Wellness and delivery

This is something I’ve been meaning to write about for a few weeks. I hope it will encourage some conversations.

In the past two months working with public sector leaders here in New Zealand, a consistent dilemma has been revealed. I want to share my thoughts on that.

Leaders are telling me they feel in a real bind. Leading in the pandemic has understandably privileged attention to the wellbeing of colleagues and yet the requirements to deliver more have continued to grow. The bind: We feel like the balance is wrong. It feels like time to pay less attention to wellbeing in order to increase attention to delivery. The bind is an emotional one, one of conscience – what kind of leader does it make me if I focus more on delivery from my people right now?

Is it really a choice between wellbeing and delivery? Is it an either-or, or a binary construct?

I don’t think it is. Systemically Intelligent Leadership might ask “how do we attend to BOTH the legitimate needs of wellbeing AND to delivery”. Attending to the dilemma as a BOTH / AND construct makes this a polarity that needs managing. The two need to co-exist, and the balance between the two needs to be flexible.

Polarity management is a System Intelligent Leadership skill. Here’s a quick intro on Polarity Management.

If we leaders were approaching this dilemma as a polarity we would be having conversations with peers, sensing and reading together the current health of the system – system mapping, acknowledging how much “heat” there is.  Is the balance between wellbeing and delivery right? What risks are revealing themselves in the current balance? (staff attrition? not meeting desired deadlines?) and what adjustments might we make together to establish a different balance between wellbeing and delivery? (Resourcing, expectations, timeframes and quality seem like great places to start.)

These are not necessarily easy things, courage may be required, but surely this is the work of leadership. Sadly, what I have heard much of is a sense that there is nothing to be done, it is someone else’s responsibility, not mine … I have to grin and bear it, put my head down and suffer. Though understandable, this is a collusion in perpetuating the situation. It is what Barry Oshry might call “Bottomness” – I have written on this before: Bottomness.

What is needed is empowering energy, a will to co-create an alternative, to mobilise peers and colleagues in a conversation about new possibilities and a rebalancing of the polarity.

Does this resonate with you?

What have you chosen to do in response?

Are you engaging others in co-creating a new balance or putting your head down?

What else needs to be considered?