Finding a balance between leading an organization and managing one’s mental health can be difficult in both good and challenging times. Even when your company is doing well, it’s important to ensure you as a leader are maintaining good mental health practices. At FullStack, we’ve looked into ways to promote positive mental health as leaders as the energy resulting from this flow out to your team, clients, and prospective clients to grow your business in positive ways.
Recognize the benefits of good mental health.
Understanding the positive factors of good mental health can lead to a greater appreciation for its importance. Leaders who are mentally healthy have a greater ability to show up for their teams. There are many ways people can practice self-care in order to improve their mental health. Finding what benefits you as a leader is important and can take some trial and error. Looking for some suggestions? FullStack’s Daniel Fuller recently shared some ways he’s been practicing self-care while working from home.
Be authentic.
Authenticity as a leader is a strong attribute that leads to more open and honest communication with your team. Share your experiences – both good and bad – with your team. Seeing your candor and honesty can ease them into sharing their experiences with you as well.
Being authentic can also help cultivate your emotional intelligence as a leader. Emotional intelligence is the ability to manage one’s emotions as well as handle interpersonal relationships by understanding other people’s emotions and feelings. By learning how to understand your emotions – as a leader – you’ll be able to better relate to your employees and acknowledge your team’s emotions.
Create a culture of understanding.
Exemplifying what you believe as a leader is incredibly important. If your team sees you taking steps to practice good mental health (i.e. taking mental health days, taking breaks, seeing the positives in a situation, etc.), they will likely be more willing to practice good mental health.
Another way to create understanding within your company’s culture is through offering mental health and wellness services. Opening these resources up to your team shows them that you want them to practice good health. FullStack offers wellness services to our clients – read more about our services here.
Want to learn more about cultivating company culture? Read FullStack’s post about the topic.