The state of your overall wellbeing (mind, body, spirit) impacts those around you, from your family to your neighbors, to the check-out lady in the grocery store, to the people you work with. When you aren’t thriving in certain aspects of your life, it is hard to hide it in the long-term. When we have a bad day, most of us hide it as best we can. “Fred, how are you doing today?” “I’m just great Nancy. Lovin’ life!” But many times, we aren’t what we say we are. We haven’t been getting enough sleep, eating the right foods, thinking positive thoughts, or taking the time to just relax, be in nature, or play. But we say it because that’s just what you say, or we hope that by saying it, somehow it will be true. Wouldn’t it be swell if we really could be GREAT more often than not?
When your goal becomes living in a balanced way, everyone around you will notice and be inspired by your positive approach to life. If you are calm, clear, and unfrenzied, your team will not only be positively impacted but they will associate these behaviors with what is expected. Your team notices what you do. They notice what time you leave work. They notice what you talk about and don’t talk about: family, friends, hobbies, interests, exciting goals, or constant pressures. They notice if you take time to exercise and they notice if you send emails at 2pm vs. 11pm, Monday vs. Saturday. How you show up for yourself and your priorities demonstrates what you value, and your overall state of wellbeing because it is impossible to hide the truth for long. So, what can you do?
Lead by example. This is so crucial for so many reasons but the #1 reason is trust. You gain absolutely no credibility if you say one thing and do the opposite. Let’s take vacation as an example. You may encourage your employees to take all their vacation time, rest and recharge, unplug from it all. First, do you really mean it or are you saying it because you feel like it is the benevolent thing to do? And what about you? Do you unplug when you go on vacation? Or do you send emails and check in while you are on vacation? What you do matters. You can’t say one thing and do the other if you want to be credible.
There is plenty of empirical evidence supporting the influence leadership has on an employee’s overall wellbeing.1 Employees that feel supported by their managers are 70% less likely to experience burn-out than those who do not.2 And the #1 driver of burnout is lack of leadership support.3 How can you possibly be supportive of your people if you are not well balanced in mind, body, and spirit? And what exactly does ‘support’ mean? Well, we don’t know exactly, but if I had to guess what respondents were thinking it is likely around values alignment, walking the talk, understanding, and empathizing with your teammates in this daily slog called work.
If you want to reduce burn-out, increase engagement, and spread wellbeing throughout your organization, focus on yourself first. Others will follow.
1Kaluza, Boer, Buengeler, van Dick “Leadership behavior & leader self-reported well-being: A review, integration & meta-analytic examination.” 2020, Work & Stress, Vol. 34, NO.1, 34-56
2“How to prevent employee burnout.” Gallup. How to Prevent Employee Burnout - Gallup
3“The wellbeing pulse survey.” 2015. Deloitte.
