A survey by Gallup measures perceptions of how strongly people believe their organisation cares about wellbeing. The study reveals that only one in four people in the US, UK and other European markets believe wellbeing is a priority for their company.
Interestingly, ground has been lost since the pandemic when perceptions that organisations care about wellbeing peaked at 49% and has since dropped to pre-pandemic levels.
There are many ways organisations rallied to support people's wellbeing during the pandemic. However, one that I reflected on was how leaders made wellbeing a focus in team interactions. During this time, wellbeing shifted to become more of a focus for many leader’s and was not viewed as the responsibility of the HR team.
The benefit of focusing on employees wellbeing is evident. Gallup research finds that in teams where people believe their organisation cares about their wellbeing, they are more engaged, stay longer, advocate for the company, and have higher customer engagement, profitability, and productivity.
With this compelling business case, how can leaders continue to make wellbeing a priority?
This article offers a practical framework for leaders to have conversations about wellbeing, with a focus on better energy management in teams.
Loehr & Schwartz (2001) performance pyramid framework recognises that working in organisations takes a toll, and we need to have a consistent approach to energy management to avoid burnout. It is an approach to performance management that recognises the connection between the mind, body, and spirit.
The concept takes inspiration from the world of sport, where athletes train in a systematic and multi-dimensional way to compete successfully. However, in elite-level sports, athletes have intentional periods where they train, compete, and recover. Yet, in the corporate world, there is an assumption that we must perform at a high level without allowing time to recover.
This framework can help you scaffold what is called the ideal performance state. This state is the capacity to maximise your team's performance potential and help them bring their full talent to work daily. According to the authors, this approach can help strengthen endurance, self-control, and focus.
The model is an approach to more intentionally look after your well-being and performance by better mobilising ‘energy on-demand’.
To manage your team’s energy at work involves two things:
Firstly, helping people move between energy expenditure (periods of stress) and energy renewal (periods of recovery). Loehr & Schwartz suggest the enemy of high performance is not stress but a lack of intentional recovery, where we deplete our energy and eventually burn out.
Secondly, to promote energy management, we should consciously develop routines that provide the capacity to move between periods of stress and recovery. The model scaffolds performance at a physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual level. This framework can help each member your team consider their rituals at each level of the pyramid to support wellbeing and performance.
As you plan your next one-on-one meeting, consider each pyramid level and its role in sustaining wellbeing and performance. What rituals does each person in your team already have, and how can you support them to be more consistent in practising these, or does a conversation prompt introducing new strategies?
Physical Capacity
Physical capacity is at the bottom of the pyramid, which recognises your health and body as the fundamental energy source. What is important is the ratio of work and rest with good eating, hydration, sleeping and exercise rituals at the core. Also, these healthy living rituals support each other; for example, if you miss out on sleep, you are more likely to eat poorly and skip the gym.
To support your team's physical capacity, can you promote healthy eating at your next team-building lunch? When a member of your team works late, can you suggest a late start the next day?
Emotional Capacity
The next level is emotional capacity, which promotes creating the internal climate that will support the ideal performance state. This level recognises how as a leader your emotions are contagious and how positive emotions create energy, and how negative feelings will drain your team’s energy and impact their wellbeing, increase stress, and can lead to burnout.
To strengthen your team's emotional capacity, how do you ensure your own emotions don't impact the team. If you are stressed or have a bad start to the day, do you make sure this does not impact your team? What do you do to support your team after a challenging client meeting? Do you help them process these negative emotions. Giving the team an opportunity to learn from these meetings, help them challenge unhelpful thinking or try to positively reframe some of these interactions.
Mental Capacity
The next level is your mental capacity, which involves focusing your team’s energy towards achieving goals. This level includes cognitive skills like attentional training, reducing distractions, effective time management, meditation, and mindfulness practices. A leader can play a role in creating clarity for their team. When people have clarity about what is expected of them and how they are performing they are more engaged and productive.
To help with mental capacity, how can you improve the clarity your team have; it might be how you delegate projects, how you run a team meetings or your approach when giving feedback.
Spiritual Capacity
Finally, at this level, we help people tap into their values and aspirations by discovering what is important to them. Living within our values and purpose can be a powerful energy source for focus, determination, and resilience. This greater sense of purpose strengthening our wellbeing. Leaders can play a role by taking time to learn about what each team member values and their career aspirations. With this understanding finding opportunities for people to participate in activities that are intrinsically motivating.
I hope you find this framework helpful to start a conversation with each member of your team to understand what is important to them, learn about their wellbeing rituals, and ways to integrate these discussions into your performance development meetings.