Healthcare leaders support everyone else. Who supports them?

Healthcare leaders spend much of their careers supporting other people.

They guide clinicians through difficult conversations, make complex operational decisions, manage financial pressures and carry responsibility for the wellbeing of both patients and staff. Yet while healthcare organisations are placing greater emphasis on workforce wellbeing, the people leading those teams are often expected to simply keep going.

For Steven Collins, Senior Physiotherapist and Head of Clinical Education at Hiya Health and founder of CSC Tuition, that expectation reflects one of healthcare’s biggest leadership blind spots.

“I believe and sometimes feel there is this implicit pressure on men in healthcare leadership to be more stoic and resilient than we actually are, or than anyone reasonably can be.”

While the comment reflects his experience as a male healthcare leader, Collins believes the broader lesson applies to leadership itself. Professional responsibilities do not exist in isolation from life outside work, and leaders are not immune to the same pressures affecting the teams they support.

“I talk to patients all the time about the body as an ecosystem, where it doesn’t matter if the stress is physical, psychological or emotional. Stress is stress and it all affects us, no matter where it’s from. Leadership is no different.”

Over time, Collins came to recognise that leadership capacity changes as life changes.

Before becoming Clinic Manager, he balanced clinical practice with developing graduate and continuing professional development programs across ten clinics and more than 100 clinicians while raising a young family, studying and supporting his mother through serious health challenges.

“Work that had previously felt manageable, almost enjoyable, became genuinely difficult once the load outside work increased.”

The warning signs often appear long before burnout

For Collins, unsupported leadership is not simply about how someone feels. It influences how people work, make decisions and interact with those around them.

“It shows up most clearly when clinicians absorb other people’s distress as their own.”

Recognising those early warning signs has become central to his leadership approach. Rather than waiting until someone appears overwhelmed, Collins deliberately creates opportunities to identify pressure before it begins affecting performance or wellbeing.

“I run monthly one-on-ones with my team specifically to check in on this: not the caseload, but how the clinician is carrying it, and if there are any signs they have seen in themselves that I need to be aware of as a ‘lead indicator’ of stress.”

He believes those conversations matter because stress rarely remains confined to the workplace.

“If someone’s stress tolerance is already maxed out by the time they clock off, that’s what they’re bringing home to their own family and vice versa.”

Collins has also observed operational warning signs that may be overlooked in busy healthcare environments.

“So often an empty diary in an otherwise sought after clinician is a ‘lag indicator’ of a clinician who let their own stress levels get in the way of best practice treatment planning.”

Supporting leaders is a leadership strategy

For Collins, the solution is not asking leaders to become tougher. It is helping them build systems that allow them to lead sustainably.

One of the biggest lessons in his own career was “accepting that at times it just wasn’t feasible to show up fully in all of them at once was a huge learning.”

Support from mentors and a mental health professional helped him rethink how he approached leadership, while reminding him there is “no prize for stoically pushing through alone when I could reach out for help, collaborate, or even delegate where appropriate.”

Those lessons now shape how he leads others.

“As a team leader, start with mental health first aid, and burnout awareness training and discussions with your team as a baseline.”

Beyond formal training, Collins believes leadership culture has a far greater influence than policies alone.

“The biggest lever is culture, not policy.”

When he notices pressure building within his own team, he intentionally shifts the focus away from performance and back to purpose.

“When I see stress creeping into the team, I bring everyone together and reset around ‘clinical first’, we are here to care for people not chase a KPI’s.”

His broader leadership philosophy is equally simple.

“I tell my team we’re playing a serious game, but not more seriously than it needs to be played, borrowing from Alan Watts’ idea that life isn’t a race to get somewhere, it’s the playing itself.”

That philosophy extends to how difficult conversations are handled.

“We set the rules of that game together, including one I’m strict on: seek to understand first, and give people the most generous interpretation of their actions before judging.”

Bottom line

Healthcare organisations invest considerable effort into supporting patients and developing clinicians. Supporting the people responsible for leading those clinicians deserves the same attention.

Leadership sustainability is not built by expecting people to carry more. It is built through practical support, healthy workplace cultures and leaders who recognise that asking for help is not a weakness but part of leading well.

As workforce pressures continue to reshape healthcare, organisations that invest in supporting their leaders may be better positioned to build stronger teams, retain experienced clinicians and deliver better care.