7 Tips to Address Work-Life Balance in Executive Coaching Sessions
In today's fast-paced business world, executives often struggle to maintain a healthy work-life balance. This article presents valuable insights from experts in the field of executive coaching to address this critical issue. Discover practical strategies that can help leaders effectively manage their time, reduce stress, and achieve greater harmony between their professional and personal lives.
- Implement Daily Intentional Pauses
- Check Your Face for Stress Signals
- Create Space for Meaningful Reflection
- Schedule and Protect Recovery Time
- Align Calendar with Personal Values
- Address Underlying Self-Worth Issues
- Conduct Weekly Energy Audits
Implement Daily Intentional Pauses
The 10-Minute Reset: Elevate Leadership and Well-Being with Intentional Pauses
Work-life balance and well-being aren't optional—they're the foundation of sustainable leadership. In my executive coaching, I help leaders cut through noise, clarify priorities, and build habits that fuel both performance and personal fulfillment. My approach, rooted in Expanding Human Excellence®, is pragmatic and direct: leadership excellence starts with self-awareness and intentional action.
Leaders today face relentless demands. That's why I'm known as "9-1-1 for Executives"—I deliver actionable guidance when it matters most. But even in crisis, sustainable performance depends on honoring both work and life. One of the most effective strategies I recommend is the Intentional Pause: a daily, scheduled 10-minute break. Here's how it works:
1. Set a non-negotiable 10-minute pause in your day.
2. Step away from devices, emails, and noise.
3. Ask yourself:
- What matters most right now?
- Where am I spending energy that isn't aligned with my priorities?
- What one action will move me closer to balance today?
This isn't just a break—it's a reset. And the science backs it up. Research on micro-breaks—pauses of 10 minutes or less—shows they significantly boost well-being by increasing energy and reducing fatigue. A meta-analysis of 22 studies found that these short breaks help people feel more energetic and less drained throughout the workday. Even a brief walk or mindfulness practice can recharge your mental batteries and sharpen your focus.
While longer breaks can further enhance performance, especially after demanding tasks, the evidence is clear: regular micro-breaks are a powerful tool for maintaining well-being and preventing burnout. It's about quality, not quantity—consistent, intentional pauses deliver outsized benefits.
Work-life balance isn't a finish line; it's a daily practice. By integrating intentional, research-backed micro-breaks into your routine, you create space for better decisions, healthier boundaries, and a more fulfilling leadership journey. That's how you expand human excellence—one mindful moment at a time.
Check Your Face for Stress Signals
For me, work-life balance is not static. I focus on teaching people how to stay connected to themselves amidst constant change. In my coaching, I blend psychophysiognomy and epigenetics analysis to help leaders recognize early warning signs before stress takes over. One tip is to start your day or week by checking your face instead of your calendar. For example: Tension in your jaw or eyes, such as squinting or dull eyes, often reveals what your schedule won't, because, in my opinion, self-connection is the new productivity. Self-connection helps you find your inner compass and make better decisions with clarity. Focus on your real qualities instead of potential failures, weaknesses, or stress because the mind is powerful, and our actions follow our perspective.
Create Space for Meaningful Reflection
When a client is struggling with balance or well-being, I start with a simple but powerful question: "What do you want? What do you want in your life?" If the gap between where they are and where they want to be feels overwhelming, we start small—identifying one meaningful habit that could create momentum for others. But more than anything, what most leaders are missing is time to think. Creating space to reflect—on what you want, what you don't, at work and in life—isn't a luxury; it's essential.
Schedule and Protect Recovery Time
My focus is less on 'work-life balance' and more on 'work-life integration'. Balance implies everything gets equal weight, but real life doesn't work that way, especially for high performers. Instead, I help clients align their energy and priorities across all domains of life in a way that feels intentional and sustainable.
One practical strategy I recommend is scheduling recovery with the same level of importance as business meetings. Block it off. Name it. Protect it. Whether it's a walk, a workout, or just unplugged time, when it lives on the calendar, it becomes part of the system, not an afterthought. I also emphasize that well-being isn't a reward for getting things done; it's the foundation that allows you to perform at a high level over time.
Integration doesn't mean doing everything all at once. It means knowing what matters in the moment and having the systems in place to protect it.
Align Calendar with Personal Values
Work-life balance is a slippery concept, especially for founders and executives who blur the line between identity and role. In executive coaching, I often start by reframing the idea—not as balance, but as alignment. I worked with a founder last year who felt perpetually "off," even though they had technically achieved all their goals. It turned out they were operating on someone else's definition of success. Once we realigned their calendar with what they actually cared about—family time, product work, and walking meetings to clear their head—things shifted.
One practical tip I always give: protect one non-negotiable anchor in your week. For me, it's early mornings without meetings—I use that time to read, think, or just be a dad. I had to fight for it at first, even within Spectup, because startup life doesn't pause. But holding that space has made me a better leader and less reactive during the rest of the week. It's not about perfection—it's about building tiny routines that keep you human.
Address Underlying Self-Worth Issues
When addressing work-life balance, it's extremely important that we focus on more than just the surface-level, practical elements. People often focus so much on trying to time-block their calendar and actively schedule time for their personal lives that they forget that an unhealthy work-life balance is almost always a symptom of a deeper problem. It stems from issues regarding one's own self-worth and a need to be productive or to stay busy in order to feel safe. People are earning their value solely through their career or they don't even know who they are when their worth isn't tied into their income or the value they bring to their jobs. If this isn't addressed directly, then any changes to one's schedule will just be a thin veneer of a solution that will eventually crumble and fall as they slip back into old cycles.
If you find yourself struggling to feel at peace when you're not being 'productive' (with regards to career and income), it's a sign that you're trying to cover up some underlying fear with your work. Some part of you doesn't feel safe merely 'existing'. You feel you need to be constantly earning your freedom. You feel as though something bad is going to happen if you are not constantly on guard, constantly producing, and constantly earning. No amount of 'time-blocking' is going to solve that problem.
Focus first on learning how to confront the discomfort that arises when you try to take time for yourself and to confront the visceral fear that comes up inside of you when you're not working. That discomfort is the unresolved emotional trauma that's trying to move through you. When you've learned how to conquer that directly, finding a healthy work-life balance will come far more naturally to you. Your values and your priorities will naturally re-align when you don't subconsciously feel as though taking time for the most important things in life puts you in danger.
Conduct Weekly Energy Audits
I teach executives the "energy audit" technique at Scale By SEO. Most leaders focus on time management, but energy management is what actually drives performance. I have clients track their energy levels hourly for one week, noting when they feel most creative, focused, or drained. The insights are eye-opening. One CEO discovered he was scheduling important decisions during his 3 PM energy crash. We moved strategic meetings to his peak 10 AM slot and reserved afternoons for routine tasks. The result? Better decisions with less stress.
My practical tip: protect your top three energy hours like sacred time. Block them for your most important work and say no to everything else during those windows. Most executives burn out because they treat all hours equally. That's how Scale By SEO keeps your brand visible.
