The Uncomfortable Trutht About Wellbeing

Your team's mental health depends more on how you showed up yesterday than what HR wrote in the wellbeing policy. That's not a comfortable truth, but it's one every leader needs to hear.

Most organisations have invested heavily in wellbeing programs, meditation apps, and mental health initiatives. Yet stress and burnout continue to rise. The gap isn't about budget or program design—it's about leadership.

The daily interactions between leaders and their people matter more than any formal program ever will. How you respond when someone admits they're struggling, whether you protect your team's time, and what you model about boundaries—these moments shape workplace wellbeing far more than any document or platform.

Picture this: A team member is updating you on a project challenge, and you glance at your phone. Or someone asks a question and you sigh heavily before answering. These tiny moments matter more than you think.

Your Behaviour Sets the Culture

Your team watches everything you do. They notice when you're distracted, when you're stressed, and when you're genuinely present. They see how you handle pressure, mistakes, and boundaries in real time.

Consider what happens when someone admits they're struggling. A dismissive 'we're all busy' response tells everyone watching that vulnerability isn't safe here. A leader who immediately asks what can be adjusted and moves a deadline on the spot creates an entirely different environment. That single interaction ripples through the team.

Your calendar tells the truth about your priorities more honestly than any town hall speech. Leaders who regularly cancel one-on-ones send a clear message about what actually matters, regardless of what the company values statement says about people being the priority.

Your working hours and email habits create invisible pressure. When you send emails at 11pm, your team feels the expectation to match that pace even if you explicitly say they don't have to. What you model becomes the real standard, not what you say in meetings.

How you handle mistakes shapes everything. Publicly blaming someone when something goes wrong creates fear and hiding. Asking 'what can we learn from this?' in the same situation builds psychological safety and innovation. Same mistake, completely different workplace culture.

The power of noticing matters more than most leaders realize. When you see someone seems off and ask a simple 'are you okay?' rather than waiting for them to raise their hand for help, you're doing preventative leadership. Most people won't ask for support until they're already drowning.

Your energy affects everyone around you. Bringing stress and negativity into the room spreads faster than you'd think. If you're constantly overwhelmed and working late, your team will feel pressure to do the same.

Boundaries, Pressure and Psychological Safety

Whether you actually listen during conversations matters. People can tell when you're mentally somewhere else, and it makes them feel like they don't matter. How you talk about team members who aren't in the room also speaks volumes—if you complain about Sarah to Tom, Tom knows you probably complain about him to Sarah.

Your reaction to boundaries reveals your true values. Rolling your eyes when someone leaves on time or making comments about sick days creates guilt around basic self-care. Leaders who model taking breaks, using their leave, and setting boundaries give permission for others to do the same without fear of judgment.

A leader who tracks team capacity in a visible way and actively says no to new requests when the team is at limit does more for wellbeing than any mindfulness program. This means having the difficult conversation with your own manager about what's realistic, rather than just redistributing pressure downward.

One of the most powerful questions you can ask in team meetings is 'what should we stop doing?' Most leaders only add new priorities. A manager who killed three initiatives to protect team bandwidth after an honest conversation about capacity showed their team that their wellbeing was more important than looking busy.

• You need to know how to have the 'I can see you're drowning' conversation. The specific words matter: 'I've noticed you've been working late most nights this week. Talk me through what's on your plate.' Then problem-solve together rather than offering generic support. Can you extend a deadline? Reassign work? Bring in help? Make decisions, don't just express concern.

• Protecting your team's time means running interference with senior stakeholders. When an executive drops an urgent request on your team that's already at capacity, pushing back isn't insubordination—it's leadership. One manager responded to an executive's 'urgent' request by saying 'we can do that, but it means project X will be delayed by two weeks. Which is the priority?' That's protecting wellbeing through boundary-setting.

• Create recovery time after intense periods. A leader who blocks out the week after a major project launch for catch-up work, documentation, and lighter tasks rather than immediately starting the next big thing prevents burnout before it starts. Intensity is fine when it's followed by recovery. Constant intensity breaks people.

Practical Leadership Behaviours That Improve Wellbeing

Here are specific leadership behaviours that directly improve workplace wellbeing:

• Admit when you're having a rough day instead of pretending everything's fine. This gives your team permission to be human too. You don't need to overshare, just be honest.

• Put your phone away during conversations. This sounds simple but most leaders don't do it. Full attention for even five minutes makes people feel valued.

• Track visible capacity. Create a simple system where you and your team can see who's at what workload level, and use it to make decisions about new work.

• Protect one-on-ones. Treat these meetings as non-negotiable. If you must reschedule, you initiate the reschedule immediately, not the day of.

• Say thank you for specific things people did, not just generic praise. 'Thanks for catching that error in the report before it went to the client' means more than 'thanks for staying late.'

• Ask for help with something small. This shows your team that asking for support is normal and expected, not a sign of weakness.

• Model boundaries visibly. Take your lunch break. Use your leave. Stop sending emails outside work hours or use delayed send. Talk about taking breaks—mention that you went for a walk or actually took lunch.

• Ask the workload question. In every one-on-one, ask 'what's your workload like right now?' and actually listen to the answer. Try 'What's taking up most of your headspace right now?' or 'If you could take one thing off your plate this week, what would it be?'

• Say no upstream. Push back on at least one unrealistic request this month to protect your team's capacity.

• When someone brings you a problem, pause before responding. Even three seconds of thinking time instead of an instant reaction changes the whole interaction.

• Follow through on tiny commitments. If you say you'll check on something or send an email, actually do it. Broken promises on small things erode trust just as much as big ones.

Start With One Behaviour

Pick one behaviour from this article and commit to it for the next two weeks. Just one. If you're not sure where to start, begin with the easiest shift: noticing and naming when someone looks stressed, then asking what would help.

Your team is watching how you handle pressure, boundaries, and mistakes right now. Not last quarter, not in the next strategy session—right now, in the daily moments that make up their working life.

The Leadership Institute's programs build these practical leadership capabilities through real scenarios and honest conversations about what actually works. Because leadership development should prepare you for the messy reality of leading people, not just the theory.

Wellbeing isn't an HR problem to solve. It's a leadership responsibility you carry every single day, in every interaction, through every decision about workload and priorities and how you show up when things get hard. Your behaviour is the policy that matters most.

Find out more: https://www.theleadershipinstitute.com.au/professional-development