What Leaders Need to Understand about Integrated Well-being
In recent organizational change, more effort has been made to improve social well-being. The reaction to the pandemic led to more work from home preparedness, which further led to improvements in mental health. Certainly these have improved humanistic well-being, but leaders must acknowledge there is much room for growth in a more integrated well-being.
The well-being issue organizations need to purposefully explore is through leadership. Current leadership models in organizations are dated in which leaders are missing consciousness of more sustainable development, positive societal aspects, and meaningful economic growth. This overarching idea of fostering and mobilizing the next generation of leaders is impeccably crucial for our economic, social, and environmental well-being.
Countless conversations may happen regarding sustainability programs and strategies, but it is often left with nought because there is a lack of consciousness and connection to what we need to achieve. Our planet and humanity form one collective of reality, in which interdependence between each other and nature is crucial to realize and understand. The nature and experience of interdependence is defined and guided by our levels of consciousness. Higher levels of consciousness gives us the experiences and realization of our holistic interdependent identities, which leads to physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual experiences.
The challenge and issue raised is to recognize our interdependent existence with all life and the need to develop sustainable leaders who realize this. This realization establishes the ground of understanding our planet as a living being and not just a thing, which leads us to care more about all issues surrounding society and sustainability.
The world faces unavoidable multiple climate hazards over the next two decades with global warming of 1.5°C (2.7°F). Even temporarily exceeding this warming level will result in additional severe impacts, some of which will be irreversible. Risks for society will increase, including infrastructure of low-lying coastal settlements, agricultural risks due to droughts and floods, and changes to biodiversity that will forever change ecosystems.
At this dire point in time, as leaders of organizations interdependent to each other on this planet, we need to realize all the damage we have done. While capitalism and societal growth has been instrumental to everything we see and are accustomed to today, the neoliberal systems have been commodifying most elements of life, including nature and finite resources. Organizations have been focused on meeting the bottom line; economic growth, revenue, and profit maximization, etc. But are we consciously meeting societal and sustainable developments?
If the first bottom line is maximizing profits, then the double bottom line meets economic gain with social responsibility, which also directly ties to employee well-being. On top of that, the next level is the triple bottom line, which ties economic, social, and environmental development. This triple bottom line is the new sustainability leadership that organizations are missing, and that means they’re missing the mark on their sustainability initiatives and goals.
We’ve gone over how the level of change in achieving integrated well-being should stem from leadership, but is there really a one size fits all type of leadership? Will any good and successful leader, in the various areas of business operations (marketing, HR, etc.) also be a good leader in the realm of sustainability? I believe good managers can be good managers at many things, but leadership, especially when introduced with more technical knowledge, may not be such an easy one-to-one fit. This is why we need to educate the future generation; to develop a conscious understanding of what it means to be a sustainable leader.
In connection with hitting the bottom line of maximizing profit, leaders cannot forget about hitting the double and triple bottom line of maximizing profit, social well-being and sustainable development to be a more complete leader.
In terms of proposing change for a more integrated well-being, it begins with education on how to be a conscious and sustainable leader. If we offer education as the solution, there would be four different forms of education.
Cognitive education is the education of the mind, in which leaders need to develop the “natural mind”; a mind that has a direct relationship with nature. Cognitive education comes from controlling what we learn through empathy and curiosity instead of judgment. It means being aware of multiple scenarios that require time for decision making.
Emotional education is for the leader to understand collective emotions, including understanding relationships not only with humans but with nature. Emotional education should also stem from curiosity and empathy, through understanding and observing how people operate and asking why they behave the way they do.
Body education to understand how our bodies form expressions, creating a bridge between physical body and nature. Pain, tiredness, temperatures; these are all forms of expression of the body, which is a map of information. Leaders need to listen better to their bodies and understand its mannerisms as a powerful instrument of leadership.
Spiritual education is the holistic understanding of how the body, mind, and soul work together. At a subtler level, some may experience great interdependence that exists among our missions on this planet. This is critical for leaders who understand leadership as a vehicle for the highest level of consciousness of themselves and those who are leading.
The proposed improvement of current leadership paradigms would come in the form of education that is scientifically and case-studied based, with proven research as to how these different levels of education is important to first hitting the double bottom line of economic and socially responsible development. This would be the next step before going for the triple bottom line of economic, social and sustainable development. Additionally, in an effort to help grow our leader’s influence in sustainable development and leadership space, it would be important to exemplify them as being good leaders. For example, incentivization programs could be created for leaders who speak in workshops, in which they are offered a small bonus or their acts of leadership are shown and shared on social media. Or platforms could be created in which leaders create sustainable leaderships and share their successes.
With leadership, reputation and influence are important to position themselves in the highest and most positive way possible. Therefore, it would be important to create opportunities for leaders to influence others through multiple platforms, educating on how to create the right messaging to the right people for meaningful impact. I believe we are already seeing this, as some leaders in organizations have paved the way to openly meeting the second bottom line by introducing new ways to promote social well-being.
Most importantly, leaders need to be able to discuss how their organization can meet the double and bottom lines; to be more socially responsible and develop sustainability strategies and mechanisms that everyone can be onboard with. This need is greater now than ever before. There should be an environment and forum for sustainability development leaders to transfer knowledge and share this kind of information with each other.
In conclusion, any progress towards human and planetary well-being begins with conscious leadership. Focusing on the bottom-line of maximizing profits will only make matters worse. Instead, we need to focus on the double and triple bottom lines of social and environmental development. Understanding this is only the beginning. It is when leaders at all levels of government, private organizations, and civil societies come together to tackle some of humanity’s and Earth’s biggest challenges that we can hope to make meaningful and conscious progress.