What do you actually do for a living, Rob?

I had a challenging conversation with someone recently. It wasn’t exactly pleasant. The chat started out innocently enough with the question:

"What do you actually do for a living, Rob?"

I managed to retort with the word:

“Well… “

And this person cut me off. They said something along the lines of the following:

“Because it is really unclear to me. You seem to talk about mental health a lot one minute and then the next you are riding the Tour de France. Your LinkedIn profile has about 20 jobs on it and it looks like you are still doing 6 of them. I am constantly receiving a notification that you have either a work anniversary or started a new job. I am confused. You seem to be a Founder of quite a few things, you are a Coach and have been a Cyclist at one point. You also appear to have more websites than any one person could possibly require. Also, do you just sit around posting things on LinkedIn all day"

I tried to interject but there was no stopping this person..

"So can you please tell me in one sentence What it is that you actually do?”

“Well… let me explain.. “

“Please do, because I have been talking to my friends about this and they also have no idea. And another thing, why did you omit to take the bins out this morning!?”

Yes, the person I was having this conversation with was my wife, Mary Driscoll. It was a fairly “robust” conversation to say the least. However, it got me thinking.. If my wife struggles to explain what I do for a job to her friends , then is it clear to the outside world? Possibly not. Therefore I will attempt to clarify and explain how it all fits together in my head.

I will also take this opportunity to add a couple of new positions in for good measure

In a sentence then, Rob..

“I am a Mental Health Campaigner, Speaker, and Consultant who is passionate about helping create mentally healthier workplaces.”

Elaborating, this is about smashing stigma, consulting with organisations to help get employees to open up about mental health and then put solutions in place. Everything I do is tied together by this passion. So here is how that fits in with my various roles on LinkedIn.

Founder, Inside-Out.org

There is still a stigma associated with mental ill-health in our workplaces. Not everybody feels that they can be open about their mental health and seek help when they need it. Great strides have been made in the 12 months that I have been working on this but there is still so much work to do. Here is my contribution:

The InsideOut Leaderboard - this is a social enterprise that is helping to smash stigma by publishing an annual list of senior leaders who have lived experience of mental ill-health. We will publish the inaugural list in March 2019. This is my main initiative and the reason that I formed a social enterprise. By highlighting executive level role models we aim to help normalise the conversation about mental health. Everything else, I do aims to support this initiative either directly or financially.

Speaking Engagements - sharing my personal story of living and working with bipolar disorder with a range of workplaces, conferences and panel events. Storytelling is once of the most powerful tools in breaking stigma.

Consulting - My work on breaking stigma has led me to talk to a great number of senior leaders on what their business is doing from a mental wellness perspective giving me a very good insight into what is good and best practice. This has, in turn, given me the opportunity to assist with the Responsible 100’s Roundtable on mental health and the “Not a Red Card” Awards and Resources. I consult with businesses on how to implement and embed a mental health strategy and how to keep the conversation alive.

Managing Director, MindCycle Events

In July of this year, I attempted to ride the 3,300km of Tour de France Route on a Smart Trainer on an initiative called the MindCycle Tour. 

The main objective of the project was to provide a medium to encourage people to open up about mental health. This was a great success leading me to launch MindCycle Events which are bespoke indoor cycling events designed to get people talking about mental health and highlight the benefits if exercise on our mental wellbeing.

We can tailor these events for different purposes such as conferences, client events and team building days to name a few. The real benefit of using the bikes as a platform is that it attracts a more diverse range of employees to the event.

For 2019 we will be theming some events around the World Championships course in Yorkshire using virtual technology to bring the challenge indoors.We will also be inviting sports personalities to the events.

Founder, Human Reserves Initiative

This is a brand that I use to deliver wellbeing consulting services through and is part of Inside-Out. I am accredited to deliver services from Firstbeat Technologies Inc. This is a fantastic tool that uses a discrete yet sophisticated heart rate monitor to assess whether someone is experiencing physiological stress activation (flight or fight) or is in recovery mode (rest and digest) at different parts of their day.

We use the Firstbeat Lifestyle Assessment to demonstrate how individuals and teams can better balance the necessary workplace related stresses with moments of recovery. Workshops around this issue can help move the conversation on mental health and wellbeing into the preventative category.

Case Study

Recently, I was asked to run an event on World Mental Health Day. The client, Cicero Consulting, wanted the event to be broader than simply sharing lived experience regarding mental ill-health and have a focus on performance with the potential to attract a broad range of employees to the talk.

I gave a talk on “Stress, Recovery and Performance” and we used the Firstbeat Lifestyle Assessment to talk through two live case studies from employees. These case studies, really brought the event to life and we were able to demonstrate how stress can be managed by taking moments of recovery in the day and how alcohol can interfere with physiological recovery when sleeping. I still shared my experience of mental ill-health but the focus was on the fact that we ALL have mental health and we can all make simple tweaks to better manage it.

I received some great feedback from the client:

“HUGE thanks, Rob. Some of our feedback was that it was the best mental health awareness talk we have ever had! We even managed to weave in some humour and fun into what is otherwise usually a difficult topic of discussion for most.”

New Roles

I am delighted to add two new roles onto my LinkedIn profile. Both of which, I believe, will contribute to solving the mental ill-health problem.

Development Partner, MQ Mental Health

MQ is my charity partner for MindCycle Events. They are a charity that focuses on research into metal illness funded by a generous donation from The Wellcome Trust. A lot of my work is focussed on breaking stigma and addressing the problem of how mental illness is perceived in our workplaces. MQ are very much part of the solution in to better understanding and dealing with it.

In addition to fundraising for MQ, I am keen to effect mutually beneficial introductions to my network as part of my development partner role. MQ have some exciting forthcoming projects in the pipeline that focus on the workplace.

Special Advisor & Investor, BetterSpace

Continuing with the theme of solutions, I am very excited to be an advisor to and investor in the start up, BetterSpace, who seek to transform the way people manage their mental wellbeing. We’re building a wellbeing recommendation algorithm to help people find what is most likely to help their mental health with a live database of interventions that improve one’s state of mind, from exercise clubs to mindfulness apps to life coaches.

Did I mention that I am really excited about this? I think that BetterSpace could be a game changer in efficiently directing both individual and organisational wellbeing budget.

In Summary

I am still a proud Director of Maven Partners, the executive search business that I helped form over 10 years ago, and I am so grateful for the support of my partners in this journey into mental health advocacy. 

The last 12 months have taken me in directions that I could never have expected after I made the decision to be open about my experiences of mental ill health.. I can’t wait to see where the next 12 months take me..

In the meantime, I better get on with the important business of taking the bins out...