Taking care of yourself
For the last installment of this newsletter, I bring you wisdom from a longtime leader on how to take care of your most valuable asset: yourself.
Robin Holmes-Sullivan is president of Lewis & Clark College, in Portland, Ore., and a practicing psychologist. She joined the liberal-arts college, known also for its law school, in 2022 after serving as vice president for student affairs for the University of California system.
She’s a fierce protector of her own well-being, and she’s explicit in talking about the topic with her team. She also models this behavior for students, admitting when she’s worried or scared and talking about how to cultivate resilience like a muscle.
For this final newsletter, Holmes-Sullivan shares some tips on how to take care of yourself. One of them: Don’t be afraid to be late to work every now and then if that gives you time to do something you love. For her, that’s a 4.5-mile walk in the forest near her home.
“If anything, I think it’s even more important that the president be a person that is being vocal about the importance of well-being,” she said.
Here are her four tips.
You’re not too busy. Leaders often tell themselves they don’t have time to take care of themselves, but it’s rarely true, she said. In her psychology practice, Holmes-Sullivan has worked with many couples who claim they don’t have time for each other, only to discover they’re just spending it elsewhere. It’s the same for leaders, she said.
Figure out what you need, then fiercely guard that time. Holmes-Sullivan calls herself “an introvert in an extroverted job,” so she needs quiet time alone to recharge. She finds it along the rocky forest trails in the three parks near her home, and she makes sure to exercise four or five mornings each week. Recently she came into work half-an-hour late on a morning with no early meetings so she could finish her weekly long walk.
Spending time with her family also recharges her. Her oldest son asked her to take him to Las Vegas, so they’ve planned a three-day trip. She and her wife have a nearly two-week trip to Scotland and Ireland planned for June, to explore her wife’s heritage. Travel gives her something to look forward to during the tough moments and models for her team that it’s important to take time off.
Tell your team you expect them to rest. In one-on-one meetings with her cabinet, she asks them about their time off, especially if she notices they are looking bedraggled or haven’t taken any lately, and she praises them if they mention plans, to normalize the idea that it’s good to step away. Recently one man said he planned to cancel his vacation plans because his house renovations had become stressful. Your house will still be there, she told him. He agreed to keep his plans. “I really am very, very blunt with people around self-care,” she said.
Be honest with students about well-being. Young people need examples from role models for how to keep forging ahead in these difficult political and economic times, she said. Anxiety feels like an external force that takes hold, she tells them, but it’s possible to develop a mental buffer against it.
It’s also important to model vulnerability, she said. Recently she told a group of students about a decision she was worried and scared about, and they met her with looks of surprise. But those feelings, she told them, are usually a sign that she needs more courage, not that it’s the wrong decision.
“I’m willing to share and be real with people because I think then they can see themselves in you, and role model off of you, as opposed to the leader being this unreal person who never had those problems,” she said.
