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Good Leaders Should Always Prioritize Hygiene
March 6, 2023 | Category: Blog, Intelligent Leadership
Hygiene is a form of order and organization that keeps people healthy and attractive. Leaders who focus on and model hygiene-oriented habits find it easier to stop the spread of infectious diseases in their teams, build confidence and self-esteem, and remain socially and professionally attractive and inspiring.
“Cleanliness and order are not matters of instinct; they are matters of education, and like most great things, you must cultivate a taste for them.” – Benjamin Disraeli.
The purpose of hygiene is to keep us healthy. In the context of the workplace, solid hygiene practices prevent mass sickness and absenteeism in the employee ranks, saving the organization money and other resources. Leadership coaching reads much more into hygiene than a way to keep ourselves and others healthy.
Solid hygiene is a matter of organization and proclivity for order. By practicing hygiene and leading their organizations by example in this sense, leaders boost their confidence and self-esteem. Through their approach to hygiene, they communicate to employees that they value personal hygiene in everyone and promote an organizational culture predicated on order and cleanliness.
Hygiene keeps us healthy and makes us socially and professionally acceptable.
Why Prioritizing Health and Wellness Matters
Hygiene has direct links to health and overall quality of life. By observing good hygiene habits and creating an organizational culture that prioritizes hygiene, leaders can secure many benefits we often take for granted.
Preventing the Spread of Infectious Diseases Through the Workforce
Leadership coaching understands the value of health and physical well-being. Leadership is the type of job that requires people to be fit and capable of making consistently good decisions while empowering and motivating followers. Being physically weak, sickly, and mentally impaired through illness is not an option for leaders.
Intelligent leaders understand that whatever makes them successful can make team members more effective as well. Sickly employees who pass viral infections back and forth at work and live off painkillers and antibiotics can’t perform optimally.
An organizational culture that prioritizes cleanliness and hygiene also facilitates employee health. By keeping employees healthy, it makes them more effective, satisfied, and less likely to defect to other companies.
In a company office, people come into much closer contact. By sharing the same space, breathing and sneezing into the same air, shaking hands, and touching company equipment, they can spread viruses and bacteria.
Losing one employee to sickness for days or weeks is bad enough. Losing many of them can be catastrophic. From a business coaching perspective, keeping employees healthy, involved, and motivated should be a top leadership priority.
Being Socially and Professionally Attractive
Executive coaching defines leadership charisma as the ability of a leader to build meaningful connections and inspire employees.
Leadership is about winning people’s trust and inspiring them to work toward achieving a goal. Being socially and professionally attractive is a must for leaders.
Organizations that understand the importance of being professional and looking the part when working with customers know hygiene is an indispensable ingredient of the success recipe.
As humans, we don’t like being close to people with body odor or bad breath. As much as we may appreciate them professionally, their lack of hygiene makes them unattractive and unworthy of our full appreciation.
Building Self-Esteem and Confidence
Executive coaching wants the best for leaders. Business coaching professionals know how to boost leaders’ confidence and understand hygiene is an important part of this effort.
Good hygiene facilitates confidence and self-esteem.
Being clean and well-groomed makes us feel good. Being healthy allows us to perform at our best. Infusing organizational cultures with an appreciation for hygiene imparts these leadership benefits to all employees.
Being unwashed puts people in a bad mood. When you’re unkempt, you subconsciously know you’re not at your best. This feeling can make you anxious and irritable.
Good hygiene is one of those things we tend to not notice when it’s there. Those who lack it, however, will quickly experience the cascading ill effects bad hygiene can trigger.
Cleanliness and good hygiene are not instinctual. Business coaching can help leaders realize their importance and cultivate tastes for it.