← Becoming You with Suzy Welch
Becoming You with Suzy Welch
You Love Your Family. You Love Your Work. You Hate How That Feels.
00:28:43
What happens when two forces, your home life and your work life —both central to your identity—need you with equal urgency at the exact same moment? Well, chaos happens. Or guilt. Or angst. Or sheer, utter exhaustion. Or...all of the above. In this episode, Suzy gets into a heart-to-heart with Jennifer, a woman who finds herself caught in a battle between two of her deepest values: her unwavering commitment to work and her devotion to her family. It’s a struggle Suzy knows all too well—because once upon a time, she was Jennifer. Her battle scars lead her to counsel Jennifer with an answer you may not expect.
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- [00:02]
A
Hello there. I'm Susie Welch, and this is becoming youg the Podcast, where each week we endeavor to help you answer the tiny, inconsequential question, what should I do with my life? Today you're going to hear a recent conversation that I had with Jennifer. When I was first introduced to Jennifer, I asked her to take the values bridge assessment that many of my students take to understand their values and how they stack up against each other. And she was surprised by the results.
- [00:31]
B
I was really surprised that family centrism was my number one core value.
- [00:40]
A
Is that a terrible thing to say?
- [00:43]
B
I have made a lot of decisions in service of my career, and I think there have been times in my life where I thought that I was not prioritizing my family enough.
- [00:57]
A
And this gives me so much pain in my heart, to tell you the truth, because I have no doubt that family centrism has always been your top value. And you having a strong second value of work centrism proves to me that you have been fighting this battle on a daily basis for the past 20 years. You've woken up every day, and you have fought this battle to keep these conflicting values in check, and they clash. Having family as your organizing principal and having work as your organizing principal. I was you. I was that girl. And so I have a lot of thoughts about how we're gonna fix this problem, by the way. So hang in there with me. I know the story. You know the story. But what can you just. Can we start by hearing your voice, say hello, and tell us in your own words what the situation is? Yeah.
- [01:44]
B
Well, thank you for having me. I'm really honored to be a part of this and honored to be speaking to you. I have been working in museums for most of my career. It wasn't a path that I was even aware of. I didn't grow up going to museums. Museums were not part of my life. So when I found myself kind of in museums, pretty serendipitously, it just felt like such a homecoming in a way. The kind of desire that I have to kind of constantly grow and learn and be creative. It was just, you know, almost addictive. Like, you know, seductive. I guess I would say.
- [02:31]
A
I want to just say I have to interrupt you. It's rude of me, but not. What can I say? I have to say this. You have said all the magical words that I listen for when I know somebody's in their area of transcendence, which is that the intersection. I mean, when you are living your purpose, we say it's your area of transcendence. It's the intersection of your values, your aptitudes and your interests. The word homecoming. When I hear somebody say homecoming, I think, bing, bing, bing. Area of transcendence resident.
- [02:58]
B
Yeah. So there's where the conflict comes in, right? I love what I do. I have grown in my career, in my own development, to have found myself in a pretty high level position at a very prominent institution. And it's so exciting. But I kind of consistently find myself not in alignment with.
- [03:27]
A
Can I put words in your mouth? Feel yourself consistently racked with guilt over your children. Can we just go there? I mean, is that what you're feeling? The. Oh, the big mommy oh, in the sky and in your chest and in your skin and in your everything. I mean, because you're. You also have another love, maybe, which might be.
- [03:44]
B
You know, it's funny, my values bridge says that family centerism is so high. And I was actually really surprised by that because I feel like a workaholic. But I have made. I've certainly made some choices to prior that. Prioritize my family. Absolutely.
