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CHAPTER 21
Leading Individual and Collective Well-being
for Planetary Health
Wanda Krause
Introduction
From a 2017 Gallup poll using analytics from 160 countries on the global
workplace, 33% of employees were engaged, 51% were not engaged, and 16%
were actively disengaged. Engagement rates wer e relatively unchanged for over
a decade. In 2021, fluctuations were observed and in 2022, we saw these fluc-
tuations move to decline whereby 60% of people reported being emotionally
detached at work and 19% as being miserable (actively disengaged). Here,
again, only 33% reported feeling engaged. In the USA specifically, 50% of
workers reported feeling stressed at their jobs on a daily basis, 41% as being
worried, 22% as sad, and 18% angry (Gallup, 2022). In 2022, in Canada,
20–30% of employees started their day feeling sad or angry (Forbs, 2022).
Kincentric (2022) tracked global employee engagement between 2019 to
2022 including 12 million employees across 125 markets. Similarly, Kincen-
tric’s (2022) research on engagement was at 67% over 2019, rose to a high
close to mid-2021 with 73%, although averaging 69% during the year, and
then saw a decline to 62% in 2022. The questions this chapter seeks to reflect
on are: What might we learn from the experiences related to these years to
contemplate how we may lead better post-COVID-19? As engagement is used
as a measure of workplace well-being the following considers engagement as
W. Krause (B)
Royal Roads University, MA Global Leadership Program, School of Leadership
Studies, Victoria, BC, Canada
e-mail: wanda.1krause@royalroads.ca
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2023
J. Marques (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Fulfillment,
Wellness, and Personal Growth at Work,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35494-6_21
387
388 W. KRAUSE
a factor but points to others as well. The assumption is that we are entering
an era where we will have to recognize that we are not going back to the
same ways of working as we did pre-COVID-19. What do experiences during
these years of chaos brought on largely by the pandemic tell us in the scope of
well-being, individually and collectively more broadly in aligning to planetary
health?
The author’s differential experience with higher levels of engagement is
the impetus for this chapter’s revisiting the heavy emphasis on engagement
driven by both leadership studies and popular research on engagement in the
workplace. The Gallup (2022) report states:
Wellbeing and engagement interact with each other in powerful ways. When
employees are engaged and thriving, they experience significantly less stress,
anger and health problems. Unfortunately, most employees remain disengaged
at work. In fact, low engagement alone costs the global economy $7.8 tril-
lion. The relationship between wellbeing and engagement is vital because how
people experience work influences their lives outside work, and overall wellbeing
influences life at work. (finding six)
The report consequently affir ms: “Organizations need to think about the
whole person, not just the worker” (2022, finding 6). Although satisfaction
and well-being may be connected to higher levels of engagement, individual
and collective well-being can also be compromised by higher levels of engage-
ment. Further, Gallup’s polls are often refer enced to emphasize the correlation
of engagement to not only greater levels of satisfaction but also productivity.
However, other even more significant determinants are often neglected. As
such, we might ask if engagement levels might actually also be productive
of higher levels of dissatisfaction and burnout, and under what conditions.
Because burnout is simultaneously tracked as increasing or, at least fluctuating,
within the years where COVID-19 presented most significantly to date, higher
engagement may not be such a great thing at all times.
The anomaly more specifically close to mid-2021 tracked in the Kincen-
tric (2022) report s eems to be ignored in google searches on engagement
and in the recent literature. Higher engagement continues to be presented as
the thing for which we ought to be striving. In fact, with a hyper-focus on
engagement, specific instruments have been created to measure it. The Work
Engagement Scale-17 is one of the most commonly utilized tools to measure
work engagement globally. Yet, Song et al. (2021) found that it did not reflect
the level of work engagement adequately in their case study and more s ignif-
icantly in attempting to understand male and female participants proved to
express inadequate differentiation between males and females.
The following seeks to nuance the view that engagement correlates to
greater satisfaction and well-being. The chapter advocates bringing largely
siloed perspectives together to understand, first, the meaning of well-being.
