Is it possible for a leader to be a top performer and still achieve work-life balance?

Christy Dobbs, Philadelphia

A Not only is it possible, it happens all the time. Look, top performers are top performers for a reason.

They're usually very talented . . . smart, creative, productive and loaded with energy. And those qualities don't tend to confine themselves to work. If they're in a person, they suffuse everything he or she does.

That's why we all know plenty of successful businesspeople who also have successful lives outside work, filled with family, volunteering and hobbies. They've figured out what they want and how to make it all happen, usually with the help of well honed 'home processes', like meticulous scheduling, online shopping and backup childcare.

We understand your question, though. We've heard it dozens of times. In a global economy where job challenges are constantly escalating, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by conflicting demands. And technology complicates matters -- with your Blackberry in hand, you can constantly be on call to everyone.

But feeling swamped is really just a default mechanism; it's what occurs when you don't face into what "achieving worklife balance" really comes down to: making choices and living with their consequences. In fact, we would even vote to retire the term "work-life balance" and replace it with "work-life choices".

The problem is that "work-life balance" suggests there is one right ratio for how much time you spend working and not working, and with that, we disagree.

Sure, there's a lot of politically correct advocacy for a kind of perfect equilibrium, and it may very well be that many people want a 50-50 split between work and life. But some people love work so much and find it so gratifying that they want to live a different equation, say, 70-30. Still others want to work just enough to support a life of avocation.

For instance, we have a friend who writes and consults about two months a year to pay for travel the other 10. He thinks his life is perfectly balanced.

Balance, we're saying, is a personal choice based on what feels right to you, given what you want from life. With that choice comes consequences.

When you choose to work 80 hours a week, you're also choosing to give up some level of intimacy with your children. When you chose to work 35 hours a week in order to see more of your family, for instance, you're also choosing to take yourself off the fasttrack to senior management.

There's no right or wrong here. There are just individual choices and their trade-offs.

But to your more general question, yes, it is completely possible to be a top performer and "achieve work-life balance". Most top performers have already made a choice . . . work is a priority . . . but their talent helps them forge a meaningful outside life too, often with just the balance they want.

Q In a matrix environment, how can a functional boss give a decent evaluation to a person whom he doesn't see very often?

Anonymous, Baltimore

A He can't.

And in fact, your question nails one of the biggest problems with matrix organisations. For all the good they can do in terms of productivity and knowledge-sharing in multi-productline companies, they can really fuzz up reporting relationships.

And that lack of clarity can drive employees nuts, especially when it comes to performance reviews. Like you, they want to know how they can be evaluated by someone who barely knows what they do.

Here's a solution to consider: functional heads in matrix organisations should start thinking of themselves as quasi-temp agencies.

Instead of trying to manage functional specialists in the product groups from a distance, they should focus on hiring those specialists, training them, deploying them to the right jobs in the organisation and, with the product heads, reassigning them when and if a better fit becomes available.

Sure, under this new approach, functional heads would still have input into any given specialist's performance evaluation.

But the bulk of that responsibility would be held by productline managers . . .

where, for clarity's sake, it belongs.

Jack and Suzy Welch are the authors of the international bestseller 'Winning'. They are eager to hear about your career dilemmas and challenges at work and look forward to answering your questions in future columns. You can email them questions at Winning@nytimes. com. Please include your name, occupation, city and country