- [04:06]
A
Okay, let me just. For those of you who have not been following Becoming youg every single minute of your life and what's wrong with you, by the way? The Values bridge is a tool that I developed as part of my class at NYU Stern School of Business in New York City, where I teach a class called Becoming youg, which answers the question, what should I do with my life? We excavate your individual values, your personal values. We test for your aptitudes, we assess your interests, and then we put it all in a big pot. We stir. And over the course of about two years, I worked with very, very smart people to create a tool that we believe is a step forward for people figuring out what their values are. You took it. It's called the Values Bridge. It pretty soon it's going to be widely available to everybody. It is still in beta right now, but you were great to take the beta version of it. And what it does is it pops out values and it ranks them. Everybody has all 15 of these values. And if you want to know more about these values, go back to episode 37 where I describe each one of the values in detail. And what it tests is how much you have of each value. And then it ranks them for you. And then for better or for worse, it tells you which one of your values are in conflict with each other and which are in harmony with each other. And then it gives you a number that tells you how far you are from Your imperfect life, your life that's fully expressed values. So I look, that's a quick explanation of the values bridge to know your values and your aptitudes. That's the greatest data you can ever have about yourself.
- [05:24]
B
I think the conflict that I'm feeling right now is that I love what it is I do and the work that I do for the institution that I'm doing it for. I believe in the institution. The people above me want me to be doing different work, like philosophically different or intellectually different than the work that I am drawn to. And so I think that's where the family piece of it comes in. It's like, why am I spending a lot of my time and stress and energy investing and trying to figure out how to do the best work that I can do in this institution while, you know, maybe not prioritizing my family to bring that into it?
- [06:21]
A
Is the problem then that the conflict that you sense and the reason that we're talking is because they're asking you to do different work and that makes the trade off to deprioritize your family sometimes harder. Is that what is sparking this, is that they're asking you to change your work in a way that you don't really love and therefore you're thinking, wait, I'm gonna deprioritize my family for that? Or is it just the cumulative years of working and sacrifices that you've made of your family for your work that is beginning to feel old to you? Or both?
- [06:56]
B
I'm tired. I'm definitely tired.
- [06:58]
A
Yeah. And yeah, I wanna say that this is the presenting symptom that, I mean, please join the sisterhood and probably the humanhood of this, because it happens to fathers also when you are a person like you, and I'm gonna say like me, whose area of transcendence has you doing work that is spectacular where there is no real work life balance. Work is your life. It is your animating, galvanizing motivation. You wake up, you think about work, you go to sleep, you're thinking about work. Work fulfills you. It fits your identity. It actually matches your values and your interests and in your case, your aptitudes. I mean, you have the trifecta, okay? You've described the nature of the work matching your values, you've described the content of the work matching your values. And you've actually your proves that you had the absolute aptitudes for it. This would place you exactly in your area of transcendence. And yet you have an oh feeling. And what I'M hearing you say is two things are going on. One is they're asking you to change the work that you do that may make you drift away from some of the interest part of it and maybe some of the aptitudes part of it. And then what's factoring into making that a really hard choice for you is that it's. You're exhausted of managing the paradox of having the two biggest most values in conflict. The number one pairing of values conflict is work centrism and family centrism, okay? And this is a fact we can't get around because it's a fact of biology, okay? The time that work needs you the most and needs your most availability and needs you to be 100% available is from when you're 26 to 45. And it just so happens that nature set it up that the time that your children need the most availability, the most investment, the most focus, the most everything need, your brain, your soul, your spirit is from the ages of 26 to 45. This is a unhappy coincidence of nature and the professional world of just the economy. And it's just biology, okay? The peak of this is sort of in your late 30s, when the organization is looking at you. Late 30s, early 40s. And the organization is looking at you and they're saying, hmm, leader or not. And that is the exact same time that most of your kids are coming into teenagerhood where they're thinking to themselves, hmm, good or bad, okay? They're making that decision about whether they want to be naughty or nice, okay? I remember my daughter saying to me, there's two of me. One wants to go party like it's 1999 and just use drugs and do crazy ass things