Well-being took centre stage during the pandemic; absolutely everyone was impacted – whether it was personal or family health, work, education, or the simple freedoms, we all take for granted. It turns out those simple things were fundamental pillars of our well-being.

Organisations tried to respond in a flexible and kind way at a very difficult time, and to a certain extent, in these extenuating circumstances, it felt ‘easier’ to provide high levels of support and flexibility. So, what now?

With greater emphasis on the types of flexibility and support we could achieve, paying attention to the experience of colleagues has never been more critical. Well-being and well-being at work have never been more important to the overall experience.

As we explored in last month’s edition, your team being at their best is critical to their ability to perform. Being at your best is easiest when you have high levels of positive well-being. In this edition, we will get to grips with what well-being means and the role you play in it. The activities included at the bottom of this will give you some prompts to consider well-being from your own perspective.

In July, we’ll look at how you can create your own team well-being plan that will contribute to the positive environment you are creating.

On this basis, I invite you to approach this edition with the mindsets of:
The positive well-being of individuals and the whole group is essential for my team to perform at their best and for us to achieve our goals.
I’m responsible for leading this and creating an environment of positive well-being.

Set this intention for your leadership of the team. It will help you when making decisions that impact your team and may influence their well-being.

What is well-being?

Overall, it’s described as being healthy, happy, and comfortable, both physically and mentally. However, it is a personal thing, and everyone will have their own criteria and assessment of what positive well-being means for them.

Here’s a little clip from Saint-Gobain to bring this to life What is wellbeing - YouTube

Focus areas to improve well-being.

Although we know the assessment of well-being is a personal one there has been research to look at how you can noticeably improve well-being.

This centres around a model of The 5 Ways to Wellbeing.

They are:

Connect
Get Active
Take Notice
Keep Learning
Give

Here’s a clip from Derbyshire County Council to introduce them, and they share a few ideas about each: Five ways to well-being - YouTube

When building your team plan – this is a good place to start for a structure.

**Beware of the toxicity of resilience.**

This one comes from personal experience.

When I was taking part in a project, we’d developed a programme of learning for our leaders. One of the modules was about resilience building in the workplace. I went into the session during a period when I was not in control of the things impacting my well-being in a negative way. I was under pressure, I had a lot to deliver, and I was incredibly frustrated because I had all the things in place to have high levels of resilience, but sometimes there just isn’t any more you can do!

I believe in enabling our teams to understand what resilience is about how we cope with and recover from setbacks. Helping them to identify how they can be resilient is important, but it is also important to understand there are times or conditions that mean those with high levels of resilience can’t take any more. It’s important to see resilience as a positive indicator, not something to expect of people…”you need to be more resilient; you need to keep going”. Be very careful with this one.

Here's a great video on A Better Way to Talk About Resilience from Emen Washington. It should help you consider resilience from different angles.

**Impact of workload**

This is a build on the resilience piece. As the Leader of your team, it is essential that you take care of the volume and demands of the workload your team have.

Everyone will have a different capacity and capability for handling work and different types of work. Take notice of what you (and potentially others) are asking of the individuals in your team. Is this reasonable? Is it reasonable for them?

No matter how good your well-being offer is or how resilient your team are, taking care of workload will reduce negative impacts on individual and team well-being.

You can’t control their happiness.

As we’ve explored above, happiness is an important factor in well-being. I’ve always been wary of the ‘make people happy’ approach to leadership; in my view, there are many facets contributing to happiness. You can’t influence all of them as a Leader.

However, you must be aware that if people are unhappy, their well-being will be compromised. If their well-being is compromised, then their ability to perform at their best is diminished or will be once they exceed their capacity for resilience.

But happiness at work doesn’t mean beanbags and free lattes all day; it doesn’t mean having no challenges or there being low expectations.

Here are some ways to increase happiness at work:

Interesting work which plays to strengths and leads to growth.
Support and care.
An environment where everyone can speak freely and respectfully.
Opportunities to connect through work and fun.
Great leadership is present.

Sure, creating an environment where people enjoy working is important, but the standing desks, free apples and lattes will not make up for feeling unsupported, unchallenged or like your leader doesn’t really care about you.

**Role modelling**

It’s our main theme on all the topics we have covered and will continue to be – how you behave and show up is the mark of your leadership.
This will be what you will be remembered for, good or bad. So, decide what this means for you and how you will lead this approach to well-being.
**Top tip!** Practice an attitude of gratitude! Here’s something to help with this.

Put your oxygen mask on first.

Your role modelling of well-being and the team plan is important for the team, but it’s also important for you.

You’ll have heard this analogy before, but when it comes to well-being, putting on your own oxygen first is the best way to look after the well-being of others. If you are not at your own best, then how can you expect to perform at your best for you and your team?

This is not a pass on behaving in whatever way you feel, but it is about consistency and practising what is good for your well-being. This doesn’t mean you need to be ‘perfect’, as we all have different needs for wellbeing. It means you need to be kind, but you also need to identify if you are being inconsistent and not supporting the plan and then put it right.

If you are finding it too difficult, then you need to understand if the plan is workable or if this is a mindset or behaviour challenge you need to overcome.

Normalise conversations about mental health as a key factor of well-being.

Talking about mental health and mental illness can be scary, especially for those who have challenges with it. It takes a huge amount of trust and vulnerability to share personal stories of mental health.

A good way to start this, if there is limited experience of this happening within your team, is to depersonalise it. Find an article, a story or perhaps the video I’ve shared of Emen Washington on resilience and then start a conversation. For example, if you shared the video, you could ask…” what does resilience mean to you?”

By starting with a more generic look at topics relating to mental health, you start to normalise talking about it. You can then start giving insight into your experiences, and this will enable others to feel they, too, can do the same.

Ensure you are well equipped to support your team if they highlight areas of risk – identify what support services are provided via your organisation, or if there are limited services, identify some key options such as health care providers and charities. I find the organisation Mind offers a really good suite of options to support mental health issues.

**Develop your team leaders.**

If you are running a department and have team leaders reporting to you, it’s important they are right alongside you in the development and implementation of your team’s well-being plan.

Our direct line leaders have the most impact on our wellbeing at work so as the department leader, it’s your responsibility to ensure those team leaders are capable and effective when having conversations of all kinds, including those about wellbeing and mental health.

The best way to do this is to role model what good looks like and what you expect of them. In addition, see if there is training available; if not, run your own session to outline what you expect and how they can achieve those expectations.

Your experiences with well-being

Ahead of looking at how to develop your team plan for well-being next month, let’s pause and take a moment to reflect on your experiences with well-being. This section could also form the foundation of individual and group discussions you have with your team.

You have an Activity Sheet to capture your thoughts, or you can use a notebook if you prefer.

Activity 1

I want you to think about this from the perspective of you as a member of a team or when you’ve been leading a team.

When there was a positive environment of well-being, how did this impact you?
When there wasn’t a positive environment of well-being, how did this impact you?
What was present or absent in each scenario?

Activity 2

For you to be at your best:

What do you need to be doing to achieve this?
How do you need to be feeling to achieve this?
Why are these factors important to enable you to be at your best?

Activity 3

What do you notice about your current team:

What may be contributing positively or negatively to the well-being of your team?

Activity 4

What would be the ideal environment for your team, so they feel at their best and can do their best work?

Now that we’ve looked at some of the key considerations around well-being, including what this means for you, you are now in a great place to focus on this for your team.