Workplace mental health is a systemic concern, and leadership sets the foundation for ensuring that employees feel engaged and connected to their roles. As a leader, it’s important to remember that mental health is multifaceted and includes focusing on both individual needs and structural needs.
In a corporate setting, optimal mental health undoubtedly includes how you show up for yourself and others. It’s important to prioritize staying regulated, grounded, and connected to the work you do. Strive to be an excellent role model and allow yourself to care deeply about the people on your team. Leaning into these principles authentically will promote a sense of workplace safety.
How Leadership Sets the Workplace Tone
Employees generally want to do a great job and keep their bosses happy. Like anything else, they feel good when work is going well, and they tend to feel motivated to work hard when there’s actual training, reinforcement, and incentive to succeed.
With that, employees look to leaders for explicit direction and cues for how to interact, behave, and engage in the workplace. It’s much less about what you “tell” people to do and more about what you actually do. With that, how you approach your responsibilities and take care of yourself matters tremendously, and your actions can ripple through your entire department.
The nuts and bolts of good leadership may be subjective based on your industry or specific company set-up, but some of the more overarching behaviors include1:
Prioritizing open communication and feedback: When you’re in charge of others, understanding and tending to interpersonal dynamics can’t be overstated. Excellent leaders value collaboration and truly seek to understand each employee’s needs, emotions, and struggles. They are receptive to feedback and strive to implement criticism.
Exhibiting and modeling healthy behaviors: Employees watch how leaders take care of themselves and look after their staff. They pay attention to your various behavioral cues related to conflict resolution, stress management, and delegation. If you’re constantly anxious or detached, they notice this.
Providing ongoing support and training: When employees feel unprepared or unsupported in their roles, they are more prone to burnout or declining performance. It’s hard to do a job well when you don’t know how to actually do the job (or when you lack the resources to execute it). This is often a systemic issue, and leaders must hold themselves accountable if employees are struggling.
Intervening early when problematic dynamics arise: Strong leaders pay attention to all interpersonal dynamics and closely monitor group cohesion. They are willing to step in if someone doesn’t feel comfortable or needs additional support. They don’t tolerate gossip and truly prioritize safety within social settings.
Establishing reasonable boundaries and respecting boundaries: Regardless of the job role, nobody should be expected to work 24/7. Successful leaders don’t fall into the vicious trap of workaholism or glorifying ‘the hustle.’ They understand the need for rest and leisure, and they prioritize this within their entire organization.
Prioritizing Open Communication and Feedback
Many leaders generically insist they have an open-door policy, but simply saying this isn’t enough. Actions always matter more, and leaders should strive to create safe workplace conditions where employees feel comfortable being vulnerable and honest.
In mentally healthy workplaces, employees feel heard, and they can implicitly trust that they won’t be punished for having struggles. However, this trust doesn’t develop automatically. It comes with time and experience, and it’s built through countless exchanges with leadership.
Keep in mind that employees notice how you respond to discomfort. For example, if someone tells you they’re having a hard time with a specific assignment, how do you typically react? A good leader might say, “Tell me how I can specifically support you,” or, “I really appreciate you letting me know this- let’s talk about our options here. I want to make sure we figure this out.”
If two people start arguing during a meeting, how do you approach the situation? A good leader might say, “I’m going to jump in and intervene here. We need to use respectful language. I won’t let people interrupt one another,” or, “Hang on. There’s a lot of passion here. Let’s take a moment to breathe and collect our thoughts.”
Remember that feedback is bidirectional: this means that mentally healthy workplaces flow with active feedback. Just as you likely offer employees your perspective, you should actively seek their opinions (even if it feels uncomfortable to receive). You can cultivate feedback in many ways, including:
- Routinely sending anonymous feedback forms after assignment completion
- Asking in team meetings, How else can I help?
- Asking employees directly, If I could offer you anything right now, what would you need?
- Asking employees to pitch in on training or resource ideas
- Always validating when employees offer their feedback to you
At its core, prioritizing open communication entails making more space for vulnerability. With that, when communication is this open, you can address issues quickly, and you show a sense of receptiveness to your team. This benefits everyone, and it can strengthen your company’s overall performance.
Exhibiting and Modeling Healthy Behaviors
There’s a common parenting trope that says, Kids don’t do as you say. They do as you do.
While your employees are not your children, this core concept generally applies to workplace settings. It’s true that people tend to follow actions over directions. Modeling ideal behavior as a leader is far more nuanced and powerful than merely telling people your expectations.
