By now you’ve made your New Year’s resolutions, and at CFR we hope one of them is to accept that our articles help you build a high-performance organization! As part of your reflection, you agree with our principle:

High involvement leads to high commitment leads to high performance.

Now let us dive a little deeper and share a fundamental truth:

Health is an essential element and the foundation of high performance.

Unfortunately, many people have a limited grasp of the major components of health. Yes, in recent years the trend has been to refer to “well-being” when talking about health, but let’s pull back the curtain and highlight the fundamental pieces. What are they? We know of at least five: physical, mental, social, financial, and spiritual. And if you think about them, they apply to organizations as well as people.

In organizations:

  • The physical components are the equipment, buildings, and technology.
  • The mental elements are the values, principles, policies, procedures, processes, and practices.
  • The social relates to the interpersonal aspects, the relationships between leaders, their teams, and all other employees.
  • The financial factors are the balance sheet and operating profit.
  • The spiritual is all about energy. When you see the building, enter, go to the shop floor or any other part of the operation, what vibes do you pick up? You’ll know when you’re in a high-performance organization. You can just feel it.

On an individual basis:

The first four types of health are self-explanatory. However, we do have some observations about the spiritual component. We seldom see spirit linked to energy, which is why we are Dr. Dan Siegel supporters. He said in Mindsight, “the brain turns energy into information.” Think about it. Without our five senses we would have no conscious awareness of our world or determining what is good or bad about the five dimensions of health we have listed.

None of us have the competence to deal with the negative impacts of “disease” on one or more of these factors in our day-to-day performance as individuals, or members of organizations. Which is why we at CFR continually remind you to look at the components of competence: knowledge, skill, experience, and networks on both an individual and company basis. After all, the words “organization” and “corporation” both derive from human elements: organs and bodies.

The level of knowledge required to effectively deal with health in all five areas is why there are so many specialist professions in each of them.

 

What to do?

 

  1. Accept you cannot master all five elements of health

Acknowledge that all five are important and give each equal attention for yourself and your company. Split them up on a monthly calendar – tackle the physical in the first two months of the year, mental in March/April and so on. You can dive into these on a personal level, alongside the company to see if there is harmony.

  1. Invest some time increasing your knowledge of each component

When you don’t know what to do, you do what you know. Relying on others is a necessity, but informed decisions depend on critical thinking. Utilize input from others while recognizing at the same time your responsibility for your health and that of your employees. Think “If it is to be, it is up to me.” Seek out resources from trusted sources.

  1. Ensure your network includes professionals in each area of well-being

To name just a few, bankers, accountants, psychologists, sociologists, and alternate health care professionals, like Terry Wahls, are as important to your personal and organizational health as your family doctor and human resources contacts. This doesn’t mean you must have a personal relationship with all of them, but a contact list without resources in each of these areas is not a good idea. Most of them probably don’t even see health and well-being as their domain, but are still a great place to start to find those who do.

  1. Dig deeper into the role spirit and energy play in your personal and company well-being

Two of the most insightful thinkers in this area are Dr. Bruce Lipton, a biologist, and Dr. Dan Siegel, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA. Listen to some of their podcasts. We think you will find them enlightening, maybe even profound.

Recently, we’ve been hearing a lot of chatter about self-care of burnout, sleep disorders, and stress. We think they fall into the spiritual category as they relate to energy and what we do with it. Whether you agree or not, the self-care aspect is paramount, and Doctors Lipton and Siegel have some practical suggestions for you to consider.

You may be asking yourself – how is the above image relevant? Look in this article at our four letter and six letter words with the same first and last characters. Now look at the maze and see if you can spot that letter. If you can, the relevance is obvious. If not, give us a call. We’ll be happy to point it out!

PS: the letter is in several different places in the maze, making the journey as enjoyable as the destination.

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Gary Forget is the People & Leadership expert at Connecting for Results. He considers himself an organizational doctor and everyone who has worked with him can attest to his deep understanding of people and the barriers to high performance. Whatever the root cause of lackluster performance, Gary has the tools, experience, and knowledge to significantly increase bottom-line results. Besides his diagnostic capabilities, Gary is adept at mentoring employees, so they are more effective and capable of achieving their personal, team, and business goals. To get in touch with Gary, contact us!