Why is self-care important for leaders? How does self-care affect your ability to lead?
After last week’s newsletter generated a few questions, let’s focus on self-care and resilience this week.
Self-care doesn’t mean weekend luxury getaways, pedicures, or even a day off lounging on the sofa as you binge watch the Umbrella Academy.
Self-care can take many forms. But more importantly, it should be a part of your regular routine. When you are stressed and burnt out, here’s what tends to happen.
- You are less emotionally balanced, often feeling frustrated and short tempered.
- You are more cynical, making unnecessarily negative comments.
- You are more removed from your team, shutting down access to your knowledge and support.
- You are less focused on people, ignoring check-ins and 1:1s.
- You are more focused on task completion, caring less about quality, thoroughness, or long-term strategy.
In short, self-care affects your abilitiy to lead.
Here are some actions to take immediately!
Identify the Meaning of Self-Care
Start with a broad understanding, as this will help you focus and refine actions in the next step. What constitutes care for one person may actually cause stress for another.
Action Step: Define what self-care means to you. Is it about physical health, mental clarity, or emotional stability?
Personalize Self-Care
Generic self-care suggestions just won’t do. You next need a plan which resonates with who you are and what you value. It might be exercise at the gym, meditation, reading, or taking long walks.
Action Step: Experiment with different self-care activities each month. Track your energy levels to find what provides the greatest benefits.
Overcome Common Obstacles
Excuses such as having too much on your plate, time constraints, or feeling guilty for not putting in 60-hour work weeks are just that: Excuses!
Identify these barriers in order to break them down.
Action Step: Especially at the start, conduct a weekly review of your schedule and identify lost time. Eliminate any actions that keep you busy for the sake of busyness. For example, if you are spending an hour or more each week on inbox zero, are there any real benefits?
Shift wasted time to self-care opportunities.
Pro point!:
Just as you would spend time on strategic planning and team development, schedule time for self-care. View it as proactive, maintaining the energy and clarity needed to focus on the future, handle emergencies, make decisions, and inspire your team.
Create a habit of self-care.
Don’t Underestimate the Power of Quick Resets
Five-minute pauses here and there are not long-term solutions, but they do provide space, distance, and a chance to reset.
Action Step: Get into the habit of using a pomodoro timer, scheduling short breaks at regular intervals. Use the time for simple activities like deep breathing, stretching, or a walk around the block.
Make Regular Adjustments
What works today may not work tomorrow. Monitor, reflect, and adapt to ensure that your self-care practices remain effective and aligned with your needs.
Action Step: Schedule a monthly self-review to evaluate the effectiveness of your self-care practices. Adjust as necessary to meet new challenges or changes in your routine.
Wrapping Up
Self-care isn’t just about better health. As a leader, you want to lead with energy, empathy, and insight. You want to support your team.
During the pandemic, I found myself increasingly frazzled. Self-care actions which had previously worked, such as taking a day or cooking nice meals, became less and less effective. I returned to these steps to assess what I needed to prevent stress and burnout.
View self-care for leaders as not something you just owe yourself, but you also owe it to your team to remain healthy.