Interest in leaders’ well-being has grown significantly in recent years. More and more organisations want to strengthen leaders’ well-being, prevent stress and create better conditions for good leadership. This is a positive development. At the same time, the conversation about leaders’ well-being often focuses on the individual leader — on resilience, balance, recovery and the ability to handle increasing work pressure. These are important themes, but they do not tell the whole story.
We expect leaders to create a good psychosocial work environment for others. But leaders are also employees. Like everyone else, they need a healthy psychosocial work environment in order to thrive and succeed in their work. This is why leaders’ well-being is not only about the individual leader’s room for action, but also about the conditions under which the leadership task is carried out.
Hos Institut for Belastningspsykologi arbejder vi derfor med ledertrivsel ud fra et arbejdsmiljøperspektiv. Vi interesserer os både for lederens handlemuligheder og for de krav og belastninger, der opstår i samspillet mellem mennesker, opgaver, forventninger og organisatoriske rammer.
The outside does not always tell the whole story!
Leaders’ psychosocial work environment is part of MentiMove
MentiMove is a digital course and implementation platform developed to strengthen organisations’ work with prevention and the psychosocial work environment. The platform is based on a holistic understanding in which employees, leaders and the organisation mutually influence one another. This is why leaders’ psychosocial work environment is an integrated part of MentiMove.
Some modules strengthen the leader’s role in psychological first aid, crisis management and psychological safety. Others focus on collaboration, conflict, learning culture and shared responsibility for the work environment — factors that matter for the well-being of both leaders and employees.
When leaders and employees work with the same concepts and preventive measures, it becomes easier to detect strain early and act before it grows.
This raises a fundamental question: Is the most important task to help the leader handle the strain — or to examine how the conditions for leadership are designed?
“Leaders also have a psychosocial work environment. That is why leaders’ well-being must be treated as a work environment issue — not as an individual responsibility.”
Head of Working Environment
The two perspectives do not exclude each other. But if the focus is exclusively on how the individual leader can handle the strain, we risk turning a work environment problem into an individual problem.
A Strain Psychology perspective on good leadership.
Leaders’ well-being is affected by the interaction between the individual, the task, relationships and organisational conditions. This is why work with leaders’ well-being cannot be limited to the individual leader. A sustainable leadership life also requires that the strain arising from the organisation of work is identified and prevented.
How MentiMove can strengthen leaders’ well-being
MentiMove strengthens leaders’ psychosocial work environment by:
- strengthen systematic work with the psychosocial work environment
- create a shared language for strain, well-being and prevention
- support psychological safety and a learning-oriented culture
- qualify supportive conversations, psychological first aid and crisis management
- strengthen collaboration between leaders, employees, HR and the working environment organisation
- translate knowledge about the psychosocial work environment into concrete actions in everyday practice
When leaders and employees work from the same frame of understanding, it becomes easier to detect strain early, talk about it and act before it develops.
Would you like to see how MentiMove can strengthen leaders’ psychosocial work environment and create better conditions for good leadership?
“When we put leaders’ well-being on the agenda, we began by looking at the span of leadership. Present leadership requires the number of employees per leader to be realistic.”
Municipal Chief Executive
From dialogue to systematic prevention
Dialogue is an important first step. But if prevention is to make a lasting difference, it must become part of the organisation’s everyday practice.
This is precisely the idea behind MentiMove. The platform gives leaders, employees, HR and the working environment organisation a shared language and concrete tools to detect strain early, talk about it and act before it develops.
Exercise: The Leadership Landscape - where should we focus our efforts?
Try the dialogue tool The Leadership Landscape, which helps leadership teams and organisations identify the factors that have the greatest significance for leaders’ psychosocial work environment — and discuss where it makes most sense to focus their efforts.
Læs mere om ledertrivsel
Read article: When leaders are struggling — why do we make it an individual problem?
Read article: Who is responsible for leaders’ psychosocial work environment?
Read article: MentiMove and leaders’ psychosocial work environment
Would you like to learn more about responsibility stress and responsibility fatigue in connection with crisis management? You can find inspiration and concrete tools in our Foundation Book in Psychological First Aid.
Danish