Jennifer Garvey Berger is well known for her acclaimed books on leadership. A Harvard graduate, Jennifer is the CEO of Cultivating Leadership that supports leaders to thrive in complexity.
We recently spoke with Jennifer about leadership and wellness. She walked us through the complex journey of leaders and shared insights on what they must do to maintain their mental health and well-being.
What does it take for an individual to become a leader?
Jennifer: Well, I think a lot of it is about whether you have a purpose that requires other people, right? Do you have a big enough purpose so that you need others to help make that happen? And once, once you do then I think you are a leader. But it takes, I think leadership is a long unfolding practice that people can start whenever and get better at always, as they grow.
Leadership comes with a lot of burden. Please give a few tips to leaders to keep their mental health in check?
Jennifer: Yes, leadership comes with a lot of burden. Well, I think one of the best tips is to recognize these burdens. We often think of leaders as like, getting good things, getting power, everything productive. Actually it comes with quite a challenge to the person, to their families, because of the level of responsibility. I think that the most important thing is for leaders to understand that their well being and their own personal evolution is the thing that enables them to lead, as opposed to being a thing that they’ll get to if they have time. You know, a lot of people think, Oh, I’ll get to that as soon as my schedule calms down. But actually, it’s because your schedule hasn’t calmed down that you need to get to it soon.
Does leadership mean being a favorite all the time?
Jennifer: No, no. In fact, leaders have to figure out how to deal with conflict, how to deal with differences! There will always be people around you that you, for whatever reason, clash with. Having the real conversations, instead of trying to be nice, actually deepens relationships, and it makes people like you better, but it doesn’t feel like it makes people like you better at first, it feels scary. I think it’s really important for leaders to watch the signals they’re sending to their organizations.
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How should leaders manage burnout? Give one example
Jennifer: I worked with one wonderful leader, and she would take time on the weekends to slowly answer some emails. But she never sent the emails on the weekends because she never wanted anybody else to think they had to write emails on the weekends. And she was really careful to leave the office at a reasonable hour and be seen to leave to say goodbye to people, to walk out the door, so that people wouldn’t think that they were expected to work so many extra hours in the office. And that’s the sort of modeling that’s really helpful.
I think, when a leader gets on the phone and says, you know, now we have all these global calls at three in the morning here, I don’t think that’s very helpful. I think a leader should say, I can’t go to that meeting because it’s three in the morning for me. So I hope you have a really good meeting that empowers other people and it models boundaries.
Many leaders believe that talking about burnout or stress makes them appear weak. What are your views on this?
Jennifer: Yeah. The funny thing is that I’ve talked to 1000s of people around the world about who was your best leader and what were some of the characteristics of your best leader? And I would say 85-90% of the time, what people want from their leaders is humanity. And so if you, if you act like a robot, people actually aren’t drawn to you. If you are someone who thinks I can’t look like a human it becomes harder to lead. It’s actually not easier. It’s bad for your body, sure, but it’s also bad for your leadership to look like a robot.
Do you think geography plays a role in leadership styles? Having worked with a diverse range of people, how do leaders across the world differ?
Jennifer: Of course, culture plays a huge role and how we lead, what’s valued, what’s expected. It’s our culture and also our individual personalities that shape how we are as leaders. And there are some fundamentals that I think are across culture, which helps leaders to think well, to think differently from one another. All those things are useful no matter where you happen to be. So yes, I think there are absolutely regional differences, and one of the things that I’m finding is that the spine of leadership seems quite the same around the world.
When we talk about leadership, women are still far behind. What are your thoughts on this? What do women need to do to bridge the gap, and what challenges are they facing? What’s your perspective on the overall scenario?
Jennifer: I think we often look to women to see why they’re so far behind. And I think one of the questions is to look to men to see why women are still far behind. Because women have been exercising leadership for as long as there have been women. The question is, is the leadership they’ve been exercising accepted as leadership? I teach and write about leaders who are leading in complex, unpredictable times, and a lot of what they need to do is what female leadership has long looked like, and so I think it really is getting out of the habit of thinking only men are leaders and making space and making space for the distinct characteristics of a woman who’s a leader.
When it comes to leadership, how should leaders handle disagreements? This is a crucial aspect of their role, and it also significantly impacts their mental health.
Jennifer: Often, the two pathways that sort of automatically occur to us are to smooth over disagreement, like, okay, okay, it’s gonna be fine, or to try and win, to treat it as a battle like will I come out victorious? Can I defeat you? And both of those pathways are not very helpful.
The leaders I work with are super smart, so if they disagree about something, then there’s something interesting going on. You know, there are multiple right answers, and they need to figure out how to access those multiple right answers to give us more space to make decisions, to take next moves, to do all those sorts of things. So, much of that has to be learned. It’s really a discipline to have excellent conversations. You have to study it. It’s an art.
Jennifer, let’s discuss social media. Many leaders believe they should only share positive messages and focus on encouraging their employees. This is often the case on social media, where leaders feel compelled to maintain an optimistic image. What are your thoughts on this? What should be the ideal behavior pattern for leaders on social media?
Jennifer: I think this is a really tough question, and I think we’re gonna have to experiment to figure out a good answer, because it also is changing all the time. And AI is gonna make changes in how people consume social media as well. I’m a leader of this company, I try to also talk about my life at home, talk about my kids, so that I’m a three dimensional person, leaders have to be careful about this. We don’t want to hear about your stomach problems, or about things that are private, but the idea of going out with a less polished veneer is what people are wanting from their leaders on social media or when they’re sitting across the table from them.
What’s your message to the new generation leaders?
Jennifer: The new generation understands complexity more naturally than the older generation. The world that they’ve been born into is so complex. You know, they won’t put up with terrible lives for the sake of climbing a career ladder. They won’t put up with terrible hours for the sake of making money. You know, by and large, they want the organizations they work with to be doing good things in the world. And they’re very picky about that, as we all should be. So I’m very excited about this next generation coming up, very excited about how they’re going to take a world that’s pretty troubled and lead it to a better place.
It’s important for leaders to have a sense of their own journey as leaders. Many people kind of think, Oh, I became a leader at 32 when I was given this job and then they get busy and they don’t understand that at 36 they should be a different leader than they were at 32 and at 42 they should be a different leader than they were at 36 Right?
Like it is, a craft that we learn about, we practice, we learn, we experiment, we grow. And I think if we were to think of leadership as a craft, I think we’d have better leaders.