First this article defines health and team. Replacing the adjective wellness with the adjective heath, this article better aligns with the 1986 Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion. This article then reviews the Cove published Wellness of our Leaders 2018.[1] Finally, this article explores how in 2026, through leaders planning, adjusting, and empowering, we can lead to support the health of our teams, through assuring people’s dignity and enabling our teams to optimise their potential.

As with Wellness of our Leaders, this article amalgamates exchanged ideas from others on leading to support the health of our teams through listening, training, reading, observing, and experience.

Through leadership and purpose, team health thrives. Healthy teams empower people and their teams to reach their personal, professional, and cultural potential. This article seeks to generate a conversation about purpose, aspirations, caring, humanity, and dignity in our workplace.

In teams we collaborate and work with others to achieve more by allowing people, through voice, choice, and agency, to share their talents with the world. As teammates, colleagues, and leaders, we collaborate and work to enable, empower, and care for each other while enhancing organisational productivity through task delivery.[2]

As noted by Marcus Aurelius, the main thing we were made for is to work with others… remember that our defining characteristic – what defines a human – is to work with others.[3]

Health & Team

In the 1986 Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, the World Health Organisation defined a ‘Health Promotion’ as:

… the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health. To reach a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, an individual or group must be able to identify and to realise aspirations, to satisfy needs, and to change or cope with the environment.

Health is therefore seen as a resource for everyday life, not the objective of living. Health is a positive concept emphasising social and personal resources, as well as physical capacities. Therefore, health promotion is not just the responsibility of the health sector, but goes beyond healthy life-styles to well-being.[4]

Health is enabled by, and enables, the voice, choice, and agency of our people. Leadership, supporting our team’s health, empowers, motivates, and energises our teams to reach their potential. When a team, supported by their leaders, achieves their needs and aspirations, through their physical, mental, and social well-being, they also realise gains in health enabling motivation, change, productivity, and resilience.

Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith, in The Discipline of Teams, write that ‘a team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.’[5]

In addition, Katzenbach and Smith argue:[6]

A team’s performance includes both individual results and what we call “collective work-products.” A collective work-product is what two or more members must work on together, such as interviews, surveys, experiments [or people, operations, policy, projects, and programs]. Whatever it is, a collective work-product reflects the joint, real contribution of team members.

 

The essence of a team is common commitment. Without it, groups perform as individuals; with it, they become a powerful unit of collective performance. This kind of commitment requires a purpose in which team members can believe.

 

Whether the purpose is to “transform the contributions of suppliers into the satisfaction of customers,” to “make our company one we can be proud of again,” or to “prove that all children can learn,” credible team purposes have an element related to winning, being first, revolutionising, or being on the cutting edge.

Katzenbach and Smith conclude that ‘the best teams invest a tremendous amount of time and effort exploring, shaping, and agreeing on a purpose that belongs to them both collectively and individually. This “purposing” activity continues throughout the life of the team.’[7]

Review: Wellness of our Leaders, 2018

As articulated in Wellness of our Leaders, the stressors on our teams are multi-faceted, concurrent, consecutive, compounding, and complex. Since 2018 these stressors have not eased, and in the eight years since Wellness of our Leaders was published, probably only intensified.

In summary, in 2018, stressors on our teams included:

• Habitual sleep deprivation.
• Continuous connectivity with work.
• Neglecting exercise and personal medical needs.
• Social and professional isolation.
• Legal responsibilities.

Remedies to stressors, in 2018, through self-awareness, positive actions, planning and support for our teams included:

• Self-discipline in balancing people’s lives.
• Looking for warning signs in our colleagues.
• Mentors.
• Creating resilience programs for our people.
• Staying alert for over-achievers.

