Healthy Leaders: Indicators of Unhealth and Burnout, and Practical Self-care That Can Improve Overall Health

By Chuck Carringer

Leadership is challenging. Each level of organizational leadership brings unique responsibilities and expectations, and every level and role is demanding. Difficult strategic decisions will chart the course for the future. These choices make a huge difference in effectively executing strategy, empowering, developing, directing, coaching, equipping, appreciating, providing accountability, managing team members’ performance, and protecting the organization’s values and culture.

Although some personnel-related actions might be best for the whole team, they might inflict disappointment and difficulty on a particular staff member. Limited resource decisions might will breathe life into one project while limiting another. Daily scheduling decisions often disappoint many who need more of the leader’s time. Expectations, when coupled with integrating the desires and demands of a leader’s life and work, can be daunting. These expectations and pressures can impact the best of leaders.

Healthy leaders are better equipped to provide and sustain effective leadership. Organizational leadership requires high levels of energy, effective stress management, and the ability to rebound from setbacks. Leaders impact everyone they lead. Leaders are not only responsible for their own individual work performance but for also appropriately recognizing and addressing the performance of those they lead. For these reasons, a leader must be mindful and attentive to her health. This same logic can be heard during each safety announcement at the beginning of commercial airline flights. Passengers are reminded that should an adverse situation occur that would cause the deployment of oxygen masks, passengers should first secure their own mask before, and in order that, they will be equipped to assist others. Leaders who practice effective self-care, regularly experiencing what makes them happy and healthy, will be better able to lead and care for others.

This article will examine the need for healthy leaders, explore indicators of unhealth and burnout, and offer practical self-care actions that can be applied to improve leader health. This advice is based on my observations and work as an executive coach with hundreds of organizational leaders at every level in more than 5,000 executive coaching sessions.

A leader’s overall health—physical, mental, emotional, etc.—can be impacted by many factors. The following checkpoints include a question for reflection and suggested self-care actions. These suggestions are offered as an executive coach in the context of increased leader health. Please consult a physician, psychologist, or other appropriate health-care professional as needed.

Indicators of unhealth and burnout:

• Loss of Motivation Toward Specific Aspects of Work
• High Levels of Prolonged Stress
• A Lack of Work and Life Integration
• Consistent Lack of Physical Energy Due to Sleep Deprivation
• A Sense of Isolation
• Consistent Unpleasant People Interactions

Loss of Motivation Toward Specific Aspects of Work

Reflective Question: How would you describe your current level of motivation?

Practical Actions to Increase Motivation:

• Pinpoint what is different now than when you’ve experienced high levels of motivation.
• Work in areas of strength and passion.
• As often as possible, delegate tasks that are not your strength and passion.
• Increase collaborative leadership efforts, building even greater teamwork.
• Read inspirational literature and listen to energizing music.
• Recognize that all leaders experience periods or seasons of decreased motivation.

High Levels of Prolonged Stress

Reflective Question: Do you consistently experience high levels of stress related to work?

Practical Actions to Manage Stress:

• Recognize what’s in your control and what’s out of your control.
• Don’t isolate yourself (see below). Lean into your team, inner circle, coach, etc.
• Practice effective self-care as it relates to overall well-being (physical, mental, emotional, etc.).
• Build buffers into your daily schedule to eliminate back-to-back-to-back meetings and commitments without a break.
• Consistently get your optimum amount of sleep (see below).
• Dedicate time to activities that are energizing and rewarding to you.

A Lack of Work and Life Integration

Reflective Question: Are you experiencing your desired level of work and life integration?

