Table of Contents
Introduction
Leaders alone do not have the power or the responsibility to create well-being in workplaces, but their positionality and influence mean they have a unique role to play. There is no replacement for a leader’s role in establishing and maintaining workplace well-being. These tasks are specifically for leaders and cannot be delegated.
Leaders are busy! So, here is a list-based, quick read and the third article in our series exploring accountability for workplace well-being.
Workplace Well-being is Good for Business
Workplace well-being isn’t a list of policies or a committee assignment. It goes beyond occasional wellness initiatives or employee perks. Workplace well-being is a feeling. It’s a culture – the way we do things.
Leaders set the tone, establish priorities, and create the conditions that either enable or hinder well-being across the organization. When leaders take accountability for workplace well-being, the effects ripple throughout the entire organization—improving performance, retention, and satisfaction at all levels.
Workplace well-being is well known to be good for employees, but it’s also a critical factor in organizational success. Research shows that companies with prosocial CEOs and managers:
See lower turnover among executive subordinates
Implement more employee-friendly policies
Have higher customer satisfaction ratings
Engage more often in corporate social responsibility initiatives
Have higher profitability relative to their assets
Have lower financial, operational, and reputational risk
Inspire workers to exert more effort, with more empathic and thoughtful decisions
Improve organizational efficiency
Fostering a well-being-oriented workplace isn’t only the “right thing to do,” but is also a strategic decision, with clear financial returns.
What We Want from Leaders
At the core of workplace well-being is understanding what employees truly need from their leaders. A recent Gallup poll surveying 72,000 people across 50 countries identified four fundamental needs of followers. Fifty-six percent (56%) of respondents reported hope as their top need.
Hope: Confidence that the future will be better than the present
Trust: Belief in the leader's consistency, integrity, and transparency
Compassion: Feeling that the leader genuinely cares about employee well-being
Stability: A sense of security and predictability in the work environment
When leaders consistently meet these needs, they create an environment that promotes workplace well-being. These are spaces where employees feel safe, supported, and empowered to do great work. It creates collaborative, resilient, and productive teams and organizations.
The Modeling Only Leaders Can Do
While everyone can influence workplace culture, leaders have unique leverage and visibility. As a leader, you're constantly being observed. Leaders set the tone. Your actions, reactions, and priorities speak louder than any policy or mission statement. What you do is more powerful than you say. To model accountability for well-being:
Believe in a person-centered workplace
Genuinely believe that people are more important than tasks. This fundamental mindset shift must be authentic; employees can easily detect when a leader's words and actions don't align.
Take care of yourself
Leadership is uniquely stressful and isolating. Find support systems, practice self-care, and be transparent about your own well-being journey. When you prioritize your own well-being, you give implicit permission for others to do the same.
Work on yourself
Commit to continuous growth in emotional intelligence, communication skills, and leadership capabilities. Acknowledge your mistakes and demonstrate how you're learning from them. These new or improved skills will rub off on others.
Leadership Practices that Build Workplace Well-being
Leaders play a pivotal role in establishing systems and cultural norms that support these dimensions of well-being. Their decisions, behaviors, and priorities directly influence how employees experience work on a daily basis. At the micro, person-to-person level, how leaders communicate, what remains unsaid, what leaders do or don’t make time for all communicate to the organization what is valuable and expected behavior.
Put People Before Tasks
People are the same humans at home and at work. It’s a misconception that keeping home at home and work at work is possible or beneficial. Living out this principle requires courage and conviction, maybe even a significant paradigm shift, to implement consistently:
Interrogate every deadline
Question the necessity and timeline of each "urgent" task. Many artificial deadlines create unnecessary stress without corresponding value. Investigate every “have to,” every process for its necessity or benefit. Ask your employees to help – they’ll love giving feedback on this!
