Written by: Lauren Cartigny, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Ouch! Hard truths can be hard to hear sometimes. This article aims to uncover the challenges leaders face to make a difference in reducing suffering in the workplace and encourage you to ask yourself hard questions to help you overcome them.
“Sacrificing health and family for work is not an expression of loyalty. It’s a sign of poor priorities.” –Adam Grant
How many leaders can truly say they believe that high performance from a place of well-being is possible? How many can say they have mastered self-awareness and self-regulating skills to reduce stress and deal with high pressures from a place of calm?
The answer is likely to be very few. That is to be expected based on the stressful world we live in. We will not go from one extreme to another overnight. Those who have learnt to perform from a place of well-being, most likely have had the support of an Executive Coach. So how can leaders confidently become advocates of well-being and make a difference in the workplace now?
Hard Truth Number 1
High performance from a place of suffering is normalised.
Most traditional high performance training focuses on asking us to change our mindset, to focus, to be more resilient, to keep going, to never give up, and to win at all costs. All these approaches have only resulted in rewarding overworking, normalising the numbing of our feelings, and ignoring our body’s alarm bells trying to warn us that it needs a break.
Is determination, hard work and willpower part of success? Yes absolutely. Are these the sole answer? No. Perseverance and consistently working non-stop, without stopping to recharge our energy, and our bodies, without relaxing our minds, and without feeling our emotions, are simply ways of justifying working in auto-pilot mode. This is a mode where we are disconnected from ourselves. We stop feeling our bodies, our emotions and we purely run on adrenaline. With all adrenaline highs, come adrenaline lows. This fluctuation over time causes chronic illnesses.
High achievers tend to know this well, because yes, this way of working does deliver results, but at what cost? For me, success in auto-pilot mode cost me my health due to undiagnosed chronic stress over years of seeing myself as a resilient high achiever. I felt I managed stress fine until my usual way of recharging at weekends was disrupted by personal commitments. This tipped my body over the edge.
I started having severe acne due to internal inflammation. I thought it was due to my skincare.
I developed stomach pains. I thought I was intolerant to gluten.
I lost a lot of weight. I thought my fitness regime was working.
My athletic body became constantly achy and fragile. I thought it was due to exercising.
I often felt dizzy. I just thought I was dehydrated.
All these together were symptoms of chronic stress. People don’t tend to realise that if you feel pain in your body continually for over six months this is unprocessed emotions stuck in your body. Chronic stress is a result of unprocessed emotions.
Delivering high performance from a place of chronic stress has a negative impact on our health, and most often we simply don’t realise it. We are not educated to look out for the signs. We blame old sports injuries, indigestion, drinking too much, worrying about a specific one-off situation, or not having enough sleep. There are always excuses to avoid the hard truth that we are suffering from stress.
Most of us suffer symptoms of chronic stress to some degree. This tends to go hand in hand with having high-powered roles.
Are you willing to challenge the status quo?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how stressed are you on average?
What pain do you feel in your body that you have had for longer than 6 months? Could these be symptoms of chronic stress?
Are you willing to put the same effort into your work, into learning to manage your physical and mental health?
Hard Truth Number 2
There is a stigma in sharing vulnerability in the workplace.
Despite all the social media visibility of promoting well-being in the workplace, the stigma attached to speaking up about our health is still very real.
39% of UK Business Executives admitted not seeking help for fear that it would impact their reputation if they admitted struggling.
And yet …
78% of UK Business Leaders have experienced fatigue, lack of motivation, mood swings and disturbed sleep since the lockdown.
Bupa Survey Dec 2020
It can be hard to admit to ourselves that we may be suffering, let alone admit it openly to other people who influence our careers and our earnings. Great power can be found in our vulnerability, but this requires better understanding ourselves to find understanding and learnings in what holds us back.
Leaders who have been coached tend to be more confident in speaking of their challenges because they understand them and have made progress in overcoming them. If you can develop compassion for your own vulnerability, then you are implying that you will have compassion for your teams’. Why does this matter? Because you can’t change what you can’t see. So, if your team isn’t telling you what they struggle with to deliver, how can you help them?
Are you confident enough to find power in your vulnerability?
Is the culture of your company serious about employee well-being?
How confident are you in your capacity to deliver results?
How much support have you had to learn to manage stress?
How comfortable are you in sharing your experience with your team?
How comfortable is your team sharing their challenges with you?
Hard Truth Number 3
People do what you do, not what you say.
I have met many leaders who want to do more about well-being, but they often tell me they feel like an imposter as they don’t take lunch breaks, they are asked to put pressure on their teams, and they know they display signs of stress themselves. Will being an example of delivering results from a place of calm be inspiring to your team? Yes. Will they want to learn from you? Yes. Is it realistic to think you will be an example of this overnight. No.
We don’t need to be perfect to be credible. We just need to have a strong intention, a passion to put effort in managing our own well-being and demonstrate progress in prioritising well-being when driving results. That is enough to start momentum. This shift will take years to make, but it won’t happen without leaders starting to take small tangible incremental steps.
To refer to Adam Grant’s opening quote, a lot of the work is about prioritising the right things. As a manager, the biggest impact you can have now is to empower your team to take responsibility for their well-being by helping them set their own boundaries to manage workloads. Your role is to help them honour those boundaries and manage the implications of that.
Do you have imposter syndrome when advocating well-being in your workplace?
What indicators do you use to measure when a member of your team has reached max capacity?
Have you given your team permission to tell you when they have reached their limit? Do they feel safe to do so?
Do you switch off when you take your holiday? Do you take breaks during your day?
Do your team members understand how stress manifests in themselves? Are they equipped to self-regulate their predictable stress symptoms? Are you?
Lauren Cartigny, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Lauren Cartigny is a Business and Life Professional Coach for Executives and Conscious Leadership Trainer. Following a successful international corporate career in Sales for leading Tech firms, Lauren faced an unexpected burnout. After re-learning how to perform from a place of well-being as opposed to delivering results from a place of suffering, Lauren has created transformative coaching and training programs for high achieving Leaders seeking to empower themselves with self-knowledge to improve their well-being, their relationships, and their results. Lauren is the Founder of The Self-Science Lab a personal development training company for professionals seeking to find Peace, Power and Purpose.
