. First I'd like to tell our audience that you are an expert at CrossFit. And obviously when a person is doing CrossFit, they can't think about anything else because CrossFit is so darn difficult. So that makes perfect sense.

Kristin Fry:
That's very true. That is valid.

Jennifer Paulson:
But I will also say that I also exercise quite frequently and I find that when I don't, I'm less productive at work. I'm grouchier, I look for the worst in situations. I think that the physical fitness part of it is more important than a lot of people know. And I will even say that people with families, if you're taking care of kids, if you're taking care of parents, that does still need to be a priority. And I have quite a few friends who put that to the side and say that's not the priority. But I guarantee you that if you were to try it and if you were to schedule that in, that physical fitness, yes it's a bit of an investment, but it repays so many more dividends. It's the same thing as eating healthy. You and I are, we're both on the same track with that too. But the days when you eat healthy, you're more productive, you're more energetic, you are able to function at a higher level because you're taking care of your physical body with eating the high quality food that your body needs.
My point on that basically is just to say that in terms of work-life balance, you need to be investing in those things that keep you healthy because that is going to help you be more productive, both in your personal life and in your work life.

Kristin Fry:
Well, you bring up a really good point. I actually read this article, I actually read a couple articles a few weeks ago and some studies done on the amount of hours that people spend working and across the board, regardless of the platform that was reporting the data, it all said the exact same thing. It all said some version of people who work 55 hours a week or more are not more productive and not better employees than people who work... it was like 55 hours a week was that tipping point. They are not more productive at work. At some point their productivity and their effectiveness and the way they can think about their job actually begins to decline when they cross over that hour threshold.
Again, it proves our point that spending more hours working is actually not helpful. It's unhelpful. And there is a link to depression and anxiety with workaholics and people who have crossed that 55 hour a week threshold. I mean, the data, anyone listening can google this and you will see articles that will come up on this information. So honestly, it just speaks to the fact that, for us to be balanced, we have to know how to engage our brain in appropriate seasons and appropriate ways and to disengage our thinking in appropriate ways during all the right seasons or we are setting ourselves up for failure.

Jennifer Paulson:
You know what's fascinating about that, Kristin, is basically that those studies, from what I'm hearing from yours, seem to be saying that after that point where you're working too much, you're harming both your work life and your personal life. Right?

Kristin Fry:
Right.

Jennifer Paulson:
You're having your worst relationships, worse friendships, that type of thing, but also your productivity is decreasing. And I also think your brain is getting, this is probably not the right word, but your brain's getting fried. Because if you're just thinking about one thing over and over again... Something that's really important to me is always carving out time each day for lunch, which I know seems like a very silly thing to say, but I definitely find the days when I'm like, "I've got so much to do, I'm going to work through lunch." Well, I become way less productive in the afternoon because my body needs that time to rest and recharge.
It's like sleeping at night. It's the same thing during the day, after you've been working four or five hours, leave, leave the premises. I go get my salad every day or go into the break room. But you separate, you give your brain that break. So it's the physical break, but it's also the brain break telling your mind, "You do not have to think about work for this period of time." And then that allows your mind, which is a fabulous organ, to reorganize the important things and to like... it's like when you sleep and your brain processes things that happen during the day, giving your brain a break allows your brain to reorient and then be able to be more productive when you start work again after your break.

Kristin Fry:
Right. Have you ever run into those people who they work a lot and there's a phrase that they say all the time and it's always, "Gosh, I'm so exhausted. I'm so exhausted." I have a few friends like that in my life and for five years they are "so exhausted." It's because they have not discovered the art of mentally turning their brain off. They're not exhausted from physically being in an office for seven or eight hours. That's not going to exhaust anybody, but it's how you are able to turn your brain on and off. And so it's like we all have to have these boundaries and parameters in our life where it's... I mean, I feel like you and I were talking about this recently, whether it's turning your phone off at certain times or not checking your email on the weekends or whatever that looks like for you. Again, busy seasons, ebb and flow, so of course you cannot always have the luxury to do that. And I know that from the church world, which is a little bit different, which is probably a lot of our audience.

