Are Leaders part of your Well-being strategy? Leaders need better Well-being, too!
“Leaders always get better treatment”.
OK, well they often get better reward packages and perks.
They might not be dealing with frontline issues or angry customers.
They perhaps have more control over things.
But do they always get better treatment?
What about when it comes to well-being?
Long hours, pressure, priorities, politics, the demands of leading others…this isn’t easy and whilst nobody is necessarily forcing someone to do this, organisations need people successfully leading in their organisations and not considering the well-being of Leaders is harmful.
Of course, they need to be part of your strategy by being equipped to manage and lead on well-being within their team but what are you doing to focus on their specific needs?
When creating your well-being strategy and plans are you considering Leaders as a category that needs their own focus?
Why you should have a well-being strategy for Leaders.
When you consider the impact that a Leader has on their team, the consequences are high when their well-being is not in a good place.
They are unlikely to be at their best and if they are continuing to power through then they are quickly going to reach the point of burnout which is a massive health risk for the individual and certainly means impacts for their team and you as an organisation.
Better Up has conducted a fantastic piece of research on this topic and found that “…managers are amplifiers, and any struggles they experience seem to have a ripple effect…”
For teams or departments to be successful it is essential that the Leader of that team or department has positive well-being. Here are the key points that Better Up uncovered:
Team performance drops by 23% when the team perceived their leader had low resilience.
When leaders have low cognitive agility, it led to an average reduction in 29% in team agility.
When a leader has low emotional regulation, they lose the trust and respect of their team.
There are significant financial, relational, and emotional impacts of Leaders having more positive well-being. So, if you aren’t paying particular attention to leaders in your plans, you are missing an opportunity to improve the performance and culture of your organisation.
Teams experience their world of work through their leader.
This is no different than putting different plans in place for different categories of colleagues e.g., when I was at British Gas, we would have different priorities for our engineer colleagues and our call centre colleagues. You should have a specific focus for leaders too.
How to have a focus on Leaders in your Well-being strategy.
There are two angles to this:
What support do they need to deliver the well-being plan for their team (see Purple Sky Thinking for Leaders – June and July for more ideas).
What do they need as a category of focus in their well-being strategy.
For this blog, I’m looking at point 2 focusing on their individual or collective well-being as a Leader.
I’m going to share three areas to work on to ensure Leaders are part of the plan.
1) Understand what’s going on.
Do you have a good understanding of the true state of your Leaders well-being in your organisations, at all levels?
You must start here.
To gain a level of honesty (though this may depend on your culture), I would recommend an anonymous survey, or a process facilitated by an external provider to enable you to get a true sense of how your leaders are experiencing well-being.
You need to include an emphasis on how their work and working environment is influencing that both positively and negatively.
Try to get a rich level of actionable data so you can act.
2) Identify priorities.
There may be themes or actions that align to the overall well-being strategy but take note of opportunities that will really support Leaders and demonstrate you’ve heard what they have said.
Where there are specific issues identified by leaders that perhaps would have got lost in general population results, identify the priorities that will have most impact.
Include your Leaders in identifying the priorities and the right types of solutions for them.
3) Culture and role modelling.
For me, this point is the most interesting but the most concerning part too. This is where your well-being plan for Leaders will potentially come unstuck.
Let me explain…
If the biggest negative impact on well-being raised by Leaders is being driven by organisational workings or Executive Leaders behaviours that are unwilling to be addressed, then you risk setting everyone up for failure.
There, I said it.
If the top issue they raise is…”there are too many organisational priorities and then those priorities keep changing, and this makes it really hard to plan, cope and keep my team engaged – whilst working sensible hours”.
If the Executive and organisation aren’t willing to change the way things are done – then no amount of resilience training will fix this well-being issue.
You need to be sure that your top team are fully engaged and on board with a positive well-being culture and you need to help them to be actively working in their way and being role models for positive well-being.
If there are issues with well-being for your Leaders, it won’t change overnight but by putting the right steps in place you can make significant impacts and this will support your abilities to succeed as an organisation, because you are enabling Leaders to thrive. When there is positive well-being there is improved motivation, productivity and performance.
There are massive gains from paying attention to the well-being needs of your Leaders. Yes, they need to be empowered to have boundaries and to exercise self-care but this will only go so far.
Help your top team to understand the benefits of getting this right and gaining as a result – everyone gaining as a result.