If you’re like most good leaders, you engage your team in a compelling vision and goals that motivate and direct them toward outcomes that matter. You may also create an inspiring vision to guide your decisions in life and work personally.
Yet, like most leaders, you may have overlooked a principle that’s crucial to this aspirational focus: Your psychological and physiological states influence what you believe about your current circumstances and shape the future you believe is possible.
Your state of being informs your future.
It probably comes as no surprise that when we’re dysregulated, disenchanted, or depleted, we’re more apt to view certain opportunities as out of reach or feel trapped in a situation with no way out. We’ve all been there at some point. On the flip side, when we’re feeling internally well-resourced and vibrant we’re likely to see brighter possibilities for the future ahead.
Shifting into a state of thriving can strengthen the power of you and your team to set and achieve a vision and goals that make a difference. In fact, it’s one of the essential shifts of thriving leadership.
Thriving strengthens us in at least these 6 ways:
- Clear Thinking and Decisions. It’s difficult to make sound, strategic decisions when you’re overstressed. Down to your biology, a state of wellbeing allows you to think more clearly, assess situations non-reactively, and tap into an inner well of cognitive and embodied insight to draw on—allowing you to create an aspiration aligned with your values and sustainable success. Simply put: Your wellbeing helps you approach the process of visioning and goal setting with wholeness and a clear mind.
- Sustainable Energy and Resilience. Leadership is demanding, especially when you or your team are driving a vision of change in the middle of uncertainties. Continually connecting with a sense of wellbeing contributes to the physical, emotional, and mental energy of people, allowing you and your team to lead with endurance and resilience over time.
- Emotional Intelligence. Wellbeing is closely linked to emotional intelligence, a key skill of effective leadership. From this state, you’re more likely to have better emotional regulation, empathy, and self-awareness—all essential qualities for making good decisions and caring for your team. And all necessary qualities that enable your team to think, relate, and act in concert to bring a higher vision to life.
- Less Negativity Bias. Negative emotions can skew your judgments and lead to a vision that’s built on scarcity, overly cautious and reactive, or misaligned with the true potential of your team and organization, as well as yourself. In a state of wellbeing, you’re less likely to be clouded by negative emotions, such as fear, anxiety, or frustration. Instead, you’re able to approach the visioning process with optimism, a sense of growth and creativity, and openness.
- Better Collaboration. Leadership isn’t just about setting vision-driven goals, it’s also about how you foster healthy relationships to produce and pursue those goals. Your wellbeing can help you enroll others into the visioning process in a constructive, inclusive, and engaging way. Plus, role modeling wellbeing cultivates an environment of prosocial behaviors, such as collaboration and care, within which your team turns visionary goals into actions.
- Stronger Commitment. Wellbeing is tightly coupled with the deeper, intrinsic motivations of people. When you and your team are thriving mentally, emotionally, and energetically, you’re more likely to pursue your vision and goals with enthusiasm and commitment. This energy is contagious, inspiring others around you—from customers and vendors to partners inside your organization.
How do you make thriving a potent fuel for visioning & goal-setting?
Thriving—your capacity to grow, evolve, and be well in life and work—is a dynamic and renewable resource which exists within every person. Plus, it’s a pragmatic skill you and your team can develop to fuel your visioning process, and as a result, expand and strengthen any vision and goals you create. Wisdom Works pioneering assessment, Be Well Lead Well Pulse®, outlines the science-based bio-psycho-social-spiritual pathways that enable you to thrive as a leader and human being.
Your felt experience of thriving arises naturally when you spend more of your moments in a sense of safety, inner balance, and renewal. In this state, the drivers of wellbeing are activated throughout the cardiovascular, respiratory, digestive, nervous, and other systems of your body, supporting you mentally, emotionally, and energetically. As Harvard social psychologist Dr. Richard Boyatzis shares, you’re at your cognitive and emotional best in these moments, most open to new ideas, most creative and innovative, and most able to authentically connect with yourself and others. Accessing your inner wellbeing and reconnecting to it when you get off track (like we all do) is not only an act of self-regulation; it’s also an act of effective, well-resourced leadership.
There are hundreds of practices to help you tap into this internal resource.
Here are a few to experiment with, ideally, when you begin engaging in visioning and goal setting, whether with others or alone:
😁 Recall a time of joy and vitality in your life and work. This time doesn’t have to reflect a major event; it may be a simple moment, such as when you were struck by the beauty of a rosebush as you walked through your neighborhood. If you’re creating a vision with others, share these stories aloud as a source of mutual inspiration. Notice the effects of remembering, telling, and hearing these stories on your mind, body, and energy level.
🧘🏽♂️ Take a balancing breath. Breathwork helps calm the nervous system, reduce stress, and bring you into the present moment. If you’re leading a mindful breath at the start of a visioning session with your team, consider this guidance to support you.
🏃🏻➡️ Engage in movement practice, such as stretching, qi gong, yoga, or a walk. Movement helps release any tension, refresh your energy, and connect mind and body.
🥰 Reflect on three things you’re grateful for. This can be anything, from relationships to achievements to a modest pleasure like the feel of the sun’s warmth on your skin. Gratitude helps people shift into an uplifted, expansive state, priming mind and body for creative visioning.
🎨 Draw on the arts. Listen to music or read a poem that’s meaningful to you. Or, if you’re with a team, have each person offer a piece of inspiring music or poetry and why it matters to them—or, as an alternative, hold the visioning session at a gallery or in a natural open space where you are surrounded by beauty.
🗣️ Share life experiences. We often work with other people for years without really knowing them. Take time to reflect on the ups and downs of your life, plus the values that helped you navigate your life journey. If you’re in a team setting, create a space for people to share and deeply listen to each other’s stories. We are better at envisioning a future together when we are more connected, valuing the life experiences of each other.
Visioning is a powerful tool for positive change.
Our life energy can be applied toward both benefit and harm—the choice is ours. I believe that now, more than ever, it is crucial to consciously direct our energy as an expression of love for ourselves, for each other, and for the planet. When we do so, we not only contribute to the wellbeing, success, and sustainability of our organizations, we also nourish thriving and growth in ourselves and others.
As we lead through disruptions unfolding at every level of our world, the ability to tap into our fullest potential is a vital force for transforming our challenges into visions of a better future.