The Chief Psychology Officer

Ep80 Mental Health at Work: Breaking the Stigma

• Dr Amanda Potter CPsychol • Season 4 • Episode 80

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Dr Amanda Potter:

Welcome to this episode of the Chief Psychology Officer. I'm Dr Amanda Potter, and today we're turning the table. I'm going to be interviewing my colleague, Kristian Lees-Bell. We're going to be talking about the importance of prioritising employee mental health. Welcome, Kristian.

Kristian Lees Bell:

Thanks, amanda. Finally, I get a chance to be a guest on the podcast, so it's great to be here in the interview seat for once and, to be honest, probably a little bit nerve wracking too.

Dr Amanda Potter:

Nah, you'll be fine. We'll have a great chat all about the things that you're passionate about, so I think it'd be a great, great conversation. So thank you for agreeing to be my interviewee.

Kristian Lees Bell:

And I'm delighted to be in the chair.

Dr Amanda Potter:

So, Kristian, why is this an important podcast for you?

Kristian Lees Bell:

I've really wanted to be a guest on this podcast, I think, to talk about this topic specifically because it's been a passion for mine Since probably I was about 16. I remember, even before I went to uni, I would be constantly reading about how to improve my own well-being. I was interested in the topic of mental health. I was fascinated in how, to you know, behavioral change, all things well-being, and I think, in terms of the work that I do at Zircon you know I head up the well and resilience side of things, as you know, and the more I talk to organisations about this topic, consistent the message is that, you know, work has a significant impact on our mental health and wellbeing and I think actually the idea of work stress, the definition of work stress, needs to change. Work stress now is stress. It's personal stress as well, particularly after COVID. So you know, as work has changed and the way that we do work has changed and the work and personal life has become blurred, it's all stress, whether it's personal or work-based.

Dr Amanda Potter:

The World Health Organization. When they're talking about stress and they're talking about burnout, they often talk about a workplace syndrome or a workplace impact, don't they? But you are right, stress goes beyond work, impacts every aspect of our life. But how brilliant. I didn't know it was from the age of 16 that you were so fascinated about wellbeing and stress. And what a fantastic opportunity to have brought you into Zircon to make you the practice lead for wellbeing, for resilience, so that you can really apply the things that you love in the organisation with our clients. And that's a great segue, actually, because I think this topic is critically important for our clients and for the organisations that we work with, particularly the ones that are facing change, of which are plentiful, of course, because most of our clients are constantly changing, constantly transitioning, and their greatest asset is their people, and they want to keep their people on their feet. So what is the real focus of your time when you're working with clients, Kristian?

Kristian Lees Bell:

The real focus is helping individuals and organisations to empower themselves, empower their teams, through those big changes, through the mergers, the restructures, the really fast growth that they're seeing, and actually to help them to understand some of the personal challenges, whether that might be taking a toll on their energy, their mental health, their well-being and then providing the tools, providing the practical strategies that help those individuals and teams and organizations to become more resilient and to manage effectively that change more effectively.

Kristian Lees Bell:

And we know that change fatigue we've talked about it on a previous podcast is very real. I'm constantly hearing from teams that while there are obviously enormous benefits of those changes, some people find that those pressures and the uncertainty of those changes, what they're dealing with outside of work that compounds those problems, can make people feel really overwhelmed sometimes. And actually what we see is, with that overwhelm and with the anxiety or stress or even mental health challenges related to that change, people can avoid the change. They can procrastinate, they can reinforce those fears, can avoid the change, they can procrastinate, they can reinforce those fears and that can be unhelpful for themselves but also unhelpful for their colleagues. So it's really critical that we help organisations to help their people.

Dr Amanda Potter:

You made two really interesting points there. One which is around layers, in my language, which is work, home life, personal life, family life. There are so many layers of pressure that we have, and it's that cumulative effect of each of those layers that starts to create that pressure in people and that feeling of whether they can or cannot cope. And then the other point you've made, which is about the impact it has, which is on our preparedness to make decisions, our preparedness to change and take action, and our brain's propensity for simplicity, predictability and control. And we don't like change. As humans, we move away from change. We move towards comfort and tradition, because it's what we know. So it's fascinating that everything that organizations are driving towards is actually the opposite to what our brains are telling us to do. And the way to get there is to be more resilient, to be more agile, because agile is really the key. So what are clients coming to you and asking you for when it's related to resilience and well-being?

