You Can’t Unsee It: How to Build Real Buy-In for Workplace Mental Health

Today’s newsletter is written for people who create, manage, sell, or advocate for workplace mental health strategy and practice.

Here’s the problem in a nutshell: those of us who work in workplace wellbeing have what a naturalist friend of mine calls our “seeing eyes” on. There’s something called the “frequency illusion,” or the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon: once you understand the profound impact that our neurotypes, personalities, mental health, and emotions have at work, you can’t unsee it. It’s everywhere. And we get frustrated with leaders who haven’t had their eyes turned on yet, especially when they control people and budgets. But that’s a lot of people, because dealing in emotions and feelings and mental health is very, very tricky for many.

Meanwhile, the discourse has shifted. We’ve gone from a COVID-era moment when mental health at work was a hot and widely sought-after corporate topic, to now, when many of us are just hanging on to our jobs and keeping our mouths shut. But mental and emotional health at work is a more urgent topic than ever. So how do we gain buy-in for strategies that aren't as simple to execute as a therapy app, and yet have been shown to have huge leverage on wellbeing, like work design and culture change?

Most companies still struggle with impactful, scalable workplace mental health practice—and it’s not for lack of data or resources. The behavioral health market in the U.S. is almost $100 billion, and 97% of large U.S. employers in 2025 provided mental health benefits. And yet I’ve been in many conversations at companies with world-class wellbeing benefits that still have burned out, unwell workforces. Benefits are necessary but not sufficient. Prioritizing wellbeing at work requires behavior change, and change is hard.

Behind much of this resistance is a deep social convention: talking about mental health at work means risking judgment and being seen as weak. It’s vulnerable. So when those of us with seeing eyes plead with others to care, they often can’t hear us. Sometimes they think we’re distracting from the business at hand. Sometimes they’re frustrated because they’ve already spent money and things don’t seem to be getting better.

So today I want to offer the wisdom of two business leaders who figured out how to talk about mental and emotional health at work to people who aren’t used to talking about it: Dan Simons, Co-owner of Founding Farmers (the most booked restaurant in the US on OpenTable), and David Lancefield, former PwC senior partner turned executive advisor. My interview with David is live now, and my interview with Dan will be soon—but watch his awesome TEDx talk (You Don't Have To Choose Between People And Profit) in the meantime.

Start Where They Are, Not Where You Are

Often HR and wellbeing experts and consultants come in with a PowerPoint selling the benefits of a comprehensive mental health program, trying to gain buy-in from executives who aren’t on the “people” side of the business. The data is on our side: workplaces that support employee mental health see less burnout, depression, and anxiety, all of which are costly in healthcare and retention, according to Mind Share Partners. And yet buy-in doesn’t happen. For decades, David Lancefield has helped leaders from some of the world’s largest organizations implement big change. His advice:

“The starting point for people who are not bought in is to focus on something they really truly care about and are incentivized to care about.”

That might not be mental health or wellbeing, and it might not even be “people.” It could be a leader’s growth targets, innovation goals, legacy, or CAPEX. David says to do your homework: read their investor presentations, town halls, team emails. Find what keeps them up at night. Then work backwards.

“We want profitable growth in this market? Absolutely. I think there’s one ingredient we’re missing: you told me your innovation team isn’t doing their best work consistently. We know burnout is affecting their ability to show up. What if we identified just one friction point and ran a small pilot?”

David Lancefield is a big fan of pilots, or “micro strategies,“ the smallest cell where you can make intentional choices about how you think, what you do, where you focus. The leaders who resist mental health programs still want their people to do their best work. Your job is to help them see that mental health at work isn’t a liability to manage; it’s a competitive advantage to unleash.

Stop Selling Mental Health. Start Solving Business Problems.

Dan Simons built a $100+ million restaurant business on a radical premise: employees shouldn’t leave their problems at the door. Not because it’s kind (though it is), but because it’s profitable. His metric of choice is turnover.

“The most powerful number to show a CEO in my experience is turnover. You can correlate employee satisfaction to customer satisfaction to hiring costs, training costs, replacement costs. These are ways you can measure and create the case… this isn’t checking a box on some woke checklist.”

David puts it even more bluntly: “I haven’t been campaigning about mental health. I’ve just been focused on business results and causes of problems and frictions that get in the way.”

As a restaurant owner in a busy metro area, Dan needs his team to nail takeout orders. But he spends five times more of his leadership energy on “harmony” than on technical systems. The connection? “If someone’s head’s not on straight, it doesn’t matter how good the system is.” So he invests in mental health first aid training, funds therapy access, and trains managers to pause when they ask “How are you?” and actually wait for the answer.