with my friends. And then there's a part of me that wants to behave and be the child that you raised me to be. And they're at war with each other every single day. And I remember thinking to myself, she's not going to win that war without me at her side. But I also had extremely high work centrism, and my organization was saying, hmm, do we promote her or not? And so both wanted me to be 1000% available. My kids and my work both needed my full intellectual and emotional engagement. My kids and my work. And you know what? I managed that paradox on a knife's edge, like every working parent does every single day. I managed it. It was the invisible dragon in the room. And I suited up like Daenerys every day, as you do, and every working par does I suit up like Daenerys and I fought that dragon. And most days, you win. Why? Because you're good and you care and you give it your everything, leaving nothing left over. And other days, you lose. And at around age 42, the exhaustion becomes too much. And you see women dropping out right around then are meant who I'm sure you know, from like, 36 to 42, you see people who you thought their careers were everything, just they. They surrender to the exhaustion. It's like you can't go another day. And usually what precipitates it is a kid having a small crisis or kid, you miss something so profound and you think the stakes are too high. And it's like this terrible moment of decision because you've loved your work and you've given your work everything. And I think that's happening to you. Okay? And I think further, what's happening is your work is complicating matters because they are saying, also, we'd like you to do some work you're not so completely interested in. Now, if you had no kids or your kids were older or younger and they weren't as demanding as they are right now, you might say, I'm going to navigate this crisis. I'm going to do work for a while and see if I can make the work more interesting to me. I'm going to see if I can reason with them to change the nature of the work. But you're weary. You're weary, and you have got, like, no gas left to say to them, let's talk about the work. In a way, this work is not exactly what I want, and. And you're caught in this bind. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Jennifer in just a moment. Before we go to the break, I want to let you know that you can not only listen to the Becoming youg podcast as you are right now, but you can watch becoming youg on YouTube. We're now posting video versions of each episode on YouTube. Just search for me, Susie Welch, and you'll find the podcast playlist. I hope you'll watch, and when you do, I hope you'll subscribe to see each new episode when it comes out. Thank you. Hello again, I'm Susie Welch, and this is Becoming youg. Today we are speaking with Jennifer about her values and what they tell her about some challenges and conflicts she is feeling and feeling deeply in her life and career. All right, I want to look at your values, results, and you can hear the papers flipping in the background. So your top value is family centrism. Number one, you show a variance of 88%, which means you're 88% away. You're a lot away. That's a very high variance. In other words, if you were fully expressing it the way you wanted to, okay, your variance would be zero percent. And in fact, very interestingly, your second value is work centrism, and the variance is zero. You're fully living the work life that you want. Congratulations. It feels great. A happy career is fantastic. Oh, my God. Like right now, I have 100% work centrism. Incredibly high value of mine, and I love my work. But there's a huge difference between you and me. And just to get ahead of ourselves, which is that my kids are grown. Okay. And one thing I want to say, just to foreshadow where I think we're going to go with this, is that the thing about having work centrism and family centrism in conflict is it's a problem that self corrects with time. Because there's a moment where your kids don't need you anymore. I know it's hard to imagine, but there's a day where they'd rather spend time with anyone but you. That time is coming for you. And you. The decision you have to make is whether or not you want to tough it out. Until then, whether do you have the strength to keep fighting this fight every day? Let's get to it in a minute. Your third value is your. This is. You're actually. Hate to break it to you. I know you think you're an individual, but you're an archetype because these three values. 1, 2, 3. The third value is achievement. Okay? So family matters, work matters, and achievement matters. Okay. What that says to me is that your ambition is still on fire. You want to have more success. Achievement is a value that measures and reflects how much success and winning matter to you. And even though you're in the nonprofit sphere, some of the most competitive people I know are in the nonprofit sphere. And so you still want to grow in your job. That's what that achievement at number three shows me. Now. I love your fourth and fifth value, your value of voice. Voice is creative self expression. To me, I'm not surprised that you're in the art world because the number one value of artists is voice. And then interestingly to me, really interesting to me is your fifth value is radius. And that's how much impact you want to have on the world. Did that surprise you? No.
