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Sticky Learning Lunches #23: Having a Mental Health Conversation Bothers Me
Use this 4-part model of M.I.N.D to have an effective mental health conversation. This is especially important when working from home.
You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:
Nathan Simmonds:
Good afternoon everybody. Welcome to today’s Sticky Learning Lunch. I’m not leaving the room, I’m just getting my phone. I’ve left it on the other side again. Good afternoon everyone. Hello. Hello. Welcome people just joining the room. Great to see you. Vicki. Lovely to see you again. Tracy Bravida, Matt, Laura, Carolina. Hello again. Jason, Gabrielle, Colin, Adam. It’s great. I’m getting some regulars. Some old friends, some new friends. Hello, hello. Getting some hellos coming up. If you wanna say hi, please type, type, hi.
Nathan Simmonds:
I know you and then you are, you are with me. You are fully attentive because I can see when you’re not on the little box over here, I can see when you’re looking at other webpages, people, how are we on a scale of one to 10, how are we feeling? One terrible, 10 amazing. Where are we on this scale ourselves. Let’s check in with ourselves. Mental health isn’t just about the people you are working with. It is about yourselves. I talk about self-leadership as a, as a technique, as an understanding. If you cannot lead yourself, you cannot lead anybody else.
Nathan Simmonds:
So it’s super important that when we’re working with mental health and mental wellbeing, that we’re checking with ourselves to make sure we’re okay. Let’s think about focus. What is the best part of your week so far? Let’s get this into the, the questions box as well. I, I share some of these. What is the best part of your week so far that is filling you with joy, appreciation, love, gratitude, whatever it is. And I wanna see some of them. ’cause in that it then balances off me as well. Had a pretty good morning clearing the decks. Nice knowing Friday’s, two days away, Adam. Don’t be like that. The sun. Nice
Nathan Simmonds:
Session’s in place for mental health week. All filled. Nice. Nice self development. Seeing my own son develop so much from homeschooling. He is loving the one-to-one. Yeah, absolutely. The people homeschooling and people are saying, you know, they’re seeing their, their children developing so much. It’s amazing. Sticking to the running, ah, sessions in place for the mental health awareness. We call Phil, they, maybe we need to have a conversation. David, there’s maybe there’s some synergies here that we can share and bounce off with each other, right? We are all in the room.
Nathan Simmonds:
Amazing to see you all. Good afternoon people. So David, if you feel any need you would like to reach out, please do. Just lemme know. I’d love to have a conversation. See how I can help with that. Hello Andrea. Good to see you. I set you all up for success. Always David, thank you. Just come and follow me on LinkedIn. Drop me a connection or, or an email or whatever. I’m happy to share. I’ll get the, my email address in the chat box briefly and we can continue that conversation. Let’s make sure we’ve all got their phones out.
Nathan Simmonds:
Phones first. Everybody on flight mode, a hundred percent attention on you. This is all about you. This is a selfish 30 minutes, which is all about you. And I’m not gonna sing any songs. It’s no, we’re not gonna do that. A hundred percent attention on you. What we’re gonna share today and continuing the dialogue around mental health, mental health awareness, and the tools and techniques that I use and I use with other people to support them. Making sure you’ve got a fresh page in your notepad available. At the top of that you’re gonna write keepers. This is for you to get those things you wanna remember and the things you wanna bring back to your thinking when you read back through your notes. Super important we do this and making sure you’ve got a drink available for this session.
Nathan Simmonds:
Welcome to today’s Sticky Learning lunch with myself, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM Making Business Matter, the home of sticky learning and we are the soft, the leadership development and soft skills provided to the grocery and manufacturing industry. Today is day three. It’s gone like a, it’s gone super fast of the mind model, which is a unique model we created, I created to support leaders having stronger, more robust and more eloquent mental health conversations with themselves and with their teams. And today we’re gonna be covering n for network is all about the people around us. So quick recap on Monday. Monday was all about mindset.
Nathan Simmonds:
It is all about yours and theirs. It’s all about making sure that we’re helping to support, uh, or find out where the focuses are, helping them to deescalate the emotions and come back to center so you can have a conversation. They too, yesterday it was all about importance. What we’re putting the importance on. The other element that’s really important is to understand and deeply comprehend, super important that if this is not in the right place, you cannot move the conversation forward.
Nathan Simmonds:
It doesn’t matter what questions you think you want to ask or you would like that person to get to, is absolutely imperative that they have brought the thinking down, that the breathing has started to be more controlled. That the you, that they can focus their thinking and create new emotions so that you can continue the rest of the dialogue. Jumping this and try and get to here and to hear into the network or the, the next steps or direction is only gonna cause more friction, more frustration and more agitation and just cause that person to spiral deep more deeply into the situation they’re in.
