Are you a leader who’s been highly effective but now feels a bit disconnected and is looking for a way to reconnect? Or maybe you’re highly impactful and want to maintain or improve your effectiveness in a sustainable way? The pressures of leadership can sometimes cause us to neglect our own needs in the pursuit of success. This path can ultimately lead to burnout and a feeling of being ungrounded. If this resonates with you, then self-care is a critical concept for your leadership journey.
Practice Self-Care Like Daily Exercise
Think of self-care not as a luxury to be enjoyed after a project is done, but as a form of maintenance, much like regular exercise. It’s an ongoing practice that supports your well-being, fortifying your resilience so you can navigate challenges with greater clarity. While it might be tempting to jump straight into problem-solving during a setback, taking a moment for self-care can be the most effective first step. A brief 5-10 minute pause—unless it’s a life-or-death emergency—allows you to clear your mind, stay grounded, and see the situation more clearly.
What Is Self-Care, Really?
In commercialized contexts, self-care is often equated with expensive services, gifts, or meals. While these can be part of a well-rounded approach, the self-care we’re talking about here is much more profound. Based on research, it’s defined as, “The ability to care for oneself through awareness, self-control, and self-reliance in order to achieve, maintain, or promote optimal health and well-being.” This definition reframes self-care from a fleeting reward to a foundational discipline.
When coaching impactful leaders, I approach self-care from a holistic perspective—applying it across five key domains of a leader’s life:
- Physical: Ensuring adequate sleep, nutrition, hydration, and physical activity.
- Emotional: Acknowledging, expressing, and processing both positive and negative feelings to take effective action, such as clarifying priorities and setting healthy boundaries.
- Social: Nurturing meaningful relationships with others and your community.
- Cognitive: Engaging in mentally stimulating activities and practicing mindfulness.
- Spiritual: Cultivating a sense of purpose, meaning, or a larger connection. This could be as simple as taking a moment to experience a feeling of “awe.”
Caring for one domain often benefits another. For instance, sufficient sleep and regular exercise can sharpen your cognitive functions and deepen your enjoyment of social connections.
Self-Care Fortifies Ethical Leadership
Decades of psychological research show that self-care has many benefits for leadership development, including improving cognitive functioning, building resilience, and fortifying emotional intelligence. These benefits support business outcomes and mission accomplishment. When leaders face ambiguous situations that require critical decisions, having regular self-care practices allows them to make ethical choices without compromising their values and principles while staying focused on their goals.
A 2017 publication, “The Leadership Imperative of Self-Care,” further outlines the tangible impact that a lack of self-care can have on diverse businesses, from higher education to healthcare. Ultimately, the benefits of self-care contribute to the ethical imperatives of leadership and lead to better business outcomes and mission accomplishment.
Navigating Lived Experiences and Setbacks
Leaders who regularly practice self-care build a higher “zone of tolerance” or resilience. This makes them less vulnerable to the inevitable setbacks that can interrupt our equilibrium. Setbacks like a family illness, personal injury, relationship ruptures, or career disappointments are common human experiences, yet they’re not often discussed in professional settings. In a recent discussion I had with many impactful leaders from diverse businesses, a theme I heard was that the silence around these experiences makes re-engaging with self-care even more difficult.
I offer two sets of strategies for leaders who want to engage in self-care in a meaningful and sustainable way. The first set of strategies is for leaders who are doing well and want to maintain their self-care practices. The second offers ideas for those facing setbacks, designed to reignite a meaningful engagement with self-care in an empowered way.
1. Regular Maintenance (When Things Are Going Well)
- Find a Daily Anchor: Identify one consistent, non-negotiable daily practice. For me, it’s a 5-minute mindfulness exercise when I first wake up.
- Prioritize the Basics: Focus on getting enough sleep, proper nutrition and hydration, regular movement, and social connection.
- Cultivate Your Spirituality: Engage with what gives you a sense of purpose and meaning. This could be organized religion or time spent in nature.
- Seek Support: Don’t hesitate to seek professional help from a therapist or coach.
2. Recovery from Setbacks (A Cyclical Process): Follow your inner wisdom to guide you through these steps as you heal. You might find yourself returning to certain steps more than once, even after you thought you had already completed them.
- Slow Down: Resist the urge to rush into action.
- Focus on the Basics: Return to prioritizing sleep, hydration, nutrition, and movement.
- Add Enjoyment: Reconnect with “useless joy”—personal interests and hobbies that are not about productivity.
- Practice Gratitude: If you’ve lost touch with appreciation, start a gratitude practice.
- Re-examine Your Values: Think about what actions truly align with your core beliefs.
- Allow for Mourning: Give yourself time to process losses without rushing.
- Be Patient: Reconnect with emotions you may have numbed.
- Branch Out: When you feel ready, re-engage with the world and your work.
The ability to engage in self-care is deeply connected to self-awareness, self-regulation, and motivation—all key components of emotional intelligence. For leaders who have experienced setbacks and are ready to re-engage with this discipline, coaching can be a powerful tool.
Ready to begin your journey toward sustainable, authentic success? Reach out today to schedule a coaching session.