Prioritize connection
Set goals and agendas, but be willing to adjust them when human needs arise. A team meeting agenda is almost always less important than addressing an individual employee in distress or an obvious riff among team members. Proactively schedule time for team connection that isn't focused on task completion. These investments in relationships pay dividends in collaboration and resilience.
This is not pandering! And it doesn’t mean having a group cry session while no work is getting done. It is reassessing the real urgency of each project and task. It is acting on the belief that we do our best work when we feel seen and heard.
Balance Empathy with Accountability
Being person-centered doesn't mean lowering standards—in fact, it often means the opposite:
Maintain high expectations
You'll lose more staff by failing to address low performance than by setting clear standards. Teams want to be part of something excellent.
Implement fair systems
Create transparent systems for tracking progress and providing constructive feedback. What gets measured gets improved.
Be both candid and caring
These qualities aren't mutually exclusive. The most effective leaders combine clear expectations with genuine concern for their people.
Accountability works within trusting relationships. It allows feedback to be heard and integrated instead of rejected. Here’s an example from an article in the Harvard Business Review:
Kim Scott, who worked directly for Sheryl Sandberg at Google, recounts a time when Sandberg gave her candid feedback on her presentation mannerisms: “When you say ‘um’ every third word, it makes you sound stupid.” For Scott, it was a turning point. But the reason Scott could take that feedback so well was that “I knew that she cared personally about me. She had done a thousand things that showed me that.” In sum, “candor” and “positive” are not antithetical.
Give Feedback Well
The language leaders use and how they approach feedback influences organizational culture and well-being. Effective feedback practices include:
Balance positive and negative feedback
High-performing organizations deliver approximately five positive statements (supportive, appreciative, encouraging) for every negative statement (critical, disapproving, contradictory). This ratio acknowledges that our brains naturally focus more on negative information.
Encourage healthy disagreement
Create psychological safety for team members to express differing viewpoints without fear of retribution. Actively invite diverse perspectives and demonstrate that constructive dissent is valued. Tinkering with ideas, offering alternative perspectives, challenging assumptions: this is innovation!
Focus on strengths
While addressing areas for improvement is necessary, emphasizing unique contributions and strengths creates excellence rather than mere competence. The key is to be as specific with positive feedback as you are with constructive criticism.
Deliver criticism with care
Effective criticism must be delivered with respect. Focus on the situation rather than the person, describe objective consequences rather than placing blame, and suggest alternatives rather than arguing about fault. Try coaching rather than directing your employee(s) to a better solution.
Communicate Openly and Honestly
Transparent communication builds trust and reduces workplace anxiety:
Listen actively
Practice genuine listening that seeks to understand before responding. Create regular opportunities for employees to share concerns, ideas, and feedback.
Take accountability publicly
Say out loud what people already see, name the dynamics people can feel, and acknowledge problems rather than hiding them. Trust erodes when leaders know about issues but don't address them openly. If you don’t know or cannot share information, say that.
Share the why
Explain the reasoning behind decisions, particularly difficult ones. By sharing context, you may avoid the “this makes no sense!” mutterings around the office that breeds negativity. Knowing the why behind a decision can make all the difference between significant pushback or cooperation, even if they don’t agree with the outcome.
Summary and Conclusion: Leader Accountability to Workplace Well-being
When leaders take responsibility for creating conditions where employees can thrive, the entire organization benefits. The research is clear: organizations with leaders who prioritize well-being outperform those focused solely on productivity metrics. They experience lower turnover, higher engagement, greater innovation, and ultimately better business outcomes.
Remember that changing workplace culture is largely top-down—it requires leaders willing to take accountability not just for team performance but for how people experience work every day. By embracing this responsibility, you can transform your workplace into an environment where well-being and performance reinforce each other rather than compete.
This article is part of a series. First, we examined how each individual is accountable for their own well-being, then how teams collectively contribute to creating healthy work environments. Now, we turn our attention to leadership's unique responsibility in fostering workplace well-being.
For more hands-on support to increase the well-being of your organization, give us a call.