It does so by connecting to the framework of planetary health. Such is, in
21 LEADING INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE WELL-BEING … 389
fact, critical as we are faced with multiple and compounded global challenges
moving forward in what we refer to as post-COVID-19. In 2023, COVID-19
infections were still present globally; however, for the sake of differentiating
the era of mobility after physical distancing measures and enforcement of
COVID-19 policies, we will refer to this period as post-COVID-19. Using
reflective analysis through differential observations from within leadership,
the following also interrogates the assumption that productivity is, in fact,
a key goal we ought to keep at the forefront of planning and the reason for
engaging.
Engagement is but one variable and not even the key variable. Others,
such as Kulikowski (2022), similarly point out that engagement as a central
construct for well-being at work is problematic. Kulikowski (2022)argues, in
fact, the current understanding of engagement overlooks what people consider
as engagement, arguing for the need for understanding engagement from the
employee point of view. Following an interrogation of the assumptions around
engagement, my argument is that well-being must also be understood in a
holistic, decolonized manner. Recognizing that planetary health is a broad
term and ill-defined, at least in western neoliberal and secular frameworks,
what follows is a working definition, resting on both western and traditional
knowledge. The chapter follows with a discussion and recommendations on
leading individual and collective well-being in the post-COVID-19 era.
Planetary Health
“Planetary health” is a relatively new concept to the scientific community
in the west, elevated in 2015 to greater awareness in western research by
the Rockefeller Foundation, although earlier discussed in the 1970s. It has,
however, been a central philosophy and practice of Indigenous communi-
ties globally for millennia. In the western lexicon, in brief, it conceptually
connects the individual to the planet (Prescott & Logan, 2019). In this recent
framing, planetary health has served to expand and broaden the term “public
health” that has dominated the discourse over the past two decades (Jamison
et al., 2013) to “one health” and now to planetary. In capturing and lifting
the definition to a broader perspective, the planetary health manifesto and
the Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on Planetary Health defined
planetary health as:
… the achievement of the highest attainable standard of health, wellbeing, and
equity worldwide through judicious attention to the human systems—political,
economic, and social—that shape the future of humanity and the Earth’s natural
systems that define the safe environmental limits within which humanity can
flourish. Put simply, planetary health is the health of human civilisation and the
state of the natural systems on which it depends. (2015, p. 1978)
390 W. KRAUSE
In addressing the empathy failures, inequity, and engaging across diverse
worldviews, it is important to bridge western and non-western thought, or
Global North and Global South perspectives and ways of being, doing, and
seeing. A means to do so is through decolonizing lenses and approaches.
Decolonial planetary health aspires to center the diversity and importance of
Indigenous thought and s tewardship (Hoogeven et al., 2023). “Indigenous”
refers to those who identify their ancestry with original inhabitants of coun-
tries worldwide (Wilson, 2008). Principles from traditional knowledges (TK),
in general, can support a more inclusive and relational approach to inform
leadership thinking and practice to go further in, if not rediscover, being more
integral in several significant ways (Krause, 2023). Traditional knowledge can
be defined as “all that is known about the world around us and how to apply
that knowledge in relation to those beings that share the world” (Bennet et al.,
2014). As such, it is more accurate to acknowledge the concept of “plane-
tary health” has been around for millennia in various forms of thinking and
practice, as found in traditional knowledges.
Hoogeven et al. (2023) advocate “highlighting intercultural thinking to
promote an anti-colonial, anti-racist, and reciprocal approach to climate
change and global health inequities across geographical space and within
planetary health discourse” (para. 1), considering how rigorous engage-
ment with epistemic and geographical diversity can strengthen and advance
planetary health. Ubalijoro and Lee (2022) argue “[i]t is noteworthy that
hunter-gatherer societies have practiced for millennia situational and inclusive
leadership only relatively recently (re)discovered in modern leadership theories
such as servant leadership, transformational leadership and holocracy” (p. 52).
Current challenges in planetary health and decolonization are necessarily
related to the COVID-19 pandemic (Hoogeven et al., 2023, para. 7).
The Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission (2015) offered three
categories of challenges that would need to be addressed to both maintain
and enhance human health. These are conceptual and empathy failures, the
failure to account for future health and environmental harms over present-day
gains, and the disproportionate effect of those harms on the poor and those
in developing nations. The field of planetary health recognizes human impacts
on the environment, and specifically, the impacts that the exploitative prac-
tices initiated by colonialism and maintained by capitalism have on the natural
systems of the planet, ultimately threatening human health. The Commission
argued that “a population attains a given level of health by exploiting the envi-
ronment unsustainably then it is likely to be doing so at the expense of other
populations—now or in the future, or both” (2015, p. 1978).
