Leaders, how do you cultivate resilient well-being?

I want leaders to flourish in terms of resilient well-being. My deep hope is that leaders are consistently experiencing… 1. Regular exercise, healthy food, sufficient sleep, and daily devotions (see Construct: Stress, p. 18). 2. A safe, nurturing, Christ-centered environment. 3. A supportive board that monitors the leaders’ well-being and provides proactive care. This blog post addresses #3 above.

Well-being. Yours matters. It really does. For you personally. For your family and friends. For your fellow church members. And for those you serve with at your international Chrisitan school. With well-being you’re more likely to flourish, and without it you’re more likely to decline.

“Higher levels of well-being,” says the Center for Disease Control “are associated with decreased risk of disease, illness, and injury; better immune functioning; speedier recovery; and increased longevity. Individuals with high levels of well-being are more productive at work and are more likely to contribute to their communities” (Well-Being Concepts). Sounds good to me!

And the inverse sounds bad—sickness, injury, slower recovery, decreased productivity and community contribution. Not the marks of a flourishing person, of a flourishing leader. And the international Christian school you help lead needs a flourishing leader, one who has resilient well-being.

Physical activity, social interaction, mental stimulation, diet, and sleep can help you increase your well-being (see above video)—I know they help me! I actually feel better and flourish more when I regularly exercise, talk with others, learn new things, eat healthy food, and get enough sleep.

In my experience, something else that helps is experiencing a supportive board that monitors well-being and provides proactive care. If you’re already experiencing this, great! If you aren’t or want to experience more of it, I find that it helps to start with myself, support the well-being of board members, and ask for and secure board support. Let me explain:

(1) Start with myself: I monitor my well-being. I take proactive steps. And I work to make it easy to approach me regarding my well-being. How? By talking about the importance of well-being, demonstrating vulnerability about how I’m doing, and asking for help and prayers.

(2) Support the well-being of board members: Show interest in their well-being. Ask how they are doing. Ask how their families are doing. Pray for them and ask for prayer requests. As appropriate, share resources on well-being.

(3) Ask for board support: Ask the board to support you by monitoring your well-being and by providing proactive care. Invite them to ask you to report on your well-being at each board meeting, to pray for you, and to provide outside help—like coaching and 1-2 well-being debriefs with a counselor each school year.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 

What about you? How significant is your well-being? In terms of your life and leadership, what happens when you’re experiencing resilient well-being? What happens when you aren’t experiencing resilient well-being? How do you cultivate resilient well-being? 

Here are some posts related to flourishing in terms of resilient well-being:

• What are you doing to maintain/increase well-being?
• Resilient Well-Being: What comes to mind when you think about flourishing?
• What’s the impact of work-related stress, frustration, overwork, and overwhelm?
• To what extent are you experiencing the 5 elements of flourishing?
  

Get flourishing!

Michael

P.S. Bonus! Here’s a list of 10 quotations from things I’ve read or listened to that contain a form of the word resilient:

1. “Resilience is the biblical norm for Christians. The Bible contains many admonitions to press on (Philippians 3:13–15), overcome hardship and temptation (Romans 12:21), and persevere in the face of trials (James 1:12)” (What does the Bible say about resilience?).
2. “These companies are resilient because their leadership understands that if their employees feel respected and validated—even in times of dramatic change and socially acceptable incivility—they do their best work. Period. Full stop?” (Good Comes First: How Today’s Leaders Create an Uncompromising Company Culture That Doesn’t Suck, loc 1014)
3. “Practice self-compassion. Talk to yourself the way you’d talk to a friend. People who are more self-compassionate are more resilient “(Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life, loc 802).
4. “Resilient people are not easily stymied; they bounce back from setbacks. With their fundamental belief that I can overcome adversity, challenges are interpreted as resistance necessary to build strength and opportunities to prove oneself” (Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact, loc 1727).
5. “…to thrive, you must find ways to grow stronger and more resilient—to keep developing and improving” (ALIEN Thinking, loc 2545).
6. “The future belongs to those who believe in it and have the belief, resilience, positivity, and optimism to overcome all the challenges in order to create it” (The Power of Positive Leadership, loc 316).
7. “…you can develop the ability to bounce back from difficult situations by cultivating these three traits as a leader: resilience, which depends a great deal on your self-confidence; flexibility, which requires a strong vision; [and] ownership, which depends on having a sense of agency” (Lead to Win: The Leadership Superpower of the Post-Pandemic World).
8. “Here’s the bottom line: If we don’t have the skills to get back up, we may not risk falling. And if we’re brave enough often enough, we are definitely going to fall. The research participants who have the highest levels of resilience can get back up after a disappointment or a fall, and they are more courageous and tenacious as a result of it” (Daring to Lead, loc 3322).
9. “…when the heart is open and free and we’re connected to our emotions and understand what they’re telling us, new worlds open up for us, including better decision making and critical thinking, and the powerful experiences of empathy, self-compassion, and resilience” (Daring to Lead, loc 1077).
10. “There are five key components to being an effective leader in crisis situations, says Madeline Dessing of Korn Ferry: Calmness, confidence, courage, resilience and empathy. All matter, but empathy has a unique role in strengthening the resolve of people who feel near a breakdown state” (Overcome Social distance with Empathy in Leadership).