How to Help Yourself AND Your Team
How to Help Yourself AND Your Team
Times have been tough. With so many experiencing hardships across Australia and internationally, staff can easily become disengaged and lose motivation.
Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace highlighted that only 15 percent of employees are engaged in the workplace. As a leader, it is often seen as your job to keep your team engaged and motivated. However, in order to help your team, you also need to help yourself.
Take Care of Yourself
It is equally as important to take care of yourself, as it is your team.
Known for her people-centric leadership style, we sat down with our very own Managing Director, Nina Mapson Bone, for her insights on how to prioritise your own wellbeing while positively influencing your team, to be successful.
Interviewer: In our recent webinar, The Personal and Workplace Changes NO-ONE is Talking About, it was mentioned that many people, even those in leadership positions, are experiencing burnout. How can neglecting one's own wellbeing impact the wellbeing of their team and their success within the business?
Nina: A lot of leaders put the needs of their teams and their organisation before the needs of themselves. I’m guilty of it myself. The brilliant Heidi Dening was the first to share with me the concept that self-care isn’t selfish. By not looking after ourselves we are actually not helping our teams or our organisations in the best way we can.
The leader who is suffering from burnout is going to be less capable of contributing over the long term – and that isn’t good for you, your teammates or the organisation.
Interviewer: For leaders who are feeling disheartened, overwhelmed, or even burnt-out, what advice would you give them so that they can navigate this themselves and perhaps the same challenges with their own team members?
Nina: One of my mantras is “I put my own health and wellbeing first because I cannot help others unless I am at my best”. There is so much advice out there on how to do this but my top three are:
- Take a break. Aside from giving you the chance to switch off, it also reminds you, as a leader, that the world can carry on without you.
- Do something, every day, that feeds your soul. For me that’s walking or running in nature. It could be playing a sport, doing a craft, playing music – whatever as long as it is something that you LOVE to do.
- Practice really good sleep habits. Focus less on the actual sleep and more on the habits. This is because you can control your sleep habits, you can't control your sleep. Having said this, one improves the other. And EVERYTHING is made better with a good night's sleep!
Take Care of Your Team
There are many reasons why team morale may be low in this current climate. With external factors influencing businesses and their staff, many may be experiencing a lack of communication, lack of growth, leadership changes, or leadership issues. These are all contributors to low team morale.
However, from these factors, we can identify the areas in which you can boost work morale and better understand how to work through these difficult times.
Boost morale and maintain productivity by looking through and implementing some of the tips below to help you and your team!
Tip #1: Communicate Often
Even as an employer experiencing hardships, a consistent and two-way conversation around wellbeing can be greatly beneficial. Given that 57% of employees don’t receive clear enough directions and 69% of managers just don’t feel comfortable communicating with their team, this area of many businesses could be improved.
Tip #2: Be Transparent
Along with communicating often, being transparent is also vital in boosting morale. Transparency has been proven to create trust between the team and their employer, increase employee happiness, and boost performance.
Consistent and transparent internal communication has proven sparse as studies have shown that 60% of companies don’t have a long-term internal communications strategy. The good news is that being transparent and having an engaged team can reduce a company’s turnover rate by 25-59%.
If this is an area that you feel could be improved, perhaps start by sharing with your team how external factors have been affecting you and the business.
Tip #3: Show Recognition to Your Team
During these trying times, recognising your team and the work they have put in, despite the hardships they may be going through, is vital to making your employees feel valued at work and to boost overall morale.
Here you can find some simple ways you can create a culture of recognition.
Did you find this article useful? Share it with your network.
Share This blog
Recent Articles