Christa Neidig:
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Jennifer Paulson:
Let's come back to the church versus corporate. I did want to say something that I've done in the past that's worked. I used to have a corporate job that was very, very stressful. And one thing I did is that once a month I took one day, a weekend day, and I turned my phone off. So I got up in the morning, I turned my phone off, I told my family and I did not have my phone on the whole day. So I did not check my email, I did not check my phone. It was basically like a fast from that once a month for one day. And it is just amazing the amount of difference that made. And I will also say, being in nature, you and I both being outside, being in nature is also something that can be radically recharging when a person is feeling very overwhelmed.

Kristin Fry:
Oh, I agree.

Jennifer Paulson:
But back to your point, Kristin, with the corporate versus church, I was talking about how in some corporate situations you can set clear boundaries. You can say, "I'm going to work 100% from 8:00 in the morning till 5:00 PM, I'm available. I'm the hardest worker. After that point, please don't contact me. Or if you contact me, I'll reply to you the next day." That's easier to say, not saying super easy, but that's easier to say in some positions than others. You've been in the church world and you're a consultant and you interact with senior pastors on a daily basis. What do you see as either solutions or problems that pastors have? Because basically part of their job as being available all the time.

Kristin Fry:
Right. Gosh, this could be a really interesting whole other podcast conversation. But I think in some ways... I'm dealing with a few clients where number one, there is the element where they just don't have boundaries, period. So there is that. And so I get the texts at eight or nine o'clock at night or Saturday mornings, and that's just because they genuinely don't have work-life balance. Because there's this fear of if I am not on 24/7 that the world will stop spinning and my church will fall apart. But that's actually not true. That is a dynamic of it as well.
But then there's another piece of it too where we're working with some staff members, some senior staff members who are working so hard and working these 60 hours and the 65 hours a week and there's always on. And it's because they're understaffed. That's a whole other issue. They are begging for work-life balance. They are begging to turn their minds off. But they are short on staff, there isn't anyone to pick up the pieces. So now that's an interesting dynamic.
Or there's a breakdown in communication among their staff where everyone is working and working and working and always on and all of that. And that's just because there's this hidden quiet expectation that if you are not always working, that you're not being productive. And that is a whole other... But that's false. But part of that is because there's been some story that's been told somewhere along the staff or some expectation, spoken or unspoken, but nobody actually really knows if that's true or not because there hasn't been clear communication about it. But now everyone is just frantically working all of the time.
And I think all of those scenarios are dangerous for their own reason. But I know for me as a consultant, what boundaries look like for me, because I work with all of these people now, but I'm on the east coast. That's interesting. So I have had to not guilt trip myself, because 5:00 PM for me is only 2:00 PM for California. So there's a story in my head I can't turn off because what if someone in Arizona needs me? But again, it's not my fault that I live in Atlanta. It's not their fault they live in Phoenix or San Diego. It's just the reality. Okay, so this is still 5:00 PM for me, so I can still go to the gym.
Now, the way that looks for me is if I'm home, I'll skim through my email and see if I've missed anything. That's easy to do. It's not taking a lot of my mental energy. That's no problem to do. And if someone texts, that means it's probably important, happy to respond to a text if it's important. But again, I still have to stick to what I know is healthy for me and not worry about what's someone's perception, because I know that I'm acting in integrity with what's healthy for me.

Jennifer Paulson:
Something that we do at Vanderbloemen that I find to be quite helpful is that we have three different tiers of communication. So the expectation is that if someone texts someone else in the business, then that is a priority. And we try not to do that unless it's something really urgent. If it's not a level one emergency, then we Slack. And the Slack should be replied to maybe in a couple hours or the first thing the next day. And if it's the third level of priority, it's email. That might be something that people could try is setting up some sort of communication system at their church or their organization. And that would basically be standardized around the whole organization and the expectations would be more clear.
And another idea I was thinking about that I've-

Kristin Fry:
I love that.