Not only has exploitation occurred around the planet’s resources but the
colonizing and exploiting of people for social, economic, and political gain and
dominance. Hence, it is impossible to talk about creating human health in rela-
tion to environmental health without considering human health as relates to
individual and collective well-being at all levels and with the lens of inequity
(Krause, 2022). As such, we must consider the realms of the social, political,
21 LEADING INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE WELL-BEING … 391
and organizational from an intersectional lens, as well the interconnections
between political, social, and environmental discourses in shaping human
perceptions, decision-making, and behavior, as well leadership behavior.
Essentially, planetary health is also an approach to life which attempts to
address inequalities, with the objective that all people on the globe have the
ability to enjoy health and well-being (Gostin et al., 2018), and leave no
one behind (Holst, 2020; UN Committee for Development, 2018). We can
consider how changing how we lead at policy levels, within organizations, and
how we conduct ourselves can change the trajectory of colonization in its old
and modern forms and top-down non-inclusive hierarchies to greater inclusion
and equity. We can do so through efforts at decolonization and transforma-
tion of systems. In this, we must recognize the power and agency we hold,
both as leaders and followers, to re-define societal values to promote justice,
equity, and inclusion. Through changing discourses, choices, and practices, we
can shift collective value systems, and promote individual and planetary health
from the grassroots or organizational levels upwards. From this perspective,
while we seek to protect biological diversity, we must also seek to protect not
only cultural diversity but nurture equity and caring relationships as means for
advancing individual and collective health and well-being.
Hence, how can planetary health leadership transform power relations in
promoting and protecting well-being from the individual and grassroots to
the broader collective and global levels? It is important, therefore, to recognize
and understand how power has been exercised to lead to a state of burnout
and active disengagement, and enable a gap between the rich and poor, among
various intersectionalities. From the grassroots up, inclusive of organizations,
civil society and communities, it is imperative to, thus, secure diversity, equity,
and inclusion and address unfair treatment within organizations, too.
The Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission (2015) identifies the
importance of changing human behavior as the connection to human progress
and well-being. In line with a focus on human behavior, the WISER
framework advocates inter ventions that consider or can help contribute to
well-being, inclusivity, sufficiency, empowerment, and resilience. These five
categories can encompass the 17 interlinked sustainable development goals
(SDGs) listed below. The authors of the WISER framework define well-being
as “the degree to which people can flourish as a whole, as characterized by
being happy and surrounded by resources that are necessary to ensure an
optimal life expectancy.” Building on “the degree to which people can flourish
as a whole,” it is also important to understand flourishing holistically. Such
encompass the emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual, as also aligned to
Indigenous and TK epistemologies.
Basso and Krpan (2023) offer the following SDGs, as focus, to support the
WISER framework:
•SDG2: end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and
promote sustainable agriculture;
392 W. KRAUSE
•SDG3: ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages;
•SDG6: ensure availability and sustainable management of water and
sanitation for all; and
•SDG7: ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern
energy for all.
Basso and Krpan (2023) suggest that a behavioral intervention can be
reviewed to consider the following questions: “does this intervention bring
people the resources, whether material or immaterial, that they are missing (1)
to live more healthily, (2) to live more sustainably, and (3) that contribute to
their well-being” (2023, para. 4)? These questions align well with the focus on
the four SDGs above as interventions that leaders can consider in their work
to empower and support. The planetary health lens, described here, seeks to
empower and support people’s emotional, mental, and spiritual needs, more
explicitly, and from a greater understanding of intersectionality. In addressing
power relations and imbalances, it is important, then, to include empowerment
of marginalized voices and advance practices as part of a decolonized plane-
tary health lens, thereby promoting well-being individually and collectively as
aligned to context and place. It must also be situated as the lens of those
who are central to their own agency; as such, sees interventions as a collective
effort, if not necessarily so, through the partnerships and engagements with
those who must have a say in what matters to them in any intervention. As
Prescott and Logan (2019, p. 1) argue, the role of beliefs, expectations, and
agency are core in linking narrative and planetary health.
