Diversity is Your Superpower: Leading with Well-Being and Mental Health

Focused on three extraordinary outlooks on well-being and mental health, our blog today is lengthier than we typically share. For ease in finding subjects you’re most interested in, browse the headlines in the interview below.

What’s your well-being journey?

DEANNA: Today, I’m looking forward to our discussion focused on well-being because our special guest is Lisa Warren, one of our well-being and diversity champions at Deloitte. Lisa, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your valuable input. To get us started, can you give us insight into your relationship with wellness?

LISA: Earlier in my career, I did not pay attention to or prioritize my wellness. I was taught that I had to say yes to everything and work crazy hours to be successful. My view was to keep running until I burned out, without time to recover, or the opportunity to invest in relationships and activities outside of work that helped build joy and resilience. I had a job I loved, but I wasn’t bringing my full self to work. I knew I needed a change. It has been a journey; I started with meditation and understanding what it means to be present, prioritized time with loved ones, and spent time in nature. I realized that wellness is not a luxury, it is a priority. When we prioritize mental, physical, and emotional wellness, we make better decisions, are more efficient, and create better environments to work in. You may not be able to control the dynamic pace of a business, but you can control how you maintain your wellness and prepare your mind to be ready to react.

HEATHER: I agree that wellness is personal and for every leader it is different. As leaders, we need to be open and curious to embrace how each team member chooses to address wellness versus imposing how we do it. For me, it changes in each stage of my life, and it is something I am constantly working on. I try to always start with choosing an activity I love to do because spending most of my time at work without a passion or purpose makes it difficult to find wellness without loving what I am doing.

DEANNA: Amazing! Wellness really is a journey, as Lisa had mentioned. I think over time, I had to develop confidence and courage that allowed me to maintain and sustain my boundaries of where and how I worked. My well-being is balancing my time and energy between work and walking my dog or taking a group fitness class or experiences with my friends and family. What does well-being mean to you?

LISA: That is a great point – boundaries are essential, as is permission. Giving ourselves permission to learn and discover what we need to thrive and make mistakes and calibrate. Keeping the balance between intensity and recovery is essential. A friend once compared the importance of investing in wellness to an athlete’s training program. When training for an Olympic marathon, you wouldn’t run a marathon every day. You train your body and your mind to visualize, prepare, execute, and recover.???

That muscle training concept of visualizing, preparing, executing and recovering applies to your physical health, and your emotional and mental health. To perform at our peak when we need to, we need balance and a strong foundation.

HEATHER: My views on wellness have become like a scale: constantly adjusting and rebalancing. We need to be deliberate about how we divide ourselves between our physical, mental, and financial well-being. I have found if I adjust based on my current state or the role I am playing in life or with my family, this is the most effective way for me to strike the right balance. At times my mental well-being requires more investment while at other times it is physical but being attune that the balance may change is key.

How can leaders help remove the stigma?

DEANNA: When researching well-being in the workplace, countless surveys and research claim that well-being and mental health are a top priority for senior leaders in organizations. While that recognition is important, I am more of an action-oriented person, and find myself asking – ok so HOW are they prioritizing well-being?

I think it is extremely helpful for senior leaders to model the behavior or, rather set the expectations around the importance of well-being. For example, taking PTO after a big deliverable or project, not answering emails or assigning tasks after hours, or simply checking in to their team’s workload and asking how they can help.

What behaviors can leaders exhibit to help prioritize well-being and support team members feel better connected within a team and organization?

HEATHER: Curiosity and leadership. The curiosity to ask about your team is part of how leaders can build deep connections. Leadership provides forums to discuss wellness in dedicated meetings or even provides resources for education around prioritizing their personal or professional wellness.

LISA: I agree with Heather that creating a forum and safe spaces for what your team is individually experiencing, allows them to realize that they may not be going through something alone. Normalizing sharing concerns, anxieties or vulnerabilities can break down the stigma around mental health and reinforce that emotional and mental health are just parts of what makes us human.

In a recent call with my team, we discussed returning to the office and business travel after the pandemic. Some people are eager to get back out there, others are not, and it will be different for everyone. I shared that I too have anxieties about getting back to “normal,” and it takes me longer to process, prepare, and recover from traveling for work than it did in the past. Several people reached out after the discussion to share that they were having a similar experience and were relieved to know they were not the only one.

We must integrate well-being into our job requirements. As something we give time for and reward those who do it well. It requires being transparent and consistent in role modeling the balance and providing safe spaces.

DEANNA: Heather and I have discussed mental health before. In her previous blog, she mentions that people at work are like icebergs. You will see the tip of the iceberg at work, but there is so much more under the surface. And as a leader, you should prioritize leaving time to get to know the individuals on your team: their objectives, fears and motivations, so you can get a better sense of what they need, how they work and how to motivate them.

With that heavy stigma that mental health holds, how else would you both encourage leaders to address this topic within their day-to-day interactions with their teams?

HEATHER: We do not think twice about going to a doctor if we are sick – so why is treating your mind any different? It may sound cavalier, but if your mind is unhealthy everything else is likely to fail. In my view, investing in your mind the way you do your body, is the single most important thing you can do for yourself. Sharing that outlook with my team has been important to demonstrate the strength in seeking help. I believe the more we talk about it, the more we remove the stigma that struggling is something to hide and the more we become educated in navigating mental health.