Planning, Adjusting and Empowering

Leading to support the health of our Team requires:

• Planning: leaders meet frequently with their teams to dialogue personally and professionally. When they meet, leaders have a plan.
• Adjusting: leaders adjust to build flexibility around teams striving to achieve tasks through psychological safety, growth mindset, and personal resilience.
• Empowering: leaders empower teams to increase team productivity through measuring achievements and enabling innovation.

As stated in 2018, we must look for signs of fatigue and fragility in our colleagues. Now, in 2026, leaders can plan, adjust, and empower to support the health of our teams.

To support the health of our teams, we must know our own strengths and weaknesses. We must demonstrate kindness. We must care for each other. We must collectively serve to ensure our colleagues’ health balances the demands of our employment with their own needs, the needs of their families, the needs of all our people, and the needs of our nation.

Leadership: planning, adjusting, and empowering in 2026

How, in 2026, may we lead to support the health of our teams, and empower their dignity, to enable people and their teams to share their talents with the world and reach their personal, professional, cultural potential? How do we build purpose, aspirations, caring, humanity, and dignity in our workplace?

Primarily, the answers to these questions are continuously sourced through leaders knowing themselves, while learning, understanding, and leading in a framework of planning, adjusting, and empowering. As noted by Lieutenant General John Toolan, United States Marine Corps, leaders must ‘inspire others, ignite their hearts, and, illuminate the way.’[8]

The following is how leaders can plan, adjust, and empower to support the health of our teams:

Plan: leaders meet frequently with their teams to dialogue personally and professionally. When they meet, leaders have a plan. This plan may include:

Acknowledgement of Country.

Personal:

• Recognising and sharing kindness and respect for, and by, our people and our teams. If people provide permission, recognising their significant life moments such as anniversaries, birthdays, and long service.
• Acknowledging the unique lives and circumstances of all people. Recognising their ever-evolving feelings of achievement, success, failure, and disappointment.
• Enabling prudent information exchanges between, and with, our teams. Empowering individuals to speak of their achievements, their successes, and their contribution to the team.
• Illuminating the success of our team. Celebrating events, outside work and inside work, that are important to people, families, and communities.
• Farewelling departing colleagues and welcoming new colleagues.
• Recognising achievements by our people and our teams. This recognition may follow a set of themes, such as who, this week, in our organisation: worked with others to achieve more? Moved toward the friction? Achieved in life without seeking credit? Demonstrated that calm is contagious? Held a strategic perspective?

Professional:

• Taking responsibility seriously through accountability, vision, and strategy, and leading by example. And wearing responsibility lightly though embracing failure, encouraging autonomy, and keeping a sense of humour.[9]
• Restating the key tasks and main effort for your teams and their organisation.
• Finally, speaking last, leaders articulate key organisational guidance.

Adjust: leaders adjust to build flexibility around teams striving to achieve tasks through psychological safety, growth mindset, and stoicism. These adjustments may include:

Psychological safety: creating and continuously nurturing, what Amy Edmondson describes as ‘team psychological safety,’ which is a shared belief held by members of a team that it is OK to take risks, to express our ideas and concerns, to speak up with questions, and to admit mistakes – all without fear of negative consequences. As Edmondson puts it, ‘it’s felt permission for candour.’[10] Psychological safety leadership actions may include:

• Ameliorating the domestic violence national crisis present in our society and securing professional support for victims to alleviate further suffering.[11]
• Amending task variables, such as task-related goals, resources, completion time, execution timing, details, research, and consultation, to offer teams more pathways to task success.
• Recognising the value of Ray Oldenburg’s Third Place in creating safe-areas enabling connections, interactions, diversity, unity, friendships, development, productivity, and innovation.[12]
• Encouraging people to take micro-sabbaticals.[13]
• Applying the right to disconnect protocols to after-hours emails, phone calls, and expectations. Reducing the tempo of work, by leaving our people time, space, and opportunity to concentrate, think, and create.[14]Empowering teams to create their own digital detox and unplug from social media.