Three further categorizations Basso and Krpan (2023) connect to the
categorization above of well-being are as follows: inclusivity through SDG1,
SDG5, SDG10, SDG16; sufficiency through SDG12, SDG14, SDG15,
empowerment through SDG4, SDG8, SDG17, and resilience through SDG9,
SDG11, SDG13. They, too, note where possible, it is important to include
the local actors (empowerment) to nurture behavioral change in the long run
(resilience) based on the diversity of the needs of the actors involved in the
community (inclusivity). The complexity of interrelated psychological, social,
and ecological problems that dynamically interact to drive the currently devel-
oping challenges cannot be understood or responded to appropriately by using
compartmentalized, specialized, and partial thinking (Wahl, 2006). The SDGs
are not the only means or even necessarily the best means to capture glob-
ally interconnected goals founded upon individual and collective well-being
(Krause, 2023). However, the UN’s framework for sustainable development
goals is one way of presenting the interconnections, especially in regard to
behavior, between micro-level, meso-level, and macro-level determinants for
planetary health. Redvers et al. (2022) introduce an Indigenous concensus
perspective, for example, to define the determinants of planetary health,
with three overarching levels of interconnected determinants, in addition to
ten individual-level determinants. The overarching levels are: Mother-Earth
level determinants, interconnecting determinants, and Indigenous People’s
21 LEADING INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE WELL-BEING … 393
determinants. The authors emphasize that it is critical to conceptualise the
determinants of planetary health from an Indigenous perspective by embracing
and advancing Indigenous-specific methods of knowledge from around the
globe.
What Does Engagement Mean in the Scope of Planetary Health?
As remote or work from home has increased over the years reviewed here,
so has the blurring between work and home life. The blurring of work and
home, the increased pressures to manage chaos as a result of COVID-19, and
the lack of dir ection among some workplaces, during these times of uncer-
tainty, certainly impact well-being. Such leads to problems fulfilling work and
family tasks and responsibilities, which in turn further impacts health (Forbs,
2022). Consequently, while working from home may have many upsides, it
does not mean that stress did not increase simultaneously. In early 2020, I
resolved to establish more frequent engagement with others. Believing that
extending greater support was of benefit, I correlated that sense of purpose
to my greater personal satisfaction and fulfillment. Engaging with others to
think through new challenges, largely presented by COVID-19, mostly felt
supportive. On the other hand, like many others, work-related hours were
not only even longer but compounded with more challenges to address, and,
indeed, challenges of greater complexity and, taken together with the respon-
sibility to family. Double-booking meetings became a means to fit increasing
demands and tasks in the same span of space. Replenishing of self and relations
became more challenging.
The experience of feeling stretched through longer hours and the need to
attend to greater and multiple demands are a necessary phase on which to
reflect and examine how leaders can better support individual and collective
well-being for the prospect of planetary health now and into the future, in a
post-COVID-19 era. More significantly, “[t]his is an Era of Opportunity that
provides businesses with an inflection point unmatched in history” (Kinsentric,
2022, p. 3)—for any type of organization or civil society activism. Even though
the concept of employee engagement has been discussed for the past decade,
employee engagement surveys among most corporations still continue to show
an overall decline in engagement levels among employees worldwide (Kuok &
Taormina, 2017).
Revisiting the correlations attributed to higher engagement is not to dismiss
the merit of engagement, nor to argue that engagement should not be
somewhere on the priority list for planning effective leadership strategies
for workplace well-being. However, given the decoupling of higher levels of
engagement from higher levels of satisfaction during this time impacted by
COVID-19, given that despite the value placed on engagement workplaces
are generally seeing a decline in engagement nonetheless, and given that
post-COVID-19 has in fact also evolved to a time referred to as the Great
Resignation, whereby higher numbers of people in the USA are quitting jobs,
394 W. KRAUSE
I argue for a pause to reflect. This is both a time of new learnings to take
forward on understanding what engagement means in the scope of planetary
health when working focusing on individual and collective well-being.
It is established that COVID-19 can be attributed as a key variable in the
levels of stress and burnout experienced in the workplace and life in general.
However, it is not just the hours, work-life balance, or workplace location
that have left workers dissatisfied. What matters is how they experience that
work, in other words how they are managed, treated, and coached (Forbs,
2022). Gallup research has also found that the number one reason for job
dissatisfaction is “unfair treatment at work.” This means that the lack of a
culture that emphasizes respect, diversity and inclusiveness, community, and
acknowledgment of contribution will negatively impact a sense of well-being.
