Leadership: Leading Through Disruption; Mental Health/Self-Care

Leadership is a lot like golf. You have different clubs to handle various challenges out on the golf course. Similarly, you have different leadership skills to complement each of your responsibilities.

Having a good set will help your game, but that's only part of it. You can't buy your way to being a better golfer. You also must put in the work. You must practice and study. You must develop your experience.

The goal is to be comfortable enough with your skills to choose the right ones at the right time. In short: you want to get the right clubs, learn to use them, and then choose the correct one for each shot.

Leadership Skills for Promoting Self Care and Mental Health

With all that in mind, I'm going to look at a popular topic these days: mental health and self-care. It's popular because we are going through a nearly unprecedented disruption of the way we do business. Leading through disruption — and the mental health issues that accompany it — is no small task.

Specifically, we're seeing a major shift in the way organizations function. Things that used to be face-to-face are now done at great distances. Interactions we used to have in-person are now done through computer screens.

Understandably, this is affecting the mental health of professionals who used to work together. The reaction from most managers is to give a few moments to promoting self-care for their teams.

Unfortunately, some of these self-care initiatives aren't having the impact that leaders want. How can you make yours work where others (or your previous attempts) have failed?

Getting To Know Your Self-Care Options

Just like any other leadership skill or tool, a self-care initiative is just another club in your bag. You can't just take it out and swing it at every problem you have — you wouldn't use even the best putter when you're teeing off.

When it comes to specialized tools such as self-care, you really want to take a step back and look at the situation. You must think about course management — you must think about the result you want from this next shot.

Since we're all in new territory with the current disruptions, you're not going to be able to rely on your own experience in overcoming similar situations. Again, you'll be relying on observation.

What are the people in your organization really asking for? What do they want? What are their values? What does self-care mean to them? After you ask all these questions, ask yourself another: How do you make it happen for them?

Ask yourself, ask your leadership team and ask people from your organization. Self-care might be the order of the day, but how you implement it should be unique to your situation.

Preparing for a More Stable Future

Being a leader is about more than being skilled or experienced — especially when the course ahead is unpredictable. The good news is that these disruption-focused skills will serve you just as well when things feel more normal.

Even if you're not rolling out self-care workshops throughout your career, you will be relying on these observation and analysis skills again. In the long term, it's worth the effort to put in some practice.

Are your self-care initiatives having the correct impact?