23 October 2025
The Myth of Work-Life Balance: What Senior Women Leaders Actually Do Instead
The phrase itself sets up a false choice: work on one side, life on the other, and you in the middle.
I should probably confess upfront that I do not believe in work-life balance. Not because I think leaders should work around the clock—I have seen what that does to people, their families, and ultimately their organisations. But because the phrase itself sets up a false choice: work on one side, life on the other, and you in the middle trying to keep them in some mythical equilibrium.
In two decades of working with senior leaders—and being one myself—I have never met anyone who achieved this equilibrium. What I have met are people who found something better.
The Balance Myth Hurts Women Most
The work-life balance conversation disproportionately targets women. Men in leadership roles are rarely asked how they “balance” their career with their family. Women are asked this in nearly every interview, every profile, every panel discussion. The subtext is clear: your ambition is in tension with the rest of your life, and you need to justify how you manage both.
This framing is exhausting. And it is wrong. It assumes that a woman’s career is always taking something away from her life, rather than being a part of it.
“Men in leadership roles are rarely asked how they ‘balance’ their career with their family. Women are asked this in nearly every interview.”
What Works Instead: Integration, Boundaries, and Ruthless Priorities
The senior women leaders I know—the ones who sustain their careers over decades without burning out—do not balance. They do three things:
They integrate deliberately. Instead of trying to separate work and life into neat compartments, they design a life where the two can coexist. This might mean taking a call from a client while at their child’s football practice, or blocking two hours mid-afternoon for a personal commitment and making up the time later. Integration is not about doing everything at once. It is about rejecting the idea that work is on one side and life on the other.
They set non-negotiable boundaries. The most effective leaders I know protect certain things fiercely: dinner with family, a morning run, an hour of reading, a weekend day with no email. These are not luxuries. They are the infrastructure that makes sustained performance possible.
They are ruthless about priorities. Saying yes to everything is not a sign of commitment. It is a sign that you have not decided what matters. The leaders who thrive have learned to say no—to good opportunities, to important-sounding meetings, to requests that are urgent but not important—so that they can say yes to the things that actually move the needle.
A Day in My Life (Since People Always Ask)
My days are not balanced. They are intentional. Some days I am on calls from 6am to 8pm because I work across time zones. Some days I take the afternoon off because I need to think, or walk, or simply be a human being. Some weeks I travel constantly; others I work from home and barely leave the house.
What makes this sustainable is not balance. It is honesty—with myself, with my team, and with my clients—about what I can and cannot do in any given week. It is the willingness to disappoint someone occasionally, because the alternative is disappointing everyone gradually.
“What makes this sustainable is not balance. It is honesty—with myself, with my team, and with my clients.”
A Better Question
If you are a senior woman leader reading this and feeling the weight of the balance expectation, I want to offer you a different question. Instead of “How do I balance everything?” try asking: “What does a sustainable life look like for me—not for the person I think I should be, but for the person I actually am?”
That question does not have a tidy answer. But it has an honest one. And in my experience, honest is always better than balanced.
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23 October 2025
The Myth of Work-Life Balance: What Senior Women Leaders Actually Do Instead
The phrase itself sets up a false choice: work on one side, life on the other, and you in the middle.
I should probably confess upfront that I do not believe in work-life balance. Not because I think leaders should work around the clock—I have seen what that does to people, their families, and ultimately their organisations. But because the phrase itself sets up a false choice: work on one side, life on the other, and you in the middle trying to keep them in some mythical equilibrium.
In two decades of working with senior leaders—and being one myself—I have never met anyone who achieved this equilibrium. What I have met are people who found something better.
The Balance Myth Hurts Women Most
The work-life balance conversation disproportionately targets women. Men in leadership roles are rarely asked how they “balance” their career with their family. Women are asked this in nearly every interview, every profile, every panel discussion. The subtext is clear: your ambition is in tension with the rest of your life, and you need to justify how you manage both.
This framing is exhausting. And it is wrong. It assumes that a woman’s career is always taking something away from her life, rather than being a part of it.
What Works Instead: Integration, Boundaries, and Ruthless Priorities
The senior women leaders I know—the ones who sustain their careers over decades without burning out—do not balance. They do three things:
They integrate deliberately. Instead of trying to separate work and life into neat compartments, they design a life where the two can coexist. This might mean taking a call from a client while at their child’s football practice, or blocking two hours mid-afternoon for a personal commitment and making up the time later. Integration is not about doing everything at once. It is about rejecting the idea that work is on one side and life on the other.
They set non-negotiable boundaries. The most effective leaders I know protect certain things fiercely: dinner with family, a morning run, an hour of reading, a weekend day with no email. These are not luxuries. They are the infrastructure that makes sustained performance possible.
They are ruthless about priorities. Saying yes to everything is not a sign of commitment. It is a sign that you have not decided what matters. The leaders who thrive have learned to say no—to good opportunities, to important-sounding meetings, to requests that are urgent but not important—so that they can say yes to the things that actually move the needle.
A Day in My Life (Since People Always Ask)
My days are not balanced. They are intentional. Some days I am on calls from 6am to 8pm because I work across time zones. Some days I take the afternoon off because I need to think, or walk, or simply be a human being. Some weeks I travel constantly; others I work from home and barely leave the house.
What makes this sustainable is not balance. It is honesty—with myself, with my team, and with my clients—about what I can and cannot do in any given week. It is the willingness to disappoint someone occasionally, because the alternative is disappointing everyone gradually.
A Better Question
If you are a senior woman leader reading this and feeling the weight of the balance expectation, I want to offer you a different question. Instead of “How do I balance everything?” try asking: “What does a sustainable life look like for me—not for the person I think I should be, but for the person I actually am?”
That question does not have a tidy answer. But it has an honest one. And in my experience, honest is always better than balanced.
Explore more leadership resources →
Ready to transform your leadership? Learn about the Lab →
← Back to Commentary