Gallup repor ts mistreatment by coworkers, inconsistent compensation, biases
and favoritism are top examples of “unfair treatment.” In addition, beyond
unfair treatment, job dissatisfaction correlates with lack of manager support,
unclear communication from management, and unreasonable time pressures—
all are indicators of burnout and job dissatisfaction (Forbs, 2022). How, then,
can we lead better?
Leading Individual and Collective Well-Being
If “unfair treatment” is found to be a leading reason for dissatisfaction,
then inequity ought to be higher on a leader’s priority list for addressing
or supporting well-being in the organization. After all, how we engage
is determined by our biases for and toward individuals, groups, agendas,
and assumptions of what goals are most important. Inequity and exclusion
persist across systems; that is, within organizations, society, and in view of
increasing global challenges, globally. As such, leaders have a critical role to
play to support planetary health through the individual and collective levels
in ways that are cognizant of bias and, I will further argue, short-sighted
goals. In December 2021, the WHO World Health Assembly established
an International Negotiating Board (INB) to reach a global cooperative
agreement on future pandemic preparedness by 2024. One of their areas
of focus is the human–environment interactions that contribute to pandemic
risk. As the Lancet Planetary Health (2023) affirms, “The Pandemic Treaty
therefore represents an important opportunity to take an integrated whole-
environment approach to strengthening global health” (para. 1). Therefore,
that taking a holistic view of well-being is critical, and in this vein, consid-
ering how we are leading individual and collective well-being not mer ely
for efficiency or productivity but in relation to an integrated, interdependent
whole-environment.
As leaders are in positions to develop and implement interventions at orga-
nizational levels, too, and given what we may learn from a global challenge
affecting human and global health, we can reflect on how best to move
forward, considering how to manage, treat, and coach (Forbs, 2022)or, in
21 LEADING INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE WELL-BEING … 395
other words, lead employees or followers. Our workplaces are increasingly
seeing burnout and stress manifesting in many ways, as the Gallup and Kincen-
tric reports demonstrate. We might consider, as Basso and Krpan (2023)
suggest, that a behavioral intervention within communities and at the orga-
nizational level is led with questions, such as: “does this intervention bring
people the resources, whether material or immaterial, that they are missing
(1) to live more healthily, (2) to live more sustainably, and (3) that contribute
to their well-being?” Organizational leaders need to also create culturally safe,
equitable, and inclusive environments as part of well-being. Organizational
leaders, therefore, require the systems thinking and strategies for interventions
within their organizations also for a positive impact on the larger social and
planetary systems (Krause, 2022).
Addressing the behavioral intervention, and the question: Does this inter-
vention bring people resour ces, whether material or immaterial, that they are
missing? People need more support to get work done, when there are concerns
relating to insufficient resources and staffing levels (Kincentric, 2022). In the
Kincentric (2022) study, 50% of people globally felt they had their staffing
needs met, meaning 50% did not. It is not surprising that despite the emphasis
on engagement, studies are seeing an overall trend toward lower levels of
engagement. If one feels stretched to do the work that could better be
supported by further staff one might not welcome engagement that would
take time away from completing tasks and risk burnout. Interventions that
bring resources for greater efficiency do not necessarily lead to more time for
the individual and, in fact, the opposite can result whereby the freed time has
already been allocated to with other tasks. The intent for efficiency, as facil-
itated by leaders, is not for greater work-life balance but usually for greater
productivity.
Even before COVID-19, a decrease in work-life balance has been found
among studies, leading the Kincentric (2022) study to conclude “it isn’t
surprising that they are feeling underappreciated and underpaid” (p. 5).
Without systems thinking and strategies for inter ventions within their orga-
nizations also for a positive impact on the larger social and planetary systems,
it will be difficult to put people first. Currently, even when a people first state-
ment is made by leadership, there is a disjuncture to practice. Equal treatment
and social justice must be leadership practices not merely taught in the lead-
ership literature but practiced among leaders if well-being and satisfaction are
part and parcel of an organization’s success. The 23rd IUHPE World Confer-
ence on Health Promotion held in Rotorua, Aotearoa New Zealand in April
2019, had the theme “Waiora: promoting planetary health and sustainable
development for all.” Representing global Indigenous and traditional knowl-
edges, it called for a reorientation of health awareness toward planetary health
and sustainable development while also focusing on equity and social justice
(Krause, 2023). Messages included raising awareness that western approaches
are culturally bound and tend to further the interests of the neoliberal agenda
(Krause, 2023).
