Whatever you do, do not separate family from leadership and your work. Especially when you go up the ladder in your career. Because the higher you go, the lonelier it gets. And trust me when I say that lonely people do not last long in leading positions. 

I’ve been curious about a phenomenon lately, and decided to study leaders to see who made it to the top and lasted more than a decade, and who keeps growing. Then I looked at the successful people who became legends, and the world knows about them. The ones people speak about with reverence and tabloids gossip go bankrupt on their behalf. The ones you can’t read about in papers and magazines that sell scandals, divorce, and drama. 

And here is what I found:

The real success is not in how much money one makes, or how much influence one has. It is in how happy one’s family is while pursuing success.

And I don’t mean the kind of toxic “happiness” that only exists when one makes themselves small to accommodate the family. I am talking about the kind of happiness a family feels when parents and children have quality time despite everyone’s busy schedules.

When the family supports each member’s dreams. When they expect nothing less than their best. All while at the same time expecting quality and performance in relationships within the family.

The kind of family that expects its members to love, work, play, and rest with excellence and commitment. The kind that ensures not just happiness at home but also delivers leaders to the world and the workplace.

When I work with people in leadership positions who tell me how spleated they are. How they have to step into a completely different self when they go home. And vice versa when they come to work. I can fully understand why those people come to me with “unexplained” burnout. 

Looking at history, we notice a pattern among successful people. They did the best in their abilities to make sure their family was healthy and to get their attention as much as their career did. They did not separate their private life from their work life. We see wives travelling to support their husbands and husbands traveling to support their wives. 

Think of Margaret Thatcher, the first woman prime minister of the UK, actors like Denzel Washington, Jeff Bridges, Michael J. Fox married to Tracy Pollan, and business people like Jeff Bezos, Michael Dell, Eric Scmidt, Ray Dalio and Phil Knight, the founder of Nike who is married for 50 years, or Chuck Berry, the rock and roll pioneer who despite his success he is married to his wife for 67 years.

Why is it that from all the business and leadership strategies we put so much effort into applying, we leave out the most important one – our family and marriage?

Like anything worth having, marriage and a healthy family take time, and you must work on them. Would you let your career go by in the wind, unattended, and neglect your development? What would happen if you did? You know that if you want to keep your leadership position, you must work on being worthy of it. So it is with your family.

The point is:

Leadership starts from home. It starts with self-leadership, with being a leader in your family, and only when your family is happy for you to lead them into what is good for you all, can you go out and conquer the world, pursuing your career. Not the other way around.

There is no health in leadership when your family would rather have you on the road traveling than home for dinner, Christmas, or birthday parties. 

Challenge for you as a leader

As you wrap up your year, I encourage you to take time to assess your family’s health. Not so that you find a reason for divorce, move out, or break things off. But to take an objective look, maybe hire a specialist to look into your marriage (couples therapy is not only for when things break apart, but it is also to prevent the breaking) to help you be strategic about your relationships.

Ask your spouse what they need from you to be more present when you are with them. Ask your children, and if you have teenagers, they will tell you exactly what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. And if you gather the courage to ask your family, and most importantly, to listen to them and apply what they say, you will build not just a good year in 2026, but you will build a life worth having. 

What is one thing you want to improve in your leadership and family starting today?

Until next time,

Cristina 

PS: You can read all about leadership, strategies, mental health and burnout prevention in teams and out of it, here.