The Dual Reality: Chronic Leadership

Over 1 Million Australian Leaders are managing work with chronic illness¹

In the capability sessions Chronic Illness At Work run for executives and senior leaders, something regularly happens that almost never happens in other professional settings: A leader discloses that they are also living with a chronic condition. Often, the person sitting beside them has worked with them for years and did not know.

These leaders are coaching and supporting team members, including those with chronic illness, while simultaneously managing their own capacity, health and professional demands.

Yet many leaders are expected to navigate this dual role without the professional skills, confidence or support to do it effectively.

And with Australian research showing more than 30% of employees managing a chronic condition², developing these capabilities is not only personally valuable for the Chronic Leader -  it represents a significant leadership advantage for organisations that equip their leaders to manage chronic illness with greater skill and confidence.

Managing Visibility

Australian research into leaders living and working with chronic illness found that managing the visibility of illness is a significant part of their workplace experience:

• 77% have been living with their condition for at least six years, with 54% for more than ten years¹.
• 67% of leaders are managing their appearance to limit visibility of their chronic illness¹.
• 77% downplay the importance of their illness in the workplace¹.

These leaders describe years of running two realities. The visible one, which has produced their career and gets results. The private one, which is managing the condition at work, at home, socially and impacting not just their physical wellbeing but also their mental and emotional load.

How Chronic Illness Changes the Way Leaders Work

Chronic illness changes how leaders work. Physical energy may fluctuate, cognitive or physical demands can increase, and recovery from an illness episode can take longer. 

The daily reality is that leaders can end up over-working, over-delivering and over-committing as a way of compensating for having a chronic illness. It can look like exceptional commitment. But often it is a system of overriding the body for as long as possible, calculating how much can be accomplished before capacity changes. Over time, this can create a pattern of continually pushing beyond capacity, with consequences for both the leader and their experience of illness.

One of the key professional skills for Chronic Leaders, leaders managing their own chronic illness alongside the responsibilities and demands of leadership, is sustainable ways of working.  Most people can do the work. It may simply need to be done in a way that works with their body, rather than continually working against it.

Organisational Implications

Chronic Leaders bear the personal cost for working in a system that often works against them. 

Currently, because Chronic Leadership is not widely understood, transparency and disclosure around illness can come with the fear of limited or lost career opportunities. When organisations operate on assumptions of full health capacity, individuals are carrying not just the physical impact of illness, but also the mental and emotional impact of performing wellness every day without support. 

When full health is treated as everyone’s ongoing baseline, it risk then risks attributing the challenges of managing work and chronic illness to the isolated individual’s personality or experience. The organisational context can be overlooked where the organisation thinks it is dealing with a person’s reduced capacity. It may actually be dealing with the consequences of its own ineffective systemic approach to chronic illness at work.

This leads to predictable outcomes already operating in your workforce. Talented leaders ask to go part-time, drop back a level and some eventually leave for a new opportunity.

The Organisational Advantage

Chronic Leaders are more likely to stay and progress with their organisation when:

1. Chronic Illness is better understood as a workforce reality not as an issue affecting isolated individuals.
2. Partial disclosure is normalised not stigmatised or worse punished.
3. Individual leaders have the strategies and confidence to work and lead in ways that also support their health.
4. Their organisation has shared understanding, language and specialised professional support in place to make that possible.

When these conditions exist, organisations not only improve leadership talent retention, but also create a flow-on effect across the organisation. All leaders become better equipped to support the 30% of employees who may be managing chronic illness, often without it being visible.
 
The opportunity is not to reduce people to their illness. It is to recognise chronic illness as a workforce reality and change how organisations lead, support and design work in response. 

Chronic Illness at Work

Chronic Illness at Work supports organisations, people leaders and employees living with chronic illness to build that capability through our Executive Coaching, Chronic Capability Sessions and Training & Resources.

Sources
1.  Ghin, P., Adamovic, M. & Ainsworth, S. (2023). Disclosing Illness in the Workplace: A survey of leaders living and working with chronic illness. The University of Melbourne.
2.  University of Melbourne: The State of the Future of Work 2023.