Team engagement depends on a leader’s wellbeing

Employee wellbeing is an often talked about topic throughout the workplace, as many organisations have identified its importance to business outcomes and worker output. The wellbeing of leaders, however, can quite easily be swept under the rug when, in reality, it is a crucial component.

On a recent HR Leader podcast, Elemental Coaching and Psychology chief mental health adviser Kate Connors spoke about the importance of the wellbeing of leaders throughout Australian organisations, touching on the flow-on consequences that can arise when a leader’s mental health, for example, isn’t at a healthy level.

“There is a lot of research that speaks to the impact of mental health and wellbeing of the leaders and the ripple effect that has through to people who are more on the ground in the structures of organisations,” Connors said.

There’s some interesting data that speaks to the fact that around a quarter to a third of leaders aren’t in a great place and are feeling burnt out. According to the State of Global Workplace report released by Gallup, around 67 per cent of leaders feel burnt out at least sometimes, and a quarter of them feel it pretty persistently.

“If you think about the impact that that has through to our teams, that’s pretty significant. There was another research report that was released in 2022, so a little bit, the Deloitte Insights report, which said that 40 per cent of C-suite leaders were feeling overwhelmed,” said Connors.

Connors believes that these statistics of C-suite executives raise the question about how frontline leaders, team leaders, and middle managers may be feeling.

“If that’s the kind of state where C-suite leaders are at when they’ve got so much more agency, so much more control over where they choose to put their energy and that strategic kind of lever, it begs the question in terms of, well, how is it that more frontline leaders are feeling all the way through to middle management and senior management as well?” Connors said.

In terms of the effect that burnout, poor mental health and wellbeing can have on leaders and, therefore, organisations, Connors believes that engagement is where we see the consequences arise the most.

“It’s about engagement. The data is clearly indicating that about 70 per cent in regards to team engagement essentially is connected back to the leader of that team. So, if the leaders themselves are struggling, then there is bound to be a very significant impact through to organisational outcomes.

“We know that engagement and team engagement is such a critical driver of organisational outcomes, such as profitability, such as customer loyalty, such as turnover, such as discretionary effort.

“So those things are the organisational outcomes that are so tightly connected into engagement. And if engagement is so tightly connected and so positive, the relationship is so clearly a positive relationship between if a team leader or a leader is well and engaged, then that will flow on. Overall, you can see there the real interconnection and intersectionality between where a leader’s wellbeing is at and, therefore, where their team’s engagement will be at,” Connors said.