Leaders Speak Up: Unlocking Mental Health in the Workplace

How workplace leaders can share their mental health journeys to foster psychological safety

To improve workplace mental health, we need to rethink how, where, and why we work. That’s why Thinkers 50 and the Silicon Guild partnered through May (Mental Health Awareness Month) for a webinar series called Mind Matters: Mental Wellbeing, Leadership, and Work. Leading experts will host weekly discussions about how to destigmatize mental health challenges like anxiety, depression, and burnout, and rethink workplace practices that harm mental health.

Our final webinar of May was called “Leaders Speak Up: Unlocking Mental Health in the Workplace.” It discussed how leaders can speak up about their own mental health journeys in to foster psychological safety and decrease stigma around mental health within their organizations.

The session featured:

  • Megan Reitz, author of Speak Up, and Professor of Leadership and Dialogue at Hult International Business School
  • Amy Edmondson, author of The Fearless Organization and Right Kind of Wrong and Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School
  • Peter Sims, author of True North, Little Bets and his new book, Black Sheep: The Quest to be Human in an Inhuman Time. He is the founder and Chairman of BLK SHP, an organization dedicated to creating a new renaissance.
  • Morra Aarons-Mele, (moderator), author of The Anxious Achiever

The session began with the following questions: Why is speaking up so hard? What is a leader’s role in speaking up and getting personal about their own mental health, to make the same easier for the people on their teams?

We’re wired for story. Uri Hassan’s research at Princeton shows that when we hear a story, our brain waves “sync up” with those of the storyteller. As he puts it, “trying to make your brain similar to mine.”

Megan Reitz shared three framing concepts:

  1. A leader’s role in speaking up and enabling others to do so is very important.
  2. But not if it’s performative. Action speaks louder than words. (No “insert vulnerable moment here” anecdotes that ring false!)
  3. Our actions and words are situated in a system that makes it difficult to have conversations about mental health.

“My door is always open”?—?except if it isn’t

What a leader says about mental health, or doesn’t say, gets replicated across the organization. Alongside her co-researcher, Jon Higgins, Megan has found that as people get into increasingly powerful positions, they are more likely to go into an “optimism bubble”. This means they overestimate their listening skills, their approachability, and the extent to which people are speaking up around them. This in spite of research that shows that having a lot of power literally causes the equivalent of brain damage.

Furthermore, when people do speak up about mental health, the leader’s response will define future conversations about mental health. For example, if a leader looks frustrated or unsure at the mention of mental health, people will internalize that reaction, and determine that it’s not a welcome topic.

Instrumental and relational gazes

Spaciousness is the capacity to have conversations inside of what Megan calls “pathologically busy” organizations. When it comes to viewing our roles in an organization, there are two views: instrumental and relational. In an instrumental view, we see ourselves as individual units, or the “means to an end”. In a relational view, where we have a broader gaze and see our interdependent relationships with one another.

Depending on what gaze we have; we will make different choices. When addressing mental health, we can’t focus solely on the instrumental gaze but need to address our organizations as a whole, including the larger purpose of our work. As Megan succinctly put it, it takes a leader asking, “What the hell are we doing? What is the point of my leadership?”

Headspace reports that in 2020, 35% of workplace leaders were talking about mental health. In 2023, that percentage more than doubled to 89%. However, employees are feeling less cared for than ever. Perhaps this “speaking up” is more performative. And furthermore, we’re having these conversations in a broken system that is overfocused on the instrumental gaze which keeps people focused on the short term.

Strategies for discussions of mental health

As Amy Edmondson observed, “vulnerability is merely a fact.” Being human means we are vulnerable. She shared five concepts for leaders looking to have positive discussions around mental health:

  • Reframe reality. Get ahead of people’s assumptions of what leaders expect, and what the job is like. Set expectations that fit our complicated, unpredictable world.
  • Double down on purpose. It’s important that people know that they matter and their work matters.
  • Double down on community. We need authentic relationships based on a desire to support each other and be held accountable.
  • Build scaffolding to invite input. Scaffolding refers to structures that allow people to voice concerns. This kind of input doesn’t happen spontaneously but thrives with structure.
  • Master the pause. Take a breath, to ensure a thoughtful and caring response, before getting into a conversation about mental health that may be challenging.

Generational shifts

Peter Sims discussed how he saw changes happening at the C suite level in the conversation around mental health. Conversations are now occurring in families and those desires to discuss mental health are reflected through organizations. Additionally, he discussed the generational shift in how mental health is viewed. He cited his own mental health journey, where he found that overwhelmingly, it was younger people that recommended he practice self-care, and give himself grace. As younger generations come up in organizations, they can establish this mindset across organizations.

The challenges of vulnerability

Peter has found that when leaders express vulnerability about historical experience, it’s highly valued by their organizations. However, the same doesn’t hold for vulnerability in the moment. The unfortunate reality is that leaders can’t always be fully open about their mental health difficulties, particularly if they helm large organizations. Peter offered that leaders can speak about their own struggles but frame it as something that happened to a loved one. If they show signs of doubt, the word will get out!

The panelists encouraged us to think of vulnerability as a fact of life?—?we’re all fallible human beings, (or FHBs as Maxie Maultsby puts it). Indeed, vulnerability is only a weakness in a world that expects predictability.

How can leaders display productive vulnerability? Amy cited three behavioral categories:

  • Messaging. Repeated and truthful messages about purpose, challenges that the organization faces, and the value of every person in the organization.
  • Modeling. Showing up as a caring, passionate, humble, emotionally intelligent leader. Asking good questions, listening, and changing the narratives.
  • Mentoring. Other teams will emulate this vulnerability shown by leadership.

Lightning round: How can you communicate your anxiety? How can you pause?

  • When you’re feeling anxious, your view narrows, and you can’t even see that your view is narrowing.
  • Know where your lifelines are: the people that can help you.
  • Practice mindfulness: We exercise and train our physical bodies, but need to do the same for our brains.
  • Moving your body and changing your physical environment.

The replay of the full conversation is available on LinkedIn. Keep in touch with Thinkers50 and the Silicon Guild for the latest in thought leadership.

Leaders Speak Up: Unlocking Mental Health in the Workplace was originally published in Silicon Guild on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.