Taking care of your mental health when you’re the boss

As a company director, how often do you think about your own mental health? Do you take the time to measure your happiness? Perhaps you’re too busy, don’t have the time… but what if we took a few minutes now?

Quality of working life (QWL) is a commonly followed indicator in companies but not when it comes to company founders and directors; for their contentedness, there is precious little data.

Just under 70% of employees questioned for one study by the Workforce Institute said that their manager has just as much of an impact on their mental health as their spouse, and more than the impact made by their doctor (51%) or their therapist (41%). That’s the influence you, as a manager and guardian of company culture, have on your workforce. And in turn, on your company’s performance.

What we can infer from that is that your own well-being has a knock-on effect on those who work for you. So who’s looking out for you?

Well, we are.

On your behalf, we spoke to Céline O'Quigley, a clinical psychologist at moka.care, the complete mental health prevention solution for business teams. Here’s what she told us about how entrepreneurs and business leaders can monitor and improve their mental health.

The quality of working life for employees is a hot topic in many businesses. But the quality of life of those leading those businesses is an issue that’s much less explored. Bosses are rarely asked about their state of mind. And, even when asked, there is little resulting sympathy; these people have chosen to be in a position of power and should worry less about their own well-being than about the welfare of their subordinates. Or so the argument goes.

Yet, the boss is only human and is likely to have a family, a private life, fears, doubts, ups and downs. What they’re certain to have is their condition of physical and mental health. And health requires maintenance.

But the adverse medical symptoms of ‘being the boss’ can be treated. In fact, they must be treated. After all, how can leaders protect the quality of life of those they lead if they can’t protect their own?

The data that does exist on the subject in France suggests managers are faring worse than the people they manage in terms of coping with their mental load. Supermood and MEDEF launched the Executives’ Quality of Life index (Qualité de Vie des Dirigeants) in 2020 to understand the main sources of both stress and fulfilment. They surveyed hundreds of company directors over several months to study:

• their work-life balance;
• their relationships with their teams in terms of leadership, quality of feedback and peer-to-peer recognition;
• the health of their business (profitability, salary etc.).

The results support those published in another study by Apec in 2022.

65% of managers feel they have an excessive workload (compared to 47% of non-management employees) and 62% report a feeling of professional exhaustion (compared to 48%). Those signalling an intense level of stress were 64% of managers, versus 48% of non-managers.

When we consider that employees credit their managers and their spouses with the same amount of impact on their mental health, we can see the importance of improving the life satisfaction levels of managers and directors.

For Céline O'Quigley, there is little - in mental health terms - to distinguish between employees, freelancers and managers: for all three demographics, the indications are the same, split into three categories.

• The emotional sphere. This involves measuring the leaders’ level of commitment to their work. Are they able to ‘switch off’ from work or are they excessively involved emotionally? Is there a balance between their professional and personal involvement?
• The cognitive sphere. Does the entrepreneur suffer from lapses in concentration or memory? Memory disorders can indicate an imminent burnout.
• The physiological sphere. Back pain, insomnia, weight gain, and digestive disorders are among the main signs that should alert freelancers or business leaders to poor mental health.

Through her role with Moka.care, Céline O'Quigley has experience in guiding executives through difficulties with their mental health. She reveals simple yet concrete advice for preserving a decent quality of working life for business owners and freelancers. 

Schedule management is a good place to start. Your diary can be your friend or your enemy, depending on how you leverage it. Insert time in your schedule for non-work-related occasions: dinner with friends, lunch with the family or time out for a hobby. Try to include activities that combat stress, like sport or yoga.

Communicating has never been so quick and easy, thanks to email and other instant messaging apps on our phones and at our fingertips. But if this makes it easier for us to connect with colleagues and customers, it also makes it more difficult to disconnect. But disconnecting helps our mental health. So, let’s make sure we do it. 

If freelancers and other independent workers don’t have to worry as much about the potential stress of managing colleagues, they are more concerned with issues of isolation and hyper-connection with their working life. Another piece of advice in this domain is to carry out tasks sequentially, one at a time, rather than trying to multitask and do everything at once. 

Connecting with other managers and executives is an excellent way of avoiding feelings of loneliness. Getting together with them regularly in groups of four, five or six will enable you to create bonds and realize that other people are facing the same challenges that you face; you are not alone. 

Hero Syndrome, sometimes also known as the Savior Complex, is something many executives will be familiar with (even if they’re not all aware of it). It’s a psychological phenomenon which leads people to think that they - and only they - can save their company or their colleagues. It can be well-meaning and altruistic, but it can also send your quality of working life into a downward, dangerous spiral. It’s what makes managers suffer in silence and think, wrongly, that they don’t have the same right to help as everyone else.

Protecting your quality of working life goes hand-in-hand with preserving your mental health in your life outside of work. It will boost your performance and the success of your company as a whole. But it isn’t always easy. You need to allow yourself to think about it and set aside time to work on it. Like any other project you’ve got on the go, it is something that needs to be built with your teams and others around you.