Practical Actions to Increase Work and Life Integration:

• Begin with the end in mind. Define success for you as it relates to work and life integration.
• Calendar life activities first. If not, work will occupy every space. This applies to family, social, and recreational events.
• Leaders follow their daily schedule from their calendar. Take ownership of your calendar. Put life on there first. Friday-night football games, dinners with friends, and weekend getaways only happen through intentional planning.
• Practice periods of electronic disconnection. Start small, an hour at dinner time, and build a habit of two to three hours. Stop sending and checking emails at a certain time. If you must, hold them in your draft folder until the morning so that others don’t feel the need to respond. Disconnect as much as possible. If it’s a true emergency, let people know that you can be reached by phone but that you will not be monitoring email or text.
• Maximize your weekends, holidays, and vacations.

Consistent Lack of Physical Energy Due to Sleep Deprivation

Question: Are you consistently getting the optimum amount of rest you need each week?

Practical Actions for Getting the Optimum Amount of Rest:

• Recognize the likely decreased effectiveness without your proper amount of rest. Sleep is important to performance.
• Have a consistent bedtime and wake-up schedule.
• Practice work prioritization. There will always be more work than can be accomplished. Determine what merits your focus now and what can be delegated or eliminated.
• Utilize all your resources to manage a heavy workload: team members, contract labor, etc.
• Meet with a sleep expert.

A Sense of Isolation

Question: Do you feel alone in your role and responsibilities?

Practical Actions to Manage a Sense of Isolation:

• Recognize that there are periods of heaviness related to decisions and actions that leaders must make and take.
• Utilize collaborative leadership. Include others in important discussions and decisions. Ultimately the responsibility may rest with you but utilize others in the process in reaching the decision.
• Invest additional time interacting with members of the team that you don’t see as often.
• Change your perspective; focus on the efforts that others are making for the team’s success.
• Gain perspective by volunteering in a nonprofit in your community.

Consistent Unpleasant People Interactions

Question: Are you consistently less than your best self when interacting with others?

Action Steps for Improved People Interactions:

• Recognize when you are impatient, curt, impolite, or disrespectful.
• Apologize for serious breaches of decorum.
• Practice mindful breathing: inhaling and exhaling deeply to slow your pace and increase a sense of calmness.
• Allow people to finish speaking; don’t interrupt.

Leaders will experience highs and lows, successes and setbacks. In times of difficulty, all eyes are on the leader. Team members draw strength from a leader’s composure, positive outlook, and transparency; they appreciate well-defined next steps that will lead to an improved condition. The most effective leaders demonstrate resilience during times of difficulty and disappointment. I have observed that healthy leaders demonstrate greater resiliency, which can be developed through effective self-care.

Leaders increase their well-being by building habits rooted in self-care. Building a new habit typically takes 30 to 90 days.

Examples of a successful leader’s habits include:

• a daily morning routine, beginning each day in a manner that makes him healthiest
• a daily shutdown routine that plans out the next day so the leaders can know she have a starting point for the next day.
• Leaving a workspace uncluttered, orderly, and organized.
• Keeping a gratitude journal; recognizing people and experiences for which the leader is grateful.

A healthy leader recognizes the need for her own encourager, truth-teller, confidant, and advisor, someone with whom she can be completely transparent and vulnerable, where she can express points of frustration, mistakes, achievements, and insecurities. Many times, this role is filled by a mentor or coach, someone with whom the leader has complete trust. The result or outcome for the leader is decreased stress, clarity of direction, increased resolve, and a sense of partnership, contributing to improved leader health overall.

The events of 2020 have increased awareness of the significance of leader health. Becoming a healthy leader requires intentionality. When leaders are healthy, they increase the probability that they will lead to their greatest capacity. Healthy leaders are better equipped to provide effective and consistent leadership for their teams and organizations.

Chuck Carringer

• Executive coach, trainer, and speaker.
• Holds a doctorate in Executive Leadership.
• Certified by the prestigious John Maxwell Coaching, Speaking, and Training Certification Program.
• Faculty member for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Organizational Management and as an executive coach for The University of Tennessee Haslam College of Business Graduate and Executive Education Leadership Development Programs.
• Partners with nonprofit Boards of Directors as a certified BoardSource consultant.
• Hosts a weekly leadership podcast, “Leadership Upside.”