Why leaders must set the tone for mentally healthy workplaces

What prompt­ed you to set up the Insid­e­Out Leader­board and why is it so impor­tant to recog­nise busi­ness lead­ers who are open about their men­tal health?

I set up the leader­board a few years ago, soon after shar­ing my own sto­ry of bipo­lar and real­ly under­stand­ing that there are so many peo­ple that expe­ri­ence a men­tal health chal­lenge, but do so in silence. That moti­vat­ed me to con­tribute. I did a lot of lis­ten­ing when I was look­ing into this and I kept hear­ing the same mes­sage that we do not have enough senior lead­ers who are shar­ing our sto­ries. 

I thought that was my oppor­tu­ni­ty to make a dif­fer­ence by pro­vid­ing a plat­form and safe space to col­lec­tive­ly pub­lish a list of busi­ness lead­ers who have the com­mon theme of hav­ing a men­tal health chal­lenge and are pre­pared to be open about it. Real­ly, the objec­tives are twofold. One, to show­case those lead­ers in their own organ­i­sa­tions, but also to cre­ate a rip­ple effect of oth­er lead­ers fol­low­ing suit. I’m pleased to say over the three years that we’ve been run­ning it, we’ve seen more and more lead­ers put their names to it.

How much of the respon­si­bil­i­ty around men­tal health and well­be­ing lies with senior lead­er­ship?

Senior lead­er­ship sets the tone. If your CEO is not pri­ori­tis­ing an issue, then it’s prob­a­bly not going to get done. With­out senior and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee lead­er­ship, you’re not going to move the dial on men­tal health and well­be­ing. It needs to be a strate­gic pri­or­i­ty to make change.

Then it gets imple­ment­ed through­out the pyra­mid from the ground up. If you’re not win­ning over the hearts and minds of mid-man­age­ment, that’s going to be a block­er. You’ll find plen­ty of will­ing par­tic­i­pants at the employ­ee lev­el across dif­fer­ent parts of the organ­i­sa­tion, but it takes that lead­er­ship engage­ment to pri­ori­tise it.

Along­side that, there’s the whole idea of the pro­vi­sion of good work and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly safe envi­ron­ments. That requires all lev­els of man­age­ment in an organ­i­sa­tion to cre­ate a cul­ture where peo­ple feel safe, where peo­ple can speak up, share a prob­lem, make a mis­take, or ask a ques­tion. 

There’s a respon­si­bil­i­ty on all lev­els of the organ­i­sa­tion to cre­ate work­ing cul­tures and envi­ron­ments that are con­ducive to health – not slav­ing through 16 hour days and miss­ing hol­i­days and work­ing every week­end. We’re nev­er gonna get well peo­ple if we do that.

How do you get every­one on board, espe­cial­ly those in the mid­dle of an organ­i­sa­tion who might not be as engaged?

There’s an edu­ca­tion piece to be done and there’s an inspi­ra­tion piece to be done. A lot of man­agers in an organ­i­sa­tion might view well­be­ing as a very soft agen­da point – it’s nice to have, but we’re too busy to get involved in it. Where­as, actu­al­ly, if you want your teams per­form­ing at their best, they all need to be pri­ori­tis­ing their well­be­ing to some degree or anoth­er. If they’re not, then they won’t be per­form­ing at their best. And all of our lead­ers want their teams to per­form their best, I’m sure. 

It’s lit­er­al­ly one of those rare sit­u­a­tions where the busi­ness case and the moral case are in align­ment. It’s the right thing to do to cre­ate health and hap­pi­ness in our employ­ees. And actu­al­ly, if we do it, we’ll be more pro­duc­tive.

How can organ­i­sa­tions do more than ‘talk the talk’ and active­ly work towards cre­at­ing a men­tal­ly healthy work­space?

We’ve got to move beyond talk and into action. There’s cur­rent­ly quite a big per­cep­tion gap between how employ­ees feel their employ­er is doing on men­tal health and how the CEO might feel. And we’ve got to close that gap with action. We’ve got to have mean­ing­ful peo­ple who are respon­si­ble for men­tal health and well­be­ing report­ing on the ini­tia­tives, dis­cussing them at senior lead­er­ship meet­ings, embed­ding that into the KPIs of man­age­ment and mea­sur­ing it. 

If we’re going to take this seri­ous­ly, we’ve got to move from talk to action and imple­men­ta­tion. The pan­dem­ic has ele­vat­ed the con­ver­sa­tion, but it’s not always ele­vat­ed the action.

How can lead­ers look after their own men­tal health while sup­port­ing their teams?

My advice to lead­ers is to put your own oxy­gen mask on first. It’s a bit of a cliché, but you’ll nev­er be your best if you’re not pri­ori­tis­ing your well­ness. Then that has the rip­ple effect of set­ting the tone of being a role mod­el – say­ing that it is okay and encour­aged to pri­ori­tise well­be­ing.