Tag: experience

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What If ‘Wife’ Were a Job Title?

The job description is long and complicated. Where can you turn for training?

By: Melissa Thoma   |   06/11/2010

Position available: Wife. Starts immediately.

A recent project updating our company’s job descriptions has me thinking about a title I hold: wife. After all, as anyone who has done it will tell you, being married is a job. What if I were charged with creating a job description for this role and posting it the major job sites? What might that look like? Let’s see.

Job Title:

Life Mate, Manager of Spousal Relationships for Family Unit.

Sounds impressive. But obviously a small enterprise and not a Fortune 500 play.

Position Posting:

Family unit seeks female senior executive for full-time (we’re talking all the time) development of intimate relationships, nurture, care and feeding of mate and offspring. This exciting and creative venture seeks to execute a multigenerational strategy of developing the highest possible quality of life through shared resources and support. The very life and happiness of team members will be the responsibility of the Life Mate, who will leverage her skills in communications and negotiation to ensure the health of the primary couple relationship and the proper development of junior staff.

The Life Mate must pledge her permanent fidelity to the enterprise and must be willing to assign all assets and available resources to the job.

Wow . . . this sounds like hard work! I hope it pays well.

Responsibilities include:

• Willingness to relocate anywhere and everywhere that opportunity may take the

business unit

• Feeding, clothing, housing and primary care of the company and its staff

• Development and coordination of schedules that accommodate all parties

• Continuous guidance, mentoring, development, discipline and management of

junior staff

Resources Provided:

• None. All resources are the responsibility of the jobholder.

Termination Conditions:

This is a right-to-work state, meaning that the jobholder may be asked to leave at any time with or without cause.

Qualifications:

• No experience required; just the desire to hold the position.

• No experience required with management or mentoring of junior staff.

• No experience required with setting or keeping budgets.

• No experience required in managing households or maintaining property.

• No prior experience in the bedroom necessary, but good skills are appreciated.

Benefits:

Although vacation, health insurance, life insurance and other basic benefits are the responsibility of the jobholder, certain tangible and intangible benefits accrue:

• Research indicates that people employed in this position may live longer than their

single counterparts.

• Research indicates that for many people, successful engagement in the enterprise

yields high levels of life satisfaction.

Would you take this job? Better yet, are you qualified? Clearly there are no true qualifications necessary, yet the job itself may be the most complicated position you’ll ever hold. In business there is typically a well-defined way in which to prepare yourself for a job with such daunting responsibilities. Once again, the business world can teach some relationship skills.

The first requirement of preparing for a complex job is education. There are amazing resources on relationships, marriage and family for any willing candidate to tap. One of the most instructive books I’ve read on marriage and relationships is Harville Hendrix’s Getting the Love You Want. Hendrix presents his theory of Imago relationship therapy and practical, actionable advice for couples.

The best resource I’ve ever read for family dynamics and developing a healthy family culture is the late Virginia Satir’s The New Peoplemaking. Satir was a pioneer in family counseling. This one book is a master’s degree in organizational development for the family.

J. Zink is an author and lecturer who taught Martin and me the method we used for disciplining our young children. His system:

• Have no more than five rules at a time.

• Create simple, clear rewards and consequences for following or breaking those

rules.

• Post them on the refrigerator, review them daily with your kids, reward and enforce

religiously.

We didn’t try to make it up as we went along. We didn’t just do what our parents did. We researched a method that made sense and felt right for us, then learned and followed it. It worked. My teenage and young-adult kids still talk about how simple and effective this system was in guiding their development.

Then there is training. You are never really expected to land at a desk and just start working without some job training. Why shouldn’t the same be true of marriage? For instance, how many relationships have failed because the couple were woefully untrained in household finances? We know financial stress is a huge risk issue for relationships. Where’s the MBA–Marriage Business and Administration?

Communications is another area that all of us need some real coaching in. Why don’t we make that training a priority? There is a good assessment tool on what we call emotional intelligence at TalentSmart.com. EI is the ability to understand the emotional landscape in communications and relationships, and to respond appropriately. This assessment can be accessed online, and training can follow.

How about internships? Effective candidates can use the period of dating and courting to gain skills in relationship development and management, not just swim in a sea of love hormones. (Disclosure: I did not take my own advice. I became engaged to Martin after mere weeks at the lovesick age of 19.)

And speaking of internships, my daughter, Claire, has gotten more than her feet wet in family life experience as a nanny to multiple kids of multiple ages during her undergraduate studies at Wellesley College. She may have done it primarily for the extra cash, but the real-life experience of keeping kids and learning to discipline and care for babies and toddlers has her believing that the best incentive for proper birth control is taking care of somebody else’s children.

