Leaders: Here’s How to Create Healthy Habits for Your Team

Building an arsenal of healthy habits takes time and discipline. As a leader, you already know the value of improving your habits one-by-one until they’re fully optimized to meet your needs. You also know that equipping your employees with the tools and skills they need to create these same healthy habits can propel your organization toward success.

By prioritizing the development of healthy habits for your team — and curbing bad ones — you no longer have to leave your employees’ habits to chance. While you can’t control everything your employees do, you can provide them with the resources they need to create healthy habits that benefit them for the long haul.

Doing so, will not only benefit the company’s bottom line, it will improve your workplace culture overall.

Successful People Have Strong Habits

One of the best ways to start encouraging your team to implement healthy habits into their lives is to look at the habits of people who are already achieving the goals you want to achieve. Many high achievers adopt similar lifestyle habits.

If you’re looking to overhaul some of your habits, or inspire new habits in your team, here are some habits to consider:

• Waking up early: In “Change Your Habits, Change Your Life,” author Tom Corley reports that nearly 50% of self-made millionaires got up at least three hours before their workday began. Early mornings are an excellent time for you to get a jump on the day, exercise, or work creatively while your mind is still focused from a good night’s sleep.
• Reading often: There are centuries of valuable information documented in books that can help you with your life, business, and career goals. Successful people make it a habit to read and absorb a constant stream of informative text. Bonus: Reading for pleasure can also help boost your career.
• Exercising regularly: Fully utilizing your mind-body connection is essential for success. Successful people make a habit of regular exercise because they know it trains their mind and body to work well together while reducing stress and preventing disease.
• Surrounding yourself with inspiring people: We’re each the sum of the people with whom we spend our time. Make a conscious decision to surround yourself with people who inspire you, then learn from them.
• Setting SMART goals: Goal setting is a great habit, but you can take it to the next level by making your goals SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound). Set SMART goals in every area of your life: career, relationships, health and well-being, finances, etc..
• Prioritizing sleep: If you want to unlock peak performance across the board, sleep is critical for success. In fact, Albert Einstein preferred to get 10 hours of sleep every night. When you make it a habit to prioritize sleep, you are often more productive and creative during the day.

Habits Among High-Performing Teams

High-performing teams tend to cultivate a culture of strong habit-building. Team members who strive to optimize their individual performances, also tend to influence the individual performances of other members in a way that benefits the whole group.

If one or two people on a team start making a keystone habit of skipping happy hour to go to the gym, for example, this habit will likely benefit the rest of your team. Once everyone starts trading afternoon scotches for Soul Cycle classes, your team has built a habit that benefits everyone.

Purposely try to build a culture that creates healthy habits in the workplace. Here are some other habits to develop:

• Clear communication: If everyone on your team contributes to the habit of clear communication, there’ll be less room for error and a clearer understanding of relational equity among teams.
• Growth mindset: By adopting the attitude of “how can we?” during projects and conflicts, your team members ensure everyone works together to take ownership of the company goals. Setbacks merely become new learning opportunities.
• Rest and recovery: A well-optimized team can’t spend every waking moment producing high-quality work. Team members need a period of rest and recovery to improve the quality of their performance. By encouraging team members to create intentional habits in caring for their mental and physical well-being, you optimize the team’s performance as a whole.

How to Encourage Healthy Habits, and Prevent Bad Habits

As a leader, you’re in a great position to provide your team with accountability for their good habits, and this accountability can go a long way in improving your team’s work. By providing them with comprehensive resources that promote adopting healthy habits, you can create a work culture that prioritizes health.

Providing habit-building training or technology, like a habit-tracking app, gives your team critical tools to change their behaviors, set goals, and achieve them successfully.

Corporate wellness programs also provide your organization with a high return on investment. A key component of employee wellness is prevention, and by teaching your team members to avoid habits that could contribute to poor health or burnout, you can help them to optimize their focus and productivity. Other programs around energy management and wellness, such as stress management, sleep optimization, and work-life harmony, empower your people to become the best versions of themselves they can be.

The Bottom Line

Leaders have a responsibility to provide their teams with the resources they need to create healthy habits that benefit them for the long haul.

Once you start investing in helping your employees develop and improve habits, you can change the trajectory of your company culture. From improved productivity and energy levels to stress resilience, investing in your people is a high-return investment for not only them but the business.

Could your team use support to develop healthier habits? We design corporate wellness programs to support your people in feeling great and performing better every day.