The mental health of a leader encompasses everything they do to stay at peak performance and elite levels of people development. Leadership mental health is the foundation to sustainable excellence.

Beginning in Coaching

I fell in love with coaching because it gave me something tangible to work towards. Fresh out of my master’s program and stepping into a new workplace, it was actually required that I have a coach for the first year of employment. They paid for it, I benefited from it.

Tremendously.

Little did I know that at 24, it would be a life-changing experience.

My first coach, Jeff, helped me see the bigger side of life and leadership. Leaders struggle and leaders fall. Because of this, leaders can’t bear the weight of responsibility themselves.

Good leaders surround themselves with others. Those that will both listen and challenge. Strong leaders embrace the chance to be pushed and to be bettered.

Most of all, leaders take their own growth seriously.

The Faces of Mental Health

Mental health, like a diamond, has many faces to it. Here are several of the types of mental health I talk about with my clients:

  • Counseling A leader presenting a key topic to a group of people with a whiteboard in the background.
  • Coaching
  • Reading Books
  • Seminars
  • Podcasts
  • Conferences
  • Retreats
  • Exercise

This is not an exhaustive list by any means, but it does provide us with healthy ways to get started – or continue – our journey of holistic leadership health.

One of the most frequent questions I get is, “What’s the difference between counseling and coaching?” Both are in the ‘helping professions’ and both have their place. I’ve experienced both. I’ve benefitted from both over the years. I need both in my life to help me be at my best. So here, in brief, are the differences.

Counseling – The benefit of counseling is that it looks backward in the leader’s journey. Addressing pain points, unresolved issues, family dynamics, trauma, and emotional scars (among other things) counseling provides a safe place for leaders to stop, pause, and reflect on where their life has come from.

Coaching – Coaching is predominately future-focused. Instead of needing details when clients give me their history, they give me the “5-minute version.” I need to know enough to ask good questions, not about where they’ve been, but about where they want to go. Coaching helps individuals get from point A to point F quicker, easier, and more proactively.

Other Investments In Mental Health

Books 

Leaders are readers. If you’re not reading, you will never reach your full potential. I regularly send out my current reading lists and those I see on other websites. I challenged myself as much as possible through a wide variety of genres. Thoughtful leaders engage in history, economics, biographies, fiction, and a wide variety of personal development books.

Seminars and Conferences

Learning from others is a great way to get a quick return on your investment. Find a local or national tradeshow, expo, or conference related to your line of work. Attend regularly, take notes, and write key takeaways from your learning. Years ago, I made it a practice to take the conference notes I took and create a three-step action plan after each one. The amount of new information can be overwhelming and this helped simplify it for me and gave me quick wins when I returned to my normal daily routine.

Podcasts

There are two major time wasters in our daily living: our exercise habits and our commute times. I’ve given up music 95% of the time in favor of podcasts. Exercise six days a week gives me ample time to squeeze in an extra book or podcast. Additionally, I spend an average of 10-15 hours driving every week. I can get in an extra book a month on average just by listening to books and podcasts in the car.

Retreats

Our leadership journeys are often moving at a frenetic pace. Meetings, sales, marketing, investing in others, family time, it can all feel overwhelming. One of the greatest assets you can give yourself is the ability to stop. Breath. Contemplate. Refresh. Retreats are a way to intentionally withdraw from the day-to-day grind and gain some long-term perspective.

Exercise

This is so important we’re going to dedicate another post to it, but the benefits of exercise extend far beyond physical health. Exercise releases chemicals in our brain that make us happier, gives us an energy boost, reframes our perspective, provides inspiration, increases productivity, and stimulates growth.

All In

Growing leaders must be all in on their own health, as this series has shown. Mental health is a critical component of that. This includes both traditional approaches to mental health, as well as positive habits that increase our brain capacity and stimulate our own growth. Leadership mental health is a commitment to yourself and to others to continually execute improvement.


The Wrap Up

If you or someone you know is facing burnout, please get help. Email me to set up your first appointment.

Looking for more ways to fight against burnout? Here are 50 self-care tips.

 Want the entire series as a Kindle book? Go here.

