 Is it true that businesses are only as healthy as the people who run them? We're used to counting rows and stock on the shelves or counting customers that come in through the door or log on or peering at the bottom line of a balance sheet. But there is another factor that we may well be ignoring and that's to our detriment as managers and of course to the detriment of our businesses. It's something that's been screaming at us for quite a while now and we've been ignoring it. Now our staff coping personally. Psychologists Emmy Golding and Peter Diaz have been looking at the field of workplace mental health for some time and they've written a book which is a guide to managers about how to deal with this elephant in the room or the office or the factory or the studio or any workplace anywhere. Anywhere. Yeah. So how important is mental health to the health of the business? Well I think mental health is a tsunami that's coming. It's on its way. If it's not hitting workplaces already it will be shortly. We're seeing the impacts that it's having around the world in workplaces. The impact is going to be huge for workplaces and the situation right now is that most workplaces are not ready. How much emphasis has been given to workplace health in the past? Well I think when it comes to psychological safety in the workplace we're 10 years behind our physical health and safety. I was the other day looking at those photos where you used to have construction workers up on tall buildings with no safety harnesses and they're walking along that beam and now you think how did we ever do that? Well I think that's kind of where we're at with psychological safety at the moment. So why have we ignored this for so long? I think it's been seen as an expense. Something that doesn't make money. So it's in most cases it hasn't even been a budget item until now. So what's happening then is that people are reacting to a problem instead of being proactive and avoiding a problem. So hopefully we can turn that around. We're trying to help to encourage people, businesses and managers. Don't leave it until it becomes a problem. Deal with the situation, create a culture that is people friendly and business friendly because both have to go hand in hand. You can't just give so much attention to people that the business suffers but you can't give so much attention to making money that people suffer. They go hand in hand. Yeah so okay first things first. What are the signs that a business has got people in it who are suffering? You know sometimes this is an interesting one because mental health problems we know from the data that 50% of people will not tell their managers they have a mental health problem regardless of how severe it is. So you could be having a mental health problem in your team right now and according to statistics you do if you've got more than 10 people you have at least a couple of people in there that may be having a mental health problem to you know depending on the severity of the problem doesn't have to be completely severe but you could be having two at least but you may not know about it or they may not be willing to talk about it so the issue is big it can be under the surface but what we're seeing now especially in Australia more people are coming out because we've become more aware more people are putting the hand up and say yes I do have a mental health problem. In some cases they wait until there's a performance management meeting and then they've gotten into trouble to say well the reason why I'm not performing is because I'm anxious or I'm or I'm depressed and then HR teams are panicking and say well what do we do now because we went in with this objective of dealing with a contact or a performance issue but now we found that there is a mental health issue what do we do and that's when they come to us they come to the workplace mental health institute and that's why we wrote the book mental wealth you know to to help managers have a good balance between helping people and caring poor people and making sure they're engaged and also taking care of the business so mental wealth is not really a mental health book it's a business it's a leadership book that deals with a mental health aspect of things. Let's tease some of that out stress and pressure are a part of any workplace environment and obviously they're a factor causing mental ill health but looking at stress and pressure in the workplace what's the difference between normal stress and abnormal stress and that's I'm so glad you raised that because we can't get rid of all pressure all challenge in the workplace you know we're there to perform to create to get things done and so a workplace that tries to eliminate anything that may potentially create some sort of pressure for people it's just a futile exercise what we instead want to do is build up people so that they are able to take on more and more challenge so they're able to to have those those psychological strategies and there's a whole range of different approaches that people can use but have those strategies to be able to meet and exceed the demands. And that's a great question because people are being paid these days in in the modern workplace more often than not we're being paid for our ability to carry certain pressure and produce under pressure that's what we get paid I mean otherwise it would be a gift it wouldn't be a salary you know so we get paid so we can deliver on goods so that in that out of the gate it means that we're expected to feel certain pressure whereas we turn it into stress or not it's completely up to us there's a difference between pressure and stress pressure if I like pressure it's exciting if I think it's going to hurt me it becomes stress and it's damaging so for example I mean if a person goes to the gym everybody knows that in order to grow your muscles and be fit you have to lift weights and