Weekly Impact is written for leaders by our Executive Director, Garth Jestley, who has decades of experience in senior leadership roles in the financial services sector. Each week he will share insights on life, leadership and faith.
This is the sixth and final blog post in a series unpacking the mission of LeaderImpact – “helping marketplace leaders explore the relevance of faith in God in their professional and personal lives.” In this post, I will discuss how the mission of LeaderImpact ties to our professional and personal lives.
Most marketplace leaders I know place a high value on the quality of both their professional life and their personal life. That said, we tend to compartmentalize the two arenas because each has its own unique responsibilities, challenges and opportunities.
On the professional side, I learned early in my career the importance of maintaining focus on the goals for which I am being held accountable. This need for focus together with the pressures of leadership can lead to an imbalance between our professional and personal lives. If not corrected, this imbalance can have significant negative repercussions for us personally as well as our families and the organizations we lead.
The pressures of leadership can lead to an imbalance in our lives which, if not corrected, can have significant negative repercussions.
On the personal side, many of us have families with whom we enjoy spending time. This commendable desire for more family time, however, can undermine our ability to adequately support the financial needs of our families if carried to extreme. For example, we might end up trading off the fulfilment and rewards of business advancement against involvement in family activities. That said, my experience has been that the general bias among marketplace leaders is toward providing the family with material comforts at the expense of quality time with the family.
This tension between the professional and personal arenas is unavoidable. Notwithstanding, the two arenas are actually intertwined, with each affecting our success in the other. At LeaderImpact, we believe that faith in God is highly relevant to both arenas and, in particular, helps us resolve the inevitable tension between the two.
As we meet with our peers, we derive benefit from their collective wisdom, the materials we discuss and the moral support we provide to one another. The wisdom within the group covers all aspects of life including both business and personal struggles. In its focus on the relevance of faith in God to all of life and not just one arena or the other, LeaderImpact is absolutely unique.
Jesus said, “I have come that they might have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10(b)) Our vision is to see leaders everywhere discovering their full potential in both the professional and personal arenas as they experience new life in Christ.
Are you looking for solutions to the inevitable tension between work and home life? Consider test driving a LeaderImpact group.
Garth Jestley is a husband, father, grandfather, leader and business executive. Most importantly, he is a follower of Jesus Christ.