Odds and Ends

FIRST: If an idea resonates with you, you have a question, or you just want to say hey - feel free to reach out to us at [email protected]

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SECOND: We are hosting our second Webinar on how communication impacts your influence Wednesday, October 25th at 12 PM EST. You can sign up here. The Webinar will be no more than 30 minutes and anyone who signs up will have access to the recording!

Onto the newsletter!

A Series: Optimizing Your Health

One of our core ideas at BETTER is that healthy leaders create healthy teams. This flips the idea of leadership you will read about most places on its head. It’s not the external strategies and practices that make you the best leader you can be. It’s the discipline you create in your day and week that allows you to be your best.

That is why BETTER exists. We see and interact with leaders everyday that lack resources, time, and energy to be their best for their team. And we don’t want to rest at training, workshops, resources, and books. We want to create systems for leaders to interact with daily to guarantee they will be the healthiest person in the room.

So - we are doing something a little different with our newsletter. This is the first in a 6-part series in our newsletter on “Leader Health”. What are all the different areas we, as leaders, need to instill discipline into our lives to make sure we are as close to 100% health as we can be in every season? And how do we do it?

The Idea: 100X

The core thesis of this idea is that health multiplies. If you are as close to 100% health, you won’t have to try to lead, it will happen. Your health will multiply (“X”) into those around you.

But let’s back-up. Let’s define what we mean by health. It happens often that we start discussing the 100X idea with coaches and ADs and they immediately want to tell us about their extensive workout regimen. That’s physical health - and it is an important part of this.

But, our use of the term “Leader Health” is broader than just your physical health. How is your energy? What is your mindset for your leadership? Are you at peace? Or unrest? Are you self-aware and know what it’s like to be on the other side of you? These are some of the ideas we will dive more deeply into in the next six weeks.

Research Insight: Well-Being and its Effects on the Workplace

The seminal work on well-being in the workplace was performed by psychologists named Harter, Schmidt, and Keyes (2003). You can read more about it here. They defined this idea of “Leader Health” with a term they called “Well-Being”. It constituted four parts: Psychological, Physical, Social, and Workplace well-being. Some of the most notable findings were…

• Employees with higher well-being demonstrated better work performance

• Leaders’ well-being was linked to teams’ overall performance

• Teams with leaders exhibiting high well-being had lower employee turnover and thus higher retention.

• There was an observable positive correlation between collective organizational well-being and the bottom line profit

Simply said, the health of a leader not only uplifts their own performance, but permeates through the team, reduces turnover, and increases team performance. Health multiplies.

Anecdote: There are plenty of great stories of leaders (both players and coaches) in athletics that exemplified the 100X idea as leaders that wouldn’t normally have been “elected”. They didn’t exhibit the “traditional traits” of what we’ve been trained to look for in leaders. But, they were the bastions for their teams health and culture. For the purposes of this series - stay tuned - we will tell those stories in time.

For now - let’s look at where we can start as individuals to move closer to 100X leadership.

Moving towards 100X:

1. Self-Health First: Ever heard of putting on your oxygen mask before the person next to you? If you prioritize team health over your own - it won’t last. If you’re healthy, you won’t have to pull your team in your direction - they will follow.

2. Be a Sherpa: Guide your team by going up the mountain first and exemplifying health in leadership. Provide tools and an environment for your team to go up the mountain without shouldering their burden.

3. Adapt to Your Team: Understand the different perspective of those on your team and that what they need to get to 100X might look different than yours. And that’s OK.

4. Balance Your Time: Recognize when to switch between connecting with your team and maximizing your own production as a leader. (We have a tool to help you recognize this - ask us about it!)

5. Embrace and Exemplify: Be the embodiment of the values you wish to see, sculpting a culture that inherently supports and challenges in healthy doses.

Closing Thought: 

As we go through this series, we will deep dive into varied aspects of healthy leadership. Next week - we will dive into #5 above and an idea called “Values Congruence”. Our hope is that it paves a pathway that is insightful and practically applicable for your leadership. Your journey towards being a source of unwavering strength and profound impact, gains momentum here.

The BETTER System

We’ve built a system to help leaders in athletics develop things like their Circle of Competence in a more intentional way. More than 300 coaches and leaders in sports are now unlocking the mindset, leadership, and performance of their teams with the BETTER System. It’s a suite of 7 tools including data collection tools, talks, culture playbooks, and team exercises.

Find out more about the System some of the top programs and athletic departments in the country are using to enhance their mindset, leadership, and performance.