One is “When leaders rise, everyone rises.”

This means that when we as leaders are well, happy and moving at full steam, our communities are similarly well and moving ahead. The opposite of course is also true. The alternate question I ask is thus: Who loves the lovers of people. Who takes care of people whose task it is to take care of people? The answer is often…left blank.

Last year I spoke at a major secondary education conference. Some 500 leaders gathered in Wellington, who were a powerful lobby of experienced educational professionals. I asked a simple question of them. “Who here believes that leadership is a profession?” No one moved. Then, just to add pain to my thinking, I delivered a statement that made many uncomfortable and quite possibly offended more.

I told them that when they were appointed for a role as a leader at their school they were no longer in the education business, they were now in the people business. And if we are not careful and intentional, the people business can break us.

Now this year everything has changed and intensified.

The COVID era has accentuated the reality of this position and the COVID era has exposed both good and bad leadership practice. Perhaps a generalisation, but what I have observed is that leaders who have poor communication skills and poor relationship building skills have struggled. Those who are well connected and understand the need for no ambiguity in communication have fared much better. Zoom of course just doesn’t cut it because we are as humans are made for intimate connection and community. We don’t do so well in isolation regardless of the tech.

There is a huge amount of data floating about that discusses well-being. To be honest, most of it I just stare at blankly. Let me be mean to academia for a moment. I’m sure the researchers have ideas and theories that have some practical applications. But here is my two cents' worth.

I am your wellbeing. Am I looking out for you?

In most cases senior leaders are looking down but who is looking up?

‘I am your wellbeing’ is possibly less complicated than other courses, workshops programmes and ideologies.

And it begs the question. Who am I looking out for?

Again my observation is that so many leaders are becoming isolated. And no, not just physically isolated but isolated from a true reflection of their mental wellbeing and status. When did we believe that we were impervious to the pressure and circumstances of people around us? The superman or superwoman persona is just not helpful.

I have previously written articles on personal well-being for leaders. Here I stated that we must measure our overall health in five different categories as indicators of a balanced ‘reasonable’ life. I determine that reasonable and balanced means I have capacity and surplus energy to consider excellence of practice, innovation of potential outcomes and space to effectively mentor and grow others. I commented to a client recently, if you are going to awake at 2.00am it should be to drink champagne, not to be thinking about how to fight tomorrows fires!

These were simple bullet points of well-being and I hope they are simple to be able to measure and assess.

1. Physical health. Our bodies are pretty darn good at communicating imbalance: right? Tiredness, pain, loss of concentration, weight gain, weight loss, headaches, forgetfulness, zoning out, inability to stand up and random acts of wine. Suffice it to say that if we ignore the body talking to us, it will shout louder and until we listen.
2. Intellectual hunger. I surveyed the leaders I coach and asked ‘how sumptuous are the meals of growth you are involved in?’ Are you reading books and articles, listening to podcasts, watching TED talk etc? This is not profession centric necessarily. A huge part of a healthy life balance is involvement in “the other”, hobbies and side interests. Balancing your mind. The observation is that this feeding of one's intellect is often cast aside when well-being is low. It is like staring at the medicine cabinet when you have a headache but not being able to open it.
3. and 4. Relational health. An easy assessment to consider. How is the quality of my relationships at home with the people who I love and the people at my place of work who I respect? Do I find myself scratchy, argumentative, more intolerant, increasingly disconnected, closed off to ideas or becoming exiled behind closed doors (and screens)?

These four have dynamic presenting symptoms and poor outcomes. Yet there is a fifth that has potentially a greater influence than all the others and may well be under your radar.

5. Emotional burn out. When I referred to the “People Business” it is here where it has its most dangerous bite and most devastating effect on leaders if unattended to.

So many professions now understand how the effects of emotional collateral damage are extremely significant if you want longevity of tenure in any profession. There are obvious industry sectors who experience this collection of emotional weight as occupational norms. Counsellors, first responders, pastors and priests, police officers, judges, social workers, nurses, doctors and other medical professionals.