396 W. KRAUSE
The kind of engagement matters. Engagement around process matters
but it can also feel challenging to engage in conversations and meetings
around process when the vision is not clear, beforehand fully understood,
not modeled, and demonstrated by leadership, or the vision is not co-cr eated.
Kincentric (2022) found that engagement is eight times higher when senior
leaders make people feel excited about the future. However, while communi-
cating vision is emphasized if people do not buy into, co-create, and see the
words behind the vision lived and practiced by leaders, the vision can carry
little motivational quality. In fact, the demonstration of misalignment to vision
or lip service to values underlying a vision can erode trust in the vision and
trust in leadership preaching to the vision.
Leaders, both executive and senior, need to ask themselves why they are
seeking to engage and whether higher levels of engagement at a minimum
during times of greater stress is helpful, and to whom. Leaders need to
be aware of seeking to engage encompasses some form of communicating
one way, whether communicating developments, new directions, changes,
or additional tasks. Over-communicating versus under-communicating might
benefit in the long term in that employees feel they are on the right
track, and such minimizes the chances of having to retrace steps, revisit, or
redo tasks on the leader’s and follower’s side. However, leaders need to be
cognizant of the possible impacts of over-communicating, the side effects,
or unintended consequences. When communication becomes routinely one-
directional, such communication can land as being told or commanded, rather
than collaborative and opinions valued.
Inquiry and deep listening become critical forms of leadership in engage-
ment. These are competencies that leaders need to further, particularly in
turbulent times. However, these are leadership competencies that are critical
to nurture relationships and build trust over longer periods of time. These
entail effectively holding space for those they lead as a routine leadership
and engagement practice. Leaders can practice inquiry by asking open-ended
or semi-open-ended questions with genuine curiosity. The leadership impera-
tive is to seek guidance from others, particularly being attuned to including
marginalized voices, and actively responding to opinions, grievances, goals,
and desires expressed. Deep listening is letting go of all distractions and
holding heart-centered focus on the person you are listening to, remaining
grounded, present, clear, attentive, open, observant, and curious. When deep
listening, one drops down from thinking to attention on the heart and listens
from this space of awareness and being (Krause, n.d.). This practice can be
understood as empathetic listening as listening entails seeking to truly hear
and understand the other. Such is leading from the heart, the place from which
connections for engagement are created, an endeavor that is impossible from
the place merely of mind. Such practice also involves cultural competencies as
different worldviews will be expressed.
COVID-19 served to create not only physical but also social distance, felt
much more strongly by some than others. Leaders are not immune to stress at
21 LEADING INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE WELL-BEING … 397
the least. Where isolation or burnout was likely felt more strongly by some
than others, these often competing needs among different leaders require
different responses and planning by executive leadership. Where leaders and
followers are feeling isolated or they have a greater need to connect with others
specifically in the workplace, opportunities to connect need to be presented.
In many Global North cultures, community is not found outside the home
as more prevalent and present for those in the Global South (Ife, 2016)—in
most, although, as my previous research (2009, 2012) found not all instances,
particularly for marginalized and racialized people in those contexts. Gallop’s
research found that both Europe and South Asia (including India) dropped
five percentage points in well-being in 2021, with South Asia at the lowest in
well-being in the world at 11%. In these regions, people felt that their current
life is worse than it had been previously. Hope in the future had also dropped
(Gallup, 2022).
The challenge to leaders is that they sometimes attach to that role identity
and understanding of resilience that is superhuman. In key respects, leaders
have gotten to their positions through hard work, determination, and grit.
Many of us women have been taught by our especially racialized family in
advocating for our success and happiness that we have to work much, much
harder. No doubt male leaders in the workplace are socially expected to lead
in a way where vulnerability is also a taboo to show in leadership, particu-
larly in hard times. Gallup (2022) found that while almost half of the world’s
workers felt the burden of stress, working women in the US and Canada
region were among the most stressed employees globally. Executive and senior
leadership do need to be aware of these vulnerabilities as related to individual
circumstance and intersectionalities where higher levels of engagement may
be leading to burnout and not communicated due to internalized expecta-
tions of what leadership and the role entails. Leadership need to provide
tangible resources, including time away. Time away, as a tangible resource,
is, however, improbable when 50% of workers already do not have adequate
staffing support. Therefore, one intervention on its own will not work unless
the impacts of that intervention are fully understood and mitigated.
