Martin Gros looks back to his sabbatical

Your sabbatical ended last November. How did you experience the six month off from work?

It turned out as I had hoped for. “The six months were energising. I made new, surprising and wonderful experiences. I could bowl down stuff and get myself physically fit. In a nut shell: I could recharge my batteries.” That’s actually what I said in April, before the start of my sabbatical.

I managed to be really “out of the loop” and to focus on other aspects of life. Half a year is the perfect length of time for that purpose. But you really need to want it, i.e. you need to plan well in order to resist all the temptation from work.

How did you spend this time and what did you particularly enjoy?

In short: Family, sports and nature, friends, house and garden, life in the village, newspapers, “office fengshui”, retreat and streusel cake.

We launched “our” sabbatical – my wife is self-employed and my kids still in kindergarten, hence they could also take a kind of a sabbatical – with a seven-week trip to Spain and France. The perfect start.

During summer time, we spent a lot of time in the mountains, made excursions, went sailing and I rode my bicycle a lot. I also did some craftsman’s work on our home. We welcomed many visitors and due to the fact that I was more involved in the daily life of our lovely village I made new acquaintances and friends.

In fall, I went to a wonderful retreat, went with friends to Hamburg, spent time on the isle of Sylt and with other dads and their kids in a mountain cabin. All of a sudden, I had a whole lot of appointments but it wasn’t stressful at all. To the contrary: With or without action, every day was something special and I had been looking forward to (almost) every new day. That was probably the most exciting thing about the whole sabbatical.

How was your „re-entry“ and how does your sabbatical linger on?

It was special moments to come back to the team and to see the important and less important every-day issues which are going on. It took only a week and I was fully back into business again. And I feel that’s just right. I need a certain level of stress to do a good job. And honestly, I am a “ComTeamer” with neck and crop and many things in our job – internal as well as external ones – are very exciting. What I somewhat regret is that the priorities in my life shifted again. The element “my job” is back, hence other parts of my life have to step back. You could say, “that’s life!”, but it is a kind of a good-bye. I have a few concrete intentions – you may say New Year’s pledge at this time of the year – from my sabbatical for my “normal” life but I think most of the things linger on implicitly.

What recommendation would you give a colleague or somebody else who is due for a sabbatical?

Everyone needs something else. Most importantly, one takes the opportunity to find out what one really wants while the job is “on holiday”. Many companies offer their employees and leaders the opportunity to take a leave, e.g. there are parent leaves. And sometime one needs to seek the opportunity. Probably, it is a bit easier for us in our kind of business to plan ahead with colleagues and clients. Issues such as position in the team and individual availability are probably less critical. Still, at the end everyone benefits from a leave, especially the employer.

Martin Gross was interviewed by Karin Pressa.