Mental Health Awareness Week - How does trust help our mental health in the workplace ?

In this first special bite sized daily episode of Get Amplified supporting Mental Health Awareness Week, the Get Amplified team are joined again by Chris Collett, former Army Major and Mental Health First Aid Trainer. The team explore why having trust in the workplace helps our mental health and how a leader can build trust by showing vulnerability.

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Transcript

Sam 0:10

Welcome to a series of special editions of Get Amplified in respect of Mental Health Week. Five-minute snippets on a variety of useful topics. Sean, off you go.

Sia 0:21

Thanks, Sam. So pretty much we realise right now things aren't the norm, right? Okay, we've got that.

Sam 0:26

True.

Sia 0:27

That also applies to podcasts, funny enough. So whereas people used to listen to podcasts in their community or, you know, when they're walking the dog, a lot of that has changed. So we've decided to this week at least just put out some short bite-sized snippets so that people can digest them and so they can focus on their families when they go out for the hour walk instead of focusing on their podcast. So therefore we thought we would um keep it to the three of us, but also invite back a special guest uh who we've had on before, uh, Chris Collette, and welcome, Chris.

Chris 1:01

Thank you.

Sia 1:01

And we're all going to talk about a really important subject, and that's mental health awareness. And on the 18th to the 24th of May, it is mental health awareness week. Last year we put out a series of notifications about this, but we think putting them into a podcast will be a really good way of explaining our thoughts, and they are literally our thoughts, our opinion of three people. Chris is slightly more qualified in the way that he is a qualified instructor for mental health first aid, but we we just wanted to be clear, you know, we're not experts here, we're just um people that think that this definitely applies in the workplace, it applies to what we do, and we wanted to share that with our audience. So, with that, Sam, I think I'll hand back to you and you can maybe ask some questions.

Sam 1:48

Yeah, great, thank you. So um obviously, it seems there is a much greater awareness of the importance of mental health in the workplace, um, clearly, particularly at the minute, you know, when the workplace is slightly strange and it is your home workplace at the minute. Um, what do you think has changed? Why have we become so aware of it recently? Chris, that's maybe one for you to kick us off.

Chris 2:13

Yeah, absolutely. Uh mental health is is part of our overall health, and people have become more and more conscious that we need to look after healthy bodies and healthy minds. So, the advent of social media has meant that the transmission of information is ever more uh quick and instantaneous across the world. But I think it's probably worth setting it in a little bit of context, the kind of mental health we're talking about here, because clearly we're not experts, so we're not talking from an academic or a clinical point of view. So you can see mental health on a on a spectrum, a continuum from um you know mental health issues such as a lack of sleep or a uh a small degree of stress which affect the way that you you conduct yourself at work or hold relationships or are able to function, to perhaps the other end, if we see it in a linear context, you've got mental health issues which are designated by a document called ICD 10, which a clinician would uh suggest that actually you've presented with some symptoms, and therefore they can designate you have got you know depression or anxiety or whatever it might be. A way of sort of more looking at the other end of the spectrum where you know sleep and relationship problems and difficulties it were, in what we're talking about over the next few days are those things that uh most of us have encountered at work, those everyday stresses and strains which present us with some issues and can that can be described as affecting our mental health rather than mental than being described as mental illness. And if we set it in context, in a workplace context, we've got a few sort of statistics for you which might help um uh show us where we are. So the predominant cause of workplace stress is considered workload, and actually, given the the process we're going through at the moment with the COVID-19 problems, people's workloads not only do they have a work workload, they're at home and they've got to deal with children, they've got to deal with family, they've got to deal with their own issues with being locked down. So that workload becomes even more of a pressure. The number of work-related stress, depression, or anxiety issues in 2018 and 19 was 602,000. Yeah, so we're we're um in what we're talking about over the next few days are those things that uh most of us have encountered at work, those everyday stresses and strains which present us with some issues and can that can be described as affecting our mental health rather than uh mental than being described as mental illness.

Sam 4:26

That makes sense. So Vicky, perhaps you you can explain uh why this topic is so key to what you do at the Amplified Group.

Vic 4:35

Yeah, thanks, Sam. So I think we mentioned this on the first podcast where we introduced the Amplified Group, in that it really relates to our why. And one of the things that we became more and more aware of through our careers was the amount of stress that people are under at work. And what we're gonna try and do over this next week is show how the five behaviours and the process of building stronger teams can really help reduce the stress in the workplace. And it was it was a bit of a an aha moment, I think, when we started to really unpick the fact that so many people we know are going through stress in the workplace because they don't feel like they're being heard, because they don't feel like people have got their backs and it's a highly political environment that they're working in, and how you can overcome that. So it's great to have this opportunity to share this because as Shah said, last year we shared these as posts, and we had some really great traction, but we can just be able to dig into it a little bit more.

Sam 5:45

Yeah, as a discussion.

Vic 5:47

Yeah.

Sam 5:48

So so you know, we talk about the five behaviours. The first one to cover is I guess is trust. And um, perhaps we could talk about how trust relates to mental health in the workplace.

Chris 6:00

Relationships are fundamental are founded on trust. So the more trust you have with people that you work with, surely the better the operating scenario is going to be, the more you're able to reach out if you need help, the better able you are to allow people to operate within their own comfort zones if you trust them so to do. If we assume that the leader is somebody who sets the context in which other people work, them showing their vulnerability, them showing their uh willingness to not have all the answers. And it's okay not to have all the answers. That sets the context for other people then to be vulnerable. And if you can be vulnerable, that's got to reduce the stress of you trying to hold things inside because you desperately want to say something or you desperately need some help, but you're too frightened to do that. And that has an adverse effect on your mental health if you don't, it causes stress, it causes anxiety, things which are relatively easily avoided if the environment exists where you can be vulnerable with one another.

Sam 6:55

I guess if the if the leader is or the leadership of the organization is showing themselves to be vulnerable in that way, they almost give permission for the people within the organization to open up.

Vic 7:08

Yes, I I can um say we ran a virtual workshop last week, in fact, and the leader really demonstrated vulnerability, and he actually said afterwards he felt better for it. But if if you're a leader and you're being able to open up and really show where you're finding challenges, particularly at this time, then everyone else feels like they can let their guard down too. So it has to be the leader that really leads the way.

Sam 7:39

So, Shar, do you want to wrap us up with uh maybe a tip for our listeners?

Sia 7:44

Yeah, I think you know everybody's really said it. I'm just gonna re-reiterate it is the fact that if you're a if you're a leader, show your vulnerability, give others permission then to be vulnerable themselves. So come on a call and just say, Hey, I'm having a hard time right now, I'm having challenges with this right now, and just show their human side. I think we'll let other people feel comfortable enough to open up themselves.

Sam 8:11

I think that makes a lot of sense. So thanks everybody for listening to this mini version of Get Amplified from the Amplified Group. Uh, we'll be back tomorrow talking about anxiety in the workplace and how to eliminate some of those frustrations if you don't feel like your voice is being heard.