HOW WELL-BEING BUILDS LEADERSHIP
I want you to consider your response to this questions:
What does well-being mean to you?
We ask this question when we commence our Well-being Workshops and on our on-line Well-Being program.
We receive responses such as:
- nutrition - eating good food
- controlling how I think and what I think of
- fitness - going to the gym
- my relationships with other people ...and the list continues.
Well-being is a term in our general vernacular these days - it's appearing in organisational strategy documents and the awareness of what it encompasses is growing.
We believe that Well-being is fundamental to every individual, to operate and interact in society, to be an effective and productive person and specifically, it's the anchor to your personal leadership.
Well-being is defined by many as the choices we make to nurture our health and happiness. These encompass our thoughts, actions, self talk, speech, the food we eat, how we care for our body and the support we provide for ourselves and others.
- How do you explain well-being to others?
- How do you define it for yourself?
- How does it show up in your life?
Together with Cynthia Mahoney, we've been exploring well-being and it's connection to leadership for over five years. We help people 'drive their life' by putting them back in the seat of control, the owner of their own map and connected to what makes them happy.
When we work with individuals and teams, they talk about being busy and not having time to focus on themselves. We hear their concern about not finding time to: exercise, get creative, to socialise, to shop and prepare their own healthy meals or have that well deserved and needed massage.
And then on the other hand, we can work inside organisations and we see awesome examples of well-being strategy in action: the fruit box on the kitchen table, teams having stand up meetings, flexible work arrangements, team gym visits, four day weeks, 'bring your dog to work' days - these businesses are focused on the well-being of their people.
When we created both our Art of Personal Leadership, A Well-being Workshop and our Well-Being Challenge for Busy People (6-week, online program ) it was to meet the needs of people who wanted to take well-being into their own hands; they knew that they wanted to be accountable to themselves and the important people in their lives.
When we hold ourselves accountable, we become self aware of our behaviours, our internal language and the emotions we feel when our discipline and stamina is challenged.
Accountability leads to leadership. People who can responsibly take action, do what's expected, not be told what to do or not do and act proactively are demonstrating personal leadership.
There are five key areas which people have told us in their feedback that their participation (on our workshop/program) was critical to the changes they've experienced in their well-being.
1. Realising that in their past, they had accomplished challenges they had set themselves and the experience of success felt great.
2. Connecting to their Values and becoming acutely aware of their drivers. Knowing what motivates others increased the opportunity to have meaningful conversations and improved their relationships.
3. Stopping the negative self talk, knowing when they were making stuff up in their head and how to question and change to the voice which should be doing the right positive talking in their head.
4. Asking for help - identifying who is in their network and who is missing - who holds the key to enable them to achieve their well-being.
5. By mapping out the actions needed to make things change and stick made the process more manageable. Writing down the first three actions, was the beginning of making well-being paramount.
WANT TO HEAR MORE ABOUT THESE FIVE KEY AREAS?
In the following five videos, we explain how we achieve these five areas in our workshops.
With the belief that leadership is a verb, not a position, we know that when people effectively lead their own life, showing up to the workplace energised and ready for the days challenges, they have their well-being sorted.
Let me know how you feel about your well-being. Tell me if your well-being affects your leadership.
We have two public programs (for women) available this month to coincide with Women's Health Week in Australia. For those who enjoy a face-to-face workshop, join us in beach-side Carrum or if you need a program which is self-paced, join a group in a closed Facebook group and receive daily guidance.
The Art of Personal Leadership, A Women's Well-being Workshop
Our work this month supports promoting #WomensHealthWeek - Women, it's time we put ourselves first.