Leadership focus: developing psychologically safe managers

Last month, we talked about the importance of introducing a ‘Wellbeing Programme’ into the workplace, as part of the overall business strategy. Wellbeing Programmes, holistically try to improve the wellbeing of the workforce. They look at how individuals are employed; their work context; how they are managed; their role, and activities that improve self-care.

As discussed, managers play a vital role in implementing Wellbeing Programmes into the workplace, but it’s very important to recognise that the pressure of doing so doesn’t create or lead to additional stress. As one of our ‘7 Key Elements to Wellbeing’, Leadership in any organisation needs to focus on ‘Developing Inspiring Leaders’. It’s therefore important to prepare your leaders and managers to deal with any additional pressure and encourage them to develop safe psychological conduct and resilience so they can undertake Wellbeing Programmes in a positive and productive manner.

Applying Psychological Safety is one key way of building resilience and improving your own psychological health as a manager. The first stage of Psychological Safety involves considering how you look after your own psychological wellbeing. In order to do this, it’s important to recognise any ‘risk factors’ or psycho-social factors that could be having a detrimental impact on your own wellbeing.

These could include:

• Traumatic or distressing events
• Cumulative stress
• Several stressful situations occurring at the same time
• Lack of control
• Lack of social support

These factors are not unavoidable – often influenced by external or environmental factors (for example, the breakdown of a relationship). However, learning and developing different styles and patterns of thinking can directly reduce the onset, impact, duration and severity of the mental distress incurred by such factors that lead to declined performance, poor leadership decisions or increased levels of absenteeism.

Take the time to think about how your pattern of thinking normally emerges in a stressful situation. This can be difficult but it’s important to try and identify how your thought patterns emerge in particular scenarios where you feel highly stressed: what were the trigger factors? And what was the actual outcome of the situation?

By identifying negative thought patterns, you can start to challenge and transform these into more reflective and rational styles of thinking. This will not only enable you to cope better in similar situations in the future but help you as a manager to identify when others might be suffering from mental distress and take measures to improve the situation.

Coupled with good social support and looking after your physical wellbeing – eating well and ensuring you get regular exercise – adopting different styles of thinking can be crucial to a more holistic and positive approach to workplace wellbeing. It can help develop you as a manager and encourage you to take proactive steps to implement Wellbeing Programmes in your organisation or team.

For more information on Leadership, Psychological Safety or Wellbeing Programmes, follow the links or contact us today to and one of our wellbeing specialists will discuss your requirements and find out how we can help.