“Graeme Cowan wrote Great Leaders Care for managers but read it as an EA and you’ll recognise your own job description in it, including the parts written in invisible ink.
Self-care is the first of the book’s three pillars and it matters well beyond the individual. A manager’s mood is contagious, with managers accounting for around 70% of their team’s wellbeing and engagement.
Nobody shapes whether an executive eats, thinks or breathes better than the person gatekeeping their diary. Protecting white space in their day can be the foundation the whole team stands on.
Crew care is the second pillar. Over half of Australian employees say belonging matters more than a 10% pay rise. Cowan’s strategies are small but powerful – such as celebrating progress and making time for people to learn something real about each other. That work has long been the unspoken domain of EAs.
Red-zone care is for when things have already gone wrong and Cowan’s ‘crew moodometer’ is a traffic light tool to measure team function. Most teams sit in amber, where capable people compete instead of collaborate.
Supporting your executive to implement one specific change sits well within an EA’s role. And where one person is struggling, managers can empower all staff to ask ‘R U OK?’
Every chapter ends with a manageable call to action. Start there.
