How can leaders protect themselves as they help others?

We’ve all heard the same analogy right? We are all in an airplane and the oxygen masks fall from the cabin ceiling, and the clear message is, “Put your own mask on first, before you help others.” Or maybe you’ve seen the ‘inspirational’ message flash up in your social media: “You can’t pour from an empty cup.”

The message is clear — it is important to take care of your own wellbeing and make sure you are in a good place before you try to help other people. And of course the reason why this sentiment is repeated so often is that it is largely true. If you are a broken mess you need to focus on your own wellbeing for a time, not least because you might not be much use to anybody else.

But life is seldom (never?) so clear cut. I don’t think I have felt completely okay, well, ever! There is always something going on, always a challenge, a fear, a nagging doubt. So what we are really talking about is relative wellbeing — are you well enough to support other people? Do you have enough oxygen? Is your cup full enough?

And of course it can also be relative to other people — are you in a better situation than them and therefore better able to help them than they are to help themselves? The kicker in this situation of course being that you might not know until you start to engage, at which point it is likely too late to disengage.

So, how should you approach this from a position of leadership? If you make a point — as I do — of saying that you need to care about your staff and be ready to support them if they need it, how do you make sure that you protect your own mental health and wellbeing? And how do you ensure that you create a culture where people are comfortable and open about coming to you with their own challenges and issues, without being overwhelmed?

I am going suggest thinking about it from three perspectives:

— ‘For the many, not the few’

— Givers and Takers (h/t Adam Grant)

— Vulnerability, not oversharing (h/t Brené Brown)

For the many, not the few

An obvious way to attempt to protect yourself from being overwhelmed is to limit the amount of time and space you give to other people. This is an intuitive way of trying to ensure that you that you have enough in the tank to respond to whatever circumstances you are dealing with, by limiting the amount you are dealing with. But there are several problems with this.

First, it is too often reactive — you give of yourself until you start to feel overwhelmed and then you put boundaries in place. So it is clearly preferable to establish boundaries beforehand so you don’t ever risk being overwhelmed.

But, second, those boundaries are hard to define and stick to, especially if you are committed to creating and supporting a culture where problems and challenges are shared and discussed. You could, for example, try to limit the amount of time you spend helping those in your team. But what do you do with the person who comes to you with a family emergency after that time boundary has been reached? Turn them away? As soon as you do that, the efforts you have put into establishing an open culture will be diminished.

And, third, as soon as it is clear there are limits to the support you are willing to give it means you will inevitably begin to favour those who are more overt in coming forward and they may not be the ones most in need of your support. The introvert, the person battling a quiet but debilitating depression, the more isolated and less confident will all be more likely to miss out.

So, counter-intuitively perhaps, I have found more success in managing my own wellbeing by trying to actively help more people, by seeking out those who might not always come forward to ask how they are doing, and following-up to check on progress. And, by doing so, my own wellbeing has actually been easier to manage. Why?

Well, it is worth being open about the selfishness of this approach: helping others feels good! Against a backdrop of work frustrations and the daily tribulations of life, a conversation in which you feel that you have actually made a positive difference is glorious. Sometimes these conversations might be the only really positive part of my working day.

And it is important to note that this approach doesn’t mean working with no boundaries. Rather it means changing the boundary from one that seeks to limit the number of people I might engage with to one that more effectively manages my emotional exposure. This is hard and I definitely don’t always get it right, but it is important to recognise what I can and can’t do. I can’t be somebody’s therapist to help with their anxiety, can’t ‘fix’ someone’s broken marriage, can’t cure their cancer, or raise their kids.

I can listen. I can empathise. I can share some experiences and offer some gentle advice. I can help them to access professional support services. Most importantly, I can show I care; just being there can be more important than anything else. This is often a hard lesson to learn, not least because people attain positions of leadership because they are good at achieving things — fixing things. But that isn’t your job as a leader of people.

Givers and Takers

In his excellent book, Give and Take, Adam Grant challenges us to accept that helping others can in fact be the best way to help ourselves. That message aligns, I think, well with what I have described above. But Adam Grant adds a really important lens we can use to help protect our wellbeing as leaders: understand the nature of who you are helping.

At the risk of over-simplifying an excellent book, Adam Grant suggests people fit into one of three broad categories: ‘Givers’ — those inclined to say yes to requests and be generous with their time; ‘Matchers’ — those who look for a fair trade for their time (“You scratch my back…”); and ‘Takers’ — those who are more inclined to exploit a situation for their own advantage, to demand more than they give. Adam Grant demonstrates the impact that being in one of these categories has the likelihood of a person succeeding in business and work.