it's going to hurt possibly it's going to hurt tomorrow too if it's going to be any good we know that so but what do most people do they go to the gym it hurts and they feel good about it they don't feel stressed they feel this is doing me good pain equals good in the workplace is the same thing if pain equals good we have excitement we have engagement we have a great workforce if pain equals oh my god this is hurting me now we have stress we have problems that what you say is of course true and we know that but there are different sorts of pain let's look at the work environment more than ever it's a place of great change and there in allies one of the ironies of the modern workplace technology and information are increasing exponentially at the rate of knots yet it seems to be accompanied by a shrinking in the workplace and there are fewer staff tighter budgets greater emphasis on the bottom line and to misquote Churchill we never before have so few staff being expected to produce so much with so much less to work with that's a reality and it's almost like there is an inevitability that staff are going to suffer on a personal level because of that and we have to be careful of that that is a reality in some workplaces we have seen that um there they are doing more with less people and that is a problem so when that is happening we have to be very careful we have to be very honest as managers and also our staff members if we're being given too much work we need to be able to go to the manager and say look I can cope and give you a good job produce to the to the excellence that you require by handling this this and this and this but if you want me to do this then I'm going to have to cut back on on the how I'm performing there's you know a human being can only perform so much so that conversation needs to be had and also the manager needs to be humble and needs to say am I overwhelming my staff now I think if you don't as a manager if you if you don't ask yourself that question and or if you proceed after if you if you proceed after answering in the positive yes I'm overwhelming my staff but I don't care I'm just going to do it that's not going to pay off that's that's going to cost you in the bottom line it may be a hidden cost but it is going to cost you now we know how to work those things out and there's a there's a financial cost to that so this comes back to your question about signs how can you tell when a workplace there's people struggling and I think for most organizations it's once they start to see the productivity decreasing because people when they become overwhelmed when they become so stressed they're so busy that nothing gets done and you know I think we've all been in that space at some point where we feel overwhelmed and we just don't know where to start so you see more and more of that and there's the research has shown that productivity can be reduced by up to 50 percent so you're paying someone for a full-time job and you're only getting a half-time job done the other thing you then start to see is absenteeism so people not showing up so these are the sort of things that you can track and measure but a good manager who is in touch with their people and understands their people and has the skills not just the awareness about well-being but the skills to actually go in there and keep an eye on their people and know what are the signs to watch out for and know what each of their team is capable of and how to work best with them they're going to be able to prevent a lot of that happening so that's good both for the employees and it's good for the business. What you say about managers being accountable to their staff is really interesting and of course it's true but they're also accountable to their managers and very often the pressure that they're placing on the staff underneath them is actually directly coming from the manager above that mid-level managing. And that's an issue of culture and we deal with the aspect of culture in the book Mental Wealth that's why we call it an essential guide because it actually if you put in place the principles that are in the book what you're actually doing is you change the culture of the organization and we do know from cultural studies how do you change the culture of the organization you need two points of pressure frontline and CEO if those two points of pressure can come closer together it changes the whole structure of the organization. I want to tell you a story well actually it's not a story this happened to me and what it did was a shed light on on other situations we're talking about workplaces that have been shrinking and resources and the expectation of reduced staff to meet a greater need and that applies like across the board in every industry. Now an industry that I'm not a part of but I use industry that you've not outused is public transport. My pregnant daughter had to travel from the top of the state down to where we live in the city at short notice she was fleeing a situation she had all her worldly goods in two enormous bags you know enormous each one of them like was the weight of a person and she had a toddler in tow she was on her own and she was on the train heaven knows how she got on the train but she texted me she said and I'd intended to meet her at the station of course she texted me to say dad can you please get on to the platform and help me off the train I thought yeah of course of course no problem so I get there and because short story a long story short I couldn't get on to the platform there was no staff at the barrier there was no way I could get through the barrier there was a person who was managing the station locked up in a booth that I could see in the distance and they were protected from the general public I even thought of buying an opal card couldn't get an opal card mine was in the car all I could do was top up the opal card couldn't