Effective Leadership Today is ALL about Wellbeing

A quick search for today’s leadership challenges exposes at least five people trends:

1. A ubiquitous and alarming amount of employee burnout globally.
2. A record number of discontented people, often termed the Great Resignation , leaving organizations to find better bosses, better working conditions, and better jobs.
3. Experiments for agile and hybrid work models—with mixed results .
4. Company cries over the lack of talent , along with the hunt for human-centric strategies to attract and retain the best people.
5. A push for integrating “W”—wellbeing—into company ESG initiatives which are becoming crucial to brand appeal, employee and consumer trust, and business growth.

The deeper reality underlying these trends? Advancing wellbeing is not only imperative for you, your team, and your organization and its brands; it is increasingly a differentiator.?

LEAD WELLBEING BY TAPPING INTO FLOW

How do you drive positive outcomes at work at the same time the work inspires people to grow and thrive? In Be Well Lead Well Pulse? , part of the answer is captured in a dimension we call FLOW.

FLOW is a common human experience regardless of gender, geography, age, or industry. It is about being in the zone, those times when you bring your full presence to life and work. You feel the effortlessness of FLOW through a hobby, sport, music, gardening, or any other activity (even washing dishes!) in which your concentration—and your whole being—is totally absorbed. In these moments, your “self” disappears. (So do outer distractions and inner obstacles that often get in your way.) Your senses are heightened. Time distorts, speeding up or slowing down. As you fully engage in the activity, you are intrinsically rewarded with energy, enjoyment, deep connection, and a rich experience of how life unfolds with ease.

At Wisdom Works, we believe work is a prime opportunity for people to find FLOW. When this happens, work becomes not only an avenue for being productive and accomplishing results, but also for elevating the wellbeing and growth of individuals, teams, and organizations. The FLOW dimension of Be Well Lead Well Pulse? measures three of 19 vital psychometrics of holistic wellbeing and stress resilience:

• Engagement at Work: The extent to which people get immersed in their work, feel happy and inspired by work, and experience inherent satisfaction and pleasure in the work itself.
• Self-Esteem at Work: The extent to which people perceive themselves as important, meaningful, worthwhile, effectiveness, and valuable to the organization—an internal sense that they make a positive difference at work.
• Mindfulness: The extent to which people pay attention to the present moment without evaluating it as good or bad and act with awareness rather than reactivity.

→?Are You in Flow??Rate yourself from 1 to 10 (where 1 is LOW and 10 is HIGH) on each of these psychometrics and encourage your team to do the same. Or invite one of our Certified Guides to implement the Be Well Lead Well Pulse? assessment with your team members to measure their FLOW at work using pioneering wellbeing science. Once you have your results, identify ways to increase FLOW at work (you’ll find suggestions below); doing so is one of six shifts required for leading thriving for yourself and others.

Psychologist Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on FLOW: “Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times….The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”?

Here are more resources you’ll find helpful …

• This excellent animated video of the seminal book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by psychologist Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi , has good insights about moving from boredom or anxiety to FLOW.
• What can our brains teach us about FLOW? Researchers hypothesize that the link between flow and wellbeing is about: suppressing brain activation in structures related with thinking about ourselves, dampening activation in structures related to negative thoughts, and increasing activation in reward-processing regions of the brain. Find out more in this cognitive science article.
• FLOW is not limited to an individual. As sports teams and jazz bands know intimately, FLOW between people can produce shared genius. Check out these 10 conditions for group FLOW , as examples, a focused yet open-ended goal, deep listening, the blending of egos, equal participation, and the potential for failure. And learn to use the power of breath as a force of connection and FLOW in your team.

HERE’S WHAT ELSE I’M EXPLORING: FLOW PRACTICES YOU CAN USE NOW

FLOW doesn’t have to be elusive. Nor does it necessarily mean overhauling your life. However, it does entail working with, instead of against, the innate human rhythms that can empower you and your team to thrive. These three (out of many!) practices can help you design your workday for experiences of FLOW:

• RESPECT CIRCADIAN TIME. As neuroscientist Andrew Huberman says, none of us escape this cycle . Every cell in our body has a 24-hour timer regulating our sleep-wake phases, gene expression, and body processes. Overriding this circadian rhythm links to diminished physical and mental performance, as well as greater reactivity, depression, seasonal affective disorder, diabetes, and other chronic health conditions. Align to your internal circadian clock with these three actions: View 10-30 minutes of bright light or sunlight first thing in the morning, limiting light toward the end of the day. Engage in physical activity throughout your schedule. Take in healthy FUEL , such as good nutrition and hydration, at regular time windows. (Hunger, thirst, and poor-quality FUEL will restrict your possibilities for FLOW.) Check out the timeline below to support you.

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• OPTIMIZE ULTRADIAN TIME. While you respect the 24-hour circadian cycle, honor the smaller?ultradian rhythms , too. For instance, our?basic rest-activity cycle ?involves a rise then fall in our alertness approximately every 90 minutes. How can you work with this natural pattern to foster FLOW? Organize your day into chunks of focused work punctuated by rest periods. Pause regularly to enjoy?one of these conscious breaths. Plus, integrate the additional practices from the timeline above into your routine. This is not only about energizing high performance for you and your team, but also making high performance?sustainable.
• BUILD YOUR MINDFULNESS MUSCLE. Mindfulness is a bridge to FLOW. Incorporating mindfulness into the day’s activities and team’s work builds your individual and collective muscles for self-observation and positive change. As a past mentor of mine says, “When you are able to see differently, you are able to intervene differently.” Explore the concepts and practices in Part 1 and Part 2 of this article to apply mindfulness as a leadership and team strength—and a gateway to FLOW at work.

The Be Well Lead Well Pulse? assessment system includes a collection of close to 100 macro- and micro-practices, like those offered above, to enrich your capacity to thrive and amplify thriving within your team and organization. Contact us to work with a Be Well Lead Well Pulse? Certified practitioner in your world region, and learn more about our programs for getting certified to use Be Well Lead Well Pulse? wherever you lead.

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