Kristian Lees Bell:

When I think of the most common issues, Amanda, I would say that it's often challenges around their people going through transitions. I would say so, whatever those, whether that's a restructure, whether it's a merger, whether it's leadership changes what they're coming to us for and talking to me about that they're seeing that their people are as a result or some of them might be going off work with stress related absences or that's taking a toll on their personal well-being. It could be challenges around well-being and how that's playing into people's communication style, workplace conflict or relationships with their manager. It's those wellbeing issues and particularly the stress and the uncertainty that those changes have made for some people play out in the way that they communicate with others. It has a real impact on their connection to other people and that can create problems, I think, in terms of the workplace dynamics.

Dr Amanda Potter:

So it becomes a bit of a barrier then, as a result, they're not able to kind of connect in the same way as they would if they weren't feeling quite so stressed, which is so interesting, isn't it? And it makes me think about a piece of work that I've been doing recently with a major global organization, and I had the great joy I was invited by someone called Annabelle to run a couple of leadership events around the concept of resilience and the neuroscience of resilience, and that was fantastic because I was given free reign to go in and really tell some stories about the importance of resilience and also the brain chemistry and the impact of the actions that we take and the habits we have on how we feel. It's wonderful when clients like Annabelle influence their internal clients to actually invest in this stuff, to actually spend time talking about the link between habit, brain chemistry and then emotions.

Dr Amanda Potter:

We know from work like the one I mentioned with Annabelle that organisations are recognising the need to change the way in which they develop and support their people and to focus on topics like resilience. But I'm also interested in the changes that are happening outside of the organisations that we're working with Kristian and the impact those changes societally at a macro level. What are the impacts that they have on how people feel at work?

Kristian Lees Bell:

It's a great question and there's been so many societal changes, haven't there? And obviously post-COVID, even more so in terms of the way we work. But we can talk about the introduction and the progression of AI and the fact that that, I think a few years ago, was something that people were beginning to and starting to get to grips with, the changes also in pressures, that created by financial changes and the cost of living. I think that is put some pressure on some people in terms of how they feel, in terms of psychological safety, their feeling of security. That can really kind of increase their levels of stress, which then play into how they operate at work. I think there's also different generational differences as well. So there's a report.

Kristian Lees Bell:

Recently I read a big UK report looking at responses of HR, l&d and managers across the board in the UK. It really highlighted the fact that different generations, ages of people are looking for different things when it comes to work itself. So it's Generation Alpha, which were born 2010 to 2024, are going to be, according to the research, the most diverse group, the most socially conscious digital nomads we call them and they're going to be more open, most likely about their health. They're going to expect employees to provide a level of in-depth support and actually show that they care for the well-being of their staff, and it's not just them, it's, I think, across the board. There's a change in perceptions, amanda. So employees we're seeing and we see this in Zircon too are wanting more and value more than just a paycheck. At the end of the day, they're choosing to work for those organisations that take wellbeing seriously.

Dr Amanda Potter:

I think that's fascinating. I hadn't actually even heard of Alpha, did you say Kristian?

Kristian Lees Bell:

Nor had I yeah Generation Alpha.

Dr Amanda Potter:

Generation Alpha. That's new to Kristian, said before, wasn't it? So yeah, this is the only generation that has been raised purely in the 21st century health and I completely agree around the expectation of support as well. We started to see it with Generation Z, but actually I can really see the expectation will be greater and greater for every generation that we're bringing into organisations.

Kristian Lees Bell:

Yeah, there was a recent report by a wellbeing organisation called Unmind and they looked into these generational differences actually, and Generation Alpha even more so than previous generations. They just feel there's less stigma around this topic of mental health and, as much as you know, you and I, we talk about mental health, we talk about stress and we talk about resilience and we work in this industry. For many people at work people at work and actually research suggests it's almost 50% in the UK those people still see that that stigma stops them from actually having a conversation. They don't feel comfortable speaking up and disclosing that they're struggling with their mental health. There's a difference between those generations, so I think it was something like 45,. 46% of 45 to 54 year olds felt that there was a stigma around mental health, and then it goes down all the way to under 30% just under for 18 to 24 year olds, which is the generation we're talking about. So that's a big difference, isn't it?

Dr Amanda Potter:

My generation. You don't talk about anything that's different or might potentially make you be perceived as weaker in any way. You kept things private. I love the fact that we're being so much more open, and that that's a good thing. There's a really nice shift in the support from organisations around mental health first aiders as well isn't there, and I know that Jess Ross, one of our team, senior consultant, psychologist and psychometrician she's a mental health first aider. What does that actually mean?

Kristian Lees Bell:

A mental health first aider plays the role of fostering a supportive environment where mental health is prioritised in organisations. In terms of what they do, they're trained to identify, to understand and actually respond to signs of mental ill health or wellbeing challenges. So, for example, jess will do a great job of being available to have a conversation if somebody is comfortable to have that chat with her, and she can act as the first point of contact, which is really really helpful for people who might never have been experiencing that particular issue or just need you know that person to speak to. But it's not around her being clinically trained, so she's not trying to solve or, to you know, answer the question herself.