do it there was no way of doing it so what did I do I had to jump the barrier I had to break the law all the time I was scared I was going to be on video camera I knew someone was going to apprehend me but I had this problem of my daughter arriving on the station she had like how long do you have to get off the train like that yep not long I thought that I was stressed she was stressed the toddler was stressed but also the station manager would have been stressed too if he knew about that of course he would have been this is one of the unexpected costs of what the economy and our managers are doing to our staff and it's not something you're always aware of and it's always something at a left field that highlights what's going on but there is a sense of helplessness in the face of all of that that also contributes to workplace mental health absolutely and that that meeting of technology and people we haven't got it right yet and what we're seeing around the world in our travels is that some some organizations are going back to having people answer their phones not a machine is that right yes they are you know that that's becoming that you need selling proposition yes exactly in the same country people answering the phone and saying you know how can I help you not pressing the buttons until you get someone or having a machine answering you now of course there are advantages to technologies we have we have created a very interesting a very wonderful world in some sense because of technology is very comfortable but when it comes to the workplace sometimes we have removed that ability of the human being to say yes you're breaking the rules here but the rules were meant to be broken in this occasion and for the sake of humanity and I think we've all felt the impact of that where we feel hang on am I am I important or not I don't feel important I don't feel like my life matters or my problem matters because I'm being dismissed and I think that's happening in workplaces where caseloads are becoming too big people are feeling dismissed managers are feeling dismissed they're talking to their managers presenting the the point of view of the people and they feel dismissed and that's what we talk about in in the book mental wealth when we talk about real compassion compassion is a marathon is not a sprint compassion has to have a long-term view of things not just fix the problem right here right now so we can go down to the next problem but what do I need to do right here right now so in the long term I have a good relationship with my people they have my trust and I manage upwards so I have their trust and I have influence so that's why I say that mental wealth is a leadership book because it teaches people how to become influences of the world and also connectors okay now the cost of mental ill health in the workplace first of all what are the obvious ones presentism which is where people are showing up at work but they're not all there they're not able to perform the lights are on but no one's home they might be sitting on facebook all day sorry facebook so they're present but they're not really producing absenteeism the other one that it's sometimes difficult to put a measure on but conflict HR issues the team dynamics and the time and the energy and the effort that gets spent on dealing with all of those issues when I mean when people are stressed we all respond differently but one of the common ones is we get irritated we might say something that we wouldn't normally say to someone so all of those things come together and create a downward spiral unfortunately and that's what we want to do is change it around and it's it's complex but there are simple things that managers can do as well and that's what we yeah we'll get to that in terms of of the the impact on workplaces we know from the research also that stressed out people are more likely to complain of harassment and bullying so I talked to a director of HR once and she said up to 70 percent of the problems that we have in HR I think have got a mental health issue behind them 70 percent let's talk about HR that's an expense let's talk about HR look the name of the department has almost become an oxymoron many industries especially the bigger ones have got two levels of staff they've got the entrenched and the transient and over time HR has become more or less permanently a part of management dealing with staff coming and going and a direct result of that is that it ends up looking after the interests not of the staff but of the company in other words looking at how they can minimize the effect of losing somebody or minimize the effect of that disruption how can we control this how can we manage this how can we control our staff and the things that go wrong from day to day not what we can do to support the staff and to look into the cause of the problem in many situations should we close down HR completely and start again absolutely no we love HR we cannot do with the learnings of HR HR has been around now for a couple of decades and there's a move to change you know people and culture is what so many departments are now moving towards to try and highlight that we do care about people and the culture and that these two things the business results and the well-being of staff are not mutually exclusive in order to support the business results and all the things that are you know the bottom line you need to look after the people the people are the biggest asset to the business that's where for most industries most of the investment is made so if you're going to invest in people do it properly and get the results out of your investment and you know HR has been caught between the sword and and you know what was the saying a rock and a hard place I was thinking of the Spanish saying they're between the rock and hard place they've been brought in by management to do a job so they're being