Relying on a concept of planetary health that seeks to bridge Indigenous
and western lenses, it is imperative to consider individual and collective inter-
ventions and support from a holistic and epistemologically inclusive lens. For
planetary health, as a concept, to truly provide a way forward that supports
the health of the planet sustainably, it will also be necessary to go beyond
dominant western worldviews that continue to contribute a capitalist mindset,
whether subtly or overtly as in one that extracts from the planet that which
exclusively benefits “man and human communities” (Redvers et al., 2020).
Burnout and compromised well-being cannot be addressed sustainably from a
worldview and mindset shaped by capitalist, extractive mindsets, and world-
views. A shifting in thinking must be informed by a worldview that truly
centers caring, relationship, equity, and justice.
398 W. KRAUSE
Conclusions
The author’s differential experience with higher levels of engagement is the
impetus to this inquiry. There is a heavy emphasis on engagement as a lead-
ership value and practice, particularly discussed in the literature regarding
leadership and followership within organizations. Gallup’s polls are often refer-
enced in discussions around engagement and used as the critical indicator of
how people feel in their workplaces as relates to their well-being and satis-
faction. Gallup (2022), however, points to other factors that can be seen as
indicators of well-being. As Gallup (2022) has also found, it’s not just the
hours, work-life balance, or workplace location that lead to dissatisfaction and
unhappiness. The report, in fact, has demonstrated that disengagement has
risen with remote work or work from home. The significance of this chapter’s
inquiry, therefore, is manifold. I have striven to address the question of under
what conditions higher engagement levels are productive of higher levels of
dissatisfaction and burnout. I asked, what might we learn from these experi-
ences to contemplate how we may lead better post-COVID-19? What do these
experiences tell us in the scope of well-being, individually and collectively more
broadly in aligning to planetary health?
Because burnout is simultaneously tracked as increasing over these years in
review, particularly in 2021 and during COVID-19, higher levels of engage-
ment may actually not be such a great thing at all times. Particularly where
insufficient material and immaterial supports are not present, such higher levels
of engagement may actually lead to burnout. We ought, instead, to consider
centering the factors, such as, insufficient supports along with higher levels of
engagement, the focus on productivity over deep listening as part of engage-
ment in the organizations, engaging in a lop-sided one-directional manner
over inquiry into the needs, ideas, and goals of individuals, and significantly
inequality in treatment. If we are to navigate the issue of sustained stress to
achieve the goals and changes we say we want to see, and not get sick, our
well-being is priority.
In leading better, we might also see post-COVID-19 as the era for revisiting
some of the assumptions around higher levels of engagement that have (1) not
led to leadership practice that has actually been shown to increase engagement
over time and (2) been shaped by thinking, being, doing, and seeing from a
colonizing paradigm that leads to us becoming disengaged from ourselves,
not just others, and sick. Now is the time to shift our thinking and practices
in the way we lead with more holistic and inclusive paradigms, as advanced by
traditional knowledge systems, such as Indigenous ways of being, doing, and
seeing.
By becoming more resilient, adapting better, doing work more efficiently
and more effectively, we may not end up as a civilization where we want to
be (Krause, n.d.). The significance of exploring the various, and especially
marginalized wisdom traditions, is to cultivate insights into how to support
individual and collective well-being to align to and advance planetary health.
21 LEADING INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE WELL-BEING … 399
This inquiry is particularly critical as we contemplate how to create transfor-
mations at a time that demands that we work in ways that are different to
pre-COVID-19. The way forward for better leadership involves cultivating
individual and collective well-being that aligns with planetary health. This
approach must (1) link the inner being to the outer world and in relation-
ship, (2) foster inclusion and equity, and (3) bridge Indigenous wisdoms
and traditional knowledges to support a holistic and integral perspective
for larger systems alignment (Krause, 2023). Traditional knowledges can be
learned from various sources globally. The significance of these wisdoms is the
emphasis on symbiotic relationships whereby individual thriving is understood
as related to collective thriving and part of the web of interconnections of all
life held within our planetary system.
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