Build your leadership around your core strengths to infuse positivity into your leadership role and minimise the negativity and stress, says Pawan Verma

A research by Bupa Global, a multi-national health insurer reveals that as high as 64% of senior business leaders have suffered from mental health conditions such as stress, anxiety and depression. Workplace happens to be common source of this malaise — long hours, extensive travels, being away from family, all these take their toll. Also, while on the job, leaders keep wading from one conflict situation to the other, often generating self-doubts about the course of action taken by them. Worse, they cannot share it with others since it is lonely at the top. Added to this is the problem that as leaders they think it to be their responsibility to take care of their teams. Hence, there’s very little time for self-care.

The Pressure to Look Perfect

The problem has its roots in our mindsets as well. Traditionally, we have built the image of a leader as a perfect person who is expected to be tough, strong and not given to ordinary vulnerabilities. This flawed expectation from leaders makes it difficult for them to face their susceptibilities and seek help. While their inner struggle goes on ceaselessly, they keep hiding it from the world because mental health conditions are associated with one’s inability to lead. In the process, they keep struggling within themselves, but they deny it, their performance drops down but they blame others. And finally, there is a breakdown when they are not able to cope up any further.

Managing Mental Health Conditions

A fundamental shift in approach and strategy is required to fight this ever-increasing menace. Leaders and their organisations will do well to adopt the following strategies in order to create healthy workplaces:

Improving self awareness: Quite often, executives are elevated to leadership positions without being trained to manage the emotional cost they will be required to pay for the role. Hence, they must be encouraged to enhance their self-awareness and shake off the psychological burden of looking perfect, strong and invincible. They must realise that the high demands of their leadership roles, the stress and strain of the job make them relatively more vulnerable to different mental problems. Hence they must accept their imperfections and vulnerabilities, share them with their confidants and seek help whenever needed.

Developing a higher EQ: Organisations need to take effective steps to ensure that the people placed into leadership roles have a higher level of emotional intelligence and that they sustain it during their leadership tenures. Emotional intelligence is basically one’s ability to manage one’s own emotions as well as the ability to understand and appropriately respond to the emotional state of others. Leaders with high EQ listen effectively, understand their own and others’ emotional triggers and respond with empathy. In the process, they not only they take care of their own mental health but that of others as well.

Distributing leadership: As leaders your job should be to create more leaders than followers; you shouldn’t be solving problems but empowering and enabling others to do so. Once you distribute leadership across the organisational hierarchy, your role would be akin to that of the conductor of an orchestra who guides and facilitates his band of expert musicians to create the best symphony for his audience. This approach of distributed leadership would take away much of the stress and strain of your leadership role.

Communicating effectively:  One way to de-stress the leadership job is effective communication. An effective communication involves deep listening, reflecting and demonstrated understanding. Also, while communicating you must remain non-judgmental and positive.

As a leader, you must become the CEOs of your own life and take control of the same. You would do well to appreciate that leadership today is undergoing a transformation whereby leaders are shunning the image of being perfect and omnipotent.

The writer is the author of Age of the Imperfect Leader