paid by management to take care of people so and I know a lot of people have had very bad experiences with HR unfortunately sadly I do think though one of the problems that HR has had traditionally is that they haven't had a lot of power they've been brought out to make things nice nice nice and inquiring things down but no real say or voice when it came to the executive level what generic situations have you seen where HR has lost fumbled the ball? Oh when making you know for example in in the area of mental health you know most of the most of the people that are biggest supporters in in the industry are HR and they know the importance of these they come to the trainings they go and say oh my god I wish everybody got trained and they go back and they talk to their managers and because they don't have enough power in the organization now that's not to know organizations in some organizations they become really powerful and they're doing really good work but you know the majority of workplaces they don't have the power that they should their suggestions are taken on board only as a general suggestion if we have the money if we have the budget we will do it so it goes nowhere and that's just the problem that HR has had and of course because they've had the job to fire people people don't like them but you know that's one of the side effects of that the HR managers that we speak to the HR directors they are they normally can see the whole picture of course they're the ones who were motivated to want to do that because they can see if the frontline leaders if the frontline team leaders and supervisors and managers had just a just a couple of skills under their belt to be able to handle issues early to be able to lead their teams well then that would prevent a whole lot of the issues escalating and landing on their desk and having that impact on the business later so what sort of issues have you seen that have escalated uh look it's it's incredible sometimes the things that seem so mundane um someone said something that I didn't like yeah and and then it's snowballs if a manager's not equipped with the skills to be able to handle those sorts of situations well then it's snowballs and it becomes now I'm stressed and I need three days off or three weeks off or I mean some of the organizations that we work with have been paying staff for months even years and the staff haven't been at work for months or years they're on paid leave because we just don't know what to do and this person's um had a conflict in the workplace for example that or they've had a situation and they just they don't know what to do managers are really um in a difficult position because they want to do right by the person they want to do right by the business there's no clear cut guidelines as to I know I've got to look after people but what do I do and so that's where the book comes in there's one of the interesting one that I remember from years ago a staff member came into a workplace and um she decided that the way the the workplace was arranged person didn't feel comfortable to her and then she brought HR on board so you know to change the physical distribution of the desks and everything and in order to keep her happy they had to change everything around we're not always the most reasonable people and we're not the nicest people simply because we're not management and I think that's one important thing too we we we all need to be humble and we we all have the capacity to be a bit of a diva from time to time and when we're in that space we're not nice you know whether we're in HR management or frontline you know and this is what mental health is about mental health is about look we're human we all can we all can speed the dummy from time to time how we're gonna handle each other when one of us does speed the dummy and it's gonna happen you know and I think that's that works better than if we expect people to never do something wrong of course HR has done something wrong is everybody in HR beautiful people the majority are but not all of them psychopaths are everywhere but that is also true of frontline staff you know psychopaths are in there too you know we two we know that we have three to four percent of the population have got psychopathic traits so but generally speaking HR the people that from our experience are beautiful people they don't have enough of a voice and they and I'm hoping that in the future they get more of a voice because they have a good understanding of what makes people tick there's another elephant in the room and you raise it in your book Suicide in the Workplace yes there was a scene in a very famous movie called Network by Sydney Lamette and had the the actor Australian actor Peter Finch and he said very famously I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore and that became a catch-cry and it was a huge speech in depth and length and emotional commitment and and his ability as an actor was boy it was on show he did it in one take they started to do a second take but they had to abandon it because he had heart problems he was getting too worked up he and he had very serious heart problems and there he was at work over over extending his his physical abilities so thankfully they stopped shooting he ended up getting an Academy Award for that one take but he got it posthumously you could go on and talk about the astounding irony of that particular workplace situation or you could talk about Apocalypse Now where Martin Sheen legendarily when his character went mad at the end of the movie and he got accolades and awards for it but during the shooting of that they had to cart him off to hospital of course in Network the character shoots himself live on camera which was over stating things a little bit by all the critics at the time and it was considered a black comedy until years later that very thing actually happened and Sidney