Leading for Wellness
Book

Leading for Wellness

How to Create a Team Culture Where Everyone Thrives

Katina Sawyer and Patricia Grabarek
Wiley, 2025
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Editorial Rating

8

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  • Analytical
  • Applicable
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Recommendation

Workplace wellness advocates Patricia Grabarek and Katina Sawyer encourage leaders to prevent employee stress and burnout by becoming “Generators” who help workers feel energized and productive. Generators set a positive example for work-life balance, communicate honestly with employees, provide flexible work environments that support individual needs, and protect their teams from overwork. At the end of every chapter, the authors offer worksheets that allow leaders to reflect and encourage them to take action that supports wellness.

Summary

Leaders should be “Generators.”

Research from Gallup indicates that in 2022, employee burnout cost companies over $3 billion worldwide. Companies often introduce wellness programs as add-ons aimed at the symptoms of stress and burnout. Such approaches can worsen stress and burnout because they ignore the underlying sources of both. For example, when a veterinary clinic’s surveys showed that staff felt burned out from constantly working overtime, human resources sent employees to an online course on being more resilient. They required them to complete it within a week. Staff had no time for training during business hours, and had to take the course over their weekends, leaving them even more burned out and frustrated.

To promote employee wellness, business leaders must regard workers as human beings with physical, mental, and emotional health needs as well as personal lives. Leaders should aspire to be “Generators”: individuals who energize their teams by creating workplaces that engage employees and help them perform their best. They should never be “Extinguishers” who force employees to work longer and harder. Generators boost employee productivity and serve business...

About the Authors

Patricia Grabarek and Katina Sawyer are the co-founders of Workr Beeing and industrial-organizational psychologists.

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