Navigating Contrast

Mental Health in Leadership and Followership

Building on the foundations explored in Part One of this three-part article, I am looking at the ways the patterns of contrast affect mental health dynamics between leaders and followers within organizations. The roles we play in our tribes impact us differently, and gaining awareness helps us perform better.

When properly understood, these mental health patterns can transform groups of people and their environments. By leading with love, we can foster sustainable mental health.

Duality in Leadership Roles

Leadership positions create unique mental strain through their inherent dualities. Effective leaders integrate seemingly contradictory qualities—strength with vulnerability, decisiveness with openness to input, confidence with humility, and action with reflection.

Leading with love requires both strength and vulnerability. In combat, this meant being strong enough to make hard decisions while remaining compassionate enough to care for those affected by them.

This lesson became increasingly important to me as I matured as a leader. High-stakes environments don't eliminate the need for emotional intelligence—they amplify it, revealing how these apparent opposites actually reinforce each other.

When leaders fail to integrate these opposing qualities and instead swing between extremes, they create unstable environments that generate anxiety and uncertainty among team members. The psychological toll affects both the leader and those being led.

Healthy navigation of these dualities requires accepting that opposing traits can harmoniously coexist. Vulnerability enhances strength rather than diminishing it. Balance isn't about perfection but about creating space for both action and reflection, ultimately benefiting collective mental health.

Polarity and Psychological Well-being

The tension between the universal polarity of self-interest or service to others pervades organizational life. Leaders grapple with guilt when prioritizing their needs, while team members often resent leaders they perceive as self-serving. This fundamental polarity manifests in various mental health challenges—burnout from self-sacrifice, moral injury when actions conflict with values, depression from perceived inadequacy, and decision anxiety.

Navigating this polarity effectively requires acknowledging that some self-interest is necessary for personal sustainability. Setting appropriate boundaries and practicing guilt-free self-care creates a foundation for service that renews psychological resources.

Both leaders and followers benefit from understanding that serving others and maintaining personal wellbeing aren't mutually exclusive but mutually reinforcing.

Dissonance in Organizational Relationships

Psychological tension emerges when experiences clash with beliefs or self-image. Leaders encounter this dissonance when idealized leadership visions collide with reality, when organizational imperatives conflict with personal values, or when the need for authority undermines desires for authentic connection.

Team members face similar challenges when organizational demands contradict their values, when expected to support decisions they oppose, or when balancing loyalty against personal integrity.

Left unaddressed, these tensions create significant psychological distress that undermines individual well-being and organizational effectiveness. Honest conversations about tense situations and letting your most essential core values guide decisions can help leaders and their teams resolve dissonance.

Paradox and Psychological Integration

Embracing paradox—the ability to hold contradictory truths simultaneously—offers a powerful approach to workplace mental health. Rather than forcing resolution between opposing ideas, this perspective allows for psychological integration that reduces stress while building resilience in yourself and others.

The mental health advantages are substantial: less anxiety about finding perfect solutions, increased comfort with ambiguity, greater resilience when facing challenges, and enhanced capacity to navigate complexity without becoming overwhelmed.

This paradoxical mindset creates sustainable approaches to organizational challenges that benefit everyone involved. Open communications allows everyone to see the diverse ways of looking at situations and problems.

Practical Applications

Maintaining psychological wellbeing in leadership roles requires intentional practices, such as regular stress assessment, robust support systems, self-compassion, and professional support when needed.

Team members likewise benefit from emotional awareness, organizational literacy, peer support networks, personal boundaries, and appropriate advocacy for mental health needs.

Leading with love allows you to see the need before the crisis. Recognizing how contrasting forces affect mental health enables early identification of the challenges. This awareness fosters effective coping strategies and environments where mutual support becomes the norm. Organizations that develop the ability to transform the complexities of modern work from threats into opportunities for growth are the organizations that win.

Organizations thrive when they acknowledge the psychological dimensions of workplace dynamics. This means providing accessible mental health resources, normalizing mental health discussions to reduce stigma, developing emotional intelligence among leadership, and establishing clear protocols for addressing concerns.

The leader and the organization itself must model the integration of seemingly opposing forces: productivity and wellbeing, accountability and compassion, structure and flexibility.

When organizations openly address the psychological dynamics of leadership and followership, they create environments where contrast becomes a source of strength rather than stress; leadership practices and organizational cultures that support collective wellbeing are natural outcomes.

Embracing patterns of contrast rather than fighting against them creates space for being more productive and psychologically balanced for everyone involved.

If you want to improve your mental health or have a more significant impact on those you lead, consider attending (either in person or virtually) the upcoming summit sponsored by the Hereos Wellness Collective in coordination with Harvard University.

Check it out here - https://hfh.fas.harvard.edu/veteran_wellbeing_resilience

I'll be there.

Sometimes, leadership means standing in uncertainty with those who depend on you, sharing their fear while working tirelessly to find a way forward.

Lead with Love,

Doom