Lumet and Paddy Chayesky famously said at the time this is not satire this is real life in your book you have this amazing figure saying that somebody takes their own life every 40 seconds around the world that's an astounding statistic and whether it's 40 seconds or 40 minutes or once every 40 days you can't close the door after the horse is bolted it's a classic case of too little too soon so what sort of research has been done about suicide in the workplace the research on suicide in the workplace continues a Victorian study found that about 17 percent of the suicides in that state 17 percent were due to problems in workplace so that's still very high I mean 40 for a suicide every 40 seconds around the world is huge and yet 80 75 percent to 80 percent of those are men so we have a huge problem with suicide and male suicide and you know one suicide is too many regardless of gender but what can we do in the workplace obviously people are not happy that is something that we get from people they're not satisfied in the workplace and one of the reasons why they're not satisfied is because they they're not connecting with the purpose of their workplace and the workplace the purpose of their lives and a person without purpose it's like a ship without a rudder it's aimless it's not going anywhere and to be aimless for a human being it's not a good thing workplace is actually good for your mental health you know that's the irony it when we when we put a person with a mental health issue and in a work in work that is is significant and it contributes back to the community that we see a better recovery overall so it's good for your mental health and yet if if you don't manage to connect to the values and the vision of the workplace um in your team then you remain disengaged and that's when the danger starts because suicide doesn't happen in community it happens in isolation suicide is decided in your head not in a collective and some people that suicide take a collective with them but the decision is individual so we can do a lot in workplaces to turn that around as managers that's why i say mental wealth the book is a leadership book because it teaches managers how to lead their team so they're connected with with something meaningful one of the things that that i see in in talking with so many organizations is that sometimes there can be the attitude like if people have personal problems they should leave that at home um and if if someone takes their life well it wasn't our it wasn't our fault and it wasn't our responsibility and and that's right ultimately you know people take actions themselves having said that there's still an impact on the business so when we go around and we and deliver training internationally one of the questions we'll often ask is you know just for a show of hands how many people know someone who has taken their life and you'll normally get 75 80 percent of the room say yes i know someone and yet it's something we don't talk about every day so all of not just the person who's taken their life but all of their colleagues are going to be impacted as well so it's quite common for us to hear from organizations who perhaps have delayed you know doing anything in the space of mental health and then they contact us and say oh we we wish we'd come to you sooner because now we've had to shut down operations for days weeks months sometimes because everybody's reacting to this incident that's happened you know and and we don't know we're out of our depth we don't know really how to handle this you know it's we like to keep our boxes of work is here and home is separate but in reality people are like that they do they impact on each other so we've got to look at the whole person the whole employee and it's not just frontline it's can be very high level people as well that yeah and talking about an employee just every single individual how much responsibility do they have to take do we have to take as people for our own workplace a hundred percent i i believe that um no one cares about your life as much as you do period now are they caring people around us that we can act we can we can connect with and they can help us absolutely they're there do they care a hundred percent about your life they do but they can only care as much as you let them so that's an important thing i see a lot of emphasis on stopping suicide i think that's the wrong focus what we need to focus is how do we connect with people how do we make people happy so happy they don't want to die people just want to die because they're not happy suicide is a symptom it's not the problem it's a it's a very fatal symptom but you know the problem is people are not happy connected people happy people don't want to kill themselves so that's why we're going to go back we're going to go back to the basics and this is why i like workplaces workplaces show they're artificial we come together in an artificial way but it they're highly social workplaces we can we can in some workplaces i've seen them operate almost like a family they can't wait to go to work i've seen most workplaces that doesn't happen but you know in some teams they love each other they they're there for each other they've got each other's back and how do you create that and that's that's always changing as well because there will be that group dynamic will shift and people will come and people will leave and then that can and it's up to the manager to sustain that to know how to talk to people to know when to talk to people to know what to say to what not to say what to do because sometimes people won't talk but they'll do okay so how much can a workplace actually support a team member who's suffering mental health how far can they go that's a good question and that's one that a lot of the managers have as well and it's it's really important that they know the limits of their capability as well we're not