Looking at this job posting makes me realize how woefully under-prepared I was to enter into the Business of Marriage. Thank goodness I was never fired, had some on-the-job training and received a generous compensation in unconditional love. I’m glad I took the job.

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Bring the Budget Process Home

The concepts that keep business cash flow in order can do the same at home.

By: Melissa Thoma   |   10/20/2009

It’s the most argued about, most costly, most dangerous issue in most relationships. Money.

Money is handled in a fairly straightforward way in the business world. We budget for it. We account for it. We invest it and spend it, and we have methods for safeguarding it. And we all know that the aim of a healthy business is profit. So let me ask you a question: How do you intend to profit from your relationship with your spouse or life partner?

Start by considering the “profits” you hope to reap as a couple or as a family. Through my marriage I hope to gain access to experiences that I might not have by myself. I profit from the ability to co-create on every level: from having children to building a business to creating a home environment and a lifestyle that are rich and satisfying. And it goes deeper than that. I will profit from having the support of my spouse in sickness and old age. This is no small list of profitable outcomes.

We expect such amazingly rich outcomes from our relationships. But do we budget, plan, invest and safeguard our resources to ensure that we will be able to achieve these outcomes? Do we bring a businesslike discipline and mind-set to producing results in our relationship? It makes sense to do so. Money is, after all, the No. 1 area of conflict and cause of divorce in marriage.

Let’s assume you’ve laid out a budget at home. Now let’s talk about how to manage those budgeted finances. In an earlier column I talked about designating a CFO for the family. This is the person who is accountable for overseeing the family resources, the budget, investments, savings and real assets (cars and land and houses). Note that this person doesn’t get to decide how it all gets spent; he or she just oversees and manages the money stuff. Martin is our family CFO. He tracks the financial and tax data that come into the household and makes sure the bills are paid on time. Why is he the CFO? Because he has the time and the attention to detail to be good at it. Does he decide how much money should be spent at this week’s grocery run? No. We agreed on a budget together in December.

In a well-run business, the CFO doesn’t approve the expenditure of every little penny. That is micromanagement, and it doesn’t empower employees to use their insight or enable ideas to shine. At home it should be no different. Each of you should have discretionary budget amounts that you may spend freely without the input of the other. Likewise, you should agree to a cap on the dollars each can spend without the knowledge and input of the other. It’s a purely personal decision. There’s no right or wrong to it. At our house, Martin and I feel comfortable spending upward of $1,000 without consulting each other. That expenditure should be tied to that overall budget–no spending beyond your resources without a talk. But otherwise, we’re free to take advantage of sales or deals, or to treat ourselves or the other to a gift.

I know that many couples have joint accounts and separate accounts with discretionary spending privileges. That’s great. Still, couples should agree to an amount that they feel calls for a discussion even when it comes from those individual accounts. Consider a business. No matter who you are and what authority you have, there comes a level of investment or expenditure on which you’ll seek counsel and agreement from other managers or owners. It’s no different in the business of marriage. You might purchase that darling red BMW convertible from your discretionary checking account, only to find that your spouse is infuriated because you have put the family at risk should one of you lose your job and you need to reassign your resources. Open financial books and open communication are the best way to deal with money in marriage.

At Thoma Thoma, we practice “open-book management.” Our employees all contribute to the bottom line. As such, they all have a right to know about our basic financial situation and how that impacts them. Even if you’re keeping separate accounts, we recommend that anyone who is contributing toward a shared purpose (and contributing doesn’t just mean dollars) has the right and the obligation to see the basic financial picture. Keep the books open, and be accountable to one another.

Smart businesses employ professionals to assist them with financial management. So should you. I really don’t understand why we don’t have required classes in personal finance at the high school level to prepare us for running a household. Managing money is complicated, and most of us didn’t learn much more than how to balance a checkbook (obsolete information these days, when we run our checking account off a debit card and internet banking). So seek out as much counsel as you can. The two of you probably came to your relationship with different views about money and how to use it. Proper counsel can open you both up to new ideas about money and help you negotiate an agreement about how the two of you will use money together.

How can you assess the well-being of a company? Just look at the bottom line. The same can be said of a marriage. Any couple with financial trouble is undergoing stress that is detrimental to the relationship. So don’t wait another minute. We’re coming up on the end of the year. Make this the year that you address your budget, your finances and start generating real profit in your marriage.

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Etiquette For Home and Office

These 10 rules instill civility everywhere.

By: Melissa Thoma   |   08/27/2009

Wouldn’t it be great if our partner were perfect? If he or she behaved according to plan and met our needs while eliminating annoying habits and getting more charming every year? I’m pinching myself now–back to reality after staring dreamily out of my office window.