- [15:00]
B
I think that voice and radius actually hearing you speak about them, are describing some of the conflict that I'm having at work, that I'm not an ER doctor. I'm not a, you know, someone who's going overseas into conflict zones. I'm not changing the world on that scale. But I really believe in what I do and what I make and the potential of what I do and what I make. And art.
- [15:33]
A
Art will save the world. It's all we got.
- [15:36]
B
Yeah, yeah. And. And doing. And to. To have to be working at an institution where I feel like I'm getting direction to do less of that. Okay, so you feel like is causing a lot of conflict.
- [15:51]
A
Okay, so the work. The work that they're suggesting to you to change is going to sort of maybe make you feel like you're diminishing your radius a little bit, because right now your radius is fully being met. Okay, we're go talk about that. Careers are long. Your career has been very successful. And in the course of a long career with an institution, institutions are like families. There's good years and there's bad years and there's good relatives and there's bad relatives. And you just continue to love the family. And institutions sometimes do boneheaded things. And it sounds to me like your institution right now is asking you to do a boneheaded thing or something that you don't like. But the. My gut feeling, from everything I've talked to about with you and looked at and learned about you, the institution loves you and values you and respects you. And they are asking you to step outside your comfort zone. My advice to you, just from a pure professional management point of view, would be to try it. Prove to them that you're better doing the other stuff and let them let you go back to it. Institutions are give and take. I don't see this as an endpoint for you. When your organization says, I mean, look, one of the greatest things that ever happened to me in my entire life. I was a crime reporter and my boss called me in and he said, what do you know about business? Okay, this was 1982. And he said, what do you know about business? And I said, absolutely nothing. I don't know the difference between debt and equity. I know those two words exist. I don't even know what the difference is. I know nothing about business. I don't know what they do in those buildings. I pointed out the window and we're in the middle of the city. And he said, yeah, well, the business reporter quit and you're the closest warm body. You're smart enough to. You can do it. You need to cover business. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. I honestly don't know. I know what a lawyer does, but I. And I don't know what a banker does. And I went to the first press conference. They could have been speaking Urdu. It was like, I had no idea. And I saw all these people who, like, were ravenously fascinated by business, and I thought, huh, I think I better learn. And it was a wonderful mistake. And they forced me to take that job, okay? I had no choice. And, I mean, if you had asked me in those few weeks was this good for my career, I would have said exactly what you're saying, which is they're asking me to walk away from the reasons I did this work in the first place. And it ended up to be a wonderful accident. And that is the problem that you face and almost everybody listening to this podcast face because they may not be managing the conflict between work and family centrism, but they're managing the conflict between achievement and eudaimonia, which would be, like, the desire to have massive success and also really value fun, okay? Or the conflict between cosmos, which is a deep belief in God, and affluence, okay? These are all conflicts that I see people manage for their whole lives long. But you get tired. You get tired, and one day something triggers you, and in this case, it's them asking you to do work you're not crazy about. And you're allowing yourself. And I say this very lovingly. You're allowing yourself to use this as an excuse to say, do I throw it in? What do I do? Do I just give in? I don't want to fight this fight every day anymore. And I don't. I can. You know, sometimes you're in a marriage that's struggling, okay, just to change the metaphor. And you're in a marriage that's really, really, really tough. And every day you suit up and you fight to save the marriage. And you keep telling yourself, it's because I love this person, and we have the children, and you fight and you fight and fight, and then one day, this is the way it often happens. You know, he leaves the dishes in the sink, and you say, that's it. I can't fight this fight anymore. Okay? And so I think if it wasn't them asking you to change your work slightly, it would have been something else. I mean, it just. It becomes a big gnawing ball of confusion, and what do I do? And then something triggers it. Like your boss is saying, change your work a little bit in a Way you think, you know, you may not like. And you're like, okay, that's it. I can't take it anymore. Okay. Yeah. Am I capturing it, do you think?
