This week former NSW premier Kristina Keneally announced she was stepping down from her role as CEO of Basketball Australia to spend more time with her family, especially her two teenage sons.
Clearly keen to keep working, she told the Sydney Morning Herald she’s after a role that will better suit her commitments at home. One that allows her to be there in the evenings and on the weekends, “consistently”.
The move puts into question which, if any, CEO and key leadership positions can be held by those looking to better balance their time between life and work. Particularly in high-profile dual-career households, such as Keneally’s, given she is married to the Mayor of Botany.
The move also reminded me of the much talked about story of Anne-Marie Slaughter, who left her high-profile Washington role to spend more time with here own teenage sons. We often think of the women looking to step back from high profile and time consuming roles as those with very small children, but the teenage years are proving to be a period of much work/life angst for women — albeit different to finding the hours for bath time, trips to the playground or managing the school drop off.
Like Slaughter, Keneally too found herself counting the hours she was away from her sons. She found that despite her children getting older, spending long periods of time away travelling was getting more difficult. As a national role, the Basketball Australia position required a significant amount of travel both domestically and overseas.
“I would have loved to have continued in the role, but the reality is that the demands of the job — particularly the travel demands — are not compatible with my changed family circumstances,” Keneally said in a statement issued by BA. “It is with much sadness that I resign, but at a personal level, this is the right decision.”
As we’ve written about previously, many parents feel their children need more supervision in the teenage years, even if such supervision is merely offered in the background. Young children can be supervised in childcare or with a trusted nanny or grandparent. But teenagers require personal care that often only their direct guardians can offer.
Keneally became chairman of Basketball Australia after losing the 2011 state election to Barry O’Farrell, she was later appointed its CEO and oversaw the body during it’s de-merger from the NBL as well as the sport’s implementation of new governance principles, and the government’s ‘Winning Edge’ strategy. She is currently more than halfway through a six-month period of compassionate leave from the organisation.
She told the SMH she found herself in a bit of a bind after leaving politics, particularly as she was only just in her forties at the time. She wasn’t keen on a new career in political commentating, and believed she was too young for boards. She wanted more C-suite experience.
That experience has seen her engage in a highly rewarding and what must be a seriously fun job, although one that’s clearly required sacrifice at the same time. But while Keneally is stepping back from such a position at this point, it by no means has to be a permanent decision. Family circumstances continually change for all of us, presenting new opportunities or reasons to put on the breaks, or push down on the accelerator, of our careers.