Let’s be honest: Some of the behavior we exhibit at home would get us fired or sued at work. We understand that in business it’s necessary to measure our words and guard our actions–otherwise the wheels fall off. Why aren’t we willing to demonstrate similar restraint in our personal relationships? After all, business etiquette reflects our understanding that aggression, meanness, teasing, name-calling or sexual objectification are not OK.

Working as business partners has taught my husband Martin and me important lessons about how we temper behaviors at both home and work. While our intimate relationship enables us to be honest and direct at work, the few times we’ve stepped over the line and gotten angry with each other, we quickly saw how upsetting and damaging it was to our co-workers. We just don’t have the luxury of creating an emotional mess to clean up. Folks can’t work effectively or efficiently under that stress.

That office experience made me notice that the same thing was happening at home with our children when we lost our tempers. They were scared, stressed and confused. Do we disagree in front of the kids? You bet. But we follow the same rules we follow at work. We stay calm. We don’t shout. We listen carefully, and each allows the other to be heard. Then we start to negotiate. If it is a volatile situation, we take it offline, away from others.

I’m no Moses, but being the polite Southern girl that I am, I offer the following Golden Rules for Universally Good Behavior–at home or work.

Rule 1: Do what you say you will do. Most of us know that if we agree to a request at work or make an agreement with a client, we have to follow through. Why is it so easy (be honest) to make a promise to your partner and then let it slide? We’ve all felt the injustice, the erosion of trust and the frustration engendered when we break this golden rule. We need to treat our partners with equal respect.

Rule 2: Be on time. Sounds simple. Why don’t more people follow this one? In the working world, those who are repeatedly late earn the scorn, mistrust and disrespect of their co-workers, clients and vendors. Being on time confers respect. It says quite clearly, “You are as important to me as I am.” Is your partner’s time as important to you as your own time?

Rule 3: No name-calling. Would you call your co-worker a stupid fool? Would you even say his idea was stupid? Don’t go there with your partner. What’s damaging at work is devastating at home.

Rule 4: No yelling, please. You know you aren’t supposed to yell at work. You aren’t supposed to yell at home, either. If you lose your temper and yell at co-workers, you’ll likely be spending some time in anger-management class . . . or on the street. It’s not effective at work because it’s not effective. Period.

A corollary: This extends to the kids, too. We don’t yell at our subordinates at the office; we don’t yell at our children, either.

Rule 5: Say “please” and “thank you.” This little courtesy makes for a pleasant atmosphere. Please begin a request with “please.” Please acknowledge others’ efforts with a “thank-you.” Thank you.

Rule 6: Absolutely no electronic fights, diatribes or one-way reprimands. Notice how easy it is to shoot off a nasty e-mail, text or phone message? Don’t go there. Ever. Please. We have a policy at our office that no content that is confrontational, negative or emotionally laden will be shared by e-mail. These are face-to-face conversations. And no one is to use all caps to express herself via e-mail. Digital communication is easily mistranslated, one-way, limited-context. Save electronic communication for facts, scheduling, keeping up. Not disagreeing.

Rule 7: If it’s important, set an appointment. Really. If Martin wants to have a deep conversation with me at 6 p.m. on Friday and all I can think about is a big glass of cabernet and five hours of Friends reruns, I just tell him we need to set an appointment. And we do. We typically come to these meetings (often on Sunday afternoon) with a much better attitude and an ability to really focus on that one important thing.

Rule 8: Respect a closed door. When we encounter closed doors at work, we know that a meeting, important phone call or just concentrated effort is happening on the other side. Do we barge in? Do we yell through it? No. We just knock. Teaching our children (and partner) to tap on a closed door at home can save so much embarrassment. It’s a sign that I respect your right to a little space. So rather than barge in on you enjoying an afternoon bubble bath, I’ll ask permission to enter your space. Nice.

Rule 9: Embrace “I’m sorry.” Funny, sometimes it’s actually easier to apologize to folks we’re closest to and beg off with every excuse at work. But acknowledging a mistake and apologizing for the results it caused is necessary to the long-term health of any relationship. Saying I’m sorry when we have caused someone to feel bad, whether we meant to or not, is the civil thing to do. It runs up all kinds of brownie points and deposits in the emotional bank account. “I’m sorry” acknowledges the damage, even when there was no ill intent.

Our policy at work is that when we make a mistake, we openly share it with the client, explain what went wrong and what we did about it, and how we will adjust our processes to avoid that mistake in the future. Try this at home.

Rule 10: The Golden Rule is always the best rule. Enough said. It works at work, and it works at home.