‘A Fine Balance – The Podcast’: Season 2, Episode 3 Out Now
The third episode of this season’s podcast is out now, featuring Gilles Dahan, a former banker and head of global trading, who left the finance industry in 2019, and now works as a consultant and entrepreneur.
This podcast episode contains some great nuggets of advice, including how to avoid burnout, even when you’re working long hours, with a family at home that you see far less than your colleagues and lap top screen.
What I enjoyed so much about recording this podcast episode with Gilles was how he candidly spoke about the choices he has taken to prioritise work over other things in his life.
When so often the rhetoric around work-life balance is on reducing the “work” side to have more balance, Gilles refreshingly spins this narrative on its head: not only has he not chosen to work less, but he does not feel guilty or regretful for it either.
Gilles first shared his story on the blog, ‘A Fine Balance’, in the summer of 2022 where he described some of the strategies and approaches he has taken throughout his long, busy and successful career to make sure that the people – and things – that matter most to him still get the quality, if not the quantity of his time outside of work.
Interviewing Gilles for the blog in the summer of 2022
At the time, he said the value of his work:life ratio was 80:20. He explained that it works because he is strategic, opportunistic and most importantly flexible. The 80:20 split, he says, “should move around and be flexible so that my family, and especially my children, know that I can always be available when it matters”.
In this podcast episode, Gilles shares how he and his wife find balance in their marriage, creating an environment in which he can dedicate himself to his chosen career in such a way. We also talk about his values as a father when it comes to specific family choices, such as whether to attend his children’s school events.
Gilles’ views on purposefully not prioritising attending his children’s school events prompted me to put a poll out to explore broader views on how this choice contributes to the work-life balance of working parents.
I was not surprised to see that Gilles’ was a minority view, with only 22% of respondents agreeing with him that attending school events was not something that improved his work-life balance as a working parent. He says that he is there for his children in other (arguably, more meaningful) ways.
Nevertheless, 22% is not an insignificant proportion – so perhaps it’s more common than is usually spoken about.
Certainly, from the working parents I’ve interviewed before, most have described attending school events as being a fundamental element of their work-life balance. You can read more analysis of the poll results here: “The Pursuit of Balance for Working Parents: Attending School Events“.
Apart from covering this aspect of Gilles’ work-life balance story on the podcast, we also talk about his experience of growing up in a family where his parents had to start their livelihoods from scratch as new immigrants to France.
And Gilles shares his experience on how to find purpose in any industry or role, even in banking (and similar industries) where you might not expect to find it. You can do this, he says, by creating a “bubble of goodness” in your workplace – to motivate your team and give the people around you hope and fulfilment, even if the bigger picture of your organisation is not what you dream it to be.
I was delighted to welcome Gilles on the podcast to pick up where we left off last summer, and hear more about his take on balancing work with everything else in life. I hope you enjoy listening.