Helping Leaders Thrive
Why Well-being and Why for Leaders?
Well-being for LeadersTM focuses on well-being at work and more specifically, on well-being as it applies to leaders in organizations and businesses. Well-being at work has been increasingly acknowledged as an important aspect of people’s lives but has particularly come into focus since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The new challenges in the workplace amplified the positive role of workplace well-being in people’s physical and mental health, engagement, performance and productivity.1, 2 Moreover, new research shows that employee well-being predicts future company performance indicators including company value, profits and even stock performance.3 As the U.S. Surgeon General points out in his recent Framework for Workplace Mental Health & Well-being,4 a healthy and happy workforce is no less than “the foundation for thriving organizations and a healthy community.”
While well-being of all people within organizations and businesses deserves attention, leaders’ well-being calls for special attention because it is particularly at risk. Leaders are concerned not only with their own professional success and well-being, but also with the success and well-being of their team, and ultimately with the company’s business outcomes. Among these concerns, it is the leaders’ own well-being that is often neglected. According to a survey commissioned by Deloitte,5 compared to employees, more executives reported feeling exhausted (43% versus 36%), stressed (42% versus 41%), overwhelmed (40% versus 35%), lonely (30% versus 24%) and depressed (26% versus 23%).
Given that leaders act as role models and affect their teams, their own decreased well-being, showing as their distress, impaired health, and diminished engagement and performance, may have a disastrous effect on their team members, in addition to the negative effects on peers, higher-ups and the entire organization. Put simply, a depleted leader is less able to lead. By contrast, a thriving leader helps the team flourish and contributes to the success of the organization.
Well-being for Leaders™: A Multi-level Approach
According to a famous neuroscientist Richard Davidson,6 well-being is a skill that can be learned because all pillars of well-being demonstrate plasticity (both neuroplasticity and genomic plasticity). That being said, favorable workplace conditions are also important to facilitate the learning. Well-being for LeadersTM uses interventions at several levels:
- 1:1 executive and leadership coaching
- Consulting for organizations delivered to a small group of leaders including HR leaders
- Speaking to medium or large groups within or across organizations including webinars, interviews and discussion panels.
These services can focus on all or selected components of well-being for leaders and cover parts of or the entire continuum of well-being at work, from stress and burn-out to thriving/flourishing.