But how about we apply these categories to our topic at hand? What difference does it make as a leader when thinking about supporting your team whether people are ‘Givers’, ‘Matchers’, or ‘Takers’?

I think the answer is self-evident — be more wary of the ‘Takers’. In practice I think this means starting from a position of being generous with your time to everybody, but be on the look out for signs that somebody you are supporting is, well, for want of a better description ‘taking the piss’. This is something I have been pretty rubbish at over the years, and I am lucky that I have had support from my own network to help me get more discerning. I don’t think there are hard and fast rules to spot who might be a ‘Taker’ in the moment (or at least I have not worked them out), but I have definitely got better at identifying them after a while, and adjusting my approach accordingly. It doesn’t mean massive changes — I take the responsibility to support my whole team seriously — but it does mean a slightly more perfunctory relationship with those who I think will ‘take the piss’. This has been a really important part of me learning to protect myself more.

It also means that I have become better at understand the impact of a ‘Taker’ on the wider team. Again, I don’t think I can say this is a hard and fast rule, but if part of the nature of a ‘Taker’ is to be more demanding, that is likely to mean that others working around them can be crowded out. So make the time to look at those working closely with a ‘Taker’, understand the impact on them, and think about how you can invest your time in those who might be more likely to come forward to seek support.

Vulnerability, not oversharing

Another excellent author in this space is Brené Brown. There is no way I can begin to do justice to the great swathe of work of this Rockstar of her field, but there is one lesson from Dare to Lead that I think is useful to consider: the power and applicability of being vulnerable.

As Brené Brown expertly shows, there is real value in a leader showing vulnerability — in being clear what they don’t know, in being open about challenges, in sharing some of their own sense of anxiety and discomfort. These can all be powerful ways of creating and supporting a positive work culture, of showing the truth behind the myth of heroic leadership.

But she is also clear that oversharing is unhelpful. Oversharing is always more about how it makes you feel as a leader rather than what you can do to help and support your team. As such it actually serves to diminish your team’s ability to be open with you.

An example: I am very comfortable talking about my own mental health challenges. I live with anxiety and OCD, and have spoken about both many times with my team and in wider circles. I think this can be powerful in creating an environment in which everybody is able to acknowledge the importance of their own mental health and it also enables me to be a little more open in one-to-one conversations in terms of suggesting professional support. The fact that I can say I have benefited from therapy and medication at times has been helpful.

But I never go into detail about my own specific mental health struggles. My team do not need to know the nature of my OCD, what I have spent days ruminating over in an unhealthy way. If I were to speak about that, it would be because I was looking for support and help from them, taking not giving. It would also be based on an abuse of a power relationship — as a leader I can demand people’s time and attention, and that should only ever be for work activity and supporting the wider culture, not for my own gratification or ego.

Brené Brown describes how to create the kind of safe spaces where people can talk about how they feel, what they are concerned about, and do so in a way that is safe — open but not excessive, free but not unlimited. This is an important skill to work on as a leader because it means that you can share enough of yourself to create a positive work environment, but not so much that you inhibit your team — and more importantly in this context, not so much that you create additional pressure on your own wellbeing. Just as you shouldn’t act as a therapist to your team, so they shouldn’t act as a therapist to you.

Sometimes you are just broken

All of this is well and good, but it should never stop you from recognising when your own mental health and wellbeing is at breaking point. As a leader, I would always want to acknowledge this moment when it hits members of my team and to make sure that they are doing the right things — getting professional support, taking time off, etc. — so it is also important to model the right behaviour here too.

I find it incredibly hard to pinpoint the moment when ‘just about managing’ switches into ‘overwhelmed’, but I am getting better. As I say, my own experiences of therapy have helped with that.

So accept that you are not a hero. You are a person trying to do your best by your team and there are times when you will not be able to cope. You must make sure that you give yourself the time and space to invest properly in the things that make a positive difference to your own mental health. And over time you can find comfort in doing this by knowing that you have worked hard to create a culture of support within your team that means you don’t need to be a hero — that there are others who see the value of working in the way you work and that the network of kindness and support you have fostered will continue in your absence.

Also accept that these are times when you are able to call on the support of your own network. Just as you want your team to come to you with their issues, remember you are part of a wider team too. Speak to your boss, your board, your peers, your friends. You should expect no less from them that you would be willing to give to your own team.