This article comes from Entrepreneur.

5 Tips to Build Mental Fitness Within Your Teams

Leaders should view mental health through the same lens, starting with a new definition of mental health that incorporates the idea that people can be more or less mentally fit. Proactive action to increase mental health not only helps us weather storms like the current pandemic better, but it also enables us to perform better at work. Mental health is just another muscle we can strengthen with effort.

Once you look at mental fitness through that lens, the next question that emerges is: How can leaders help their teams build mental fitness? Decades of science suggests a handful of simple interventions can have a real impact.

1. Foster shared meaning and purpose

Many people think burnout is about overwork, but we know from the scientific literature that’s not entirely true. One of the biggest drivers of burnout isn’t having too much to do, but rather not knowing why you do what you do. Giving employees clarity on their role and how their specific work contributes to your overall business strategy and goals can help protect against burnout.

One of the best things leaders can do to build the mental fitness of their teams is to make sure that managers are communicating the reasoning behind decisions. Roger Martin of the Rotterdam School of Management at University of Toronto calls this “making strategy a conversation.” Author Simon Sinek famously talks about “knowing your why.”

Whatever way you frame the idea, the essential lesson is the same: Expecting employees to be thoughtless doers creates feelings of helplessness that make them vulnerable to burnout. Equipping them with context and a deep understanding of how their work fits into your overall mission builds mental fitness.

2. Encourage inner work

A key part of any manager’s job is defining, delegating and ensuring their teams get work done. That is not the same as making sure employees are working all the time. Neuroscience tells us that people are more creative and effective when they build “whitespace” into their days for reflection and rejuvenation. I call this “inner work”: Mental acts or activities focused in your inner world to achieve a purpose or result. Rather than discouraging these “slack” periods, leaders should normalize and role model utilizing them thoughtfully.

Help your people understand that part of their jobs as knowledge workers is to take time to work on themselves, and you will build their mental fitness. Actions like giving people space between meetings and encouraging mindfulness and contemplation can have a significant impact on performance.

3. Create a flow-friendly environment

Decades ago psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi discovered that one of the best ways to improve someone’s mental fitness and performance is to help facilitate the creation and maintenance of flow states. This feeling of being so fully engrossed in whatever you’re doing that time seems to stand still is deeply satisfying and incredibly productive. Yet many modern workplaces are actively hostile to the experience of deep, pleasurable concentration.

Constant meetings and interruptions disrupt flow. Protecting your people from the need to constantly context switch promotes it. Leaders interested in building mental fitness in their teams should therefore constantly ask themselves: Am I increasing the propensity of my people to slip into flow states or not? How can I design a work environment that facilitates flow?

The prevalence of remote work offers leaders a chance to craft new routines and procedures that promote focus. Seize that opportunity to consciously design opportunities for flow into your workplace.

4. Build meaningful social connection

Former surgeon general Vivek Murthy has long called loneliness an “epidemic” in America. Given the social isolation of the pandemic, the situation is certainly even worse now. That’s not just unpleasant. Loneliness is one of the biggest risk factors we know of for any kind of mental illness. Being lonely makes you more vulnerable to stress, anxiety and depression.

Leaders can help reduce social isolation and build mental fitness by thinking of the workplace as an opportunity to construct community. Meaningful interventions need not be complicated. Managers can simply start meetings with brief check-ins where participants share whatever state of mind they’re bringing into the office with them.

This simple grounding practice builds social support and camaraderie and only takes a few minutes. If you do it once a day, people feel more connected, more loyal and more satisfied with their work, boosting mental fitness and with it performance.

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