Balance - Possible Strengths

Do you have these strengths? If not, how strongly does this factor apply to you?

• Breadth of interests - You have a range of interests outside of work that provide you with as much satisfaction as your job, or more. Your career is not everything to you. Your interests might include time with your family, hobbies, travel, sports and other leisure activities. Time spent on your outside interests helps you re-charge your batteries for challenges at work. If your interests are not so broad, you might take work problems too seriously and have little to fall back on to regain a sense of what else might be important to you.
• External support - Your external interests might include strong relationships with family or friends and this provides you with an invaluable source of support during a work or personal crisis. Without such external support, you might keep problems bottled up, thinking that you can deal with anything on your own. This outlook could make you less able to cope with pressure at work.
• Stress tolerance - You have a variety of outlets to work off stress. These might include friends, family, leisure activities, exercise or simply fresh air. Because other things are valued, you don't take your career quite so seriously. You keep things in perspective and laugh at setbacks that would upset others. Without balance, you could find the stress of work affecting your performance in many respects.
• Resilience - You have resources to draw upon outside of work because you are not putting all your eggs in one basket. If you lose your job or suffer a major career setback, you have a better chance of bouncing back quickly. With less balance, you could be knocked back by major setbacks more easily.
  

Potential pitfalls

• Less career success - spreading yourself across too many interests, not being seen as ambitious or self-sacrificing enough.
• Alienation - not working hard, colleagues seeing you as lazy or unmotivated relative to them, being left out of key decisions.
• Current - not keeping up to date at work as it takes too much time and isn't that important to you.