Greatest Thoughts : Leadership and team building - managing a better balanced home.

A lot of the things people learn about leadership and team building at work is directly transferable to managing better balance at home. Some of the strategies outline in her upcoming book include:

1. Vision. Discuss long-term personal and professional goals early, and revise regularly. Lack of alignment and mutual support between couples can derail entire life strategies. Be clear about what support will be required and expected to achieve these goals and where it will come from.

1. Active listening. The most common complaint from women is that they don’t feel heard; from men, that they don’t feel appreciated. For the first, introduce regular sit-down listening sessions (monthly is good, quarterly a minimum). Dedicated, face-to-face, concentrated, unspeaking, listening to everything your partner needs to say. Then repeat back what you heard. Adjust as necessary. Then switch. Sound awkward? Only until it becomes relationship-saving.

1. Feedback (aka flattery). Everyone appreciates feedback, but it is increasingly rare, both at home and at work. The rule usually recommended is 5 to 1: Five positive comments for every “constructive” one. Turns out humans love to be admired, especially by their intimate partners. So dial up the volume and tell your spouse how gorgeous, brilliant, caring, and supportive they are. Reward the positive and watch it grow. Sound artificial? Only until you see the light ignite in their eyes.

•  What is keeping you in this team? 

• Are you staying out of love or fear?

If your partner is not willing to engage, uninterested in “leaning in,” and resistant to seeking help, you should ask yourself why. Just like at work, it is interesting first to work on yourself.

Understand your own issues, the impact you have on others, the degree to which you are creating the reaction you are struggling with.

Consider working with a therapist or coach.

In the end, after you’ve figured yourself out, if the relationship hasn’t improved, the question remains:

Until recently, women had more fear than finances; a lack of love was bad, but not as bad as poverty. For many women, greater financial independence means they can hold their relationships to a higher standard.

Women want love and recognition and support, at work and at home. Companies that don’t offer it find they struggle with retention of women — many of whom will start their own companies.

Couples that don’t offer it struggle with the same thing: Women leave.

Retaining women, at home and at work, takes skill and self-awareness. It takes attention and an intentional readjustment of yesterday’s rules to today’s realities.

At work, it means adapting company cultures and systems.

At home, it requires an equally strategic focus on enhancing both partners’ potential, with a long-term family vision across lengthening lives, tons of attentive listening, and regular flattery for the journey. Anything less is so yesterday.

Greatest Thoughts by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox CEO of 20-first, one of the world’s leading gender consulting firms, and author of Seven Steps to Leading a Gender-Balanced Business.