Healthy Leadership – The Essence Of Organisational Success

In the late 1990’s early 2000’s you couldn’t attend a seminar or conference without someone introducing the concept of VUCA. Once mentioned pens started rapidly writing notes to get the details of the acronym first popularised by the US Army to describe the post-Cold War geo-political landscape. Business consultants were telling us how the world we faced was becoming increasingly Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous. These concepts were originally introduced by Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus back in 1985.

Looking back now from our vantage point in mid-2025 we can be forgiven for casting a wry smile – thinking to ourselves – those people 25 years earlier had no idea just how much ‘VUCA’ we would face.

A new and extremely volatile currency in Crypto, Bitcoin, that most struggle to understand which can rise and crash in a single day. Climate-driven natural disasters, heatwaves, floods, wildfires. Wars and responses reset political allegiances and make new enemies.

AI-driven uncertainty, tools of huge potential place enormous pressure on leaders to be the first in their industry to gain an AI competitive advantage. Country closing pandemics grounding companies and sectors to a halt. World trade-disrupting tariffs introduced one day, paused and dumped the next.

Moving from a few mainstream media players to a crazy choice of multiple platforms. The complexity faced in attempting to chase your market and its audience. Your brand at the hands of some newly self-selected social media influencer, a star today, eviscerated and out of favour tomorrow. Global Supply chains are delicately balanced and set in turmoil by a ship getting stuck in the Suez Canal. Each part and each variable with huge downstream impacts. Responding to energy price shocks while holding firm on sustainability and green targets.

The wonderful Ambiguity introduced to the workforce as they demand increased control and high levels of personalisation coupled with the requirement to work from anywhere. Many of the above changes are driven by our new and pervasive relationship with technology. Privacy seems to be a dim and distant concept unless you are in places in the world where GDPR legislation is held closely as our last bastion of owning our online identity – until some terrorist gang offers it all on the dark web or puts forward a tricky ransom demand.

This is the chaotic crazy world that every leader is desperately trying to navigate with their leadership under microscopic analysis and subject to constant critique. How do you survive let alone thrive in this madness?

There is only one way. You must be holistically healthy – physically, mentally, socially, emotionally and spiritually. You need to be in touch with your vitals. You must understand how to recover and recharge giving your parasympathetic system the time required to reboot. Similar to the oxygen mask on the plane that you place on your own face first before helping those around you – you need to know the science of your well-being to be strong enough to survive the immense pressures exerted by the many forces in your world, only then can and will you be seen as a role model for healthy behaviours.

Once you develop and perfect the ability to monitor and manage your own health system you can then turn to the people who you want to deliver sustainable consistent high performance – your workforce. You need to inspire, educate, demonstrate, and role model what individual health looks like and then you need to analyse every aspect of your organisational system, the culture, the design, the processes and practices, the behaviours and values to ensure the company is mitigating any presenting issues while supporting the workforce and workplace to become a Healthy Place To Work ready to meet the crazy world and win.