Employee Mental Health, Pt. 1

For the majority of us, our manager has more impact on our mental health than our therapist or doctor – and is equal to the impact of our partner.  Surprised?  Today’s conversation opens the door on an important discussion about mental health and the workplace!

Hello. I’m Alicia Davis… and I’m Stacie Watson…

[Alicia Davis] And we are the founders and coaches at Transformative Leadership Strategies where we do all things that are related to leadership training and team building.  And you have been working with an organization space and you were very inspired by an article that one of the leaders sent you that we wanted to share today.

[Stacie Watson] Yeah, I was so appreciative that she thought to share it with me. And just to have a little context, this organization has really gone through a lot of change, as so many of our client organizations have – and one of the things they are really committed to and focused on is changing the culture within the leadership team. You know, they’ve had a stressful three years, as many of us can relate to, and I think they’ve developed some habits and patterns that haven’t been particularly helpful.

So, you know, to their credit, they’re very intentional in trying to make some change in that regard. And I think that’s why this work that we’re doing specifically is why this particular article, from Fortune, “Managers Impact Employees’ Mental Health more than Therapists and as Much as a Spouse or Partner. Here’s How Bosses Can Spark Change in Conversations.”  I don’t know about you, but this really resonated with me, just even this idea of how much our mental health is tied to our workplace.

[Alicia Davis] Well, absolutely, of course. I mean, you and I can think about it from our own experience and we certainly know from the teams that we work with and of course also from the research out there in the world that, you know, individuals in the workplace respond to their managers, right? They leave jobs or stay in jobs, not always because of the organization, but because of the person who is directly supervising them, right? And we know how important that is the way that the leader is open or willing to listen to the needs or concerns of their staff, right? Or even, you know, I think that part of what this article talks about is that leaders and organizations, for the most part, want their teams and want their individuals to feel good – to feel good about the work they’re doing, to feel mentally focused and present, and because of that desire they sometimes they miss what’s actually happening, right?

[Stacie Watson] Yeah, that’s absolutely true. And I think it’s always interesting for all of us whether we are, you know, supervising managing others or not, to figure out our own boundaries when it comes to sort of sharing how we ourselves are doing. And I think sometimes when leaders don’t have some transparency around that, then it inadvertently can send a signal – “we don’t talk about that here” or “this is not a conversation that I’m comfortable having.” I do think it’s helpful for all of us as leaders to think about how we model mental health even when we aren’t feeling particularly mentally healthy, which means that maybe it’s saying I’m having a really hard morning, or I had some tough stuff happen, whether I share it or not and I might need a minute before I can, you know, kind of join you in this conversation. Little things like that I feel like we forget often how many people are looking at us when we are in leadership roles, and it’s kind of a lot to think about and it really is important. I mean we talk about sort of boundaries and balance all the time.

[Alicia Davis] All the time… and to do, you know, we like to talk about them as micro-actions, little things – like you’re saying – little things matter and it also just makes me think about when you as a leader can acknowledge a team member and you know, maybe you’re modeling that and maybe, you know, you’ve got somebody that you just know something’s going on and they’re not talking about it literally just saying it looks like something is happening for you if you want to share or talk about it, I’m here, right?

So presenting that opportunity, acknowledging that you’re seeing them, validating their experience… and another thing that we find that can be really helpful is something that we call purposeful pausing and in the sense of like part of this is about creating the environment of safety, right? Psychological safety. And sometimes we literally just need to pause in a mindful intentional way. And literally, that can be, kind of like you just said, Stacie, let’s just take a minute – 30 seconds – let’s take two or three deep breaths, let’s focus on what it is that that you need in this moment, right? And so that we’re bringing ourselves out of the doing, doing, doing and just shifting even for a moment into our being. And I think that this, in little bits at a time, can really make a difference.

[Stacie Watson] Yeah. You know, this is not a workplace example, but even just yesterday, one of my kids was talking about one of her classmates who is really, really sick, it’s a terrible, tragic situation and they have a mutual friend, and she was trying to figure out how to be with this friend. And you know, this is I think one of the things that’s so hard when people are struggling, for whatever reason, sometimes we don’t even know how to show up for another person. It can feel very overwhelming. And I think this happens at work, especially because you want to honor boundaries and you want to be very careful about what you expect people to share or not share. And I think sometimes and what sort of I offered to her was just being willing to be present with someone, whether you talk about it or not, just to be able to be with someone who is struggling, or in a difficult place, is a real gift. And I think if we can create that at least a little bit in our workplaces, it can just be a real antidote for some of what we read in the article, some of the research where people feel like it’s not okay to kind of struggle with your mental health at work.

[Alicia Davis] That’s right, That’s right. Normalizing it, right? Normalizing everybody’s experience, We’re all human beings. So how can we show ourselves just a little bit more kindness and care?

We would love to hear your thoughts about this topic feel free to us email us info@tlstransforms.com and thank you so much.

[Stacie Watson] Thank you.