Are you Creating Conditions for Team Wellbeing? 

As a Leader, it is possible to define and cultivate specific conditions within which your people thrive. In this article, we explore how you, as a Leader, can CREATE the conditions for Wellbeing in your Teams. We identify and share 12 ways you can generate specific conditions that support your people to thrive.

The approach we offer here leverages ‘known’ attributes of High-Performing Leaders and adds a ‘Collective’ Wellbeing twist to ensure you support individual needs and foster a collective ambition for Wellbeing as a pathway to success.

Condition 1 – Intentional Leadership

Intentional Leadership is not merely focusing on a goal. This is a choice you make, as a Leader, to ‘show up’ each day with a spirit and mood that enrols and inspires others to show up as the best version of themselves. From here, it means you curate your days to utilise your time most effectively and that you cultivate presence, listening and conversational skills that bring your mission to life, enrolling others on the journey. 

Condition 2 – A Culture of Trust and Respect

This condition is characterised by your people having a sense of autonomy, ownership, and accountability for their roles and responsibilities and the willingness to work on situations where this may be missing. Trust and respect will manifest as a curiosity for the range of perspectives within your organisation and a willingness to try new ways and other perspectives to fulfil your shared ambitions. 

Condition 3 – Work-life Balance

Leveraging flexible working arrangements and encouraging and celebrating (rather than denigrating) time off will serve you and your Teams in the long run. This does not mean work is regarded as a series of intervals between vacations. Instead, it’s making sure your people are rested well and able to produce their best work. It’s also likely that if you’re a high-performing organisation, things will get out of balance for some of your high-achieving people. The trick is to build individual capacity to know that moment of imbalance and make sure they swing the pendulum the other way to level out. 

Condition 4 – Growth and Development Opportunities

Fostering a learning culture through ongoing growth and development opportunities will enhance your sense of Team Wellbeing. The opportunities you provide for your people to stretch and expand their horizons will bring about different kinds of conversations and, through that, a propensity to innovate and pivot in a rapidly changing context. Skill and practice uplift can be further supported by career planning, giving your people a sense of direction and focus for the roles they’re in and the roles they aspire to have in the future. 

Condition 5 – Clear, Timely and Transparent Communication

The absence of important information can create conditions for anxiety, unfounded rumours and unhelpful narratives. When you offer clear, timely and transparent communication, this helps to direct the attention and focus of the workforce on the task at hand rather than stewing over uncertainties that provoke concerns. You can start this at the top, make sure it is appropriately translated to Business Units and Teams and always make sure there’s a feedback loop the other way to harness the inputs your entire workforce is willing to offer. 

Condition 6 – Diverse and Inclusive Workplace

This condition recognises the impact of having an inclusive culture that welcomes diversity as a source of strength in teams and organisations. We love the saying, ‘You cannot be what you cannot see.’ So, make sure you set the tone for diversity and inclusion from the top. When you create conditions where each individual is recognised for their unique contributions and which welcomes a diversity of ‘being’ and ‘doing’, this fosters a healthy Team dynamic, bound to think in more diverse ways. 

Condition 7 – Mental Health Supports

It can be helpful to think of mental health as a spectrum, ranging from people experiencing themselves as healthy to those experiencing symptoms of poor mental health. Normalising the conversation within the workplace will help you foster a culture where mental health concerns are identified and raised by others in a caring manner, and those experiencing mental health issues are able to raise concerns and access appropriate support, including EAP. 

Condition 8 – Fostering Social Connections

Despite our varied histories and preferences for group activity, your capacity, as a Leader, to create positive conditions for ‘getting to know each other’, understanding different behavioural styles and being able to relate to ‘difference’ will profoundly and positively impact your Collective Wellbeing. Social connection is not social homogenisation but a way for you to create conditions for experiences that build insight, positive relationships and deeper understanding through relationships. You might also consider ways to integrate the outside communities of your organisation – friends and family – as a means of fostering a broader sense of community.

Condition 9 – Mission Alignment

Your Organisational Mission stipulates your Team’s or Organisation’s reason for existence. Helping your people understand and connect with your Mission (and Vision) will positively shape their sense of how they can connect with your purpose. When times get tough inside Organisational life, or even more broadly, beyond your Organisation, helping your people understand how they and their jobs translate to Organisational value can boost a sense of self-esteem at the personal level and morale at the collective. Drawing down on ‘the reason we exist together’ can be a powerful mobilising force, bringing the Team together for a united focus. 

Condition 10 – Focus on Digital Wellbeing

While laptops, computers, smartphones and other mobile devices have transformed the ways we work, you may notice that many of your people are tethered to their devices – in the workplace, at meal breaks, in transit and in social contexts. Excessive smartphone use is often associated with depression and anxiety, low self-esteem and chronic stress. As a Leader, your capacity to create awareness relating to the potential impacts of excessive device use and craft ‘smart ways’ for other styles of working, including non-digital means of collaboration outside of work and opportunities for digital exclusion within the workplace can mitigate the potential risks. 

Condition 11 – Harness the Chance to Build Resilience 

Workdays are never perfect. It is inevitable that things don’t go to plan or the way you expect. It, therefore, makes sense that the workplace is an ideal place to build resilience. Supporting your people to embrace disruptions, innovate, learn, reflect and reframe is a wonderful way to build resilience. More often, resilience is built through ‘lived experience’, so ask yourself, “How can these moments be moments of profound learning”? As a Leader, you set the conditions for your Organisation to be a learning Organisation and one that fosters your people’s collective capacity to ‘bounce back’.

Condition 12 – Shape your Physical Environment

The physical environment you establish as ‘your workplace’ has a profound impact on the wellbeing of your people. An appropriately lit, clean, open space infused with green will reduce stress, enhance mood, and support the nervous, endocrine and immune systems of those who interact and work within. Consider how you create a space that your people love coming to, one that has dedicated places for rest, restoration, green space and socialisation.

We invite you to try these 12 ways of creating an environment and context for wellness amongst your Teams. Consider making yourself a 12-step plan and attending to one of these domains each month over the course of a year to up the ante on Wellbeing as a pathway to people retention and performance. Let us know how you go!