Leading Through ‘Healthy Selfishness’

In today’s productivity-obsessed and cost-conscious workplaces, many employees are feeling emotionally disengaged from their organisation.

And who can blame them? They’re rarely involved or considered in decision making. In fact, they’re almost treated like any other resource within the business. The result is stress, anxiety and resentment are rife.

So, if you’re the leader, what do you do?

First of all remember that, as a leader, you set the example for others and you play a key role in creating the environment, the atmosphere and the culture at work. How you feel, and how you respond to the environment, will cascade down to everyone in your team.

So if you want to support other people and give them the attention they need, you have to ensure that you are also practicing ‘healthy selfishness’.

Put Yourself First

Put simply, it is very difficult to support others if you are not a good place yourself! It’s the same advice that we get from the safety briefing on planes; put your own oxygen mask on first before you try to help others.

Here are two things I would recommend:

1. Ensure your needs are met

We all have physical and emotional needs and you have to ensure that your own needs are being met. Your main emotional needs are:

• Security (a safe territory and an environment which allows you to develop fully)
• Attention (to give and receive it)
• Emotional intimacy (having relationships where you feel you’re accepted and you belong)
• Feeling part of a wider community
• Privacy (the opportunity to reflect and consolidate your experience)
• A sense of status within social groupings
• A sense of competence and achievement
• Meaning and purpose (being stretched in what you do and think)

To support yourself, you have to get your physical and emotional needs in balance.

The exact balance will vary from person-to-person. However it might help to think of when you were last in a positive emotional state. When did you last feel that you were able to cope effectively with the challenges you were facing? What was happening that enabled you to feel that way?

2. Don’t neglect activities that help you cope with stress

There will be social connections, interests or activities outside of work that will keep your base level of stress low.

You might attend a club, meet someone regularly for a drink, go to a gym, play golf or whatever. You might not realise how important these things are in terms of helping you maintain your ability to cope at work.

However, if you let these things slip, because you’re too busy at work, your base level of anxiety goes up and this diminishes your capacity to cope with the pressures at work. Suddenly the same level of stress that you had before tips you over. This can be doubly disconcerting because you feel you suddenly can’t handle what you were previously able to cope with.

It’s important to understand, what do you do outside of work that helps you cope? Where do you get support? Who do you connect with and spend time with?

Also, within the workplace, who do you meet up with? Who do you get coaching or mentoring support from? What are you doing to nurture the relationships that matter to you inside and outside of work?

Now Help Your People Feel More Engaged

Having put your own house in order, there are three things you can do to help your people to feel more emotionally engaged:

1. Control your response

As a leader, you can control your response to the situations you are facing and to the messages you are hearing from the business.

Good partners are adept at filtering those messages and understanding what’s going on. Be selective about what you share and don’t share. Share everything and you can create chaos and uncertainty; share nothing and you stop people being able to perform.

2. Show a genuine interest in your people

Make the effort to notice what’s going on with the individuals in your team. How are they coping with the situation? Has their attitude shifted? Do they have a problem or issue with anyone else? What motivates them? What do they enjoy doing?

By interacting with your team and nurturing those relationships, you’ll be in a much better position to consider how you can help each person to develop. Ultimately, the organisation is best served when the needs of its individuals are being met.

3. Adopt a coaching approach

Partners under pressure often resort to a directive mindset. They’ll tell people what to do. In the short term, this can make life easier for team members, as they can do whatever their partner has asked, with no element of responsibility. However, it’s very disempowering and it doesn’t develop the individual’s long-term capability to cope on their own.

By adopting a coaching approach, and being less directive, you can expand someone’s awareness and their competence. They’ll start to become solvers of their own problems and they won’t have to come running to you each time – which will also help to further reduce your stress.

Remember, first help yourself; then you’ll be in a better position to help others.

 

About Cote Consultants

Cote Consultants is a coaching, leadership and performance improvement firm based in central London. We work with any organisation that wants to drive sustainable growth in performance and capital through the personal and professional development of its most promising leaders and teams.

Stay informed

For insight into how to make your coaching more effective,
subscribe to our free monthly e-mail articles

 

Posted in: Internal coaching, Leadership