LISA: Emphasizing that we are all on this journey of learning and understanding our wellness together. For a long time, people weren’t comfortable having these conversations. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that more organizations made discussing diversity and well-being a priority.

There is a pent-up demand to talk about wellness and mental health, and a fear of the implications of being open. A recent study found people were more comfortable talking to a robot than a human about their mental health and feared if they were open at work it would result in fewer opportunities or even job loss. The more we can keep the dialogue open, provide support, and demonstrate how we are managing our well-being, you will inherently build mental health into your culture.

DEANNA: I really resonate with the iceberg metaphor. There are pieces of myself that I am comfortable sharing at work, and others that I shy away from. Though I feel like I have established a great relationship with my manager where if there was a situation that would affect the quality of my work, I would be able to share that I may need extra time – whether that is PTO to deal with that situation away from work or maybe just additional time to complete a project – and I know she would have empathy and create that space for me.

However, not everybody feels this way – and it may be the leader or manager that sees a decline in work or energy towards a project. What advice do you have around approaching those potentially awkward conversations?

HEATHER: I believe you must have a connection with your co-workers and leaders. Without that connection, they have not really earned the privilege of learning about your iceberg. It is expected that colleagues will want some change and it is a natural conversation to have – the key is to remember it is not personal, and it is in both of your best interests to find passion in the work you do, even if it takes time to make the change. The art of having these deliberate conversations is how it can evolve your relationship.

LISA: It is encouraging to hear Deanna has a great relationship with her manager, because that is essential. Relationships with a foundation of trust, understanding and respect make it easier navigate difficult topics than if relationships are transactional. Investing in trust-based relationships at every level creates a healthy culture.

My advice is to (1) build trust outside of the work. Ask questions and get to know not just the team you lead, but your own manager. Developing trust at every level keeps a healthy system. (2) Understand what your team is committed to without assumptions. When you are asking your team to do something and no one pushes back, do not assume that means they have capacity. How to get work done should always be a dialogue rather than a ‘just do it.’ Integrating expectations into an ask like “Do you have the bandwidth to complete this by Friday?” opens the discussion up front for respecting your teams’ time and commitments.

How do we address burnout?

DEANNA: The expectations around urgency, bandwidth and commitments directly touches on the common issue of burnout. Because the increase in hybrid work environments has blurred the lines between work and home, it is hard to turn off, shut down your email and switch yourself away from work. How do you suggest leaders address burnout?

LISA: That is a difficult question. One of the hardest things about burnout is by the time it is visible, it is often too late. Building in preventative mechanisms to help proactively manage wellness and build resilience is step one. When we are run down and in a vulnerable state, new asks or feedback are amplified and emotionally charged.

Language and how we communicate is important – well intentioned feedback can be internalized as I am not good enough or I am not capable to be in this profession. Fatigue destabilizes your resilience to incorporate or process information in a way that is healthy.

Encouraging team members to take time to disconnect and recover, ensuring that they are aware of available mental health resources, and connecting them with internal professionals that are trained to help manage mental health are great resources.

We must build in that time and space for our team to focus on the things that help them recharge.

HEATHER: Burnout is real and happens often. If you see it as a leader and try to help, the reality is that the individual may not see it or want help which proves difficult to deal with or make a change. In these cases, the most effective action I have seen taken is breaking away to do something totally different and recharge or reevaluate. Whether that is time off, going back to school or just jumping on a new project. Sometimes this conclusion comes from the discussions and forums we discussed, and for others it is from seeking council or support from experts to navigate. The journey is personal and individual.

Where can a leader start in advocating for well-being and mental health?

DEANNA: Some companies have entire programs dedicated to empowering employees to foster better well-being with giveaways, retreats, or even discounts on tools and resources that can help. What advice do you have to leaders who may not work at places with such robust programs? Where can they start in helping their team?

LISA: Flexibility is a hugely underrated benefit. Working in a virtual environment can make it easier to set your own schedule based on your outside commitments. In addition, giving your team the opportunity to work the hours that are best for them is extremely valuable so long as you each uphold your commitments and responsibility to the team and the work you set to accomplish together.

HEATHER: There are a few key things: (1) Be clear on expectations: you run a business and have objectives. (2) Be flexible in how and when to achieve those objectives: allow your talent to have a hand in how these goals are refined. (3) Be mutually supportive: as difficult as this may seem, mutual support will result in mutual success. If expectations are clear, individuals should have the flexibility to meet expectations, balance their needs, and contribute to mutual success.

DEANNA: To close out this wonderful discussion, I am curious what you each think is the best way to advocate for well-being and mental health in the workplace? What are small actions we can take that can make a large impact?

LISA: Visibly prioritize mental health and well-being. Talk openly and be a resource. I’ve seen people get addicted to intense periods of work so that once the deliverable finishes or a milestone is reached and the work is less intense, they feel like they are missing something or falling behind. Help people take a step back and assess objectively. Plan for intensity and recovery with your team, and you will make a larger impact together. Simply encourage your team to proactively book PTO based on those ebbs and flows in your work and honor that PTO by actively unplugging. Your future self will thank you.

HEATHER: It may be oversimplifying it, but: talk about it and recognize it. Stay curious and open and you won’t go wrong.