How important is it for leaders to consider their own morale?

As we found in our guide to mental health awareness, there has been less of an emphasis on looking after mental health as a leader. The focus typically falls on employee wellbeing and boosting employee morale. Stress levels in UK businesses may be typically influenced by communication issues and a lack of autonomy at work. Employers, therefore, are often expected to lead the way in creating effective communication and better collaboration opportunities.

However, two out of three business leaders experience mental health struggles and de-prioritise this in favour of financial success. With rising supply chain disruptions and geopolitical tensions, business leaders are under increasing pressure to perform and stay focused on their business goals. However, neglecting mental health can potentially lead to burnout and health-related stress issues.

Finding strategies to sustain morale through different business challenges is therefore essential. In this next section, we outline six different approaches to boosting morale for business leaders.

1. Creating a mental health strategy

While employee mental health is important, it is essential for leaders to consider their own mental health too. For leaders, achieving a positive work-life balance can be even more challenging, as they may be under more pressure to take the job home with them. Managing stress levels, therefore, can be helpful. Some ways to do this include:

• Positive coping strategies such as exercise, meditation, journaling
• Learning how to identify stress risks, anxiety and poor mental health in general
• Having ‘no email’ days to recharge
• Managing boundaries between personal and professional life
• Effectively managing conflicts between employees
• Delegating tasks efficiently so managers are not overburdened with tasks irrelevant to team leadership
• Staying connected with friends and family outside of work
• Having a ‘confidante’ who is an employee, a family member, a counsellor or therapist
• Getting enough sleep and learning sleep hygiene strategies

2. Encouraging the whole team to work on morale

Maintaining morale is a shared responsibility across the entire team, not just managers or employers. Happiness at work should be viewed as a collective goal. Employees also play a role in ensuring their managers are respected. Reinforcing bullying and harassment policies applies not only to the way employees treat their managers, but also to how employees are treated by their managers. Here are some ways that employees can foster positive working relationships within their team:

• Being direct and honest about issues rather than gossiping or sharing with favoured colleagues
• Being aware of what makes a toxic workplace environment and how to avoid it
• Congratulating colleagues on personal successes or achieving professional goals
• Recognising and supporting the contributions of their colleagues
• Attending team lunches, drinks or other social activities
• Being thoughtful and helpful to less experienced staff who may need support or mentoring

3. Mental health awareness training for managers

Managers and leaders can also benefit from learning more about mental health awareness, both for themselves and their teams. This can involve taking a mental health awareness training courses. This type of course can help managers learn more about the signs of stress and mental health issues. It can also provide training in how to ask empathetic, appropriate questions to employees that can open up conversations surrounding mental health.

Furthermore, this can also be an opportunity to increase awareness of the UK’s workplace equality framework, including the Equality Act 2010, and to consider general approaches that support wellbeing in the workplace.

By increasing their awareness of mental health, managers can also potentially provide training and coaching to employees. Creating a psychologically safe environment where employees feel open and comfortable discussing mental health with their manager may be a key initial step towards achieving this. Organisations can have mental health ‘champions’ or coaches who employees can learn about mental health from and how to look after themselves. They might also have a health and safety representative or a trade union representative who can provide the right advice. 

4. Taking a responsible approach to business finances

In today’s challenging economic climate, managing business finances can put added pressure on leaders. Creating responsibility for cashflow and reasonable margins therefore might help them to better manage business finances and set more realistic goals. Some ways leaders can improve the management of business finances include:

• Asset management software, which helps businesses keep track of their financial value and optimise their assets through maximising returns and minimising costs
• Using valuation methods such as discounted cash flow to estimate how much investments could be worth in the future
• Learning how to effectively set a project budget to help save money; look into what was historically successful and establish a baseline budget
• Using earned value management methods to forecast the results of projects and budgets.

5. Having an ‘open door’ policy for communication

Having an open-door policy creates a two-way conversation between leaders and their employees. This often means that during certain times of the day, employees can ask managers questions without having to schedule a meeting. Usually, boundaries are clearly defined so that employees know when it is possible to approach management with a question, concern or idea.

However, this policy also emphasises the importance of employees trying to resolve an issue between themselves first before approaching management. At its most effective, this can help take some of the pressure off leaders, leaving them to the job of managing business strategy. 

6. Reconnecting with the core message of business and business strategy

Even leaders can lose sight of their own ambitions for the business, especially when they are deeply focused on day-to-day operations and short-term goals. However, a business often thrives thanks to the long-term vision that its leaders set. This might require a fresh look at business strategy, its unique selling points (USPs), employer branding and employee value proposition (EVP).

Reconnecting with the core principles and how the business helps customers can be particularly beneficial. This might involve refreshing the business’s core principles and message or revisiting long-term goals to reignite excitement about running the business. However, keeping business goals in line with customer needs is also essential for maintaining relevance and growth.