Nathan Simmonds:
Is everyone with me on this? If everyone see, see the importance of making sure the mindset is right. Let me know in the box, yes or no. Yes. Good, good, good. Yes, yes, yes. Good. So we help to understand, to lower the imp help to people to lower the importance that they’re putting on certain things. We help to adjust the focus ’cause the brain can only focus on one thing at a time. Then we get into a network,
Nathan Simmonds:
Three elements to network you, the team and then the support mechanism. So we’re gonna look at all three of those in a minute. The phrase that I had up at the beginning of this and that I shared in the LinkedIn post earlier is, your network equals your network worth. You may have heard this in other circles in other groups of people. We have to understand, you know, well when it comes to this idea is you don’t just have a financial bank account, you have an emotional bank account.
Nathan Simmonds:
Okay? Most of us live our lives though, thinking that our financial bank account actually equals our emotional bank account. I’ll be happy when I earn, I’ll be happier when I get this. We’re not gonna go into that too deeply, but it’s understanding that actually your emotions, your emotional bank account will create the financial bank account.
Nathan Simmonds:
The emotional bank account though in this context is really getting to understand how you are putting credit in that account. How you are looking after yourself, how you are taking time to make those investments of time for yourself and with other people. There’s a Jim Rowan quote that I will paraphrase here is in show me the top five people that you hang out with and I’ll show you the content of your bank balance gift will take 5% or 10%.
Nathan Simmonds:
It’s the same with our emotions. So we can start to see who we’re surrounding ourselves with and how that’s actually impacting our emotional and mental bank account. So it is really important that we start to understand who and what is in our network and how that is potentially impacting us or impacting the people that we are supporting. So the first thing for your network is you.
Nathan Simmonds:
Who here knows the Mental Health England First Aid, um, acronym of algae? Yes or no? No. Okay, I’ve got some nos coming up. I scribbled it down here. No. Okay, so they have a model, it’s called algae, A-L-G-E-E. By all means, please look at it. The first part is to assess. Is to know, to assess the situation. The L is to listen. The G in this, um, is then to, um, give support
Nathan Simmonds:
In, in appropriate ways. And then the e is encourage them to get expert advice. Encourage them to get support. Again, I haven’t got all my documents with me just to make sure that we’re completely on point with that. The first part though, in the network is understanding that when you are supporting someone in a mental health situation, episode moment, there is an appropriate amount of you that you need to give to this conversation. It is not for you to be there 100% of the time. You are not the counselor, you are not the Samaritans.
Nathan Simmonds:
Um, you are the leader, the HR responsible individual, whatever it is, there is a certain amount of you that you can give to this. You are not there to give advice. You are not there to be there constantly. You are not on the end of the phone at three o’clock in the morning necessarily. And it’s about making sure that you’ve got the right elements of you in there to support those individuals.
Nathan Simmonds:
After we, the the, when we are, when we are working in the space, the analogy is, you know, talking about carrying baggage, other people’s baggage. As a coach, as a mental health first aid, as, as someone who works in this space, I am happy to help other people know, put their bags down. I’m happy to support them while they’re unpacking their bags and working out what they truly wanna be carrying on how they wanna be moving forward.
Nathan Simmonds:
At no point though, will I be picking those bags up for them? At no point will I be lightening that load or taking any of that on myself because I have certain frameworks and, um, understandings that enable me to ask the right questions of that individual so that they can do that for themselves. Because I won’t be there all the time. I’m not gonna be there to help them wake up in the morning.
Nathan Simmonds:
I’m not gonna be there to to, to resolve every problem. The idea is to create an environment where that person can go and get those answers for themselves. It is all well and good. As coaches, as leaders, as HR professionals, we often have this sensation that we wanna be superheroes and save the day pants over the trousers cape on and fly off to the rescue. If we’re not qualified to do that, don’t do it. Just remember how much of you is in this, how much you are investing. You can still treat these people.
Nathan Simmonds:
Now, as a leader, I talk about treating people like my children, not like a child. We can still give them that love and respect and support. At the same time. We still want our children to leave. We want our children to grow up, mature and, and fly the nest. They will not always be there with you. So it’s important that we get this understanding. How much of you are you giving to this and checking in with your own mental health when you are in this situation. ’cause one of the key elements of mental health, the first aid certificate is making sure or needs to be more included, that you are safeguarding yourself when you are in the situation.
