Leadership and Wellbeing - Emotional Health

Emotional health is the second component of wellbeing which is critical for leaders. What is emotional health? Well it is the ability to balance one's emotions during the ups and downs of day to day life. Leaders, as all human beings, face challenges as well as successes. Emotionally healthy leaders are able to manage their emotions during those challenges, stay positive, and be flexible to change course when need be. Emotional health can be the key to successful relationships, interactions in the organization, and the growth of an organization.

So what can leaders do to enhance their emotional health?

Mindfulness - learning to calm the mind and focus either on the breath and/or a word or phrase can help in balancing the mind. It can also increase self-awareness, presence, and understanding of the emotions that arise within and create the ability to stand apart from them.

Lean into a social network - with the ups and downs that leaders face it is important that they have a social support system to lean on. This may be a spouse, friends, or colleagues who can support, encourage, and/or be a sounding board during tough times and people to celebrate with during the good times.

Focus on the positive - when things don't go as leaders expect it can be easy to become angry or upset. Emotionally healthy leaders are able to quickly reframe the challenging event, however, into an opportunity or a positive challenge by not dwelling on the negative.

How emotionally healthy are you? If you can improve your emotional health what can you begin to implement today to start to do that?