Maintaining Balance: Leadership and Wellness
For many frontline leaders working in the field, work-life balance is not often a possibility, much less a priority. Work is life, when you're living on the job.
When the scale is fully tipped to "work," you must use deliberate skills to maintain a healthier balance.
If you're a frontline leader, you know there are many variables that impact the work-life scale: long days, fewer healthy food options on the road, extended periods away from family, and limited social time. So, what's the antidote? Exercising wellness. When we intentionally incorporate wellness into our work, the benefits are bountiful for both a company and its employees. Research points to increased productivity, reduced staff turnover, and lower absenteeism as just a few of the perks of better balance. This is part of the reason we're excited to roll out a custom leadership program with one of our clients. Leadership is not for the faint of heart, and neither is this training. It's a five-day leadership program that includes prework, post-work, and nightly homework. What's unique is that this particular program also includes conversations outside of the traditional leadership arena. We want to give these frontline leaders the foundational skills they need to maintain balance in the field. And to instill the buy-in they need to pass on their new wellness insights to their teams.
Our goal is to connect hearts and minds in a traditionally masculine environment, while arming these leaders with tools for better living.
We start each day with a stretch-and-flex as a way to fortify the brain work required. Integrating both physical flexibility and cognitive elasticity into a leadership program supports all aspects of a frontline leader's job: enhancing problem-solving and decision-making abilities, teamwork skills, and overall job performance, while decreasing burnout. But this program doesn't stop there. Unlike the controlled environment of an office space, fieldwork can result in additional stress, which requires a holistic approach to wellness. So, we make sure to incorporate a mind-body-spirit approach into the program by including tools and conversations that touch on:
The power of gratitude and mindfulness
The importance of socializing and downtime
How to effectively manage stress
Awareness of healthier eating choices (especially on the road)
Using support systems and responsibility partners
The benefits of a learning journal for reflection
And most importantly, we talk about the practical application of these ideas while in the field. Do we anticipate this leadership initiative will have a positive impact on our client's bottom line? Yes, certainly. But the bottom line is only part of why we do this. The true and immediate value, we believe, is to bolster balance for frontline leaders and their teams. And this leads to better quality of life for everyone.
Deanell Sandoval, Vice President of Leadership and Development