Jennifer Paulson:
... this was in a church that I attended, not a church that I ever worked at, but a rotation. So knowing that this pastor is available Mondays, Tuesdays, and then if you need something on Wednesdays and Thursdays, you contact executive pastor if you need something Friday, Saturday. And I don't know that it could necessarily be boxed into a clean box like that, however, just setting some communication guidelines, setting some standards of availability and being comfortable with saying, "I will give you all that I have the time that I'm available, and please respect the personal time unless it's an emergency."

Kristin Fry:
Right. I think that's so valid and so good. And it doesn't matter what you're doing, you can do whatever you want on your personal time. Your personal time could be sitting on your couch staring at a wall, it can be going on a walk. It doesn't matter. It is still your time. Your time is your time, it doesn't matter, you get to do whatever you want to deal with that.

Jennifer Paulson:
I think that's great. I think something you and I have gotten good at over the years is learning how we recharge. And so that's another part of it, which is that if you sense yourself getting depleted, you were talking about some friends who are just always overwhelmed, they're just always busy, they're always exhausted. Well, you figure out what recharges you, and then if you notice that you're slinking down into that, then you can go easily to one of those things and say, "Okay, well I know that for me, being in nature is recharging." So if I notice that I'm completely overworked, then maybe I schedule, well, I'm going to go for a walk at this time.
For me, scheduling is really important. There's a lot of things going on in my life, I've got different commitments, but having a schedule that I can keep to gives me permission to be unavailable for some things at the times when I've decided that this is more of a priority for my physical and mental health.

Kristin Fry:
Yeah, that's really good. I like that. You actually made me think of this phrase that someone said, gosh, years ago, it wasn't necessarily in relating to balance, but it still applies. It was whenever you have an overreaction or an under reaction to a situation, that's usually a flag that there's something else going on.
That phrase just popped into my head because I think it can apply to when things get out of balance. When you're in a work, you're in the break room and someone asks you, "Hey, did you send that email?" And you turn around, "Oh my gosh, I already told you I was going to get to it in five minutes." That would be an overreaction, and that's probably a flag that, wow, that was an overreaction to a pretty just simple comment. So what else is going... Are you stressed somewhere else? Something is out of whack in your life for you to either overreact or under react. And sometimes it's like, "Hey, we've all been waiting for this meeting. It's been set up and you forgot for the 10th time." And you're like, "Oh, huh, guess I forgot." That would be an under reaction. That would be a flag. Something is happening.

Jennifer Paulson:
Kristin, I think that's really a smart point because I'll give you an example here at Vanderbloemen, we recently promoted a specific employee. And the employee was very overwhelmed and very high strung and very nervous. And then we gave that employee a vacation, that employee went home to be with their family for a while. And then that employee came back completely different, completely recharged, much more balanced, like you were saying, not over reactive or under reactive, just perfectly apportioned in each of the areas. And that's because they took that time to recharge and they had been burned out.
So I think it's also incumbent upon leaders in churches and companies to have your finger on the pulse of your employees. So yes, employees, you need to be aware of your work-life balance and what you need, but it's also the manager or the pastor's responsibility to be checking in and to be able to, first of all, model that good behavior. If you want your employees to have great work-life balance, you need to model that in a healthy fashion. But then you also need to be checking in with them frequently, maybe at your one-on-ones, just asking how their balance is and if there's anything that you can do to support them and making sure that they stay healthy. A lot of-

Kristin Fry:
Yes, so good.

Jennifer Paulson:
... Sorry, Kristin.

Kristin Fry:
No, that's good.

Jennifer Paulson:
A lot of times I think that employees feel like, "Oh, well, my boss is working 60 hours a week." So that's the expectation. And maybe the boss doesn't even know that that is what they're projecting and that they're projecting that unhealthy environment and that unhealthy work situation. So just I guess the leaders being aware, checking in, and then the employees also being able to take accountability for their own mental health that they make the right decisions for themselves.

Kristin Fry:
Right. Well, and even in the situation where the boss works 60 hours, and so the employees all think that's what they're supposed to do. Again, this can freak some people out sometimes, but it's like just have the conversation. Just ask to say, "Hey, here's one..." Just ask, "I've noticed you've been working 60 hours a week. Is that the expectation? Is that just a you thing?" Again, people get so weirded out by having those types of conversations, but they're so important and they will do more harm than good if you don't have the conversation.

