The importance of founder health and wellbeing in a pandemic

Here we explore managing team morale during this uncertain time, practices to adopt as a founder and making mental wellbeing a priority within your team.

Photo by Matteo Miliddi on Unsplash

According to a study conducted by the University of San Francisco, almost half of entrepreneurs suffer from at least one form of mental health condition during their lifetime. The magnitude of the problem is alarming, and as we find ourselves living through unprecedented and painful times, there has never been a more pressing time to talk about mental health.

As a community, the start-up world does not talk about it enough. That said, this seems to be changing with a small but growing cohort of venture capital firms offering support to their portfolios.

At Pi Labs, we have been exploring how best to help our portfolio companies manage the intense pressures involved in building a thriving business. It’s a subject which we strongly believe should be discussed more openly and we’re actively looking for ways to bring our community together to speak about these issues more regularly — especially in light of the challenges Covid-19 has taken on our collective mental health.

In doing so, we hope to facilitate the important conversations needed around this topic and aim to make mental health and well-being fundamental to how we interact as investors with our portfolio teams.

With this in mind, last week we hosted an hour-long discussion panel, bringing together our community of founders with cognitive coach and wellbeing expert Victoria Hill, to discuss some of the struggles Covid-19 has taken on their own mental health. It was a very honest and insightful conversation with some important topics raised.

Mental health issues impact the rest of the team just as much as founders, so a big part of our discussion revolved around how to prioritise the team’s mental health — while also maintaining the high performance needed to run a business. Below we’ve highlighted our key takeaways from the discussion.

What our expert says:

Victoria Hill — Cognitive coach and wellbeing expert

How to make mental wellbeing a priority within your team while maintaining a high-performance culture?

• Adopt a sustainable view of performance. Employee wellbeing and high performance are not mutually exclusive concepts. In fact, wellbeing and productivity go hand in hand. While you may achieve short-term productivity by ignoring your team’s wellbeing, this will likely eventually lead to burn out, disengagement, and resentment in the long term — directly impacting your bottom line. Whilst understanding the short-term pressures that many start-ups face, try to recognise that prioritising wellbeing and adopting a long-term view will safeguard your team into the future.
• Think about how to foster an environment that promotes mental health. A team that is encouraged to eat right, exercise regularly and openly discuss topics is likely to be more resilient than a team without that ecosystem in place.
• Take a humanistic approach to growth. While of course we want our businesses to succeed, try to remember that if the founder and the team are thriving it is more likely that the business will thrive too.
• Think: “Healthy founders equal healthy returns”. Work closely with your teams to accelerate growth, both personally and professionally and recognise that this has a direct correlation on the returns you seek as a business.

What our founders say:

How are you managing team morale during this uncertain time?

• Ensuring communication with employees is regular and very honest. Best to be open about what needs to be achieved with the aim of creating a sense of camaraderie around keeping the business going — “we’re all in this together”!
• Regular virtual meet ups, both social and professional to help reduce the risks of social isolation.
• Finding the best solutions both for us as a company as well as our valued team, maintaining an open discussion in the case that we need to minimise our resources during this time.
• Finding a good balance between securing the business and making the difficult decisions that involves, while not alarming employees
• Finding fun and unique ways to lift each other up amongst the flood of negative news e.g through “a good news group” where the team takes it in turns to share one piece of good news each day

What practices are you adopting as a founder during this time to boost your own mental health?

• Switching news notifications off, choosing certain times of day to look at the stats and understanding these.
• Taking time to disconnect from technology all together
• Using nutrition and fitness for general health
• Creating boundaries between work, down-time, and family (through simple techniques like time management, creating a separate workspace, and getting dressed for work)
• Experimenting with yoga and breathwork for more calm throughout the day
• Staying in touch with family and friends
• If you have kids, using this time to show them what you do. Our kids don’t usually get to see what we do all day, this is a good opportunity to help them understand where our livelihood comes from.
• Doing what you love and sparking the creative side of the brain (through hobbies like arts and crafts, baking, sports etc)
• Trying to maintain a glass half full perspective amongst all the noise

We hope that you find inspiration here, perhaps applying some of these practices to your own routine to find more joy and clarity in a time of uncertainty.

We are no strangers to the issues raised here, so we hope these efforts will help us all learn to be better, more empathetic and ready to support our teams and ecosystem as a whole during this difficult time as well as into the future.

If things get difficult, don’t hesitate to talk to a qualified therapist (in the present time https://www.betterhelp.com/ is great and accessible option) or someone you trust within your community. Sometimes talking things through can make the world of difference.

Some additional resources we came across and found helpful:

• Books:

For a quick, light read for those who seek a calm approach to wellbeing (or a shorter term need to tackle stress or anxiety) try The Calm Coach by Dr Sarah Jane Arnold ISBN9781782439158

For those who equate effectiveness to wellbeing (to make a true life shift) try the business classic from the 1990s (heavy going but well worth it if you can apply the principles to your life) 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey ISBN9780684858395

If relationships and communication with children is affecting wellbeing try this great start for improving that (very relevant for lockdown!) How to Talk so Kids Listen and Listen so Kids will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish ISBN 9781853407055

• TedX talks:

https://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_insel_toward_a_new_understanding_of_mental_illness#t-427712

https://www.ted.com/talks/emily_esfahani_smith_there_s_more_to_life_than_being_happy?utm_campaign=social&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_content=talk&utm_term=social-science#t-98633

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