What’s missing from executive leadership teams? Their health.
Organizational culture and performance rely heavily on its C-suite and executive management teams. That is why more than $60 billion is spent globally on executive leadership programs. But while much money and attention are being poured into leadership programs, the value of executive health remains often overlooked.
The February 1, 2024, Wall Street Journal article titled “How to Survive Being a 24-7 Boss,” it was reported that 19 CEOs died in office in 2023, more than in any year since 2010. In the landmark Rippe Health Assessment Study of 200 senior executives, three-fourths of whom were in Fortune 500 companies, 73% of respondents were overly sedentary and, therefore, predisposed to heart disease and diabetes. More than 40% had obesity. Of those with obesity, 100% had at least one other risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Leaders experience high stress levels and responsibility, often work in multiple time zones, and may not be able nor choose to attend to their health in typical healthcare settings.
There are many stories of valued corporate leaders experiencing lifestyle-related, work-afflicted medical catastrophes that lead to operational disruptions, leadership voids, and even negative stock market impacts. I recently learned about an executive team enrolled in a yearlong leadership training program. Each team member gained tremendous insights and tools to elevate their leadership capacity. However, early in the program, the most senior member of the team suffered a cardiac event requiring medical leave for three months. Another team member developed uncontrolled hypertension related to a risky combination of stress and alcohol.
Why does this happen when the organization provides its executives with a comprehensive yearly health physical? Over one to two days, their top leaders underwent multiple screening tests and a comprehensive physical and laboratory examination in a spa-like setting with a complete summary and lifestyle recommendations. A friend and highly valued team member shared his results with me. The lifestyle recommendations were overwhelming, and he was anxious that his physician had neither the time nor the expertise to provide the support and resources he needed to be successful. The yearly executive health physical had fallen short of avoiding health emergencies that heavily impacted two of their leaders and had created unnecessary anxiety for at least one more.
There are several ways to transform executive health programs to best support and improve the health of your organization’s leaders:
· Support senior leaders to make lifestyle behavior changes. Health behavior change often requires weeks, months, or years of health coaching. Just as leadership coaching doesn’t begin and end over one or two days, executive health coaching should employ extended engagements that support your leaders for a timeframe that allows them to achieve their health goals.
· Use board-certified lifestyle medicine clinicians and health coaches. Since certification began in 2017, more than 5,000 physicians and other health professionals have earned certification in lifestyle medicine.
· Coaches with lifestyle medicine and clinical backgrounds are valuable to executives because they can provide medical expertise and highly customized plans based on career demands and preferences. Coaching around nutrition, sleep, substance use, stress management, and exercise training takes advanced knowledge and time, often unavailable during conventional medical appointments or by leadership coaches.
· Couple coaching with real-time physiologic assessments to inform and guide your executives. Heart rate variability can record and identify work demands that add excessive stress and activities that foster an effective recovery in ways that consumer-grade wearables cannot. These are the same physiologic measures and insights that sports coaches use to guide elite athletes toward high-performance outcomes and protect them from overtraining. Leaders can likewise gain powerful personal insights.
By moving well beyond static executive physicals, organizations can become leaders in executive health and gain a competitive edge with data-informed lifestyle medicine and coaching programs. After all, senior leadership skills and executive health are just two sides of the same coin to drive employee and organizational performance.