Health is important: Stay healthy and lead differently!

How are you doing today?

You are sure to be asked this question often and the usual answer is “Thank you. I’m fine.”. Are you well? How is your family? Are all the family members healthy? If yes – congratulations. If not, how does that affect you? Are you unfocused, hectic, impatient? Have you slept badly, does your back hurt or does your stomach pinch etc.?

And how does this affect you in your job? Do you forget appointments? Are you unable to supervise projects properly or bring them to a conclusion? Do you also lose concentration and can you no longer remember agreements? Do you have no peace for a break, do you become impatient and react inappropriately towards your co-workers?

These are just a few examples of how stress can affect a person and influence his or her actions – consciously or unconsciously.

If you are a manager, you have a lot of responsibility – for your staff, for achieving set goals, for profitability and…for yourself! Without your own good health and resilience, you cannot really be successful and achieve long-term goals with a good and healthy team and enjoy overcoming challenges and finding solutions to a wide variety of problems.

Only those who lead themselves well and take care of themselves can also lead others healthily. The motto is “living health by example”.

“How are we going to do that?”

“I don’t have time for that sort of thing.”

“What else am I supposed to pay attention to?”

“It can’t be integrated into the daily work routine!”

“I’m not playing nanny to my people.”

Do sentences like these sound familiar? It is certainly not an easy matter – especially not in the short term – to establish health as a culture in a company and to build it into everyday life for yourself. Here are a few simple tips and tricks that are easy to implement.

What good things are you doing for yourself today?

• Give yourself a positive motto for the day, for example: “No matter what comes, I’ll take it with a smile”.
• Take five minutes and look around your workplace: What gives you particular pleasure? Observe this and try to notice the mood and emerging feelings and use them positively for yourself.
• Breathe in and out deeply three times, close your eyes…allow yourself a conscious “breather”.
• If you are under stress and don’t know what to do first, change your position/perspective: If you are sitting, stand up and walk around your desk; leave the room you are in for a short time or try to take another position in your mind – this is visibly relaxing.
• If you are in a bent position, stretch and stretch consciously (two or three times is enough).
• Take part in the staff coffee round; listen and listen, smile and try to sense what is going on in your team.

These are just a few examples that you can easily integrate into everyday life. They are small things, but they calm your pulse, reduce blood pressure, relax your back, shoulders and neck, and they promote communication and togetherness.

What else can I do – health as a guiding principle?

If you want to retain your employees in the long term and counteract high levels of sick leave, you cannot avoid change. Training skilled workers or qualifying employees in a meaningful way, offering older employees an adequate job and maintaining it is a big task and there are even more.

Meeting modern challenges (keyword: digitalisation) openly and with realistic objectives and also becoming more attractive for applicants and the region are further building blocks for successful further development and the existence of your company.

You can succeed in all these points if you actively deal with your health and the topic of “health in the company”.

Firmly integrate health into your company’s mission statement and live it. As a manager, you have a role model function. What you exemplify, your employees can see, experience and imitate. Focusing on balanced leadership, taking into account your own health and the health of your employees, is the future: “Stay healthy and lead differently!” and YOU want to retire healthy, just like your employees, don’t you?