Tired, stressed and worried – it’s what being a business leader is all about! Or is it? There’s no doubt that stress has a positive part to play in driving success, but when it starts to control performance, behaviours and emotions, it’s time to step back.
Cranfield University’s THRIVE programme is aimed at established senior leaders to help them find fresh inspiration and energy to take on new challenges.
Executive Development Director Chris Coghlan heads up the team delivering the programme, which uses a range of techniques including medical grade wearable technology to help people manage their energy and align it to what really matters to them.
Chris is passionate about the effects simple changes and new outlooks can have on making leaders happier, healthier and more productive.
How does your work sit alongside the other executive development programmes available at Cranfield?
We look beyond conventional strategies and help people understand how their wellbeing fits into their lives at work and at home. We have two key aspects to our lives, and they are energy and time – and both are finite. If we don’t manage them well, it starts to affect our performance.
Why, for instance, do most of us accept that by Friday afternoon we’ll be pretty much done. Our energy levels will be low and we’ll be ready for the weekend, but by learning to manage our energy levels, Friday afternoon could well be when they are at their highest.
The THRIVE experience helps people see how they live and how their bodies react to food and stimulants like caffeine or sugar, or sedatives like alcohol, and how they affect the way they sleep, or feel the next day.
Most people go home at the end of the day with their energy levels at their lowest – but that’s exactly the time they need the energy to put into their family or home life – so it’s important to find a balance.
Senior leaders need to be part of a paradigm shift in what the world of work looks like. Wellbeing is key and we are not designed for this world of emails, meetings and sitting at a desk all day. Once you’re mindful of that, you can start to change.
What practical techniques do you use?
The majority of people who come to Cranfield are curious about their health and wellbeing and are familiar with wearables like smart watches and checking their data. Those watches are a starting point, but what we do takes it to a different level.
We use a medical grade monitor that is worn on the chest and measures heart rate variability, which is the amount of time between heartbeats. You want that to have a good variance rather than being too regular, generally, the more variance the less stress on your body.
People will wear that monitor at work, at home, here at Cranfield on one of our programmes, and although we don’t rely solely on the technology, it gives us good analytics about health and energy levels. They will then go through a debrief with a health coach and start to plan where they can make better choices that support energy management.
How is that data used to bring transformation?
What it does is help us to understand the difference between physical tiredness and emotional tiredness; you might find that certain times of day are better for certain things; creative stuff in the morning, less challenging tasks later in the day, maybe.
Once people become mindful of their short and long-term health and how it affects their performance, they can start to build routines and rituals and habits that allow them to become healthier.
A breakthrough moment is often when they see how important sleep is. Most of the people we work with are well-educated and they usually quite curious – that’s a leadership trait. Many of them are already conscious of their health and exercise, and think they are doing the right things, but sometimes they’re not. If you do exercise in the evening, it’s good that you’re exercising, but look at your sleep patterns that night – if exercising that late means you’re not sleeping well, then you need to decide whether that’s the best time for you.
Ultimately, we want people to establish positive habits and behaviours that have a long-lasting impact. It’s part of the whole picture, and this is stuff that genuinely changes lives.
What do organisations as a whole gain from having someone work with you on the THRIVE programme?
I think it feeds down into a business’s performance. There is evidence to show that organisations that focus on the wellbeing of their people gain a competitive advantage.
We work mainly with senior leaders, and they are the people who can choose to go back to their organisation and set an example. Leaders can model behaviour change in their organisation and give permission to others to look after themselves. A simple example is one of the leaders we work with, who has recently started going to the gym at lunchtime. He’s feeling and seeing the benefits, but also, by doing that he’s given others permission to go out at lunchtime, whether that’s to the gym or just for a walk.
Research tells us breaks that including physical exercise increases cognitive performance. It’s a win for everyone. It feeds into the quality not quantity approach. Business needs that paradigm shift – the focus of business always seems to be on more, cheaper and faster, but that means quality will suffer.
Humanity has complex social, environment and economic challenges, we need leaders who can bring energy, focus, clarity and passions to challenges. Much of our workforce is just surviving, we believe there is a way to thrive.