Dr Amanda Potter:

She's there as a first point of contact so she's not there to diagnose somebody to say you know you've got. Nor is she to there to solve the problem if there was a problem. But she's there to listen, to be empathic, to be someone who can support that individual, which is great absolutely yeah, even if she was a therapist, to train as a therapist or a coach?

Kristian Lees Bell:

I think that the remit is around, as you say, listening. She'll have had training in how to listen effectively and then guiding somebody towards or signposting them to professional help.

Dr Amanda Potter:

So what's your experience personally of helping people when they have mental health challenges?

Kristian Lees Bell:

My experience goes back not quite as far as 16, amanda, but I trained as a clinical hypnotherapist, which meant that I was supporting people, what usually one-to-one with a really big variety of you know mental health challenges anything from panic attacks to really specific and quite bizarre phobias. So it kind of ran the gamut for so many different things. I'd had an interest in a passion for wellbeing and mental health for years before that, but I trained as a clinical hypnotherapist actually just out of interest at first, and then I grew my expertise and added coaching to the mix and I helped people with.

Kristian Lees Bell:

Anxiety probably was the most common issue actually, and people would come to me for any specific mental health challenges or stress, for example, but often the issues that they faced were work-related. The common thread was, at some point they were at a crossroads. They'd tried lots of other strategies or they'd read books. They'd used all the willpower that they could muster to try to get rid of this fear or anxiety, but they were still struggling. So it was a really fascinating and amazing way of understanding those issues and helping other people at the same time.

Dr Amanda Potter:

How amazing that you would have been meeting with these bright, capable people who are being held back because of something, whether it's anxiety or a phobia, and because they're bright, capable people. Like you say, they've tried willpower, they've tried reading, maybe they've tried CBT or something. They've tried different techniques.

Kristian Lees Bell:

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Dr Amanda Potter:

So what worked from your side when you?

Kristian Lees Bell:

helped them. First thing was there's that expertise and understanding. So it's a big part of that is rapport is listening to the unique situation that they're in and also developing strategies for them and co-creating strategies that work for their context. So, for example, I remember quite vividly a CEO of quite a large organization that was confident in every single domain that you might expect. But there was one area where he was really experiencing a huge amount of anxiety. It was affecting his sleep, it was affecting everything in his life, his relationships, for example, and it was that area of public speaking.

Kristian Lees Bell:

It had one previous experience where he was talking to at the time, somebody who was more senior than him and he'd lost his train of thought and he felt he was incredibly anxious at that moment and he just completely forgot what he was trying to say and that had sort of grown in some ways in his mind to the point where he just didn't enjoy public speaking at all, so he couldn't sleep the night before, for example. So I had to understand his work context, like what was he afraid of, what was some of the challenges, even the cultural dynamics of the organization, but also build and connect to the things that he was good at. So he's had a lot of strengths and confidence in lots of different areas. So it was a case of actually reminding him of what things he'd overcome and what strengths he had, and actually using the memories of those and the resources that he had in this new, very specific situation of overcoming public speaking.

Dr Amanda Potter:

So why do you think you personally have made such a difference? Sorry to ask you these questions on the pod, Christian, but how were you personally able to help him?

Kristian Lees Bell:

It was a few things, but I think that this client in particular and it's a good example for so many is that I'd experienced the same emotions, the same issues. So you know, he was terrified of public speaking and I was terrified of performing live. I'm a professional singer Don't do it too much because I've got a full time job with you but at the same time I enjoy singing and about 11 years ago I had for the first time I had to get up on a stage and I'd never used a professional mic before and the person before me had been singing a song and I had all my friends and family there wanted to do. Really well, I had to sing fly me to the moon, which is a song that probably everybody knows. The words of right, yeah. And when I got up on the stage, I snagged my thumb while I was trying to put the microphone up, because you're pretty tall, I'm six foot five and the other person was not as tall.

Kristian Lees Bell:

And then I snagged my thumb and it started bleeding. And then, as I'm starting the words to fly me to the moon, the blood starts to drain into my collar and then drip on the floor. No, so that was the the seed of my public well, public speaking to a point, but mostly my stage fright. I was terrified of that happening again, so I tried to avoid first of all doing it, and it took me a while to overcome that fear, and some of the strategies that helped me are exactly what helped that client actually.

Dr Amanda Potter:

So how do you know which strategies are going to help which client?

