Are these 7 leadership traps risking your wellbeing?

Wellbeing: a word we hear repeated constantly, yet often without ever grasping its true meaning.

For many, the concept of wellbeing goes hand in hand with ideas of perpetual peace and happiness – which are of course complete misinterpretations and only serve to take us further away from actually caring for our wellbeing.

In the public sector, it’s not uncommon for leaders’ wellbeing to suffer due to the unique pressures they face, such as:

• constantly making high-stakes decisions
• engaging in complex stakeholder relationships
• expectations to consistently model values such as impartiality, integrity, and stewardship.

Consistently caring for our wellbeing while navigating these pressures is not always easy, and its seemingly impossible for some. In addition to not knowing how to do one and the other, the skills needed to actively and confidently care for our wellbeing are seldom talked about…let alone taught.

Instead, we continue to relate to wellbeing in abstract ways that lead to pointless actions – such as simply telling someone to care about their wellbeing, or giving them an extra day off every quarter for life admin.

But all the pool tables and bean bags and generalist talk about this crucial topic is doing little to support it, and so I ask:

When are we going to have real discussions about wellbeing so we can create concrete pathways for actionable change?

Typical traps that undermine public sector leaders’ wellbeing

Actively caring for your wellbeing is many things, including looking at the way we approach challenges, manage stress, and adapt to changing circumstances. It’s also acknowledging where you’re struggling. Our wellbeing ebbs and flows and reflects our capacity for resilience, which supports how we interact with the world and navigate personal and professional setbacks.

While wellbeing is often seen as a luxury that can be sacrificed when time is tight or demands are high (which may be all the time), this constant emphasis on immediate results overshadows the importance of building a workforce that is able to sustain high performance over time. This approach favours what benefits us now at the expense of what will sustain us, and our workforce, in the future.

There are unique value-driven pressures on public sector leaders who are required to constantly reconcile their personal beliefs with public mandates which can add another layer of emotional strain. The Jobs Demands-Resources model offers a framework for understanding how these unique pressures impact leaders’ wellbeing. In the JD-R model, wellbeing results from a balance between job demands (like decision-making, public accountability, and complex stakeholder relationships) and job resources (like organisational support, autonomy, and self-care practices). Without adequate resources to meet demands, leaders face a heightened risk of burnout, reducing their ability to function effectively and sustainably.

There are 7 common traps leaders fall into which can undermine their wellbeing. Do any of the following resonate with you?

1. Working excessively – you sacrifice rest and recovery for perceived productivity.
2. Saying yes too often – you try to prove your worth by taking on more than you can handle.
3. Responding immediately – you feel the need to respond to every communication regardless of priority.
4. Overcommitting to meetings – you focus on constant visibility over meaningful engagement.
5. Absorbing team stress – you take on the emotional weight of your team’s challenges.
6. Not developing others – you try to fix every problem instead of empowering your team to solve issues independently.
7. Not taking a systems view – you focus too narrowly on immediate tasks and personal responsibilities, overlooking how organisational support can help balance demands. This can lead to burnout by neglecting the shared resources needed for sustainable leadership.

These behaviours don’t come from a lack of caring, but a lack of understanding about wellbeing as a core leadership responsibility – as well as the skills needed to enable it. This is the reality for countless leaders in the public sector today.

Emma Prime, Organisational Psychologist, says “These behaviours can lead to exhaustion and diminished wellbeing when demands consistently outweigh available resources. Without balancing demands with resources, leaders will fall into these traps, undermining both their personal and professional resilience.”

Closing the wellbeing gap

Wellbeing is a shared responsibility. Leaders need the space to practice self-care, and organisations have an ethical duty to create conditions that make wellbeing feasible. In the public sector this balance is especially challenging. High demands, public accountability pressures, and limited resources often make sustainable wellbeing feel elusive.

Here’s the hard truth: it’s time to move beyond vague concepts and unrealistic ideas about wellbeing and into real discussions that result in tangible strategies.

With this in mind, I’m thrilled to announce a new series of workshops that I will be delivering in 2025.

Designed for public sector leaders, the Leadership Strategies Series will:

• Take a concrete look at your wellbeing and why it’s critical that you actively care for it.  
• Offer the tools to build and cultivate in others the cognitive, emotional, and behavioural resources needed to navigate high-stress environments with care and integrity.
• View leadership through the lens of the whole-person, with multi-dimensional strategies that help leaders achieve sustainable, fulfilling careers without sacrificing their personal or their teams’ wellbeing.
• Empower leaders to sustain their wellbeing as a foundation for clear and ethical decision-making, stronger resilience, and consistent high performance.

The workshops will be conducted in person and online, and I will be supported by thought leaders and public sector and industry experts in organisational psychology, wellbeing science, leadership, and strategy.

Everyone who attends will receive the latest psychological insights and executive coaching methods, have access to advanced psychometric tools, and take away real action plans they can apply to initiate a powerful shift in their personal and professional development.

Early registration for these workshops is recommended, as places are limited. To learn more or register now, go to Leadership Strategies Series.