Leadership, Well-Being, and the Conditions We Create at Work

One of the questions I come back to again and again in my work is simple but powerful: What does it take for people to be well at work?

Most organizations want their employees to feel supported, valued, and able to bring their full selves to the job. And most leaders genuinely care about the people they’re responsible for. But there’s often a gap between intention and impact, and my work sits in that gap.

For the past several years, I’ve focused on psychological health and safety, executive coaching, and workplace mental health. I approach these topics through the lens of industrial psychology, but also through the lens of someone who has spent time in workplace environments where well-being wasn’t theoretical but instead immediate, visible, and complex.

Before I ever stepped into a corporate setting, I worked in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, supporting people experiencing addiction and significant barriers in their daily lives. I learned very quickly that empathy can be both a strength and a strain. When you care deeply about people, you can find yourself carrying more than is sustainable, which may lead to occupational phenomenon including burnout, secondary trauma, or moral injury.

That’s what led me to pursue graduate studies in industrial psychology, where I could continue working with people and human behaviour. That path eventually brought me into leadership development, executive coaching, and psychological health and safety work, where I now spend most of my time.

What Psychological Health and Safety Means for Leaders

Psychological health and safety is a phrase that people are more familiar with these days. The heart of it is straightforward: how do we create conditions where people can do their work without harm to their mental well-being?

Before explaining more about what it is, I want to emphasize that it’s not about eliminating all stress or avoiding difficult conversations. And it’s definitely not about expecting leaders to become mental health practitioners. It’s about clarity, alignment, consistency, and leading with empathy:

• Are expectations reasonable and communicated well?
• Do people feel safe raising concerns?
• Do leaders model the behaviours they ask of others?
• Are workloads and demands aligned with actual capacity?

There’s a policy side to this work, but there’s also a deeply human one. Every leader shapes the psychological climate of their team - through what they say and don’t say, how they role-model expectations, how they offer feedback, how they respond under pressure, and how they set and honour boundaries.

I often support organizations in developing curriculum and policies, but it’s through coaching where leaders begin to see the connection between their behaviour and the working culture they create.

Coaching Through a Well-Being Lens

When I coach leaders, I’m not there to hand them answers or a script. I’m listening closely to the language they use, the stressors they haven’t named, and the assumptions they’ve absorbed over time. I listen for what’s spoken and what’s between the lines, then mirror back what I’m hearing so they can surface insights, identify gaps, and build their own path forward.

I pay attention to the often pressure-filled environments many of them are operating in. While they may genuinely be trying to care for their people, without meaning to, they end up creating confusion or adding to the pressure. All of these cues help me understand what’s shaping their experience as leaders.

Because a lot of leaders are navigating expectations that don’t align with their resourcing. They carry their own stress while trying to support the well-being of their teams, and in fast-paced environments (especially in fields like healthcare, where I focused a lot of my academic research), there’s rarely time to pause and consider how communication lands.

This is where coaching can create space. Leaders can bring the real situations they’re dealing with and together we explore not just the behaviour, but the conditions shaping it. Sometimes, small adjustments make a meaningful difference. Other times, we uncover bigger systemic issues that need to be acknowledged. What matters is that leaders walk away with clarity about how their actions contribute to psychological safety — or unintentionally erode it.

Patterns I See in Organizations

Across industries, a few common themes show up:

Leaders care, but caring alone isn’t enough

Many leaders want to support their teams but haven’t been taught how. They avoid tough conversations to be “kind,” and unintentionally create uncertainty. Or, they talk about well-being but model chronic overwork. People around them notice the incongruence immediately and, in most environments, it becomes a barrier to upholding psychologically safe values.

Well-being and performance aren’t opposites

A psychologically safe environment isn’t an indulgent one. In fact, clarity, accountability, and realistic expectations are essential to both well-being and high performance. This misconception often gets in the way of meaningful culture change.

Systems matter as much as individuals

Even the most supportive leader can’t compensate for structural issues like chronic understaffing or lack of clarity in roles. These challenges may show up as minor at first, but their impacts accumulate over time and can lead to significant consequences such as mental health–related leave, presenteeism, and overall reduced productivity. Coaching often involves naming these realities and helps leaders distinguish what lies within their span of control and what requires broader organizational change.

Where This Connects with The Humphrey Group’s Work

My work integrates naturally with The Humphrey Group’s leadership philosophy because psychological health and safety is ultimately about how leaders communicate. In other words, it’s not just what they say, but how their beliefs, values, and behaviours align.

The Humphrey Group’s model asks leaders to clarify what they believe and lead from a grounded, consistent place. That’s the foundation of psychological safety. People feel safer when leadership is coherent; when what is said matches what is done.

The Inclusive Leadership framework also comes through strongly in this work. While it can absolutely be useful in this regard, inclusive communication is not only about diversity. It’s about ensuring that people feel respected, heard, and understood, which are essential conditions for psychological safety.

And, at The Humphrey Group, so much of our work comes back to presence: how leaders show up, how they communicate, and the tone they set for the people around them. In psychologically complex environments, intentionality really matters. When leaders communicate with clarity and care, they create more stability for their teams.

An Invitation to Lead with Awareness

Psychological health and safety isn’t a program or a checkbox. It’s a practice. It’s something leaders build through daily interactions in the way they set expectations, receive feedback, handle pressure, and how they model being human at work.

People do better when they feel safe to speak up, are supported when things are hard, and are shown recognition and respect for the work they do.

Leaders have tremendous influence over that experience (often more than they realize). When they gain the ability and skillset required to lead with that awareness, we can create environments where people thrive and stay well while performing at their best.

Want to go deeper? Explore our Adopt an Inclusive Mindset infographic, a quick guide to building inclusive awareness.