The Middle Ground | Role Reversal Part 3

After switching roles with my wife, me stepping into the “primary at-home” role and her stepping into full-time breadwinner mode, we both expected stress.

What we didn’t expect was clarity.

Not the kind that shouts at you. The kind that whispers when you’re picking up socks, wiping counters, or trying to reschedule a dentist appointment between Zoom calls.

We began to realize something we’d never questioned before:

We had been living at opposite ends of a spectrum, work is value vs. home is duty, without ever asking why (at least I was).

I was running on cultural autopilot.

I used to think the most valuable person in a home (or team) was the one responsible for the financial resources. I also used to think the At-Home Primary had the more “flexible” schedule, mine was too important.

I may not be fully wrong. But I was definitely missing the middle.

And that middle ground is where real leadership lives.

It’s where empathy starts. It’s where assumptions get replaced with conversations. It’s where we stop saying, “Who’s doing more?” and start asking, “How are we both doing, really?”

That shift didn’t just help our relationship, it changed how I think about leading teams.

In business, we often default to the visible wins. The revenue. The outbound numbers. The big presentation.

But I’ve come to deeply respect the invisible wins too:

• The teammate who remembers the team birthday and lifts the energy in meetings

• The one who sees burnout coming and pulls someone aside before it’s too late

• The person who does the prep work no one notices, so the big meeting runs smooth

These don’t show up on a dashboard, they should, because they’re the glue that holds everything together. Those are just as important as the financial resources.

Good leadership doesn’t pick sides. It builds bridges. Between roles. Between assumptions. Between what we see and what actually keeps things running.

And when we start to value effort, presence, and emotional labor the same way we value output, everything changes, at home and at work.