Sharing Saturday
I’m feeling something I don’t feel very often anymore – I’m experiencing being out of the central ring of power in a work setting, and I don’t like it.
For the past nearly nine years, I have been an independent consultant, managing two or three clients at one time, working truncated hours and spending the majority of my afternoons with my kids and their homework and their activities. My client work is mostly conducted from 9:00 am – 3:30 pm, with a lot of checking of emails at night after the kids go to bed. Occasionally I have evening work meetings, which I generally enjoy, because it’s a chance to dress up and play in the sandbox with the adults.
One of the best things about being a consultant is that you don’t have to engage in any unproductive down office time. You go in, you have your meetings, you make your recommendations, and you leave in time for the school bus. And for the most part, I appreciate this type of detachment from the work place.
But one of my clients is an organization on whose staff I worked for many years. Its mission is close to my heart, and it is a place where my personal and professional lives meld. And although I am a consultant to them on paper, my role is really more like a part-time staff person and I am treated as such.
This is an organization whose corridors of power appeal to me, and there are moments when I wish I had more access to them. This is one of those moments.
Our brand new CEO came to town this week, and it was my job to take him around and introduce him to donors for two days. Needless to say, there were many other people in the organization who wanted a piece of him as well, and my access to him, even while he is here ostensibly to support my work, was narrow and limited.
Everyone wants to bask in the circle of his light. I get that. I sat squarely in the inner rungs of a similar circle when I was on staff here 15 years ago. But today, given my current position and lack of power in the organizational structure, I am definitely on the outskirts of that circle.
This is my choice. Had I wanted to work at this same job full-time, I know the organization would have been glad to hire me back. I would have closer relationships with the senior staff, perhaps even be one myself. I would be better known and respected with my colleagues in other areas of the organization. I would have more access to the hub, and would be closer to the hive of activity when things get interesting.
But in order to have these things, I would have had to give up my very flexible schedule, my ability to work at home about 90% of the time, my ability to take vacation whenever I need to, my ability to schedule my life as necessary and to fit my work responsibilities around that schedule, and not the other way around.
There is no question that I enjoy the consulting life, and appreciate the benefits of the balance that it offers. I truly believe that I have the best of both worlds – a steady income, clients who appreciate my work and opportunities to continue to learn and work in my field, alongside a chance to be an integral part of my children’s daily lives.
And once the CEO leaves town and returns to his family-unfriendly travel schedule, making stops around the country and overseas to visit all our field offices on a semi-regular basis, I know that the gnawing in my stomach will stop and I will feel more comfortable back in my consulting role. I will stop wondering if I made the right choices, stop thinking about what it might be like to be more prominent in my field, to have trained and climbed the ladder with more drive and perhaps more success instead of seeking "work-life balance."
But until then, I sure wish I could grab his ear and make him play with me in the sandbox.
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