- [19:40]
B
Yeah, I think so. It's. And I think, you know, just to make the. The tangle a bit bigger, you know, I have people approaching me about jobs and. And I'm, you know, kind of weighing the opportunities, but also the impacts of that on my family. And so there's no clear decision in any of it. And because of all of this conflict that I'm kind of just like. I'm also exhausting myself.
- [20:15]
A
Right.
- [20:16]
B
Trying to untangle that knot.
- [20:18]
A
All right, so it's gonna continue to be exhausting and it's gonna continue to drain you until you make a decision to make a decision. And I wanna make that decision with you. Can I just give you my kind of Susie unplugged bald face advice on this? Absolutely. Having seen a lot of women go through it and having gone through it myself. Okay, the first decision you have to make is whether you can rally the strength to keep fighting. Okay. I don't want to pussyfoot around here. I urge you to keep fighting. I think that. I urge you to keep fighting because your value of work centrism and your value of achievement are so high and your value of radius so high that to throw in the towel and say, I can't keep fighting, even though you're exhausted, even you will regret it. Will you be able to go back? Sure. But it's. I don't. I don't want you to give up the fight. I want you to understand you're in a fight. But that would be the first decision. Now, look, only you can make that decision. You may say, you know what? F you, Susie Welch. Just hearing you say that makes me think, I don't want to keep fighting. You haven't been fighting in my shoes, and you don't know what else is going on in my life. And so you may decide that I am wrong, but I'm going to tell you that you. You are so close to the finish line with your kids, even though one is, what, entering middle school and the other is entering high school. You're four, five, six years out. That's the fights. That's it. That's all that's left. They're going to be gone. They go to college. They don't even know your name. Okay. By the way, they come back, okay? After college, they come back and they're like, hi, Rent. Rent's very expensive, you know? Remember, My old bedroom. And they're back. Okay, they do come back. All of my children went to college, came home, and lived at home for one time or another. I've still got one living at home, and it makes me so happy. And we're best friends, but she's embarrassed to tell her friends she lives with me. Guess what, everyone? Sophia lives with me. Anyway, they do go. They do come back. Okay? But they go to college. And you're going to have to learn actually not to be on the front lines. I mean, I kind of. It was hard for me to let go of the reins. And look, when they're in college, they're adults, and sometimes they really need your help, but they're physically separate from you. So you're just. You fought a long fight a whole bunch of years working in those days where your baby had colic and the babysitter was at home and you knew about it and it sucked. I get it, okay? And so you. You're drained. You've given your ounce of flesh. You. I think I would urge you to give six more years of your ounce of flesh. Because your problem is going to self correct. Okay? It's going to self correct. Probably when your youngest kid is in around 11th grade, all right? That's when they really start stepping because they know they're going away to college. And then when she's in 12th grade and goes off, it's over. Okay? So if you can make it till then, then you have this really weird experience I want to describe to you, because it's one of the greatest experiences of your life. One day you wake up and you're like a single person. Your kids are gone, and you can go to work and you can. You don't have to go home to make dinner. Oh, my God. And you don't have to do anything involving kids. It's like you have to learn how to be another person.
- [23:10]
B
Incredibly luxurious at the moment.
