Wellbeing Is a Matter of Integrity

From a session I led with Geoff McDonald called Well BEING by Example.

Geoff McDonald and I led a session called Well BEING by Example, all about a leader's role in launching a long-term, sustainable wellbeing strategy.

The whole session revolved around one idea: your wellbeing, as a leader, is intricately connected to your integrity. If you aren't taking care of yourself, if you don't have some kind of balance in your life, your integrity is out. And any effort you make to improve the wellbeing of your employees will fall short as a result.

It's a fairly grotesque analogy, but they say a fish rots from the head down, and employees can smell it from miles away. Pun intended.

The opposite is just as powerful. When executives put an intentional focus on living a conscious, balanced life, and make that known throughout the organization, it creates a sense of trust and relief in everyone else, because people feel permission to do the same.

The problem is that many leaders see wellbeing as a nice-to-have, an added bonus. Disconnecting from email at night or on the weekend becomes a special event instead of the norm. And many leaders assume wellbeing is HR's job. It isn't. Employees today are looking for conscious leaders. They want to see the C-suite authentically care about their wellbeing, and that starts with a leader's own.

The shift happens when leaders stop thinking "it would be nice to take care of myself" and start thinking "taking care of myself is a matter of my integrity." Once it's about integrity, it stops being optional.

That's why I tell leaders to come out of the wellbeing closet. Whatever keeps you well, don't keep it to yourself. Let people see it. Your example gives everyone else permission to stop treating their own wellbeing as something to hide.

From there, a real wellbeing strategy can take root. It needs a clear framework for the key drivers of employee wellbeing. It has to be woven into the entire employee lifecycle, from onboarding to manager development to how success is defined. And it means looking honestly at the cultural influencers of wellbeing: the parts of the work environment that are building people up or wearing them down.

Do that, and wellbeing stops being a program. It becomes part of the fabric of the culture, and it's what keeps your people for the long haul. But it starts at the top, with leaders who are willing to go first.

Danielle Posa