upskilling people to be counselors or psychologists or therapists or anything like that even though some of them might like to go that far we can see that can be counterproductive as well so it's really important they know where that line is and that's things like identifying it in the first place as a human being one person to another having a conversation and showing care showing compassion as you spoke about earlier showing empathy sharing information about you know what are some of the options because it's not just one size fits all solution when it comes to mental health you know everyone's situation is so completely different you know what works for one person may not work for someone else so managers need to be really careful that they're not giving advice or you know what worked for me but that they're opening up a conversation and and allowing the person to go and get the support they need from wherever they need it that they're and they're they're on the side as a a go-to person if if there's anything here in the workplace that that may I may be able to assist with can't promise the world I can't do everything but I'm here and we'll talk about it and let's keep that line of communication open and it's amazing what people are able to do when we feel supported you know just to know someone's got their back that sometimes that's all that is needed you know for that little bit extra energy and that's that's what we're talking about sometimes you know that that energy to climb out of a hole and sometimes guess what once they find out that somebody has got their back they find out there was no hole to begin with they just had this idea in their head that's what we find with conflict when people get to talk to each other they realize oh oh so you didn't mean that oh right okay so i've wasted two days of my life making this huge problem in my head that has disappeared by a two-minute conversation so we teach people how to have that conversation in in the book as well now early in your careers yeah you've won many hearts yes you have separately been in workplaces how have you felt your mental health has been personally perhaps peter first to you have you been in a situation in a in another life where you've been in a workplace and you knew that you were suffering and perhaps you didn't know how to handle it at the time yes and i was in that situation because i'm in during the 90s i did have bipolar disorder diagnosed and i and i took medication for it and suicide was one of those options that i contemplated and until i reached a point of one day i said that's it no more and i took a hundred percent responsibility i didn't know how i was going to do it but i started crawling out of that hole what was the the first step to taking that responsibility that as you said that's it to realize to realize that it no matter how loving and beautiful people are around me no one is going to care about my life or should care about my life more than i do i i need to take care of my life i need to find out my answer i i'm a unique individual and what my work for you is not exactly what works for me but what did work for you for for me what did you hear the word what i did was to go and and research what had people that felt great about life did that i didn't do that's what worked for me so you know Nelson Mandela he seems to have it together he was 27 years in prison if i'd been 27 years in i don't think i would have lasted two you know what did he do how did he approach the world what was he was his way of thinking so i read a biography on Nelson Mandela i i i tried to soak up his personality his way of of acting of understanding the world Gandhi was another one you know going from trying to fit in with society to becoming a disruptor and and through peace through peaceful means through peaceful means to get rid of a of an empire in in India that's a that's a huge achievement so how did he approach people and and it was incredibly similar the Mandela's of the world and the Gandhi's of the world and the Branson's of the world or Mother Teresa's of the world they have a way of operating in which they do not act as victim ever and that was the that was the lesson for me and and to to realize that there was a pity party going on in my brain you two work closely together have you ever challenged peter and said stop feeling sorry for yourself oh absolutely we keep each other accountable to that all the time so it has to happen absolutely and i think it's helpful to have someone like like that around you you know whether it's someone in the workplace whether it's someone at home and you know a friend of family member yeah we have you and i think years ago did you discover for yourself the effects of mental ill health in a workplace uh look i don't think i've ever i mean we talk about where's that line where it crosses over into a mental health problem something i mean diagnosable or not i wouldn't say that cross that line but definitely you know our levels of mental well-being fluctuate and there are definitely periods at work for one reason or another where i can remember you know having been more stressed and usually it comes down to the dynamics of in in amongst people socially you had a hr boss hr boss that was not very hr ish yeah and and well i've had a number of different hr because that tends to be the the area of a workplace where i gravitate to and so i've worked with hr a lot and i've had you know exactly what i was praised for in one from one manager was what was a problem with another manager and you know the good thing is i think because we adopt that philosophy of taking responsibility and taking that personal responsibility and not going into the victim space that kind of allowed me to say well what are my options here how am i going to deal with this can i manage up is there any what can i change in this dynamic how do i want to approach