For leaders to have a positive impact on mental health and wellness in an organisation, they must bring the right mindset to the table. In fact, the value of building a collective mindset across the leadership team that wellness matters and that they as a leadership team contribute to the wellness of their organisation cannot be underestimated.
Mindset is the lens or frame of mind through which you view the world, reflecting our values, attitudes and beliefs. These help us make sense of the world by organising and simplifying the huge amount of information we need to process, and cover many areas of our lives, including work and relationships.
However, they aren’t always a reflection of reality. At times we can be our own worst enemies when it comes to mindset, and for leaders in particular this can impact decisions and efficacy of leading or even result in feelings of guilt due to self-imposed high standards and the stories we tell ourselves.
Research has shown that mindset can tip off a cascade of psychological and physiological effects on attention, arousal, motivation and affect.
If we can pause to recognise that there can be multiple truths about our experiences, we can be free to invest our attention in the mindsets that serve us best, positively influencing our ability to learn and lead, and to achieve and contribute to a wellness organisation.
To understand how mindset improves organisational wellness, it’s important to look at it from two perspectives.
Firstly, to understand the impact of mindset on individual physiology and psychology, and secondly to consider the role of mindset on leadership capabilities to influence collective wellness.
Explore the impact mindset has at an individual level by watching this TED Talk with Assistant Professor Alia Crum, whose studies found that the beliefs we hold about how we’re exercising, what we’re eating, and the stress we’re feeling directly impact our bodies, in turn shaping our wellness and performance.
These robust studies consistently demonstrate how mindset shifts our physiological and psychological reactions to things in a profound way.
Of particular significance in considering how mindset can impact leadership influence is Carol Dweck’s work on Growth Mindset – our belief that we can grow and develop. The more areas we approach with a growth mindset, the more resilient we are at constructively coping with setbacks and challenges.
Carol’s research shows that fostering growth mindset in teams has proven to have significant impacts on employee perceptions of their workplace with:
47%
likelier to say that their colleagues are trustworthy.
34%
likelier to feel a strong sense of ownership and commitment to the company.
65%
likelier to say that the company supports risk taking.
49%
likelier to say that the company fosters innovation.
Another study, Authentic Leadership and Organisational Effectiveness by Chang Seek Lee (1), set out to determine the effects of hope, grit, and growth mindset on the relationship between authentic leadership and organisational effectiveness of office workers.
Results showed that “correlations among authentic leadership, hope, growth mindset, grit and organisational effectiveness were all significant and positive.”
All of this research points to the power of mindset and it follows that shaping mindset of leaders will influence not only mindset, but in-fact the perceived wellbeing of people throughout the organisation and is a powerful factor to consider when taking an integrated approach to building wellbeing.
Watch this short video to hear from Grant Fuller on their experience with shifting mindsets and the impact this had in the workplace.
Grant is a member of the project consortium and a participant in the pilot program run with the McConnell Dowell - DECMIL Mordialloc Freeway Extension project.
The mindset of leaders and collective mindset in an organisation significantly influences, culture, psychological safety, collaboration and of course, wellbeing. And frequently, the ideal collective mindset does not just happen but requires work.
Shifting leaders to the mindset that wellness matters, and creating a conviction that they personally can influence it is a first priority.
Having this conviction will help them commit to creating change across the business and addressing the six core issues around pressure, influence, promotion, relationships, role and change facing industry today. And work on mindset can go much deeper than this.
Being able to identify where things are from a mindset perspective is also important. Take a moment to consider how well your team deals with failure – is it something that they fear? How do they react to struggles and disruptions?
And how do they talk about what’s not working? Are they able to do so openly and without blaming or shaming each other? Unfortunately, many of us still struggle when it comes to the day-to-day mindset and activities of learning from failure.
Teams who cultivate a growth mindset culture are more willing to collaborate, to innovate and learn from successes and failures and to behave ethically. These teams are also psychologically and socially equipped to deal with setbacks and seek out opportunities for growth and innovation.
Adopting a growth mindset in yourself and fostering it in others is key to supporting psychological safety and wellness initiatives in your organisation, and of course more broadly.
In the Integrated Approach to Wellness, Lysander worked deeply on mindset with leaders which allowed them to show up authentically to “be well and do good.”
This was achieved through continued exploration of the Transformational Leadership styles to develop an understanding of self and the impact they could personally achieve across cultural wellness change through a blueprint of:
Knowledge and understanding
Skills and resources
Mindset.
Call To Action
The impact of mindset is so profound in shaping how we react and behave, both physiologically and psychologically.
If we are to truly impact wellbeing in our business, we must critically examine the mindsets at play and engage in whatever work is necessary to ensure there is strong conviction for the need to create change and acceptance of the work required to get there.
As we’ve seen, Dweck’s research goes hand in hand with this. If we are to create wellbeing at work, it is critical we foster a belief that we can change, grow and make a difference.
Dweck’s work has also found that we can nudge each other more towards a fixed or growth mindset based on how we work together and this shapes our feelings of psychological safety, our ability to be creative and innovative, and what we are able to achieve together – all elements that create a culture and environment where people thrive and wellness can flourish.
This framework sets out numerous wellness ideas, skills and solutions. To achieve success with any of these in your own organisation, starts with bringing a growth mindset to this topic and nudging it in others.
Taking it Further
Professor Alia Crum demonstrated repeatedly in her research that giving people information can shift their mindset and shifting mindset has substantial flow on impacts in ways beyond what we can even anticipate.
This framework provides comprehensive information regarding the known challenge around mental health and wellness.
We have explored how essential leadership commitment is to effect change and that their mindset is a substantial part of that.
Knowing your leadership team, what information will start to reshape their mindset on this important issue so a growth mindset around the possibility of change starts to emerge?
Where to Now?
Sources
Authentic Leadership and Organisational Effectiveness by Chang Seek Lee
https://acadpubl.eu/jsi/2018-118-19/articles/19a/27.pdf