Recently I undertook Coach Certification for the Global Leadership Wellbeing Survey (GLWS) a local Australian assessment tool. The survey provides a fascinating insight into the domains of work life (“Working Well”) and Personal Life (“Living Well”) and through responses to 126 survey questions provides valuable insights on where things may be out of balance.
The definition of Wellbeing that the GLWS advocates as described by Dodge, Daly, Huyton and Sanders (2012) is…
“A delicate balancing act between:-
1. An individual’s social, emotional, psychological and physical assets (resources), and
2. The particular social, emotional, psychological and physical liabilities (challenges) they are facing in life and at work at any one time.
When individuals have more challenges than resources, their see-saw dips, along with their wellbeing, and vice-versa”.
An individual’s assets or resources I referred to as “Currency” with a client this week; we discussed how we create currency assets in many forms such as in our social, emotional and physical relationships. These will look very different for each individual – it might be the catch up with your closest friend once a month, the exercise class/es you take weekly, the walk along the beach, the podcast you listen to on the weekend, the book you read to relax, you get the idea!
I was intrigued by this very simple and logical framework that your assets or resources should be greater than your liabilities or challenges for you to have positive wellbeing. The assets or resources we can consciously build upon – whereas the liabilities or challenges that come our way we may not be able to influence so easily. Wellbeing implies a sense of thriving, flourishing, being fully alive, balanced, calm, contented and at ease with life (GLWS 2018).
At the time paradoxically I was able to completely relate to this picture for myself! As the GLWS describes the “see-saw” of my own assets and liabilities was quite dramatically out of balance, my challenges at that point in time were depleting all of my available resources.
It really hit home, how critical it is to be fully conscious of our ‘see-saw’, of the energising or depleting impact of what we do, moment by moment. How can we logically expect ourselves to perform at our very best, “firing on all cylinders” otherwise? Perhaps this is only something we become acutely aware of as it is grossly out of balance.
I’m looking forward to using the GLWS tool with my clients over the coming months and having the opportunity to explore my clients’ wellbeing, and how this may be impacting their sustained high performance at work, and at home!