It’s not new information that leadership development programs generally focus on training leaders on skills that are measurable and “visible,” such as strategic thinking, decision-making, team coaching and professional communication. Programs are built around these skills so that leaders can be, objectively, successful. However, what’s rarely — if at all — acknowledged in leadership development programs is something far less visible: mental health and emotional capacity. These often-ignored elements are the conditions under which leaders operate, and when leaders are depleted, it becomes difficult to perform the skills expected of them — the very competencies that leadership development aims to build.
For learning and development (L&D) leaders who help build and facilitate leadership development, there is an important opportunity here to incorporate mental health support to boost the emotional capacity of leaders in ways that are practical, role-appropriate and rooted in organizational systems. The goal is to ensure leaders have the skills and support they need so they can sustainably and effectively perform in their roles in an evolving, high-pressure and complex world of work that is unlikely to slow down or simplify.
Anchor Your Approach In a Framework
A consistent challenge in mental health at work initiatives is fragmentation and disconnection. This can look like workshops that raise awareness without changing individual habits, peer dynamics or organizational expectations. Thankfully, the tide is shifting on “check-box” workplace mental health programs, as the significance of focusing on mental health at work is finally not only mainstream but also recommended as a core competency for a healthy workplace.
The former U.S. Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, shared a framework for workplace mental health and well-being that provides a practical structure for avoiding this pitfall with “five essentials” (i.e., protection from harm; connection and community; work-life harmony; mattering at work; opportunity for growth) that highlight the importance of normalizing and supporting mental health to create healthy organizations.
Just as you would structure any other leadership learning experience, you can also use this framework as a roadmap to build mental health support into leadership development through:
- Intentional curriculum that focuses on the mindset, skills and tools leaders need.
- Learning cohorts and communities that build rapport, connection and reduce isolation.
- Shared practices and social norms that support embedding mental health as a leadership practice and value, rooted in psychological safety.
- Ongoing measurement and reinforcement to see outcomes produced and focus on how to create continuous improvement.
Your First Step: A Needs Assessment
Leadership populations are not one-size-fits-all, and they are not even mostly similar. Each leader, regardless of seniority, faces a variety of stressors, many of which are also contextually and individually influenced. Before building mental health support and content for a leadership development program, deploying an anonymous, intentionally designed needs assessment is key. This will help you understand what leaders truly want and need, while also giving them a sense of ownership in the process rather than feeling that information and its importance are simply being dictated to them. Some areas this assessment can cover include gaining an understanding of your leaders’:
- Role-specific stressors
- Organizational obstacles to change
- Work culture norms and psychological safety
- Intersectional identity needs
- Strains outside of work
Asking these questions mitigates the risk of just delivering run-of-the-mill “self-care” content that unintentionally implies the leader is solely responsible for addressing and fixing their stressors. While mental health self-management is part of supporting leadership mental health at work, addressing systemic factors that impact those leaders is just as critical.
Build Mental Health at Work Conversational Literacy™ Into Core Curriculum
Learning how to talk about mental health at work is a form of conversational literacy that all professionals need, regardless of title, tenure or industry. This is even more important for those in leadership roles, because it impacts how they support their teams, their peers and how they vocalize their own needs for support. It’s crucial to equip leaders with education and a shared understanding of language, expectations and boundaries. Some of this foundational learning includes:
- The purpose of talking about mental health at work
- The connection between mental health, performance and leadership sustainability
- Updating the narrative of leadership success and emotional struggles
- How to model talking about mental health without compromising credibility
- Practicing “Mental Well-Being Non-Negotiables™”
- Emotional self-regulation and building discomfort tolerance
- The value of social connection and leadership community
The key is this: building and practicing Mental Health at Work Conversational Literacy™, along with other skills focused on emotional recognition and maintenance, which are critical behaviors for sustainable leadership and mental health. When mental health support is normalized and embedded as a performance-enabling leadership behavior, it’s seen as a must-have and not as an “optional wellness thing.”
That also means treating the quality and improvement of leaders’ mental health as a program outcome. If leader mental health is positioned as a leadership capability within an organization, it should be measured as such, alongside other important outcomes. This helps to determine whether the training provided is impacting leaders’ mental health outcomes. Some areas that are helpful to measure post-program include:
- Increased understanding of mental health in general
- Choice of participation in peer groups
- Post-program behavior change
- Shift in conversations with peers and team members
- Change in feelings of psychological safety
Make Mental Health a Foundational Layer of Leadership Performance
Leadership development programs are already tasked with addressing performance, change, engagement, retention, inclusion, profitability and more, often all at once. Integrating mental health support into leadership development doesn’t mean reinventing the wheel or creating an entirely new program. It means understanding the importance of including mental health management into existing curricula to create sustainable leadership behaviors. This approach should be grounded in an evidence-based framework and reinforced by a strong support system and clear measurement to help new habits take hold with purpose.
When we treat leaders’ mental health as a core competency for effective leadership, leadership development becomes more realistic, more humane and more likely to develop leaders who can perform under pressure without burning out the people around them — and themselves.
