Abstract
Leadership is a challenging and complex practice. The study of leadership spans across organizational and functional boundaries, applies to institutions, academia, private and public industry, theoretical exploration and conceptual application. Well-being is also a broadly encompassing term, embracing elements across human complexities, organizational and team dynamics, as well as social and general implications. Marrying these two terms—leaders and well-being–this research seeks to understand well-being for leaders themselves. Accepting leaders as humans and their role to play in their followers’ well-being, provides a basis for exploration, yet recognizes how leaders are often exempted or excluded. The literature suggests support for a relationship between leadership and followers’ well-being. The missing aspect is understanding well-being for leaders themselves. Hearing leaders’ well-being stories through qualitative interviews provided rich and contributory data. The main research question for this study was, how do leaders describe their well-being experiences? The purpose of this study was to develop the concept of leaders’ well-being, identify leaders’ practices of well-being, and to capture the story of how leaders describe their well-being experiences. The study goal was understanding and elemental construction of the leaders’ well-being concept, and to capture the narrative in how leaders tell their stories. This complementary approach aimed to elicit insights into leaders’ well-being experiences, exemplifying needs to explore this topic more deeply. Leaders acknowledged opportunities to improve their own well-being management, while recognizing lack of support for this focus. Leadership development opportunities do not provide comprehensive, holistic approaches required to allow leaders to be successful with their own well-being. Thematic analysis developed themes contributing to leaders’ well-being and illustrating a balanced approach in assessing both “what” and “how” leaders describe their well-being experiences. Collecting data contributing to leaders’ intra- and inter-personal needs suggests complex requirements for developing leaders’ well-being as a concept. Embracing an intradisciplinary approach while inviting diverse perspectives and leaders’ experiences is necessary to ensure the leaders’ well-being concept finds useful application for individual leaders and broad generalization to the study and practice of leadership as a whole.