it or when is the time for me to move on to a new challenge and take on something new because this situation simply isn't working for me and then they can be very difficult decisions for people to make um you know do i stay do i go how do i should i change me should i try and change them how do i tease all of that out but for me that making a decision and moving forward was what was most important not to stay stuck in okay great yeah now um maybe we'll just go through a checklist of things that managers can do just brief responses to basic questions like someone came to you and said what should i put in place what's the first thing you'd say smile it's amazing how many managers wreck their culture by not smiling you know if you're gonna do one thing just make sure they use smile when you're talking to someone make sure that you smile you know i have that problem but i when i get into my head i get very serious and then people get intimidated and when i learned that lesson now i've forced myself to just smile you know and if i'm sending an email send an emoji a smiley you know at the end so they know that you're okay because that's the question people are asking are we okay that's what your staff are wondering am i in trouble are we okay and it's ridiculous because we've grown up and we and we hate it we don't want to think like that but we do and we need to acknowledge that what should be taken out of the workplace oh facebook social media yeah people do too much comparison they you know when we go on facebook what do we put you know holiday pictures and we see the people having this wonderful life and where are we in the cubicle looking at our excel spreadsheet that's not very convenient you can do the facebook in later okay what should be added to manager training skills based training awareness isn't enough we can't just be aware of this issue we need to actually know how to deal with it so one of the the things that i've seen those organizations do who are benchmarking is it becomes part of induction part of the induction program is that we care about psychological safety and workplace well-being and here's a basic skill set that teaches people from the very beginning that this is the culture we support here so they get that attitude shift as well as the skills and the knowledge to be able to apply it and make a difference so for managers yeah mental health and well-being training that is skills based that is going to teach them how to be better leaders in this in this space for staff resilience training they need to become a little bit tougher we've become a little bit soft and this idea that somehow you know life is you know a better roses and it's not it's not we need to get back to reality and and learn to cope and i think those two would be a great addition to anyway very often you get it at the opportunity to get your staff together and usually for reasons of discipline or direction but what should be the first thing you say or what should be the main takeaway from meeting with your staff i'm fond of saying that you should meet with your staff to tell them good stuff more often six times more often that you meet with them to tell them bad stuff you know it's it's a workplace boss to to front to to person reporting to you it's a little bit like a marriage if you're always criticizing it's not gonna last but if for every criticism this is based on research you say six positive things in between you have a great marriage so the same thing in workplaces make sure that you praise meaningfully not like hey you're a top block that's not praise that just makes people you know comfortable and not productive but tell them what they're doing well i love the way you did that report i love how you cross those t's or whatever it is but give six times for every time that you gotta tell them something like hey i noticed that you didn't say hello with a smile can you do that better next time no problem i gotcha because i i know you know i'm a top bloke that's not a problem but if i'm not sure of that geez am i doing anything right so that ties in with what we often talk about is remember why you hired someone in the first place you hired them because they had a skill set because they had an attitude set remind yourself of that and then remind the person of that you know that's what you're here for you're you're contributing you're offering value you know we all like to know that we're valuable as in we contribute to this group by the way that sounds easy but just asking a married person how easy it is now talk about mental health in the workplace how can you put in in place effective monitoring off mental health that's a double-edged sword because as soon as you start asking people to rate how well am i feeling today for example and i've seen some try to do it with good intentions it forces the person to look inwards and look for problems and so what happens is people go oh yeah i actually i am a little bit stressed about that and it's and they snowball it it builds and it becomes a focus of looking for problems as opposed to how do i just feel even better how do i feel even more confident more capable more resilient stronger happier more relaxed more creative all of those things so what ways can you monitor it i think less is more sometimes you do want to take the pulse of the organization and you can do a we recommend sort of an annual basis having some kind of survey that covers on a number of different topics but mental health well-being should be just one of them and it needs to be worded very very carefully so that you're not creating problems that you're getting a sense of where things are at so you can make sure your activities that you're implementing are making a difference as well and how can you do it without being intrusive well the the online we do have an online assessment for organizations that can be done that is worded