Interestingly the emergency services have acknowledged the trauma associated with “first on scene” by-standers when it comes to witnessing and assisting at accident scenes. Inexperienced people who happened to be at the right or wrong place at the right time.  We now have a much more intentional Victim Support agency and process to help unpack what has been witnessed and felt emotionally.

I spoke to a highly experienced fire fighter and senior leader in Fire and Emergency NZ who reported witnessing on a near daily basis human circumstances that most of us would recoil from in a single occurrence.  They now recognise the broad effect and depth of this first on scene phenomenon.

Tragically, the horror known as ‘forgotten baby syndrome” where people leave their child in the car for a full day forgetting to drop them at day care is predominantly suffered by highly experienced professionals not delinquent parents. The results are devastating. The causes are emotional work load stress.

So what has this to do with leadership in education?

Everything.

As a classroom teacher you might be involved in the emotional spectrum of 30 students and families. As a team leader, potentially four to six times that number. As a senior leader, potentially hundreds if not thousands. And these are circumstances and issues that have no direct relation to our work yet are imposed by the nature of being in the people business. I would imagine that no one has an employment contract that states under job description that they must deal with these weighty realities. Yet we do. Day in and day out.

Life. Births, deaths, divorces, abuse, redundancy, illness, addiction, accidents and tragedies: let alone academic and social deficits.

If you consider Murray Burton, the Principal of Elim Christian College, and the whole Mangatepopo Canyon Disaster. No manual nor probably past experience could have prepared him and his staff for this level of trauma. As a leader either you have this capacity or you don’t. As a side note, if you ever consider a conversation that has a powerful impact on your leadership and team, consider coffee with Murray Burton.

This fifth element can take us out unless we have highly effective and deeply measured awareness of it.

The ultimate result of all five are isolation and skewed perspectives.

The growing number of occupations that contend with these issues find the antidote for isolation in connection. Practically, there is a huge growth in the need for mentors, supervisors and coaches. However, what I believe we need overall are effective scratching posts. People who we trust, who are nonjudgmental and can simply offer us the ear we need to unpack and unload. Perhaps they also need to have the ability to ask questions that make us squirm, but essentially they are isolation breakers. Neutral minds and hearts who care enough to be quiet and to listen.

In the past I have referred to the unpleasant results of isolation being the adoption of addictive behaviours. We know now from research that addiction behaviour's primary cause is loneliness. Isolation, which, in a crowded social media connected world might seem ludicrous. But real it is.

In 2018 the former British Prime Minister Theresa May appointed a world first to her cabinet. Tracy Crouch MP became the world’s first “Minister of Loneliness” in recognition of the some 10 million Britons who reported having little or no human interaction on a daily basis. How crazy, and how very sad is that?

Loneliness has very dramatic and very well-known poor health outcomes. When a leader states “it is lonely at the top”, I have to make the comment that you are doing something relationally wrong.

The antidote for isolation is always connection.

Connection requires a single and repetitive theme.

Time.

Ok, two themes.

Time and Intention.

This status on well-being cannot be casual nor can it be a minor priority any longer.

How does this practically work?

I recently asked the leader of a specialist education support group how often their staff met and what format did that take. This group of professionals are spread out geographically making regular connection tricky. I was told they meet about every three weeks and have a meeting agenda to direct proceedings.  What I really wanted to know was how much and how often do they just “hang out”? The answer was simply…never.  I suggested that they gather at a local cafe on a Friday and I would throw some coffee and cake money on the counter. They could simply chat as professionals and colleagues about specific issues or about nothing at all.  To my surprise the initial answer was “but what if someone sees us”. In the end, the leader consulted her SLT and the result was a resounding “hell yes”. They connected for two hours just talking, drinking coffee and sharing stories.

That is being intentional about your well-being.

We all know that when we attend professional conferences we get bombarded by the offer of dozens and dozens of workshops. (I’m guilty as I facilitate a number of them). But what do you really want to do? Where is the largest gain? Coffee. Conversation. Laughter. BS and wonderful irreverence.