At a time when ensuring work-life balance is becoming a prerequisite for employees, and subsequently a real challenge for employers, Tahnee Perrot Rodriguez approaches balance management from the angle of professional competence, based on a thorough understanding and proper management of essential physiological and psychological needs. With her company Balanced France, she advises and trains managers and employees on an individual and collective level to make balance a pillar of more sustainable well-being and performance.

1. What does the notion of balance mean? What do you offer at Balanced France?

The notion of balance at work is not new. It has been studied in the Anglo-Saxon world since the early 20th century. In the 1970s, with the tertiarization of the economy, the notion of work-life balance developed. And a new paradigm seems to be emerging since the health crisis and its impact on part of the working world. Changes in the workplace raise new questions.

The figures testify to a real imbalance in the physical and mental health of the French population: almostone in two employees lives with chronic stress, and nine out of ten French people are too sedentary. This is reflected in an increase in psychosocial risks and musculoskeletal disorders, the average cost of which amounts to 5 billion euros a year in major groups alone, not to mention the issues surrounding commitment.

"Managing balance depends on our ability to understand and address our essential physiological and psychological needs, despite the ups and downs of everyday life".

Because we don't just find our balance, we build it on a daily basis by adapting to changing contexts and environments. We distinguish between daily habits (diet, sleep, mobility, emotional management, etc.) and adjustments to be made during periods of high intensity, in order to support an overstressed nervous system. The ultimate aim is to react intelligently to moments of imbalance or difficulty, with a view to avoiding the 4 "B's": burnout (physical and moral exhaustion), brownout (a state of professional disengagement in which the employee no longer feels in tune with his or her work, mission or company), boreout (a syndrome of burnout caused by boredom and a lack of fulfillment and meaning) and blurout (hyperconnection negatively affecting both professional and personal life).

If a professional career is often experienced as a long sprint, where stress is the object of paradox (rewarding on the one hand, a sign of failure on the other), Balanced encourages the creation of a marathon culture in companies, divided into periods of sprint, cruising speed and recovery. Each of these phases is associated with priority needs and challenges. It's during periods of intensity that we'll encourage a team to support its nervous system individually, value each stage collectively, and maintain conditions conducive to well-being and sustainable performance for everyone, despite the intensity. From standing meetings to specific sports sessions during rush periods, to diet, there are many tools promoted by neuroscience and psychology to explore in order to rethink our relationship with periods of stress.

Our mission at Balanced France is to ensure that this skill is recognized at all levels of seniority, to encourage a process of co-responsibility between employees and managers, and thus support a more sustainable relationship with the notion of performance. To achieve this, we provide training in balance management, as well as in all competencies based on knowledge, skills and attitudes to be developed throughout one's career.

2. Who do you target?

Supported by our team of 45 professionals (neuroscientists, consultants, health professionals, etc.), we help managers and employees of organizations of all sizes to acquire this skill by discovering and understanding the foundations of their own physical and mental health.

"We've noticed that it's more executives who come to us than HR professionals.

In addition to our training courses, we provide mentoring to these managers, encouraging them to think across the board about the place of balance in the company's mission, values and day-to-day operations. Leaders take up this subject, no doubt because they feel very concerned themselves, and are questioning their own performance and growth model...

There are different situations, depending on the organization and the manager. Some start-up managers will be wondering how to run their business "without burning out", because they have already experienced burn-out. Managers of SMEs in a growth phase are aware that they will be asking more of their teams, and they need to be equipped for this. Managers of large groups come from an extremely intense work culture, which they do not wish to reproduce.

"The managers we work with tend to be in their 40s and 50s, and are at a generational crossroads after having experienced very high-intensity careers with strong ambitions. They are experiencing a real awakening and want to pass on other values."

These are managers who want to embody this methodology, inscribe it in their organization's DNA and ensure that their employees will not experience what they themselves have experienced. They see the intrinsic fragility of a purely linear vision of performance. The notion of competence is also very appealing, unlike QVTCs which are very vertical.

3. What does an impact leader mean to you?

More than someone who dares to think bigger, I see leadership as the role of a social engineer who takes an interest in and determines the conditions for success that enable a team or community to move forward towards the great project he or she is carrying.

He or she wants to get things moving, but is clear that he or she can't do it alone. Gifted with real power of conviction, human, emotional and situational intelligence, and profound humility, he or she knows his or her strengths and weaknesses. He or she has a strong idealistic streak, but is obviously also very pragmatic, and allows himself or herself to dream and have ambitions, even though he or she may not have the immediate means to do so.

The notion of balance takes on its full meaning for him because of this ambition, and this is what cognitive resource theories tell us about the importance of good stress management in leaders. They are so invested that they can easily forget themselves, but self-forgetfulness comes at a cost. This sacrificial relationship can bring the adventure to a halt or make it go less smoothly. This notion of balance is all the more important for them if they want their project to last.

Tahnee Perrot Ramirez is Franco-Mexican. After graduating from SciencesPo and starting out in the diplomatic service, she embarked on a career in consulting at PwC, then in social entrepreneurship at Make.org, and has never stopped wanting to get "closer to the ground", as she puts it. In fact, at the same time as teaching her clients the genius of collective intelligence, she is training in neurobiology and neuroscience, as well as yogatherapy. It was at the request of an executive that she tried her hand at coaching, and then over the course of 5 years of coaching professionals, particularly executives, that she came up with the notion of managing balance through the Balanced at Work method, which combines neuroscience, positive psychology and mind-body tools.