in such a way where we get a true picture not making matters worse and that how we avoid that being intrusive is by making it highly private so we get the results and we don't know who said what it just gone out completely anonymous so it's completely anonymous and that gives that gives organizations a true picture of where things are at i want to talk about rigid realities you see staff in the face of the problems that we all face in the workplace staff can end up becoming malleable and flexible but maybe in the wrong ways they start too early they're finished too late they take on too much they do stuff that's out of their area because it needs doing how can we encourage staff not to be malleable in the wrong ways i think it's about again recognizing diversity in terms of our work preferences and our personality styles as well so we talk about this amongst us you know i tend to be an on or off person whereas petas 24-7 the brain's going thinking so for some people if they're enjoying what they do then long hours is is not a problem you know because they that's what they throw themselves into for other people work where it is just a small part of their life and so it has its place amongst other things that are important to them in their life as well so i think respecting that diversity that everybody's different and again knowing your people figuring out what works for you how do you monitor yourself and know when all right i've probably bitten off a bit more than i can chew here what am i going to do how do i pull it back who do i need to speak to do i just chew faster for now and mental note don't do that next time learn to say no i'm again it's not one size fits all yeah okay what can we do what should we do if we become aware of a team member who is suffering talk to them yeah yeah raise it with them ask ask that question are we okay not are you okay but are we okay is is you want to find out if if and you can tell them have i done something that has upset you or or have i done something annoyingly obviously um that has you know caused some problems for you and in most cases you will find out that person will come back no no no he's fine he's got nothing to do with you and it's it's like a weight has lifted off them because they know that you're onto something it's and you can continue you can say look the reason why i ask is because you normally are really chatting in meetings and and you know the last week i haven't heard you you've been in the corner very quiet and we have feel that we're missing out on your wisdom that you contribute to the team so to be very specific as to what you have seen or what you have heard directly from and what if it's not i'm sorry what if it's not a broken relationship but it's just an observation yes somebody's situation how do you approach it with them what if they're not receiving that yeah look they may not want to talk about it yeah and so do you go to the manager i always think it's best to respect that person's privacy you know if they don't want to talk about it that's fine and they have every right to keep it to themselves but more often than not people will share a little bit of something but even if they don't just the fact that you've raised it that you've asked that you've shown that you notice them that you care that in itself can make a huge difference for the person that could be the thing that spurs them to say all right i'm gonna go and get some external help with this or it's enough to know that there are people around me who do care and i don't want to tell them all the nitty-gritty details of what's going on for me but at least i know they're there this could be also a good time to tell them look and remind them what you find special about them because if a person is suffering i can guarantee a hundred percent of the time there's a very bad self-talk happening and somebody coming along and say you know what we appreciate you the way that you bring the warmth that you bring into the team or whatever it is and the expertise on this and that be very specific on it can be very healing for that person it can it can interrupt their their pattern their process in a very positive way so at the end of the day how do we encourage people to actually deal with the things that they can't change look i think sometimes we become too rigid on the things that we can't change um what about doing something else you know if you can travel a certain road because and you used to travel down that road but now there's work what do you do do you just sit in the car and cry because you no you just turn around and find some other way you know put a gps on and and we do see that happen in a lot of workplaces we see people that shouldn't be in that work is the wrong job period it's got nothing to do with the manager it's got nothing to do with the organization they're simply in the wrong job and they won't get out because nobody's helped them see that you know i've seen artists that should be accountants and accountants that should be artists and they won't be happy until that happens so yes it's important as individuals in in this environment of change that we learn to change quickly too so how better are we getting it adapting to the conditions in the workplace i think we've got a little way to go i'm human being struggle with change it's it's built in as part of our survival mechanism um that anything different could threaten my survival so if everything just stays the same i'll be okay so but the world is changing as you said earlier the technology the globalization the way everything's changing we do need to get better at changing with it for our for our own well-being and that may mean as peter said leaving and getting something new but it may be changing the way we approach it and changing how we think about it and changing our perspective on things as well thank you thank you thank you again