In what way can organisations accomplish bona fide advancement in the often conflicting areas of team wellness & productivity? We talk to leadership mentor, Stuart Hayes here in this blog about some of the latest advancements in team performance and well being:
To begin Hayes asks leaders to think about the impacts of tension in the workplace and compare the end results of stressed and happy teams, in terms of productivity and efficacy:
1. Staff Performance:
Stress and negative feelings leads to workers attention being preoccupied with themselves which in turn impacts their psychological clarity. Meanwhile happier staff have minds that are clearer and are a lot more switched on, intentional and resourceful.
2. Wellness in the Team:
Stress and bad feelings can sometimes cause illness, which impacts productivity in a very direct way. Happier men and women are generally healthier and more productive than their stressed counterparts and take less sick days;
3. Morale and Important Staff Retention:
Tension and bad feelings result in challenges with high staff turnover … contrast this with personnel who are more satisfied, who feel even more ‘linked’ to the company as well as their colleagues, and consequently generally stick around longer;
4. PR:
Stress and also negative feelings could lead staff to be feeling bitter as well as a decreased degree of commitment in customer care positions. Generally happier team members interface much better with clients and are much better champions of your firms brand.
5. Being on Board with Business Strategy or Adjustment Initiatives:
Stressed or negative staff are both unlikely to line up to the teams strategy and at the same time more be an obstacle to change. Positive cheerful staff are imaginative, curious, initiate advancements and also are a lot more welcoming of both the present methodology as well as any improvement initiatives management may want to implement.
So how do you improve well-being and performance?
To get a handle on anxiety and stress and achieve developments of the type listed above, business leaders are increasingly looking to wellbeing initiatives, however not all of these initiatives work or equate to production increases.
“Pulling off lasting enhancements in both performance and well-being needs a good deal more thought than providing a health club membership or employing a wellbeing speaker. These are in truth merely ‘box ticking’ approaches and they aren’t going to deliver the goods” says Hayes. In fact its this “box-ticking” approach that’s the real reason why wellness programs flounder.
“If you consider it, accomplishing long-lasting changes for the better in any area of life needs an analysis of what is going on, making a conscious long term choice to alter this, and after that implementing a highly pointed and systematic plan for change.”
Hayes is keen to stress that helping teams to amplify their enjoyment and experience of their job and the outcomes they accomplish from their work is I essence the same thing. “The goal should never be the creation of a wellbeing scheme in and of itself. Instead, it should really be the design of a distinct culture in which responsibility along with wellness are foundation stones. This points to a need to recognize that as leaders, we are responsible for changing the manner in which our staff react to stress ad negative feelings, altering the way our group associates and interacts with each other, as well as seeing to it every person is naturally aligned to the organization’s higher goals, all at the exact same time. This is the backbone of an outstanding culture, and even why leaders should look upon themselves as guardians of culture over and above anything else.
NEW RESEARCH
As is well documented, mindfulness practices are being successfully used by scores of institutions in order to help team members accept and better handle issues, pressure and negative feelings. But what hasn’t been as widely reported is the fact that our mind and heart continuously engage with each other, that the heart can be used to change a person’s feelings from unfavorable to favorable, or that our heart’s field can make a measurable impression on the people around us.
Based on his experience Hayes believes this epitomizes the leading edge of human resource development as well as leadership. “In a number of ways it’s quite funny, given that we all have a heart, all of us have a mind, and all of us experience these ideas naturally, nevertheless the increasing development of investigation that reveals that the mind and heart collaborate is incredible,” states Hayes, who’s now dedicated the better part of the past seven years to studying this relationship and the ways in which it pertains to improving team performance in the workplace.
So how can this help improve team performance and well-being? Consider the following four points:
1. When communicating with a good leader, an individual’s brainwaves will ‘synchronise’ with the leader, a result that does not happen when the same person has a conversation with other individuals in their group.
2. Both the mind and heart issue electromagnetic fields which are able to be evaluated out from the body, however interestingly, the heart’s electromagnetic scope is appreciably more powerful.
3. The size of the heart’s field varies, being determined by a person’s mental state; and
4. The heart can be engaged in particular ways that measurably shift the effect of undesirable feelings both within a person and within those people near them, inducing adjustments in each of these parties.
Any person associated with leading a group under pressure, or anyone having to carry out changes in an enterprise, or seeking to achieve high-performance outcomes in much easier ways, can benefit from a 1 day concentrated leadership training Hayes is running called Leading To Improve Performance And Well-Being.
The workshop trains people in methods that are practical for leaders who are working in competitive and stressful environments. It will help them to achieve real and measurable improvement in the commonly opposing areas of group wellness plus group productivity. If you would like to find out more check out the link below and browse the website for more information.