Introduction
Growing up in a family of Chinese heritage, one of the pieces of etiquette we learned was to always fill everyone else’s teacup before your own. It was a sign of respect and to show that you weren’t selfish. My mom explained that by serving others first, you wouldn’t end up taking all of the tea and leaving nothing for others.
While certainly honourable, this approach doesn’t always translate to other areas of life. Many people take the approach of servitude towards leadership and life in general, taking care of others and often leaving themselves depleted in the process. When I look at the leaders around me and reflect on when I have been at my best and times when I haven’t, it becomes apparent that self-care as a leader is important for your own performance and your team’s.
This can often feel counter intuitive, especially for leaders with a strong mindset of serving others. However, we’re starting to see studies finding associations between leader self-care and higher work engagement and lower exhaustion and links between leader mindfulness and stronger leader-worker relationships. Here are three areas I’ve personally found benefits to self-care as a leader.
Supporting Your Team
Leadership has evolved since the days where management simply required knowing more than your team. That evolution was then propelled forward in the past two years where public health restrictions tore down work/life boundaries for many of us. As we forcibly welcomed coworkers into our homes and personal lives through cameras and screens, leaders are facing the need to be councillor and friend to our teams who have lost the organic relationships everyone used to have in work and play.
In the past two years, I had more people breaking down in tears at work than ever before. It breaks my heart to know so many people have past their own breaking point, and being able to support those conversations with presence and empathy is hard.
Those conversations are emotionally draining for the best of us and there is no way any of us support others if we’re already drained ourselves. Over the years, I’ve made a point of taking care of my own physical, mental and emotional health and this practice ensures I have a full reserve when faced with these impromptu tête-à-têtes.
Being Present
Being present is also becoming increasingly challenging, with every device and app constantly competing for our attention. We experience this distraction on a regular basis at work, whether it’s missing a question posed to you or worse—not paying attention when your team needs you.
The repercussions of this distraction reverberate widely for a leader, and and one study shows that leader mindfulness helps improve employee problem-solving pondering and flow experiences. Books like Nir Eyal’s Indistractible and Doreen Doddgen-Magee’s restart are great resources for strengthening both your focus and mindfulness.
Decision Fatigue
Leaders are faced with decisions on a constant basis, whether we’re aware of it or not. From setting our team’s priorities to whether our team member needs feedback or support to when our next team meeting should be, we’re faced with big and small decisions as a natural part of our roles as leaders.
My team has lovingly named a look I have as “Friday Face”— a look that says I am depleted and am not making any more decisions that week. More widely known as decision fatigue, this is when our decision-making abilities degrade as we are faced with increased decisions and decreased cognitive strength.
Aside from reducing the number of decisions you need to make or making them early in the day or week, many other ways to combat decision fatigue involve self-care. Whether it’s eating healthy (a goal itself fraught with decisions!) or a mid-week recharge, taking care of yourself as a leader will put you in a stronger position to make decisions with a clear mind.
Final Thoughts
Adopting my cultural tradition, I like to think of self-care for leaders more like filling your own teapot so that you have something to fill everyone’s teacups with — including your own. After all, it doesn’t make sense to help others and leave yourself with nothing. But you do need to have something to give from if you are to support others.
