Leadership awareness: you are affecting lives every day

Introduction

Growing up makes us stiffer, and rougher. The spirit of unhealthy competition and having to be ahead of others instils in our choices, and hurts our days. With time, our minds start seeing the negative in things ahead of the positive. In order to simplify our lives we tend to forget that our toxic behaviour of trying to win no matter what is a learned skill. 

Circle back to your childhood years and how everything around you is based on the spirit of community, and of establishing a space where each individual can shine and feel comfortable. If your memories are washed out by years, simply look at children today.

1. Where does their willingness to share anything they have with everyone come from?

2. Where does the warmth towards other people and animals come from? 

3. Why are these behaviours already rooted in our minds but we spend so many years after educating children that they are juvenile? 

4. When did being open, vocal, and in touch with your emotional profile become a sign of weakness?

Discussing how the educational system and the society as a whole has placed capitalism values over anything else in the last decades would be a different type of content that I would write. I am not trying to convince you that we need to all live in a kumbaya world: I am trying to convince you that we are our own predators as a species, which is very unnatural.

Competition brings evolution. Hustle brings results, fast. Stress brings the necessary motivation to complete tasks that otherwise may seem impossible to finish. Everything is useful: in moderation.

The story changes once individuals build their success or their company’s success at the expense of others. The second that people’s health, let it be physically or mentally, is affected by someone else’s choices, we’re playing another game: a losing one.

Objectives

Subject

If the build-up of stress manifests itself in physical ways, we know how to seek help. Few of us have trouble asking to go home with a migraine. But when it comes to talking about burn-out, depression, or anxiety, we are hesitant to discuss the topic with our friends, let alone with those in charge of our careers. This leaves us alone with our struggles and delays or prevents us from wanting or feeling able to seek help.

Mental health issues often feel isolating. We are afraid to talk about them publicly, and we deem ourselves as smaller for facing them. This behaviour has been rooted deeper into our coping mechanisms by the latest global COVID-19 pandemic. While one can clearly point to the benefits of establishing a more dynamic work life balance, working from home does possess traits impacting our mental health, too.

Having a home office reduces the ability to separate home and work spaces and, if coming from a toxic environment, the negative emotions and anxiety from our teams and leaders can slip into our day to day life. If we’re not practising awareness and actively dedicate time to seek the source of our mental pains, our day to day lives can combobulate into an undefined ball of pressure. Everything suddenly seems to hit from all directions and, circling back to our work environments, going through such intense emotions makes one feel like they are the only ones going through them, feeling invisible.

When choosing to pursue a leadership position, you have to be aware of the impact you make on people’s lives by simply holding the role. Your maturity and approach to your responsibilities impact more than product success. There are certain workplace dynamics that make leaders so critical when discussing mental health in workplaces.

Framework

How to build a space prioritising everyone’s mental health

Provide challenge

Tweak your team’s relationship with stress in order to find the perfect balance for their development: too much stress can cause burnout, while too little can decrease their motivation. As a facilitator, seek opportunities for everyone to grow and develop, in their own way and rhythm. Be curious about people and what uniquely motivates them and then do your best to match their desires with work that will add value within the organisation.

Drive with a mission

The question rooting all of our actions is always “Why am I doing this?”. Irrelevant of their expertise and proficiency in doing something, people will not deliver without being aligned with a purpose and a vision that fuels their work.

Considering how much time we spend working, we cannot afford to see jobs superficially - it would be unauthentic. As a leader, you can help by inspiring purpose and giving them a clear sense of what success means for their job, and how it connects to the work of their colleagues and customers.

Connect people

You can also positively impact on people’s wellbeing by eliminating the wall between yourself and the people reporting to you. Establish an environment where you are available within your limits. When leaders are more present and accessible, it contributes to trust, positive culture and people’s sense of their importance in the organisation.

Celebrate wins

Acknowledging someone’s efforts will make anyone feel more seen, and less isolated. Receiving feedback can close the loop of a project and reconnect individuals with how their day to day work helped the team achieve its goals.

When celebrating wins you should spend more time eliminating the superficial congratulations from your presentations and speeches: they do not stick. Go deeper into displaying the most challenging and highest successes of your peers, personally addressing them for their growth.

Final thoughts

A leader’s attitude and energy ripples to the rest of the team like fire. In their means of communication and interactions with people, leaders are required to consider multiple facets of how their words can be interpreted and impact others. Further, looking more internally, the endless responsibilities that leadership roles ask people to fulfil are bound to affect someone’s mental health: having to put on multiple hats during the day, and managing people while also managing your own work can be overwhelming.

It is very difficult to nurture healthy environments if we do not sit down and look inward at our relationship with work as leaders. However, many people do: their servant approach to their team (chosen with the best intentions behind) is causing some to forget about their own mental health. Naturally, this leads to burnout, anxiety, stress, and can spill into physical pain. Look after yourself while looking after others, too!

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Quality content

Today’s quality content is not leadership related. I want to use this space this week to give light to one of my university friends that is running one of the most successful Instagram pages of illustrations. Her posts are full of inspiring quotes and ideas, assisted by incredible images. Ever since she started this page she had an exponential growth, through which she presented pieces of herself.

I hope Iulia’s page can bring you some comfort and ideas these days as well - I feel hugged by every illustration she puts out. And she also sells prints and other items in her online shop if you’re in search for redecorating your home with amazing details!

That’s it for today! Thank you for being here! Have a great week ahead!

Razzmatazz without the matazz.