Why Multidimensional Self-Care Is Essential To Better Leadership

Posted on July 12, 2021 by Dr Jacqueline Ashley, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.

“What do you do for self-care?” That was a job interview question I was once asked. I thought it was an odd question at the time, but now I realize it should be one of the most important questions to ask in any job interview if an organization truly values the well-being of its employees.

Self-care has become a buzzword these days, which has increased awareness of how essential it is to practice. However, even though leaders in organizations may recognize it as important, it’s not always treated with the priority it deserves, but merely given lip service.

Let’s be clear on what self-care is and what it’s not. Self-care is not selfish, but a necessary lifestyle practice for good health. Self-care isn’t just something you do to recover from illness or crisis, but is also preventive and proactive. It’s a way to value and love yourself, but also demonstrate to others that you care to show up at your best for them, personally and professionally. Consistent self-care practice is what sustains our energy and motivation to keep moving through life successfully, and it is a tool of resilience to help us through the hard times.

A great framework that anyone can use is SAMHSA’s Creating a Healthier Life: A Step-by-Step Guide to Wellness that identifies the eight dimensions of wellness as physical, emotional, spiritual, social, intellectual, financial, environmental and occupational. Addressing each of these areas is key to whole-person health.

In working with individual contributors up to the C-suite, it’s troubling to find how common it is for organizations to not have a culture that actually promotes whole-person health, especially when there are generous wellness policies and programs in place that only a handful of employees feel they can really use. Organizational culture takes its cues from those at the top of an organization — its leaders. It doesn’t matter if your workplace is espousing self-care and has policies to support that if the culture doesn’t support what’s being said and the leadership isn’t role modeling the behaviors being encouraged. Too often I hear people — including leaders — express they’re afraid to take time off or set boundaries because of how they have been or might be judged for it. Everyone wants to be seen as a team player, as dependable, as taking the work seriously, and they want to avoid hurting their chances for advancement.

Multidimensional self-care is important to incorporate as an essential leadership practice to facilitate a culture of resilience and well-being in the workplace. When leaders authentically role model multidimensional self-care, they’re facilitating healthy, well workplaces where employees can truly thrive. To start, consider that leadership begins with how you lead your life. Improve how you lead yourself to improve your ability to lead others. Self-care is integral to how you lead because it helps you function at your best.

Keeping in mind the eight dimensions of wellness, here are six reasons self-care is essential to better leadership:

1. Self-care can help you think more clearly and see things more realistically. Leaders will always have difficult decisions to make, which comes with enormous stress and pressure. Stress over time, if not properly managed, can negatively impact perspective and decision-making. Self-care builds resilience and facilitates healthy ways of coping with the effects of stress.

2. Multidimensional self-care can help you recognize and reflect on what’s most important to you. Addressing each dimension can help you harmonize your life in a way that serves you and others best. It will help you determine where to realistically set healthy boundaries and manage expectations.

3. Self-care can help you achieve more as a leader. You can optimize your leadership skills, emotional intelligence, effectiveness and productivity to be able to contribute more and add more value. You can consistently achieve peak performance when you regularly renew yourself through self-care.

4. Self-care can help you value yourself and be more confident. Part of self-care practice is how you think of and treat yourself. That means being self-compassionate when you’re having a hard time, when you’ve made a mistake or experienced failure and when expectations weren’t met. Excel without being perfect.

5. General self-care and self-care in the form of practicing gratitude can help you feel your best and be happier, which can affect how you feel about others and how they feel about you. It can lead to you being more accepting of yourself and others and able to experience more gratitude in your life. With a better mindset, you’ll also be more resilient when faced with severe hardship or difficulty.

6. As a leader, by role modeling multidimensional self-care, you’re helping others see that they have permission to take care of themselves, too. Overall, self-care is an even more difficult concept to practice for women, people of color and those who are LGBT+ because of pre-existing social constructs of how traditionally marginalized groups have been judged in the workplace against their heterosexual white male counterparts. A tacit understanding exists that traditionally marginalized individuals must outwork — meaning we have to work twice as hard or more just to prove our worth as being good enough or equal; otherwise, our value is often implicitly challenged. Although multidimensional self-care is essential for everyone to practice, it’s more significant for those who’ve been traditionally marginalized because it also embodies self-respect, self-advocacy and sustainable self-preservation to not only be healthy and well, but also to ensure a solid sense of well-being.

It’s time to change the belief of overwork as being a badge of honor. Multidimensional self-care facilitates the capacity for peak performance. The new badge of honor is in caring for ourselves so we can better care for others and show them it’s okay for them to take care of themselves. After all, it’s a leader’s job to care for others and develop them to be their best. It’s time to take that seriously.

How do you see yourself incorporating self-care to lead with courage and role modeling it for others?

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com on June 28, 2021.