The Power Of Well-Being On Leadership
Human leadership is a sum total of perseverance, passion, inspiration, skill, talent, fortune and fortitude. And underpinning all these confluence of factors driving leadership success is human well-being.
A bigger picture tells us that individuals who are physically robust are more likely to attain success at top positions. However, individuals with physical, emotional, mental, functional and spiritual well-being go a notch higher, in that they tend to break the glass ceiling and scale peaks never amassed before.
The beauty of achievement is not in the moment it is achieved but in the seeds that make up and lead to the eventual success. If one were to contemplate on and zero in on the single biggest factor constituting leadership success, it would be well-being. A physically robust leader inspires through brawn. A physically and mentally sharp leader inspires through both, brawn and brains. An individual exuding complete well-being is characterized by perfect harmony of all his existential dimensions. Emotions in check, physicality in check, mental well-being ten on ten, thoughts creative, overall persona creative.
How well-being influences leadership gets easy to understand when we make an effort to define good leadership in the first place. Not everyone is well organized, not everyone is a problem solver, not everyone can work in a team, not everyone can delegate responsibilities to fellow team members, not everyone can stay in harmony with others. A leader exists as someone who can help a team surpass all these hurdles.
A leader with a strong personality (physical well-being) commands respect and authority. He is able to get the team to follow the common path towards achievement of team goals, ensuring cohesion and a solid chain of command triggering a sense of answerability among members.
A leader with great mental grit and emotional strength (emotional and mental well-being) is an asset in that he can navigate the complex web of troubles, manage egos, carefully calibrate strategies to find workarounds to challenges, remain unflustered in trying times, maintain calm in times of distress among other things. The calmness and peace he radiates is infectious on the team. In the face of adversity, under the leadership of a robust figure, team members do not get bogged down, showing resilience and tremendous abilities to cope and thrive. A sound mind in a sound body is also a perfect breeding ground for creativity, innovation, invention and discovery.
A leader who exhibits perfect well-being is known to perceive setbacks as opportunities to learn fast and engender comebacks. And consciously or sub-consciously, such a leader ends up inspiring his team to showcase similar bounce back tendencies.
Some of the activities which an individual can look to undertake in order to develop and hone well-being are - yoga, meditation, mindfulness, outdoor jaunts, nature trails, spending moments of laughter, regular body movement and exercise, doing charity and service to humanity, writing a gratitude journal, inculcating the habit of offering gratitude for little mercies that life bestows.
But is well-being only about the energized physical, emotional, mental and spiritual states or is there more to it than meets the eye? The answer would be latter. An individual who conducts himself well, who lives an empowered existence, who treats his juniors with compassion and empathy, who understands the grief and pain of others being in their shoes, who relishes the joy of giving is a great leader. A leader who is well and truly in the pink of overall wellness and demonstrating a 360-degree well-being is a genius.
There is no dearth of good leaders in this vast world. However, what separates a good leader from a great one is not the excellence in typical traits but the X-factor called well-being which only a holistically nurtured individual can radiate.