Calling – Leadership Health and Integrity (Part 1)

A Firm Foundation

The journey of healthy and sustainable leadership happens by building a firm foundation.

The bathroom remodel is nearing completion (finally!).

Over the last several months, it has been a series of two steps forward and one step back.

Exciting progress met by a frustrating setback.

The subfloor was installed fairly quickly and easily.

But then, it took three orders of the shower to get one delivered undamaged, followed by three visits of the plumber to get it installed fully.

But after six weeks, we finally had a shower. So we put up the drywall and painted.

Progress, Setback, Repeat.

That, as it turns out, is much like life.

Slow, Steady Growth

Healthy leadership is a series of growth events. Each is the opportunity to take a step forward. Unfortunately, we also experience moments of setback. 

For every successful meeting or mentoring moment, we belittle an employee.

Every time we set healthy boundaries and engage in personal development, we scream at someone in traffic.

For every trip to the park with our kids or a date night with our spouse, there’s the emotional binge eating for temporary relief.

It’s this continual cycle of growth and progression that encapsulates the leader’s life. It’s also the reason that I started intentionally focusing on seven key areas and aspects of healthy leadership.

Over the next couple of weeks on the blog, we are going to be covering each of these seven areas. In each area, we’ll examine the process of opportunity, growth, and reflection.

First up, let’s talk about calling.

Calling – Leadership Health and Integrity (Part 1)

The foundation for all leadership begins in a calling. God has been calling and shaping people since the beginning of time. Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, and Paul are a few examples. All have unique and personalized call stories that led them to live a life of mission.

There are two levels of calling that need to be identified. First, is a general calling. The second moves from general to specific.

General Calling

The general call focuses first on the development of leadership skills.

For me, it came as a freshman in college. Unhappy with where I was, how I felt, what I was looking forward to, and the classes I was taking, I remember the feeling of being alone, unloved, and unimportant.

I had gone to college because it’s what I was supposed to do. However, I didn’t arrive with any real sense of purpose or direction. Having spent a semester as a science major, the only thing that I was certain of was that I couldn’t spend any more evenings in the lab staring at a microscope.

I entered into a time of dedicated study, prayer, and reflection. I looked at transferring schools, changing majors,  and dropping out and getting a job. After weeks of prayer and study, I was renewed with a sense of purpose and direction. I was reminded that I had once been called into leadership positions and that it might be time to explore that calling again.

I began to argue with God about what that might look like. In my brokenness, I also listed the reasons why I was unfit and unqualified for leadership.

I suffered from extreme shyness and public anxiety.

I had a lack of public presence and a huge fear of the unknown.

In a sense of divine irony, I sensed the call to read my Bible. I randomly opened my Bible to the story of Moses in Exodus three and four. My reservations and fears had been calmed when I saw that I raised all the same objections Moses had. I became convinced that God delights in using our weaknesses in unique and exciting ways.

General revelations can happen at any time and force future leaders to have open hearts and minds about how God is calling and shaping them.

Specific Calling

Specific call stories take on a more detailed tone. If a general calling echoes my own idea of, “I’m not sure what this means, but I think I’m called into leadership;” specific call stories can fill in the blanks of to whom and for whom.

Originally for me, this meant youth ministry, but it didn’t take very long as a youth pastor to see that this was not what God intended for me!

Over the last decade, I have continued to define and refine my leadership skills and capabilities.

I now work with leaders, empowering them to get the right things done. My time is spent with success-oriented individuals helping them reach peak performance, accomplish their goals, and transform conflict into opportunity.

Growth Points

Let’s wrap up today’s discussion by providing discussion plans and growth points for the leadership journey.

These questions are designed to help you gain momentum in your journey towards leadership health.

  • To whom have I been called to serve?
  • What energizes me?
  • How do I want to give back?
  • What gifts and talents do my closest friends and family see in me?
  • Have I experienced a general calling? What did that look like?
  • Have I experienced a specific calling? What does that look like?
  • Who am I trying to become?

Next week, we are going to begin our look at the four internal aspects of leadership health and continue towards our final destination.