Are we social beings or are we working machines? The time to dedicate, both to work and private life, is one of the decisions that all professionals must evaluate throughout their professional lives. Decisions in this regard are related to life time, working conditions and development time at work; but above all, they are related to the life project of each individual.
It is necessary to bear in mind that in the complexity of our individuality, the ways of realizing ourselves depend on many alternatives and do not have the same manifestations for everyone. In terms of realization, there is no formula, since everything depends on the projects that we consider as people.
Sometimes the mistake is made of thinking that the combination of both spheres of life is a problem that only concerns women. It is true that in Cuba, where the construction of the female gender has entrusted a large part of the care of children to this, women often have to decide between developing a professional life or forming a family. Sometimes they spend many years of their youth preparing as good professionals, postponing motherhood, sometimes to the point of becoming elderly mothers or choosing not to create their own family by virtue of achieving professional self-realization. In other cases, they decide or choose to face motherhood in a period parallel to their training,the preparation period being lengthened further due to the interruptions of motherhood and later of the raising of children. However, Cuban professional men also have to make decisions about how long they will dedicate to both areas.
The male gender is the one that takes the longest to react to this situation. As he is not socially and biologically pressured to build and care for a family, he ends up dedicating more time to work than to home and of course the repercussions of this situation are long term. Man generally recognizes these problems when age begins to separate him from the maelstrom of work and is faced with a poor and empty private life.
In a population such as Cuba, in which the population tends to aging, "investing" early on in a full private life is one of the ways in which greater satisfaction can be guaranteed in the later hours of life.
Cuban executives faced with the dilemma.
Although this situation affects all workers in a general sense, with more incidence in professionals, in managers the situation becomes more serious. Management in its complexity is a time-consuming task, which is commonly taken from private life.
In order to motivate and guide workers, managers must set aside their independent aspirations, because from that moment on, the realization of their goals will be inextricably linked to the achievement of the goals of their collective of workers. The latter forces the manager to have to get to know his subordinates more closely, which includes having knowledge about their needs and life projects (which includes profession and private life) to the extent possible and based on this draw objectives and organize work in a way that satisfies not only the organization as an entity, but its workers as individual beings. If this works like this, surely the manager would have a group of subordinates a little more motivated and committed to organizational tasks and goals.
The manager must not ignore that people to optimize their performance need not only motivation for the profession they perform, but also a balance in the emotional order that incorporates elements of that collective and private social life that exists beyond the borders of the organization. The manager also has to learn to protect their workers, understand this for the protection of their life time outside the organization, so they should not overwhelm their employees with work, nor impose very tight or impossible goals in time to comply at that time, because in this way it would be forcing employees to use their private life time to attend to labor issues.
The idea, tacitly shared by many managers, that managing organizations is a time-consuming activity has made many managers slaves to their tasks, emotionally incomplete beings, and frustrated people.
But does the management of organizations really require so much work time? Although it is true that running an organization is a complex activity that is subject to many changes in the environment, the organization and planning of activities, as well as the possibility of delegating functions, are the tools par excellence that would allow a manager to employ time in your favor. Although the average manager knows many tools that would allow him to simplify his work, the conception of the director pending everything, solving problems and assuming all the decisions, does not allow their use to free them from some work burdens.
The non-delegation of functions, logically associated with the need to make all business decisions, has marked the leadership pattern of Cuban organizations: the authoritarian leader. But authoritarianism is much more than a simple leadership trait, authoritarianism by concentrating decisions on one person, prevents this person from developing other aspects of his life in which he also concentrates desires and expectations.
In a general sense, management leads to the sacrifice of independent professional life, but the sacrifice of private life is an irreparable mistake that many managers unfortunately commit.
Cuban executives and their private lives.
Most of the managers observed and interviewed have notions about time management and work stress. However, regardless of their knowledge of these time management tools, the managers who were interviewed work an average of 16 hours. You are 16 hours, they are divided in various ways, and although not all of them take place in the workplace, they can be recognized as hours dedicated to work. If we talk about the "social being" in which we logically frame the managers of organizations, the remaining 8 hours are divided into the other activities that all social beings need to carry out: sleeping, listening to music, spending time with the family, doing hobbies, etc.
It is logical to understand that of all these activities, the social ones are the ones that are most affected since physiological activities, since their development is inevitable, are the ones that occupy the most time in the “free hours”. But even these physiological activities can also be affected when the workload is greater and work stress increases. Digestive disorders, ulcers, hypertension and sleep disorders, were pathologies associated with the sample studied.
Social activities are the big losers, time spent with family, raising children and distraction, for many managers become secondary activities, always postponed for moments of less tension that never come.
Relationships are also affected for managers, in this case women have a higher rate of involvement. As a result of the macho patterns in which our society develops, women better assume having partners who dedicate little time to family activities, however, female managers do not always find the same understanding in their colleagues.
The women who were analyzed mostly had family support. Some had family members who supported the raising of children and housework, so that they could develop their work. While others, they postponed motherhood in order to meet work demands.
The number of dysfunctional couples and families was higher in the executives sampled when compared to other families in society. The index of separations (divorces or separations of relations in concubinage), reached higher indexes.
Other managers, not separated, acknowledged having problems with their partners, mainly associated with time. Relationships with children were also affected for the same reasons.
Conclusion:
Time is a scarce resource, but not only work time, but also time we dedicate to ourselves. The use of time is something that exceeds the organizational limits and extends to our private lives. The time that is dedicated to family and children, in short, to private life, is as valuable as the time we dedicate to our organizations.
Although society needs our work to grow and develop, it also needs focused, satisfied and motivated people. Satisfaction in working life, at no time will it supplant satisfaction in personal life, since they are two edges of our life project that cannot be superimposed.
