Well-being starts with realising the need for self-care, developing a plan, having self-control, and being self-reliant in maintaining your plan. If leaders are confident and look after their well-being, they will be very effective and influence their colleagues and subordinates to look after each other.
But we can find it easier to be destructive and derail our well-being. Here’s how this could happen.
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Over-focusing on the task
Being an innovator often means that you are driven and work many hours to succeed. You focus on your mission, ideas, and associated tasks, often to the exclusion of all else in life. Forgetting how to live healthily may be manageable in the short term. If you continue in the long term, then you are at risk of depleting your energies and well-being to the point where you degrade your ability to function. And, as a result, your personal life often suffers.
Innovation and creativity require risk taking. A depleted leader is likely to misjudge the type of risk, the potential impact, and the mitigation that is needed.
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Using destructive habits
Most of us, as successful leaders, do not think about how we are looking after ourselves. We can assume we are coping well with the stresses and pressures of work and life, even if we resort to using negative habits such as addictive behaviours, misusing power and authority, other toxic actions, self-sabotage.
If we use negative habits, we can be good at pretending that they are acceptable, or we just think that we need them because they are what we are used to. Especially if we have unresolved issues linked to our past. Of course, it takes willingness and courage to face yourself and acknowledge the deleterious impact negative habits have and then change.
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Stress and uncertainty management
Too much stress can lead to poor psychological health as can feeling overwhelmed by life’s uncertainties. Currently, we are all experiencing very high levels of stress and our well-being levels are low. Neither has returned to pre-COVID pandemic levels.
This may be partly because of an inadequate understanding of what triggers stress and the response to it and uncertainty. And for some of us, being very stressed can be addictive. We may inadvertently engineer our leadership so that we maintain high levels of stress and anxiety.
A poor approach to stress and uncertainty will lead to a very negative impact on well-being and the ability to function. For example, not having or using a comprehensive self-care plan.
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Ignoring conditions for creativity
Being an entrepreneur requires qualities normally attributed to artists. The ability to go into free fall and be truly creative. This is when the great ideas and innovations come. Getting into this state requires a great of self-confidence and trust to be your authentic self so that you create, not duplicate. If you do not center yourself or take care of yourself, you may not enter this creative space easily and create anything new. Then you will be disappointed and then likely feel deflated. If you don’t change and look after yourself better, then you will continue to feel disappointed. And your confidence and well-being will suffer.
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Not creating your own persona as a leader
There are many stereotypes that exist for leadership- positive and negative. For example, being a compassionate leader, having high levels of confidence, being brash, overly competitive. Sometimes, when someone becomes a leader, they don’t take the time to create their own persona based on their own individual qualities. They adopt one of the well-known stereotypes. This can be difficult to always maintain, especially if it contradicts core values.
If you lack the skills, expertise, and knowledge to lead, all these factors will compound the situation. Especially if you are not honest and pretend that you have the qualities.
Leading via an inauthentic persona is stressful and contradictory. Eventually, there is likely to be an adverse impact on other aspects of the person’s work life and leadership.
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Associates and colleagues
We can choose colleagues and associates who reinforce the worst parts of ourselves and are not at all supportive. Such individuals deplete our strengths, in fact, they detract from our ability to cope.
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Toxicity
If we are not comfortable with leadership or don’t know how to be transformational, we can default to toxic behaviours out of a desire to control the person, team, or situation. Using toxic behaviours, as a leader, has a damaging impact on that person’s well-being alongside those who are being targeted. In fact, experiencing such behaviours can have a long term and negative impact on us cognitively, emotionally, and physically -a phenomenon called ‘weathering.’
Using toxic behaviours in a startup can lead to a negative culture that is detrimental for all concerned. Using toxic behaviours in a startup can lead to the creation and building of something of poor quality, causing suffering and harm to those targeted.
All these factors are ones we know and recognise. And sometimes ignore. Do you want to be a healthy leader, or someone who muddles through their leadership and does not achieve their full potential?
Anna Eliatamby is Director of Healthy Leadership, CIC and co-author with Grazia Lomonte of Healing-Self Care for Leaders and their Teams.