When skeptical CEOs push back, Dan doesn’t argue philosophically. He shows them the math: turnover costs, training costs, error rates, customer satisfaction correlations. “It produces more profit. It increases enterprise value. It decreases turnover.”

The Mental Health Storytelling Trap—and How to Finish the Arc

When mental health at work first became a growing movement, we promoted storytelling as one of the most powerful levers for change. As the movement matures, and this work becomes more trauma informed, we’ve realized storytelling can also harm. Mind Share Partners’ 2025 Mental Health at Work report finds 46% of employee respondents would worry about losing their job if they were to talk about their mental health at work. Stigma hasn’t disappeared, and storytelling can be dangerous right now. In my Neurostrength survey, only 10% of respondents had formally disclosed mental health challenges, mental illness, or neurodivergence at work.

David Lancefield noticed something interesting when he reviewed corporate mental health advocate stories: “They talked a lot about what caused the issue and what they went through. Then they did talk about what they’re doing now, but it felt like the first two parts were 60–70%. The residual—how are you living now and how can you contribute—was sort of tacked on at the end.”

The clergy have a saying: preach from your scars, not from your wounds. When we share our mental health journeys at work, we often stop mid-arc. We describe the crisis, the treatment, maybe the recovery, but we miss the post-traumatic growth. David’s advice: “You want them to think of you as somebody who’s suffered but come through it with resilience and thought and a contribution you can make. Finish the arc of your narrative.”

Mental illness still carries a “bruise that stays there” in many workplaces, says David. “People say, ‘Yeah, but I can’t quite see putting them into a leadership role now.’” Those without seeing eyes often judge, and so a complete narrative is your protection and your power.

Honesty Is Stronger Than Vulnerability

Here’s one of the most practically useful reframes I’ve encountered. I asked Dan if he considers himself a vulnerable leader. His answer:

“I’ve replaced the word vulnerability in my business language with the word honest. When I say the word vulnerable, it feels weak. I don’t feel vulnerable. I think I feel less vulnerable by being honest about who I am.”

We’ve sold vulnerability as a leadership superpower. But vulnerability implies exposure to attack, your soft underbelly open to harm. Honesty is different. Honesty is strength. “When we’re focused on protecting our weaknesses, we’re weaker because our energies have to go into defense,” Dan explains. “If you spend all the time playing defense, you can’t focus on the thing you’re intending to do.”

This reframe matters especially in today’s economic climate and cultural moment. Words signal safety. “Honest” signals confidence. It’s a small shift with a big effect on how skeptical leaders receive the conversation.

You Don’t Need to Get Personal

Here’s the thing: a mentally healthy work culture doesn’t mean everyone’s sharing their stories. We never know how someone else is interpreting our mental health story. Everyone has different limits and contexts; this is why mental health ERGs can be so helpful, because members tacitly acknowledge it’s okay to talk about some personal stuff in a safe space. That’s not always true across an organization at large, and that’s okay.

Simons’ Farmers Restaurant Group builds its culture of openness intentionally and with care. Dan says he starts most talks with some version of a trigger warning: “Hey, being here working with our company, you will hear conversations that you’re not used to hearing. Some people love it right away. Some people are really pushed back by it. And know that just because I might reveal something that sounds personal to you, that doesn’t mean that you need to believe that you have to do that, or you’ll be forced to do that, or you’re supposed to do that.”

Miss that step, and you risk pushing people away, which is the exact opposite of the goal. “I often have to remind myself to not pursue this kind of business culture with an arrogance or an overconfidence that presumes everyone is where I am,” Dan says. “We need to meet people where they are.”

Questions About Mental Wellbeing That Don’t Freak People Out

How can you talk about feelings without "talking about feelings?" David asks clients two deceptively easy questions: “When have you felt your best at work? What helped that happen?” and “What’s the biggest thing that gets in the way of you doing your best work?” Neither question asks about mental health directly. Both get right to the heart of it.

Dan does something similar in his restaurants. Before each shift, managers look team members in the eye and ask: “How are you?” Then—and this is critical—they pause. Stand still. Be silent. Actually wait for an answer.

Dan says, “For me to think I’m the only one struggling in this moment is just illogical. It’s statistically inaccurate.” His team of 1,600 employees has free access to mental health support. But a big piece of the work happens in those daily moments of honest check-in. That’s the whole thesis, really: policies and benefits matter, but the mentally healthy work lives in the small moments. It's the pauses, the questions, the willingness to actually hear the answer.

Morra

P.S.: For two great resources on what works when it comes to workplace mental health, I recommend Mind Share Partners 2025 Mental Health at Work Report and One Mind at Work's Mental Health at Work Index