
The important role of leadership in supporting mental health
With one in four people suffering from poor mental health, and approx. 300,000 employees leaving companies due mental health struggles, providing a working environment that supports our mental wellbeing, is more important than ever.
Let’s start with the obvious, we all have mental health. While it tends to get talked about most commonly when someone is suffering from a period of poor mental health, is is just like our physical health, sometimes we’ll feel 100%, sometimes 80% and then sometimes 20%.
As business leaders, we have a responsibility to not only ensure businesses success, but also the success of all our team members. This means helping them level-up their skillset, advance into more senior positions, and provide an environment that promotes positive mental wellbeing.
The ‘check-in’
One-to-ones, appraisals and reviews all too often focus purely on team members work performance. This, of course, is important to helping drive business performance, but these are equally good opportunities to check-in on an individual’s mental health.
A simple question to ask them, “how are you feeling?”
Now, three out of four might be feeling perfectly fine at the time, and the discussion will be quick. However, even in those situations, hopefully, they’ll appreciate the essence of the question and the recognition of them as a person, not just a tool for completing activities.
However, for the one in four that are suffering, this might be their opportunity to let you know that they’re struggling in some shape or form. I’m not naive enough to believe that every-time someone is suffering from poor mental health, they’ll be happy to open up about their struggles. However, if they do, you at least have the opportunity to explore how you may better support them. And if they don’t, least you’ve made the effort.
Performance impact
We’ve all had experiences of individuals whose performance seemingly out of nowhere, takes a dip. Over a long period of unproductively, it’s easy to take the corporate approach. Maybe they should go on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP)? But what if their performance doesn’t improve, maybe they’ll need to go through a disciplinary procedure? What would the end result of that be? Maybe they’ll be able to pull things back, or maybe they’ll choose to leave because it’s all too much. Or worse, maybe you’ll need to release them from the business.
Well, let us go back to before the PIP was issued. Instead of going to them and taking that route, perhaps you need to have a human conversation with them? If their performance has dropped suddenly and unexpectedly, then it’s unlikely they’ve simply forgotten how to perform. It’s more likely that either they’re struggling with something, or maybe they’re feeling disengaged from the business and have “check-out” (not much we can do about the latter unfortunately, I personally don’t believe in convincing people to stay when they’ve decided to leave).
If we assume that outside factors are impacting their work, rather than risking the loss of an employee who, until then, had performed well, you could check-in with them? “I’ve noticed you’ve seemed distant/not yourself, is everything okay?”. It could be a single question that means you don’t have to lose a valuable employee.
The challenge
I challenge all business leaders to try and put people’s mental health into the discussion. As mentioned at the start, far too many employees leave businesses because of mental health; 300,000 was the most recent estimate. Lay the groundwork now to build strong relationships with your team, so when the time comes that you need to ask them “are you okay” they’ll be willing, to be honest.