Nathan Simmonds:
When you are in that, in, in that network, in that environment. Hope this is useful. Who here has had an experience when they’ve gone too far into this conversation and felt they couldn’t back out of this, but they gave too much of themselves to, uh, a situation they got into? Good question. Early doors. How do you know how much you should be investing? It’s the same I think with many behaviors when we get into this. If it is starting to encroach in your personal life and is it, and it’s causing you detriment mentally or emotionally or physically, you’ve invested too much.
Nathan Simmonds:
You haven’t got the right support mechanisms in place for yourself. There is a time and a place for certain elements. There is a time and certain time and a place to be able to disconnect and, and decompress from situations. And if you don’t have the right safety mechanisms in place and safeguarding, that becomes overwhelming and therefore the problems that you are carrying for other people suddenly become yours.
Nathan Simmonds:
So we have to be doing a lot of internal work ourselves and it’s easy to do because we’re human and we want to connect with people, but we have to understand how we do this in the frameworks we, we employ to make sure we’re delivering the best possible service for ourselves first. Now, you cannot help someone else. You cannot give more to someone else than you have yourself. It’s important we understand this. So the next stage of the the network
Nathan Simmonds:
Is actually team. You are a leader, a HR professional, and people are in your environment, is helping to include the team. Now you don’t have to breach confidentiality and say, this person’s got this mental health challenge. This person’s got this situation. What you can do though is you can talk about people returning to work and creating these, these environments and safe bubbles for people where actually the team are including them, create projects, create work, speak to the individual as their return. Okay, so what would you like to be involved in? How can we support this?
Nathan Simmonds:
Who else can support you? And we start to buddy people up and we don’t have to give all the information, we can leave that to them to have that conversation, but we’re creating a level of inclusion. A lot of people band words around like, oh, I’m, I’m, I’m really OCDI like this. Well actually, when you’ve experienced OCD, you stop making jokes about it. Um, one of my clients previously, she said, you know, I’m, um, I’m a bit OCD, I like to know what’s going on. I said, no, you’re not OCD, you just wanna be included.
Nathan Simmonds:
So it’s important, you know, when you hear people like this, when you hear people joking around that sort of words of, of, of obsessive compulsive disorders about the state of their desk or how they like things to be done, actually it’s just a level of inclusion that they’re looking for. The the behaviors that they’re talking about is actually helping ’em to validate and justify why they’re doing certain things or pushing up with certain, um, behaviors. Super interesting way of looking at it, isn’t it?
Nathan Simmonds:
But when people are returning into your environment, helping them to feel included starts to build stronger relationships. Johann Harri in his book, the Lost Connections, he said the opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. And actually those people that are suffering from addictive tendencies or addictive situations, actually it’s because they’re missing something, a connection to something that would encourage a different behavior if it was there. So the next thing we wanna do is start working inside that team.
Nathan Simmonds:
The other side of team that we want to be looking at is also crisis teams. Who hears, who here has heard of the term crisis team? Who’s heard of the idea of a crisis team? No. Okay, good, good, good. Yes. We’ve got a couple of yes coming a couple of no’s. We’ve got a mixed bag. Depending on the severity of your mental health situation, you may have a crisis team. Now, when we did our first day certificates for mental health, they talked about people that have, um, bipolar personality disorders.
Nathan Simmonds:
And depending on the severity of that, you may have people that intervene and step in on certain elements of your life to make sure that actually if you have to go to hospital or something else happens, that they will then come and make sure your cat is fed so that you are not then worrying about whether or not your cat is okay or your plants are gonna get watered.
Nathan Simmonds:
All these sorts of things because animals and plants are huge in mental health. Um, I’m looking around my office and my office is absolutely full of them and they’re vital because they, it’s important to me. It keeps me connected to things. Having the crisis team, when that mental health thing peaks just takes some of that pressure off you as a leader or a HR professional or in someone within your gift. If you know that you’ve got someone with, um, a mental health, um, situation going on that you need to be aware, find out who their crisis team is, ask them who is, who is there in your crisis team?
Nathan Simmonds:
Who can I contact on your behalf in this situation? Who else is help? Do you need, um, to, who else needs to know about this? When this happens and you’re starting to understand how you then connect with other people, it is not your responsibility to be making all the phone calls all the time. Maybe there’s someone else in that team that you can then connect with that then takes that on because that’s their responsibility, that’s their role. Maybe it’s a parent or a primary caregiver. So we understand who the team is at work, how we connect people, and also for them outside. When situations get to that, that level that requires that extra support.
Nathan Simmonds:
Which leads into the last one, which is the expert report support. It is the additional people. One of the ones that really frustrate. One of the things or statements that really frustrates me when working with people in, in the mental health chain is, you know, you are, you’re talking about counseling, you’re talking about health, um, support or charity organizations. And the response back is, oh, counseling doesn’t work for me. Has anyone heard this in the conversations they’ve had? Oh, I spoke to them but it wasn’t for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It just drives me bonkers. Why?
Nathan Simmonds:
Yes, a lot. . The 12 step as an example, 12 steps aa, how long has the 12 steps been going for? And how many people has it actually helped? You know, how long have these charity organizations been going and how many people have they saved? How, you know, counseling is a profession that has been around for millennia and how many people is it supported along the way? What people seem to think when they’re caught in that spiral is that there is just one type of counseling. They get caught on the idea that there is only one counselor out there. Oh, the doctor sent me to Health in mind.
Nathan Simmonds:
I’ve been referred to this person, it didn’t work, therefore it’s all over. That’s the only person that exists. It’s helping people to understand there are multiple avenues that they can go down. Someone, you know, Matt just said here, the person may not be the right person. Absolutely. It’s no different from me. I’m a leadership and career coach. Now there are plenty of leadership and career coaches out there. We have different experiences, different focuses, different niches. We work with different types of people.
Nathan Simmonds:
Just because you’re coming to work with me, we don’t work. It doesn’t gel. It doesn’t, it doesn’t, you know, it doesn’t get that, um, that forward momentum doesn’t mean that leadership and career coaching doesn’t work, it just means that we are not a right fit. So when we hear this, we have to make sure as HR, leadership, all that sort of thing that we’re talking about.
Nathan Simmonds:
All the different options that we’re sharing, all the different points of contact that we’re coming up with, different charity organizations that we’re reminding people that actually speak to your doctor, speak to the referral group, ask to speak to someone different about this and helping them to see the multiple avenues and multiple options that are gonna help them move out this start helping them to see all the different alternatives and which ones they can then plug into a quick recap.
Nathan Simmonds:
Tons of time, 21 minutes past quick recap. Network, your net is your net worth or equals your net worth. And this applies still for the mental side of things. Remember your three elements of your network. One is you making sure you’re looking after yourself and where you fit into the equation. Team at work, connecting people and also what their team is and, and the support mechanisms they’ve already got in place and who they can contact. And also seeking the same with the algae model, you know, encouraged to go and get expert advice. Go and find the support and who are those support mechanisms out there.
Nathan Simmonds:
This links back into the you though, because actually when you are doing that, you’ll find more resources for them, which you may not have known about. And you can find more answers for yourself, which then supports them even more and gives you that support. And this is how we strengthen that network, those connections, it becomes, um, integral the integrity of the conversation.
Nathan Simmonds:
You’ve got the structures and this is the bit that’s gonna help hold it together for you. Hope this is useful. What have you taken away from today’s conversation that is useful for your mental health conversations? What have you got? I see that in the question box. I’m just gonna put you on mute.
Nathan Simmonds:
Don’t take money off other people’s backs, you know, not off other people’s back. Yeah, absolutely. The components of network, absolutely a few things. Network, yes. Algae and your, yeah. Addiction not being solved by avoidance. Absolutely reality. I can’t solve everyone’s problems. They need to own it with help from others. Absolutely. Opposite of addiction connection. So helpful. Look after myself first. Absolutely scope of each component. Nice. Can’t help everyone if you’re not in the right frame of mind.
Nathan Simmonds:
Completely, completely. This is how we’re linking this in. So one is you’re checking the mindset of the individual and okay, where the focus is helping to understand what they’re putting that focus on and kind of deescalating further some of that with a few questions. Once you get into this, then you can start to get ’em to understand where the points of contact are.
Nathan Simmonds:
What your role, who their role models are, where they learn from and bringing some of these things into their thinking so they don’t feel alone so that they understand there is a group of people or connections around them that is gonna support them developing from this moment. What’s happening right now isn’t forever is just a moment with the right questions from ourselves as practitioners on uh, leaders, um, and business professionals. We can help them to adjust that and understand there is another step and there is another action that can be taken.
Nathan Simmonds:
Before we get into announcements, what questions have you got for me, please? I’ve only, I’ve had one so far. What questions have you got for me right now regarding mental health conversations? Um, got some questions coming in. Again, if you have not registered for tomorrow’s session, now is the time.
