“Wellbeing is so important, but it’s shocking how few people understand or pay attention to their own, because they are so busy being busy.”
Strategy, finance, building organisational resilience – these are all topics you would expect to see on the curriculum of a management training programme. But how about mindfulness, self-awareness, and personal wellbeing?
For Peter Thornton, director of Cranfield’s Breakthrough Leadership Programme, the personal and the professional go hand-in-hand. The 12-month programme aims to equip professionals with the knowledge, skills, behaviours and confidence to make a successful transition to director level. This includes personal resilience and an understanding of the importance of looking after their wellbeing.
“The world of work is getting harder,” Peter explains. “The pressure to get things done is non-stop. In this environment, the temptation is to pedal faster to try to keep up, but if you’re pedalling at 100 miles an hour and you never stop to think and notice what is going on around you then you’re not going to be making the best decisions or being the most effective leader. Pretty soon, you’re going to be burned out and running on empty.”
To reinforce the importance of wellbeing at work, Cranfield teaches self-awareness and mindfulness, and provides one-to-one coaching for participants as part of the programme.
“We take a holistic view that it is not just about what you do, but how you do it, and who you are, to be able to deliver that,” Peter says. “We talk about ‘slowing down to speed up’ – about being more mindful, realising the need to just be and see and feel what is going on in your organisation and with yourself.
“Because all our participants are probably the busiest they’ve ever been. They’re in their mid-career and may have young families, elderly parents and big mortgages, at the same time as having to make important decisions in the biggest job they have ever had. That’s stressful.
“Many of them are busy doing things they shouldn’t be, and we help them to extract themselves to some extent from the day-to-day, to trust and delegate to their team, so they can focus on leadership.
“We’re trying to build resilience individually as well as organisationally, and we support people to have the conversations they need to make that happen.”
For many people, attending the Breakthrough Leadership Programme is therapeutic. The programme aims to provide participants with a supportive environment, so that if they are having difficulties and are open enough to talk about them, they can find a better way forwards.
“We’ve had people who were completely stressed out and unhappy in their work,” Peter says. “Some people aren’t getting on with their boss and, because of the pressure they are under, the rest of their life suffers. They don’t spend enough quality time with their family, and the stress mounts up.”
“We’ve had participants on the edge of a breakdown, who have cried in my office telling me that everything is going wrong” he added. “They get to the point where they know they’ve got to make some changes. We support them through our one-to-one coaching to effectively reinvent themselves and be happier.
“Wellbeing is so important but it’s shocking how few people understand or pay attention to their own, because they are so busy being busy.”
Discover more about the Breakthrough Leadership Programme:
