Leading the conversation: Enabling mental health discussions

Why is it so difficult to discuss mental health? As leaders, we need to initiate conversations and spread the message that it’s okay to speak up. Thinkers50 experts Amy Edmondson, Megan Reitz, and Peter Sims talk about how it’s done with Morra Aarons-Mele, author of The Anxious Achiever and host of the podcast of the same name.

Mental well-being is critical for individuals, communities, and organizations, yet despite the lifting of taboos around mental health in society, employees are feeling less cared for than ever. So why are we still reluctant to talk openly about our mental well-being at work?

Leaders can play a critical role in facilitating these conversations by speaking up about their own experiences and encouraging others to do the same.

Reitz believes this optimism bubble is the first thing that needs to be tackled to provide an environment in which people feel comfortable voicing their concerns

Bursting the ‘optimism bubble’

Megan Reitz, Associate Fellow at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford and co-author of Speak Out, Listen Up: How to Have Conversations That Matter, identifies a syndrome that, despite leaders’ best intentions, often deters people from having vital conversations around mental health.

“My research over the last 10 years shows that, as you get more senior or into a more powerful position, even in a non-hierarchical organization, you are likely to go into what we call an optimism bubble,” she said. “This means you’ll overestimate the degree to which people are speaking up around you. You’ll overestimate your listening skills and overestimate how approachable you are. Leaders might think that they’re having good conversations in the workplace and that their door is always open; hence, they assume that people can speak up about the things that concern them. This isn’t necessarily true.”

Reitz believes this optimism bubble is the first thing that needs to be tackled to provide an environment in which people feel comfortable voicing their concerns. “Leaders need to realize that they may have to do a lot more work than they think to help people feel at ease and speak up,” she explained. “How we respond when people speak up about mental health determines whether somebody else will speak up afterward. All it takes is for a leader to look puzzled, frustrated, or unsure when somebody brings up a tricky topic and that will land in everyone’s minds. People will think, ‘Right, we won’t talk about that again.’ Our responses as leaders impact the conversations that we have in our organizations – and the behaviors that people adopt.”

Create spaciousness

One way to guard against this tendency, Reitz says, is to create “spaciousness.” This means giving people the sense of a space where they can have “the conversations that matter inside pathologically busy organizations.” This draws on the concept of two orientations that people tend to have in organizations: the instrumental gaze and the relational gaze. “In an instrumental gaze, we see ourselves as separate, fragmented, and a utility – a means to an end. The focus is on short-term, tangible targets. The other frame is the relational gaze, where we have a broader perspective. We see our interdependence and our relationship with one another. We make very different choices depending on what gaze we have in the organization.”

The problem is that we are inside an “increasingly a broken system” where the instrumental gaze has got out of control and our focus on the doing and on short-term targets means we are squeezing out other conversations that are needed if we are to set up an organization that enables us to flourish. “The more that we end up focusing on this instrumental gaze, the less we end up being able to allow relational conversations,” says Reitz. “We can’t meet mental health issues just with instrumental processes – we need to question the whole way we look at work. It comes down to [the big questions]. What are we doing here? What’s the point? Why are we working together, and what is the point of my leadership? It’s through these crucial questions that we start to have the kind of relationships and the kind of conversations that help at work.”

Five insights into unlocking mental health in the workplace

Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School and author of  The Fearless Organization, offers five insights into unlocking mental health in the workplace. Her first is to reframe reality. “Let’s get ahead of people’s automatic assumptions of what leaders expect or what the job is like,” she said. “We need to set expectations to fit reality. The world is complex, uncertain, and volatile. When we don’t talk about that, we tend to feel, ‘It’s just me. I’m the one. I missed a deadline. I failed.’ But this is all normal and natural, so let’s normalize it. Let’s destigmatize it. Let’s embrace that reality together. We should talk about it and make it discussable all the time.”

Connected to this is the advice to “double down” on purpose and meaning. “One of the biggest factors in reduced mental health is the sense that you don’t matter,” Edmondson explained. “It might be because you think what you’re doing doesn’t matter or isn’t noticed by customers, clients, or more importantly, colleagues. Mattering to the world, each other, and the people you encounter every day is part of health. It’s part of being human. It’s part of what makes us want to get out of bed in the morning. We need to double down on talking about it. Why does it matter? Why does it matter that this organization exists or that this project exists? Why does what I’m doing matter?”

Edmonton’s third injunction is to double down on community: “We need robust, authentic relationships that are based on a realistic understanding and appreciation of each other and that help us be accountable with and for each other. Let’s build those kinds of robust relationships.”

Following on from this, she says, leaders need to build “scaffolding” to invite input. By this, she means that we need to put in place rituals – whether check-ins with each other or simply brainstorming sessions – that create the structure to speak up: “It doesn’t happen spontaneously. It needs help. It needs scaffolding.”

Edmonton’s fifth and final recommendation, not only for leaders but for everyone, is to master the pause. This means taking a breath before responding thoughtfully to what we hear – especially if it’s something we don’t want to hear: “If someone disagrees with an idea you care about, pause, breathe, and express interest. Roll up your sleeves and get into a higher-quality conversation as a result. Take a breath so that you can help yourself respond productively.”

A generational shift

Peter Sims, best-selling author, philanthropist, investor, and founder of BLK SHP, is optimistic that a profound generational shift is underway and that talking about mental health will be destigmatized by a younger cohort of leaders. “Last year, I had a very challenging year,” he reveals. “For the first time in my life, I experienced depression. I was open with people about this. On the one hand, I talked with some older people, including some CEOs in big organizations, and these guys were all men and didn’t know what to do with my questions. It’s a generational thing. They don’t have the tools. They were used to saying, ‘Just tough through it.’ The younger people I talked with who had experienced depression said, ‘Just be patient with yourself. Give yourself self-care. You’ll get through this.’ Their advice was the right advice.”

Sims says the older generation is missing a piece of the toolkit to be able to work through this type of situation. “It’s not that they haven’t gone through something similar – many of them have – but they have never been around anyone who could give them perspective. They just don’t have the tools.” But he believes organizational change will happen because the younger generation has a different set of tools and experiences “to really drive lasting change.”

It means trying to build a team while being fully cognizant of reality, which means saying, ‘I can’t do it alone'

The critical role of modeling

Edmondson argues that leaders need to end the stigma around mental health so that showing vulnerability is seen as a strength, not a weakness. “Vulnerability is merely a fact,” she points out. “We are all vulnerable to all the things coming at us that we’re unaware of at any given time. It’s a strength to acknowledge that. It is a strength to say, “Here’s what I’m unsure or anxious about. I need help from you. Vulnerability is only a weakness in a world that expects to run on time, expects predictability, and certainty. We don’t live in that world.”

She cites Alan Mulally’s turnaround of Ford Motor Company post-2006 as a great example of a leader modeling “productive vulnerability.” “He said to his team, ‘Listen, we’re on track to lose $17bn this year.’ That is a statement of vulnerability. He told them, ‘We cannot keep going this way. There will be a point where they will shut us down. Let’s start telling the truth to each other.’ It’s a statement that the company’s vulnerable, I’m vulnerable. It’s about discussing the reality [which means] modeling productive vulnerability.”

All four contributors agree on the crucial role of modeling on the part of leaders. For Edmondson, this means “showing up as caring and passionate about the possibilities here but also being curious and humble. It means trying to build a team while being fully cognizant of reality, which means saying, ‘I can’t do it alone. I need you. I’m utterly dependent on you.’ Great teams can use each other’s strengths and weaknesses to interact candidly, to ask good questions, to argue their points carefully with as much evidence as they can muster, to listen, and to change their minds. The leader’s first job is to build a great team at the top and model that teamwork, then other teams will start to emulate it.”

The right messaging is also crucial. Edmondson says this consists of “repeated and truthful messages about purpose, about challenges, about what we’re up against, why it matters, why every one of you is needed to do this well – the right communications that engage and inspire. How we show up as leaders is so important.”

Know your lifelines

Reitz draws on her own experience of feeling truly anxious, which she likens to “being in a vortex where you can’t even see that you’re in a vortex” to urge us all to turn to people we know will help. “I’ve learned over time to know when I’m in that vortex, where my lifelines are – where the ropes are that I can grab hold of. There’s a handful of people I can wave at and say, ‘Help! I’m sinking.’ They know, they get it. That’s so important – know who gets it and who will throw you a lifeline.”

This article was developed in collaboration with Thinkers50 from their Mind Matters series of conversations between leading experts in the field of mental well-being at work.