Nathan Simmonds:
I don’t know where the chat box is on your screen. You will see the link for tomorrow’s session. Come up in the chat box, please make sure you are registered for tomorrow so we can share the rest of this conversation. Carry on building this up. Links come up in just a moment. Questions, are there common signals to know in, um, when to progress to the next stage of the model?
Nathan Simmonds:
When we’re up here and we’re in crisis or someone is in crisis, it is just a matter of whether they’re starting to calm down and you can start to get coherent answers. Whether you’re getting more than, you know, one syllable responses where the person is starting to kind of, you can see rather than the, the rapid eye movement and the the agitation. Things are starting to calm down. The breathing is starting to slow. We’re just monitoring that.
Nathan Simmonds:
Um, certain techniques in NLP when we’re looking at ’em, we can, you use your peripheral vision, you can just start to see the, the shoulders come down and things start to just relax a little bit and you can feel the emotional. Then you can just check in with some questions. How does it, how’s the breathing now? How does it feel when you, when you slow down the breath and then it’s like, yeah, actually that feels better. Okay. And we’re just looking for those emotional cues to help move into the next part of the conversation. What do you do when people refuse? Help acknowledge it that
Nathan Simmonds:
In certain situations when I’m coaching, you know, not everyone’s meant to hear what I’ve got to say to them because it’s me. But unless I say it, um, you know, 99 times beforehand they may not hear it the 100th time when they go into that room with somebody else. When people refuse help, it is their journey. It’s not yours because they refuse help. It isn’t your fault. Um, because they made their choices. That’s not you.
Nathan Simmonds:
They’re living their journey, they’re living their path and you cannot force people to get on that train at the first station to help ’em go. If they don’t wanna do that, they don’t wanna do that. Um, sometimes that’s sad when it happens. Um, but you have to go with it. That’s their journey and their choices and that’s where they’ll go to. You do everything you can to make sure they feel connected, um, that they are psychologically safe, that they can have the conversation. And if you hand on heart said everything that you could and done everything you could, then you just allow it to move. It’s tough.
Nathan Simmonds:
That is almost the end of the day’s session. Unless you’ve got more questions coming in. Announcements, big ones got the link for tomorrow’s session. Sign up. If you’re not already signed up for tomorrow’s session, now is the time to make that happen. So you can be in the room with us again at one o’clock tomorrow for tomorrow’s to key learning lunch. Um, other thing, coaching cards. The mental health coaching cards, which cover a mind model.
Nathan Simmonds:
They’re on the website that links there. The other bit of exciting news as well, he says is we are creating a new leadership development program course that is gonna cover certain key elements of mental health first aid. So we’re gonna bring guest presenters to deal with this.
Nathan Simmonds:
This will be a face-to-face training, um, program potentially for the future where we can take people through the mental health first aid certificate and also be looking at giving you some of those tools and techniques to create that safeguarding for yourself with some of the core leadership and coaching techniques that I teach people that I know and love from psychology, from leadership to help your leaders be the best version of themselves when they’re having those conversations.
Nathan Simmonds:
One, they have the skillset to see it, support it and develop it. And then they have the skillset to ask better questions, get into the conversation, support themselves and support those individuals moving forward. Who here right now would like their people to be even stronger in these conversations and more equipped to have these types of mental health conversations? Who would like that for their teams right now?
Nathan Simmonds:
Gonna wait for that to come in. I would like my leaders to be stronger. Absolutely. Good. Who else would like their team leaders to be able to have mental health conversations of a whole different dynamic and strength and caliber in order for them to support their people when they need it most? Yes. Yes, yes. A hundred percent. Absolutely. Good. So we’re getting some stuff coming in now.
Nathan Simmonds:
That’s amazing. As soon as this starts to become more of a reality, we will reach out and have a conversation with you and see how we can make this work if it’s appropriate, and also give you some more of the understandings. Yes, you’ve got some of this, yes, you’ve got the mental health coaching cards. There is a whole toolbox of stuff that we can share from a first aid certificate point of view and from a psycho, a psycho, um, psychological and coaching leadership dynamic as well.
Nathan Simmonds:
And when you bring these two things together, it creates something far more robust and beautiful at the same time. Everybody, thank you very much for today. I hope today has been useful. Oh yeah, I hope today’s been useful. Tomorrow. Same time, one o’clock. We are gonna cover the last part of the session. You are very welcome. Thank, thank you. We’re gonna cover the last part of the session, which is about direction. It’s about creating the next actions. So we’re gonna break down the stages again, direction, create action because action creates traction, which always leads into something else. Thank you very much for your time today. Always appreciated. Very grateful. Look forward to seeing you again tomorrow.
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