Walter Schmidt 
Rush Hour of Life 
Managing the Clash between Family and Career

It is about time that we learn to reconcile career and family ourselves – This book offers a path to a healthy work-life balance.

There is an increasing demand for practical solutions to solve the conflict between the modern business world and family life. This is especially important for young working couples in their ‚rush hour of life‘ when both of them have a career and are needed in the upbringing of their children. Walter Schmidt has discovered the reasons for the apparent incompatibility of the values and attitudes. He has developed a new model to achieve a healthy work-family-balance by transferring the concept of Salutogenesis, introduced by Aaron Antonovsky, and that of Servant Leadership, coined by Robert K. Greenleaf, to the reconciliation of family and career. He believes that the key to the solution lies in a fundamental change of behaviour of the persons involved. The most important factor is the Sense of Coherence: The belief that we live in a world that is generally comprehensible, offers resources to solve problems, and rewards efforts. This sense can be developed and fostered by consciously dealing with one’s own emotions and relationships as well as through exercises introduced by the author, such as the ‚partner maps‘.

Über den Autor

Walter Schmidt was born in Weiden (Bavaria, Germany). He studied business economics and conferred a doctor’s degree in economic sciences in Vienna and Innsbruck. After his career in diverse management and leading functions in marketing and sales at worldwide known enterprises, he worked for one of the largest business consulting companies in Europe. In 1987 he founded Inter Media as a management and HR consulting company. In 1993 he was a founder member of Search Net International – one of worldwide operating networks of HR consulting. His special issue is education, training and life shaping of female and male managers. His scientific work embraces development of management skills. In 2009 he completed his second doctorate in Philosophy at the Catholic University of Eichstaett. As a visiting Professor at the Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University of Warsaw, he gave lectures on the subject ‚work – life balance‘ during the summer semester 2014. In December 2016 he was appointed Professor of the Faculty of Family Studies at the Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University. Since March 2017 he gives lectures on the subject ‚Rush Hour of Life‘. He develops and manages scientific projects. His goal is, to educate young people to learn how to balance career and family life, which will be a target for their adult life.