- [23:11]
A
Yes, it is. I mean, if we were talking and it was like eight years ago, I would say, okay, it's a very long road, but the road's not that far for you. Okay? So I would say keep fighting. The second question is whether you stay at your institution and play the long game and do the different work they're asking of you, because that will feed your achievement values. Because you'll get bonus points for doing what they asked you to do. And you'll learn something about yourself and the institution. And guess what? They might be right. They might be okay, but they might be wrong. And you'll know within three months. And then you can go back and say, look, I tried. Let's redesign my work again. But I'd say, stay and fight. Keep fighting. Your values are so clear. It is this problem of biology that I mentioned earlier, and you are in the belly of the beast of this biological conundrum right now. You're in the belly of the beast. Your work needs you 100%. Heart, heart, soul, brain, energy, space. And so do your kids. And you have to make this decision when you have conflicting values with work and family centrism. How long am I going to fight? Well, you've fought a long time. Your decision is whether or not you want to keep fighting. The upside for you is huge, given your values. I think that every day you are a very creative person, figuring out how to make all these values work. You've been juggling this. You've been making the jigsaw puzzle. Bravo. Brava. Brava. Brava. Brava to all of us. Okay. Those of us who did it, and you'd go in through it. It's so freaking hard. Your kids don't get it, but one day they do. One day they do, and they actually turn around and they. I'm telling you, with God as my witness, they thank you. You may not be getting a lot of thank you right now, but they thank you because they grow up and they see what you did. My son has a baby, the greatest child ever born in the history of humankind. And my granddaughter and another one on the way. And about a year ago, he said to me, I lay awake at night, and I think, I don't know how she did it. And it was like sweetest song I ever heard. Gave me a huge hug, and he thanked me. And I took that opportunity to remind him what a very difficult child he was and what a living hell he was. And I took that opportunity to remind him how he almost made me lose my mind for 12 years or so. Fantastic human being. Grew up to be a fine man, a fine husband, a beautiful person. It was worth it. They do thank you. If you make it through.
- [25:38]
B
Now, that gave me goosebumps, actually.
- [25:41]
A
Thanks. So that's what I would say to you. Make this decision whether or not you're gonna stay and fight another day. And you can take my advice or you can leave it. And I think it would be beautiful either way. The end is in sight for you and your values. Tell me that. That you'll thank yourself and they will too.
- [26:00]
B
That's great advice. I really appreciate the directness of It.
- [26:05]
A
Yeah.
- [26:06]
B
I feel. Feel seen.
- [26:07]
A
Oh, I see you. I see you. I have felt you. When I read about you before, we talked, and I was looking at your values, I was like, oh, my God, here's my twin. I mean, at Christmas, I was looking at all my kids and their partners all around the Christmas tree, and I thought we made it. But like you, I made it fighting every day. But you will not be fighting forever. But what you're fighting for is probably the most valuable thing you've got, which are your values. And you're setting an incredible example to your kids. So I. I'm. I'm cheering you on, and I want to. I want to hear the end of this story. You got to stay in touch.
- [26:38]
B
I will. I will. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.
- [26:42]
A
I love you. Thank you for talking to me. Jennifer's story, where does it leave you? Like, what should. What questions does it raise for you? Well, I think it raises a couple of really important questions you've got to ask yourself. Number one, do I know my values? That's the. That's the fresh net of all of the becoming new conversation. But actually, just I would suggest it's the fresh net of living a good life. A fresh net being a very, very obscure word that only editors use, which means the sort of beginning of a. Of a waterfall. Okay, I love that word. Not actually even in all dictionaries anyway. Knowing what your values are, even knowing what they are with certainty, clarity, with priority, like, which ones are the top ones and which one are the are. Those are your moderate ones. Which one are your peripheral ones? That's number one. Do you know your values? Are you groping for them? You don't have to. You can actually try to figure it out. You can do the work of doing that. That's number one. Then after you do that, maybe you do know them. I hope you do. Which ones are in conflict? That's the second question. Which ones are in harmony? Yay. Wonderful. Which ones are in conflict? Because you've got to understand that that's the source of any kind of angst or struggle or sadness or confusion you're feeling. Which ones are. Let's name them. Let's talk about them. And then the third question is, what am I going to do about it? Am I just going to let myself wallow in the conflict? Or like all conflicts, am I going to try to resolve it? Am I going to try to make peace? Am I going to try to find a resolution? And so I would leave you with those three questions. Do you know your values in detail? Can you name them? Do you know what the rank order is? Do you know which ones are in conflict? And if you do, what's your plan for resolving them? Becoming youg is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Newsom of Magnificent Noise. Our production staff includes Muskaan Nagpal and Kristen Muller, with help from Eliza Zinn, Hallie Reiner, Maddie Paul, and Tanya Joji. I'm your host, Susie Welch, and this is becoming you.