'My Spouse Won’t Take Me To Work Events' The Times, 17 March 2005How would you manage this tricky dilemma?
We asked two experts
Your dilemma: Your spouse regularly entertains work colleagues and clients as part of their job. Other partners sometimes go along to the evening events and you would like to go too. But your partner wants to keep professional and private matters separate. What’s the solution?
Rob Barham, CEO, TACK International
Your partner may feel:
a) that you could get bored or
b) obliged to entertain you and have less time to do the job.
You need to “sell” yourself and highlight how you could be of benefit to him if invited - convince your spouse that you can help with networking, rather than hinder it. Your partner will know the value of this key soft skill to build knowledge of people and discover common interests and acquaintances that could be of value for both business and career.
Your partner should be thinking in terms of making the most of these social events. Recent research from TACK shows that buyers would rather spend less time with their suppliers in formal meetings. If your partner's clients and their partners are giving up their time for an evening event, your attendance is a clear sign of your spouse’s commitment to them.
You can help to build closer ties and act as co-host without broadcasting your private life.
Malcolm Higgs, professor at Henley Management College (www.henleymc.ac.uk)
This is by no means uncommon. In fact, the opposite situation also often arises with the partner being expected to participate in work-related entertainment, but not wanting to become involved. There is no doubt that many of us prefer to keep our work and private lives separate. The behaviours we exhibit at work can be different to those we display at home. Some people feel uncomfortable if a partner sees different behaviours. Alternatively, they feel compelled to moderate their work behaviours and this, in turn, makes them uncomfortable.
Your desire to attend these events is not unreasonable, but your partner’s wish for you not to, equally may not be unreasonable. Exploring the reasons together in order to better understand the cause of this difference in view may lead to you both identifying some events that you could attend without unduly impacting on the work/private life divide.