Jennifer Paulson:
100%. Kristin and I are always huge in favor of communication. Something else that we do at Vanderbloemen and that works really well is we use our Google calendar. And people calendar everything. So every time Kristin has an interview, every time she's on location at a church for me, and anytime I have a conference call, that's all calendared, and then we're able to be more respectful of the other employees because we're able to type in, "Okay, is Kristin available right now? Does she have time?" Oh, she's head back to meetings. I'm probably not going to call her and ask her my question at this point. I'll probably communicate with her in this fashion.
That goes along with the communication, making sure that people are aware of where you are and what you're doing, and then that allows them to realize if they should interrupt your time or if they shouldn't. But it's a good way for people who are worried that they're not doing enough. Well, if you're calendaring everything that you're doing and people can see what you're doing, then you don't need to worry about the time that you're at home taking care of family needs because you've calendared all the rest of your time.

Kristin Fry:
I think it can swing in the opposite direction, and that sometimes people will capitalize on self care as a reason to be lazy.

Jennifer Paulson:
But that's a good point.

Kristin Fry:
That is also not work-life balance. They'll imbalance in the opposite direction.

Jennifer Paulson:
Yeah, I think that's true. There's a new buzzword, you probably will know it better than I do, quiet quitting. Quiet quitting, have you heard about that?

Kristin Fry:
Oh, yes, everybody's talking about that. Yes.

Jennifer Paulson:
Right. Where you're just underperforming, you're doing as little as possible to get by. Well, and then those are obviously management conversations that you need to be having with your employees if it's getting like that. But I think the modeling of the good behavior and the communication is super critical. The other thing that you and I wanted to talk about, Kristin, is, since we are a Christian company, the role of prayer and the role of God and the Holy Spirit in this work-life balance, self care type of conversation?

Kristin Fry:
I just think, gosh, I'll speak for myself. I mean, we're in the Christian industry, and so we're working with churches. We are Christians, and so as much as it's a priority of any pastor, it's my priority as well to make sure that I'm investing in my relationship with God. Because when I don't, and again, I am not perfect, so there are plenty of days where I am getting up and going on about my business, but those times when I'm like, no, I want to spend time in the Word. I'm a journaler, that just works for me, does not work for everybody. I want to spend time having conversation with God and listening to the Holy Spirit. When I do that, it really... Because at the end of the day, I want my life and my interactions to be a reflection of who God is in my life. That cannot happen if I don't make time to invest in a relationship with God.
So yeah, I think that's a really big deal. And it's easy because everyone is so gifted and talented, everyone in all these churches, and we have all these natural giftings, and that's wonderful. But at the end of the day, if we are not investing in our relationship with God, there is a meaningless thing that starts to happen with how we're acting. And it's not that we're doing it in vain. I don't want to go so far to say that, but I think we're short changing the power that can actually come through, and we're short changing the ways that we could really see God working in those situations. Had we just paused, looked up, looked inward, said, "God, we invite you into this space." I just think that's a game changer. And again, we're in the church business, that should go without saying. But I'm human, so I know that needs to be said to me.

Jennifer Paulson:
It's like, Jesus, take the wheel. And the more stress that your life becomes, the more that you do need to invite God in to help you with that.

Kristin Fry:
Right.

Jennifer Paulson:
I agree. I agree. Kristin, I think that's a perfect place to end it, unless you have anything else that you want to add on [inaudible 00:24:18]?

Kristin Fry:
I don't. I don't. Thanks for having this conversation.

Jennifer Paulson:
Oh, it's my pleasure. You do a good job with this, and I really appreciate you giving us some of your tips and some of your advice, Kristin, because we need to make this world a healthier place, and I think work-life balance is a good start in that direction.

Kristin Fry:
Yes, agreed. Thank you.

Christa Neidig:
Thanks for listening to the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast At Vanderbloemen, we help Christian organizations build their best teams through hiring, succession, compensation, and diversity consulting services. Visit our websites, Vanderbloemenn.com to learn more. And subscribe to our Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts to keep up with our newest episodes. Thanks for listening.