Work Life Balance?
When Leadership Doesn't Switch Off
Spend enough time around leadership and you start to hear the same advice repeated. Protect your time, switch off, find balance.
It sounds sensible and it reads well. It feels like something we should be aiming for. Then you listen to people doing the job and the picture changes quickly.
A Role That Doesn’t Switch Off
When young coaches ask Roberto Martínez about work-life balance, his response is blunt:
“If they ask me that, they are not going to last. Football, for me, is not a job. It is a passion. It must be a way of living. And you must accept that it will bring with it both good and bad moments.”
For him, football is not something separate from life. It is part of it. It is how he thinks, how he observes, how he spends his time. Even without daily contact with players in his role with Portugal, he is watching games, speaking to staff, planning, thinking.
That perspective cuts straight through the idea that leadership can be neatly divided into compartments. Work on one side. Life on the other. In reality, the two blend.
Gary Kirsten describes his approach as “twenty-four seven” and admits, “leadership works you over.” The constant question in his mind is simple: how can I add value to this group today? It sounds purposeful but it can also be exhausting.
Ashley Giles is equally honest: “Do we ever switch off? No, I don’t think we do properly.”
The job does not end. When the training session finishes, the thinking continues. When the game is over, the analysis starts.
The Cost
This is where the conversation moves away from theory and into reality. Leadership places pressure on the areas of life that matter most.
Sean Dyche describes the challenge as “life meets professional football.” Early in his time at Burnley, he lived away from his family, trying to build a team and a culture while holding everything together at home. He talks about being “stretched all over the place, your private life, your professional life.”
There is no neat solution to that.
Michael Maguire is equally direct:
“The job is twenty-four seven. It might be a phone call you need to make…I thrive on learning, so I am trying to find people from the other side of the world that I have been involved with on various things – it is definitely a challenge.”
He simplifies his world in a way that most leaders would recognise:
“There are two things that I have in my life: family and the sport. I don’t want too much else. Because they are the two things that I love.”
Stuart Lancaster offers a different perspective, one that lands harder over time. Reflecting on the scrutiny around the World Cup back in 2015, he spoke about seeing the effect on his family, particularly his mum.
“You just felt the pain. My mum, I could see the pain I was causing my mum. She said, ‘It doesn’t matter how old you are, you want to be able to defend your son, and even though you are 45 I want to be able to defend you and I can’t’ - because the bullets were flying in. They were feeling my pain and I could not do anything to make it go away for them. That was the bit I really struggled with. So while my personal pain was tough, I felt for my family.”
That is the part rarely discussed.The decisions, the pressure, the criticism, they do not sit neatly with the individual. They extend into the people around them.
Why Balance Becomes Difficult to Define
Given all of this, the idea of balance starts to feel vague. It suggests equal weighting and clear boundaries. Leadership rarely operates like that.
For some, like Martínez, the idea of separating work and life does not even appeal. The role is too closely tied to identity. Trying to pull it apart creates friction rather than relief.
For others, the goal shifts.
Gary Kirsten and his family created their own structure during his time with India. A fixed window of 21 days; meaning that if Kirsten was unable to return home in that time, his wife Deborah would fly over with the family.
“The balance was tough, but we were fortunate that we had young kids at the time and it was easier to travel with them. Deborah commuted in from South Africa. It was tough initially, but we got into a routine. We actually ended up having lots of fun as a family at that time.”
That clarity was tested following the pinnacle of Kirsten’s coaching career:
“I said to my wife it would be a max of three years in the job and that would be it. On my last day we won the World Cup. So of course, it was tempting to stay on and I was offered a good contract. But it didn’t deter me from my commitment to the family that I would only do three years, so that was it.”
Finding Space, Not Separation
The leaders who sustain themselves over time do not rely on clean breaks from the role, they create space within it.
Dan Quinn travels.
Gary Kirsten runs, cycles, fishes.
Michael Maguire seeks out environments that strip sport back to its essence, like his trip to Papua New Guinea, where the game exists without the money or noise.
Kirsten also speaks about his work in the townships of South Africa. Building cricket programmes, creating opportunities, contributing beyond the immediate demands of elite performance.
These are not escapes, but they are ways of gaining perspective reminding leaders that their role sits within a wider context.
Rethinking the Question
The conversation around work-life balance often starts in the wrong place. It assumes that balance is both possible and desirable in its traditional form.
The reality described by these leaders points somewhere else.
Leadership demands a level of commitment that challenges the idea of clean separation. The role follows you. It sits in your thinking. It shapes how you spend your time and energy.
So the question shifts.
Less about how you divide work and life and more about how you live with the overlap.
The role does not switch off. And neither, in many ways, do the people who take it on.
If you have 5 minutes, spend some time reflecting on the questions below and how this all applies to you:
Reflection Questions
Where does your role follow you beyond working hours, and how aware are you of that carryover?
What have you consciously decided matters outside of work, and how are you protecting it?
Where are you trying to create balance, when the real task is managing overlap?
Next Week
Next week we look at how leaders continue to develop while carrying these demands. From mentors to new environments, reflection to constant learning, we reveal the habits that keep thinking fresh while the pressure of the role continues remains.
Thanks for reading - and for being part of this space.
If there’s a question, challenge or idea you’d like me to explore in future posts, just hit the button below and let me know
Have a great week!
Tom