Harmony Murphy is Retail Head, Advertising UKI at Google and NDA’s monthly columnist.
It is already more than half way through the year, how time flies and what a year it’s been! I spent time traveling from NYC to Morocco and different parts of Europe speaking with multiple global business leaders and industry moguls in many different sectors.
I observed a holistic picture of leadership – the good the bad and as they say the down right ugly. Different forms, methods and characters of leadership to deepen my understanding, sit, listen and study and deepen my own leadership traits and qualities!
I’ve decided to deep dive and pen some insight based on these conversations with leaders and the wider correlation between leadership and wellbeing both of the leader and of the employee. I wanted to share some of these findings both statistical and sentimental, for each person reading to digest and extract their own take-aways and meanings against what leadership means to you!
Strong leaders create an environment where trust flourishes, enabling employees to feel safe to express themselves and celebrate others’ understanding / action on contributing fully to the organization. Creating an attitude of driving collaboration and not a divide and conquer type mentality – it’s not about asserting power or dominance, it’s about synergy and homogeneity to reach unified and individualized success. It’s okay for everyone to excel in their individual lane and projects but also to have a sense of collaboration and lack of bottle necking and politics. An infrastructure in the long run promoting retention and growth through camaraderie and clarity.
So to simplify this down, what are the effects of GOOD and BAD leadership when its comes to wellbeing both of the employee and of the leader? What is the correlation and behaviors behind these that drive continued leadership success or dips in leadership trajectory? I look into some insights to back up my thoughts: According to Forbes 2024 global research
- 60% of employees worldwide say their job is the biggest factor influencing their mental health.
- Managers have just as much of an impact on people’s mental health as their spouse (both 69%) and even more of an impact than their doctor (51%) or therapist (41%).
The impact the workplace and managers have doesn’t just ripple into the everyday workplace but into our lives in general and has a holistic impact on our moods, motivation and relationships. Now we know that there is a very clear pathway from leadership to wellbeing, what are the leadership traits associated with better employee wellbeing? According to a recent scientific review by Diego Montano at the institute of health and sciences, university of Tubingen. Below you can see some of these patterns within 4 quadrants of leadership styles:
Transformational leadership – Leading with a clear vision. Transformative leaders are charismatic, they aid creative thinking and genuinely care about the needs of their team.
Goal-focused leadership – Leading with a laser focus on goals and steps to achieve. Making breakdown of tasks clear, regularly checking in and carefully steering with precision and team work towards progress.
Furthermore from this deep research we now also know the traits that put teams at psychological risk ultimately impacting the business. By knowing what these traits are early on we can move from gut instinct to knowing the evidence base around what has poor effects on employee health and long-term input. Ie some of these behaviors may drive short-term momentum or numbers but lead to churn and burn-out in the long-term!
Destructive Leadership – Leaders who are aggressive, disregard company interests and expose employees to potentially harmful behavior, further exposing the company and reputation of it by the lack of conduct and risks.
Laissez-faire Leadership – Leaders who don’t lean into action. Avoiding decisions and hesitating to take action, pace or movement.
When leadership habits become challenging, this could be a warning sign of poor manager mental health, confidence levels or ego balance within managers. This means supporting good leadership could start with identifying ways to improve support and workplace culture from a top down level for it also to flow. Knowing the baseline and wellbeing of leaders to be able to act at a morale and % of energy / integrity to lift their department. Etc
Poor leaders also bring with them the risk Psychosocial hazards these are elements of an organization that put your people at risk of psychological harm especially over a prolonged period. These are far-reaching and include how we are treated by others and whether we’re put at risk of harassment and discrimination. Organizations must work to minimize the level of risk that employees are exposed to by dealing with corrupt leaders via coaching, mediation / managing out i.e in some cases a zero tolerance policy. By framing negative leadership styles as a psychosocial hazard that increases the risk of burnout and stress, so it is more than critical to tackle these issues head on.
However on the contrary to the above the incredibly inspiring thing about good leadership is fewer cases of poor mental health, and amazing synergy in driving community and team. I sat down with a leader only this week who for the purposes of this article who has asked to remain anonymous – the feedback I had from this top partner was “sometimes you can do everything, but sometimes all you needed is your peace, it’s not always a question of what you do but if your face fits or not. Leadership is also knowing your value, where your value stands and if your values match with the companies.”
A leader in which you interact daily can either subject you to uplift, inspiration and clarity or destruction as they feel this within them. Bad leadership can take your life and passion for the job and in general and slowly chip away are your soul and morale.
Researchers also tested to see if qualities of workplace bullying targets warranted uninvited psychological assaults. They found nothing: 0% data to support the reason to blame the victim. In other words, targets are not simply those with exploited weakness.
Evidence actually shows targets are often star performers, highly ethical employees whose competence poses a threat to their low performing, low ethical bosses. The bully’s only real motivator is to battle the target while having the upper hand often manipulating and exhausting via unethical tactics used to uphold the image they long for but are unable to get through competence
Some short and sweet advice on leadership and wellbeing:
- Setting a climate of belonging that promotes a feeling amongst employees of being part of a group
- Cultivating psychological safety without fear of retaliation or intimidation to speak up
- Driving equity a shared sense of purpose and identity within their work team goes a long way towards promoting wellbeing amongst employees and leads in turn to higher levels of engagement
- Equal reward, recognition and galvanisation of teams to drive fun and togetherness
- Ensuring methods to coach or move along leaders with negative trades that become Psychosocial hazards!
- Hiring for diversity, diverse people, minds and inputs to give alternative perspectives piecing successful outcomes together which each leaders “super powers”
A leader can be anyone of any level so by emulating good leadership skills no matter the person the org or the vision these trickle down to those around you and show the right, ethical and equitable way to collaborate, lift others and live. The business world is a small world and in my eyes it’s also thinking that in 10 years time the amount of business we moved together the people inspired and lifted and propelled into their leadership journey too. You never know when paths will cross again and in what leadership capacity!!
