Thriving: The new leadership imperative

As I work with companies across the globe, there isn’t a leader I know that doesn’t want to make thriving a game-changer for their teams, relationships and organizations. More and more leaders and leadership teams want to operate in ways that uplift their workforces, customers, partnerships and communities.

Consider the thousands of organizations in over 60 countries and 150 industries now operating as B-Corps (“benefit” corporations), or the growing list of member companies at IWBI, or conscious businesses (like IKEA, Unilever and Salesforce) seeking to make commercial enterprise a force for well-being. Novel titles reflect this shift, too. Today Chief Value Officer, Chief Equality Officer, Chief Ecosystem Officer, Chief Well-being Officer, Chief Purpose Officer and Chief Wisdom Officer are not uncommon as leaders strive to lift people, performance and the planet to higher virtues such as service, compassion, responsibility and wisdom.

I don’t believe this is a fad; it’s a global movement. At the heart of this movement is a re-centering of leadership consciousness around a profound belief about being human: we are designed with an inherent capacity to thrive. Thriving is a natural state of human functioning, and as such, it is the basis of human potential, development and optimal performance. When people thrive, they have an abundance of energy to unleash toward positive business and social outcomes. A thriving work culture attracts, develops and retains people at their best. Thriving is not only about getting a strong return on investment; it redefines how people work, grow and succeed. To achieve sustainable positive results, our leaders must encourage work environments in which human thriving is cultivated, tapped into and amplified.

WHY THRIVING? WHY NOW?
In our increasingly complex, networked, fast-paced and oftentimes bewildering work environments, thriving is an imperative. Why? Because here are just a few of our leadership challenges:

Dismal Employee Engagement: According to the world polling firm Gallup, the rate of employee disengagement is at an astounding 85 percent, a global norm resulting in approximately $7 trillion in lost productivity. This phenomenon undoubtedly affects your organization.

Too Much Stress: Collectively, we face an all-time high of negative experiences, with 4 in 10 people reporting a great deal of worry and stress. This impacts every facet of life, especially work. The American Psychological Association says that in U.S. workplaces alone, overstress contributes to accidents, absenteeism, employee turnover, lower morale, diminished productivity, and direct medical, legal and insurance costs at a price tag of $300 billion every year.

A Crisis of Mental Health: The latest Global Burden of Disease study claims that over 1.1 billion people worldwide (that’s 15 percent of our planet’s population) encounter mental or substance use disorders, with anxiety and depression topping the list. If we fail to effectively respond to this crisis of mental health, it will cost the global economy up to $16 trillion by 2030, harming individuals, communities, organizations and countries alike.

Ill-Equipped Leadership: My belief is that organizations cannot evolve any faster than the consciousness, competence or capacity of their leaders. So, when 79 percent of the 1,500 global CEOs interviewed by IBM said our world’s escalating complexity has no end in sight, it’s sobering news that over half also said they are unprepared to handle it. Leaders of the world’s most powerful companies—in some cases, with annual revenues that dwarf many countries’ economies—feel ill-equipped to deal with the volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (often termed VUCA) that characterize our lives, work and workplaces today.

Without question, these leadership challenges include people who work for, partner with, buy from, invest in and serve you—the ecosystem of stakeholders that keeps your business viable. Our workplaces are too frequently powered by what I call the five disses—disconnection, disengagement, distraction, disenchantment and disease— rather than the human thriving that fuels innovation and growth.

THRIVING: A HOLISTIC VIEW
When it comes to empowering thriving at work, we have an opportunity to think broader than wellness and energy management programs. These strategies are vital for preventing illness and disease and maintaining health, but there is more to the story. For example, my team at Wisdom Works partnered with the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs to assess 19 factors related to thriving in 300+ leaders. We found those leaders that self-reported as “high-thrivers” were also more likely to self-report expansive states of awe and appreciation in their lives, a clear vision and deeper purpose to guide their decisions, greater resilience during change, and knowledge of the psychological resources for energizing, maximizing the potential and cultivating care of people and teams — vital capacities for building and leading vibrant workplaces.

Across the scientific literature, higher thriving is linked to a variety of categories that foster better employee work experiences, healthier people and flourishing work environments:

• Personal resources, such as exhibiting a sense of autonomy and internal locus of control, being flexible and learning, risk-taking appropriately, feeling fully engaged and finding constructive meaning at work
• Social resources, such as feeling social support and belonging in life and work, enriching the family experience through work avenues, and balancing work-and-family
• Physical well-being, such as experiencing more energy, better health and less stress
• Psychological well-being, such as experiencing a higher quality of life, cognitive agility and performance, and optimism, as well as constructively regulating emotions and coping with stress
• Leadership motivations, such as operating based on intrinsic values and expectations (rather than continually reacting to external demands), and being driven by social impact and altruism
• Workplace outcomes, such as demonstrating lower healthcare costs, lower turnover rates, colleague engagement, increased organization and team performance, and positive customer feedback

HOW TO GET STARTED
The benefits of empowering thriving at are clear. So, how might you get started? Here are three big steps forward:

1. Get honest about your current realities. Are people and teams thriving in your organization today? A few signs that suggest “no” are: low moods, lack of energy and focus, disengagement, frequent fatigue or illnesses, a lot of hours being put into work (with mediocre results), frequent blow-ups, a lack of meaning and purpose at work, and weak camaraderie or outright conflict between people and functions. Use a science-backed assessment such as Be Well Lead Well® Pulse to examine a wide range of factors for thriving at work. Or co-design a listening tour to gain perspective about what enables and thwarts thriving in your organization.

2. Commit to asking: What does thriving mean for us? This is a big question. Leaders who take it seriously often reinvent everything about their organization—the vision, strategies, brands, systems and structures—toward a purpose and values for uplifting human potential rather than eroding it. They involve their ecosystem of stakeholders in providing perspectives about this question, knowing that employees, community partners, business alliances, suppliers, investors and customers each have a unique experience of the organization. But first you have to sincerely commit to asking the question, and allow this inquiry to transform your organization.

3. Grow thriving leaders. The unique job of leadership is to steward work environments where people thrive—where people can bring their best selves to work and leave more capable and well than when they came. Yet, too often, leaders themselves are operating on reactivity and stress, rather than the generative mind, heart and energy that fuels their effectiveness. Create leadership development strategies to evolve not just the competence of your leaders, but equally, their internal capacity to authentically lead with and amplify well-being.

As leaders, we have the opportunity to make a holistic framework for thriving the very foundation for leading effectively. When we do, we contribute to thriving people, thriving workplaces and a well world.