Leadership Wellbeing Must Be Central to 2035 Industrial Strategy

The Business & Trade Committee’s Industrial Strategy Report was published last week (6 June 2025), and I’m absolutely stunned. The report lays out ten rigorous “tests” for success – vision, investment, skills, procurement, regulation, governance – yet not once does it mention mental health or wellbeing for business owners, senior leaders or entrepreneurs. That silence is astonishing, because without robust support for those at the helm, the entire Strategy risks faltering, and we’ll all lose out on the sustainable growth we so urgently need.

A Blind Spot at the Heart of Strategy

From my work on the Leadership Wellbeing Report, conducted in partnership with the East Midlands Chamber of Commerce via its Q1 2025 Quarterly Economic Survey recorded answers from 338 senior leaders on wellbeing, and the data couldn’t be clearer:

• 26.92% feel very comfortable seeking mental health support
• 75.53% admit their mental health impacts decision-making
• 4.76% actually prioritise their own wellbeing

Almost 60% cite poor work-life balance and 18.9% loneliness as their greatest challenge. These are not marginal issues – they go to the core of leadership capacity.

Imagine asking a pilot to fly a transatlantic journey without checking the instruments, without any cabin crew, no rest breaks, and then being surprised if the flight runs into turbulence. That’s exactly what we’re doing when we demand that entrepreneurs and CEOs deliver net-zero targets, supercharge productivity, or pioneer advanced manufacturing, yet fail to equip them with resilience, peer support and confidential counselling.

Download the Leadership Wellbeing Report (2025)

The Real-World Toll on Leaders

I want to share three stories from the report that underscore just how serious the crisis has become:

• Lee, co-founder of a creative agency, endured years of relentless pressure before suffering a minor stroke, an event that could have been prevented had stress-management interventions been in place.
• Marc, leading IT business, became bedridden with burnout. His business ground to a halt while he recovered, threatening jobs and customer confidence.
• Richard, a serial entrepreneur, was sectioned under the Mental Health Act after months of business challenges and deteriorating mood. Even in supportive circles, stigma prevented him from seeking help early enough.

These case studies are painful reminders that stress and burnout aren’t abstract concepts, they destroy health, fracture businesses and erode investor confidence. Yet the Industrial Strategy Report remains deaf to this evidence.

Why Wellbeing Is a Strategic Imperative

You cannot decouple human resilience from economic outcomes. When three-quarters of our leaders acknowledge that mental strain affects their choices, every decision on investment, recruitment and innovation is being made under a cloud. That’s not just a personal tragedy, it’s a systemic risk:

• Innovation pipelines dry up when founders are too exhausted to take creative leaps.
• Investment deals stall if CEOs lack the clarity and confidence to negotiate.
• Regional growth plans falter when senior teams burn out halfway through delivery.

If sustainable growth, net-zero ambitions and productivity gains are the pillars of the 2035 Strategy, leadership wellbeing must be its foundation.

Four Bold Moves for the 2035 White Paper

To turn this ticking time-bomb into a launchpad for sustainable success, policymakers must take four decisive steps:

• Embed leadership wellbeing as a core mission
  Just as the Strategy champions net-zero, productivity and regional resilience, it must elevate mental health and wellbeing to equal status. A clear, cross-cutting mission sends the message that looking after leaders isn’t optional, it’s essential.
• Mandate wellbeing metrics in every sector deal
  We measure carbon emissions, skills shortages and export performance; we must also measure leader stress indices, burnout rates and uptake of executive support services. Data drives accountability, and without it, wellbeing remains invisible.
• Fund bespoke resilience programmes
  Generic workforce wellbeing schemes simply won’t reach CEOs, founders and senior teams. We need ring-fenced funding for executive peer networks, one-to-one coaching and confidential counselling, tailored to the unique pressures of top-tier leadership.
• Empower the Industrial Strategy Council with statutory remit
  Give the Council a clear duty to monitor and champion leadership mental health, with annual reporting to Parliament. This oversight ensures that senior wellbeing isn’t an afterthought but a governed priority, reviewed and refreshed each year.
• From Marginal to Mainstream
  Some may still view leadership wellbeing as a “nice to have” or a private matter. The QES data proves otherwise: it’s a strategic linchpin. When 59.15% of leaders struggle with work-life balance and 18.9% with loneliness, the risk of impaired judgment, poor decision-making and business failure skyrockets

We cannot expect CEOs to deliver trillion-pound missions while silent on their own capacity to cope.

Embedding wellbeing in the Strategy also delivers tangible returns. Research shows that leaders who engage with resilience programmes make better strategic choices, have lower absence rates, and inspire higher staff engagement. In a world of geopolitical uncertainty and rapid technological change, psychological resilience is as critical as digital skills or R&D investment.

My Call to Action

We stand at a pivotal moment. The White Paper’s publication will set the framework for the next decade of UK industry. By insisting on leadership wellbeing as a strategic pillar, we protect individual health, reduce the human cost of high-stakes roles, and secure business continuity, ensuring firms aren’t derailed by preventable crises. We also enhance policy delivery, because resilient leaders are more likely to achieve net-zero targets, productivity gains and regional growth.

I urge every reader – policymaker, business leader and concerned citizen – to push for these changes. Share this blog, write to your MP, and demand that the 2035 Industrial Strategy is not only visionary in ambition but wise in caring for the people who will carry it out.

Because without healthy, supported leadership, every target, every mission, every projection is built on sand. Let’s make leadership wellbeing the bedrock of sustainable growth, and finally give our leaders the support they deserve.