Growth mindset: fostering team growth mindset to embrace challenges, persist against obstacles, enable pathways to mastery, learn from criticism, and find inspiration in the success of others.[15] Growth mindset leadership actions may include:

• Listening for soft voices, especially from new leaders and their teams, many of whom are highly motivated, self-learning, and self-disciplined. Listening for soft voices that inspire change, through the safe iteration and escalation of ideas, to reduce risk, enable innovation, create previously unseen organisational opportunities, and/or avert organisational distress.
• Learning from David Garvin’s approach to transformation as learning organisations, through mastering five activities: solving problems systematically, experimenting with new approaches to work, learning from experience, learning from other organisations and from stakeholders, and transferring knowledge throughout your organisation, horizontally and vertically.[16]
• Avoiding a sunk-cost bias. Empower people and teams to end projects and ideas that are marginal activities or non-core business, so they may profitably focus our efforts on quick wins and core business.[17]

Empower: leaders empower teams to increase team productivity through measuring achievements and enabling innovation. This empowerment may include:

• Empowering people to not attend meetings that are outside their core business. Whenever a person is not here, we all assume, and have faith, that they are in a more important place.
• Enabling people to understand and apply appropriate risk management consultations, research and assessments, accurate authorities and permissions, and delegations aligned with their position or appointment.
• Following the advice of Shane Warne and ‘the three lessons he shared [with his children] that ‘manners are free’, ‘don’t give up’ and ‘be present.’[18]
• Harnessing Parkinson’s Law through disciplined initiative and pro-active consultation, iteration, and version development of our work early, comprehensively, and often. Deliver our work before our due date. Empathise with time-pressures and due dates of others. If we are to risk, or miss, a due date, we advise as soon as delays are known.[19]
• Measuring achievements by assessing tasks throughThe Eisenhower Matrix as:
  • important and urgent: just do it!
  • important and not urgent: schedule it
  • not important and urgent: delegate it
  • not important and not urgent: delete it
  • unrealistic and unable to complete: negotiate it[20]

Enabling innovation: through:

• Defining purpose to communicate, clarify, guide, assure, and nurture our people’s and our teams:
  • Enabling of forgiveness, leading, learning, educating, training, rehearsals, and connections.
    • Realisation of roles, responsibilities, and allocation of resources to tasks.
    • Confidence to speak up for change and apply continuous workplace improvements.
    • Employment of appropriate approval and release authorities.
• Employing the Secret Power of the 8-Minute Phone Call[21]
• Replacing 60-minute and 30-minute meetings with 50-minute and 20-minute meetings. Always complete meetings on time (or earlier). Allow people 10-minute breaks between meetings. You may remember the value of 10-minute breaks between lessons at High School?

Conclusion

This article seeks to generate a conversation about purpose, aspirations, caring, humanity, and dignity in our workplace. This article defined health and team and reviewed the article Wellness of our Leaders, 2018. Finally, this article explored how, in 2026, through leaders planning, adjusting, and empowering; we can lead to support the health of our teams.

Healthy teams thrive through collaboration and work.

In teams, we collaborate and work with others to achieve more by allowing people – through voice, choice, and agency – to share their talents with the world. As teammates, colleagues, and leaders, we collaborate and work to enable, empower, and care for each other while enhancing organisational productivity through task delivery.

Through leading to support the health of our Team, we are all encouraged to:

• Plan: leaders meet frequently with their teams to dialogue personally and professionally. When they meet, leaders have a plan.
• Adjust: leaders adjust to build flexibility around teams striving to achieve tasks through psychological safety, growth mindset, and stoicism.
• Empower: leaders empower teams to increase team productivity through measuring achievements and enabling innovation.

The key message of this article is that we, as teammates, colleagues, and leaders must know our own strengths and weaknesses. We must demonstrate kindness. We must care for each other. Finally, we must collectively serve to ensure our colleagues’ health balances the demands of our employment with their own needs, the needs of their families, the needs of all our people, and the needs of our nation.