Modeling is action-based, and it exists within the moment-to-moment decisions you make: people pay attention to how you react to failure, respond to stress, communicate with others, and manage conflict. Whether you’re aware of it or not, employees attune to your verbal and nonverbal cues to determine how and what you value in the workplace.
They also notice discrepancies and contradictions. For instance, if you regularly speak about the importance of taking time off but consistently send emails on vacation, your contradiction speaks volumes. And if you encourage employees to share their ideas in meetings but then shut them down, that action clearly stands out.
Some ideal healthy behaviors worth modeling include:
- Regularly taking time off for yourself without working during those breaks
- Sharing excitement or curiosity about employees taking their own time off
- Disclosing how you adaptively cope with work-related stress
- Talking openly about how you strive to engage in proactive self-care
- Aiming to stay emotionally regulated when engaging with employees or leading meetings
- Breaking for snacks, lunches, walks, and other moments of rest
Providing Ongoing Support and Training
When employees struggle at work, it’s easy to dismiss their concerns by focusing too closely on individual characteristics. Some leaders will blame their employees for procrastinating, avoiding, or simply failing to complete certain tasks.
And while employees must hold themselves responsible, it’s also important to consider how supported the team feels. Support and training need to be fluid and embedded within the workplace culture. All employees should feel like they can easily access information and resources to realistically meet their workplace expectations.
Burnout often happens when demands are unrealistic or misattuned to an employee’s current level of competence.2 For example, if you give someone a task without properly mentoring or training them on how to do it, you’re likely setting them up for failure. If you do this repeatedly, you will likely experience significant problems with turnover.
If you feel someone is consistently underperforming, take some time to reflect. Rather than defaulting to simplistic accusations like, “What’s wrong with them? Why can’t they get their work done?” consider asking yourself, “What else might they need from me to improve their performance?” Your answer may reveal important sights, including changing how you train or implement your protocols.
Remember that support also means checking in on your employees regularly. You need to have a pulse on how people are feeling consistently at work. Are they perpetually overwhelmed or disgruntled? Do they constantly feel pressed for time? Are they anxious or withdrawn in your presence? If so, this likely means you need to evaluate potential structural changes.
At the same time, it’s also important to be mindful of micromanaging. Your staff are all capable adults- in some cases, you will need to lean on giving people the benefit of the doubt. Trying to resolve everything on your own can make the environment feel stifling. It can also reinforce themes of helplessness among your staff.
You may be micromanaging if you:
- Frequently struggle with trusting your employees
- Often intervene or “do” tasks on behalf of your employees
- Feel you must compulsively check in on what employees are doing
- Become hyperfocused on small details (even at the sake of the big picture)
- Struggle with delegating tasks or letting employees reasonably take risks
Intervening Early When Problematic Dynamics Arise
Leaders must be willing to have the hard conversations. You can’t just sit idly when tension is high or team members aren’t on the same page. People depend on you to set an example and take care of issues swiftly.
Such intervention comes in many different forms, but it can include:
- Setting and enforcing clear communication standards during meetings and other collaborative discussions
- Sitting down with employees to problem-solve cohesively if conflict exists between two or more people on your team
- Empowering employees to share their own ideas about resolving conflict or uncomfortable work dynamics
- Offering a mentorship program where employees can directly help one another
- Regularly planning team-building exercises that foster connection
- Taking employee concerns about harassment, bullying, or other forms of discrimination seriously and consulting with HR immediately
Establishing Reasonable Boundaries and Respecting Boundaries
Employees should know their work expectations at all times. These standards should be explicit throughout the corporation. If someone has to “guess” when, how, or where they work, problems typically arise. If things feel ambiguous, it’s time for you to clarify protocols or reevaluate if certain workflows need to be more concretized.
Respecting boundaries also means truly understanding what employees need to function effectively. For example, if someone feels they are better able to focus on working in the early morning than late afternoon, can they come into work a few hours earlier each day? If someone else prefers remote work, can they work-from-home two days a week assuming all tasks are done to completion?
When employees feel seen and respected for the work they do, they tend to care more about the work itself. This benefits everyone, and it actually makes for a more peaceful work environment.
Final Thoughts
As a leader, you have tremendous influence over the welfare of your employees and your company at large. Remember that mental health isn’t static- it is constantly evolving and fluid. It also sometimes ebbs and flows like seasons.
But if things feel like they’re out of control or problematic, it may be time to intervene. Prevention or early intervention is much better than “waiting to see” if things resolve. Remember that most employees genuinely want to be productive and enjoy their work- the more you can foster this kind of environment, the better things will feel.