Kristian Lees Bell:

I think, first of all, it's a matter of gauging their individual strengths. I think so. You know, as a psychologist, when I work with people one-to-one now, I'll spend some time information gathering, like we would do if we were doing an audit or an assessment, so I can understand that person, what their preferences are, what their strengths are, what they've done in the past that's worked for them it may be different situations what hasn't worked. So I'm kind of information gathering. Also, they have different ways of seeing the world, so it's about me stepping into their shoes and asking good questions, and this is where the coaching comes in as well.

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Dr Amanda Potter:

We've talked quite a lot now about individual support and I've mentioned that we run workshops and that's key to what we do and who we are. So there's a lot about education and about helping people understand that they're chemical human beings. There's a lot around coaching and your therapy and individual one-to-one support. So I understand from the work you're doing at the moment with the clients christian that you're moving more into the mental health audit process. What is that?

Kristian Lees Bell:

so our listeners can understand it to assess whether they need to do such a thing in their organization so, first of all, we call it a well-being audit, as we found that most most of our clients um, I think, find this name more helpful for their needs. But but we also, through a wellbeing audit, we are looking at some of those mental health and stress challenges that people face. So in a wellbeing audit, we focus on just straightforward conversations through focus groups, really brief employee surveys. As we know, people are often filling out loads of those already and we're looking at existing data as well. So, like absentees and data at EAP or employee assistance program and how people use that Engagement surveys I know a lot of our clients use Amanda and feedback.

Kristian Lees Bell:

Is it workload issues? Is it team dynamics? Some of those organisations, for example, have a mental health first aid programme where they have wellbeing champions. Recently we had an organisation that came to us with reports from those mental health first aiders that they were seeing conflict in relationships between managers and their employees and they were seeing more stress. But what we wanted to do was understand the context, whether the different regions were different, whether what the stressful situations were actually sort of what were causing some of those situations. It's about looking at the context, looking at surveys, absence data, for example, looking at work-life balance as well. So what's happening in sometimes in terms of people's personal stress? How is that interacting with the way they work and their productivity?

Dr Amanda Potter:

What I really like about the process you've just described is the variety of data and the fact that you're using a huge amount of data that already exists, rather than having to just go and collect a whole load of new data. Of course you can, because you can do questionnaires, you can run focus groups, but I like the fact that you might want to use data from the EAP process, from feedback via Glassdoor or whatever that might be, in order to understand how people are feeling. I think that's absolutely great. So what I understand it's almost like a diagnosis. Is that the right word?

Dr Amanda Potter:

So an assessment of the areas that might impact negatively or positively an individual's wellbeing.

Kristian Lees Bell:

Yeah, that'd be fair to say.

Dr Amanda Potter:

So working location must be one too, and the whole debate we have around hybrid versus remote versus in person Is that something that comes into your conversation?

Kristian Lees Bell:

into your conversation. Yeah, it really is. We had a recent client who came to us to help us support with a wellbeing audit and they had administered engagement surveys which showed that pretty much across the board actually, that there was very positive work-life balance scores. That's amazing. So they had that sort of flexibility because the organisation had generally again across geographies, across their different global hubs had given people the opportunity to work as flexibly as possible, flexibility in the work-life balance opportunities, which was giving people just more flexibility and autonomy in their work.

Kristian Lees Bell:

There was actually a drop in people feeling energised at work in certain regions and it was year on year. So there was questions around that organisation survey. You know, do I feel energised at work, do I feel driven and motivated? And that had gone down for the last couple of years and it was only until we did looked at the existing data, together with actually having conversations with those people where the scores were, you know, not as they should be, we found that it was actually some of the workload pressures were unique to those particular geographies and actually the leadership styles were slightly different and were not really gelling as well with the teams and employees.

Dr Amanda Potter:

And that goes to show that it could be a number of factors that actually have an impact on well-being then. So in that situation, it wasn't necessarily environment, it was relentlessness, if we think about the psychological safety term that we talk about absolutely and it's also probably the toxic relationship with line managers, which we know is one of the predictors of burnout.

Dr Amanda Potter:

So interesting that they're quite different things to what you might expect that are having an impact. And do you, christian, then, find that for every wellbeing audit that you conduct with clients, that you find that there are different precursors to stress or having a negative impact on well-being?

Kristian Lees Bell:

I'd say we can see patterns, but yeah, generally every organisation has some unique mental health and well-being challenges, and some of those are completely unexpected. This is why it's so critical whether you call it a well-being audit or an assessment, or you are one of the companies, that organizations that do or conduct a stress risk assessment, whatever you call it it's good not to make assumptions on why people are struggling or what the problems are. The well-being audit is a way of, I suppose, looking at building a profile of why people are working and or even struggling in the way they are.

Dr Amanda Potter:

So, christian, it's a very thorough process that you have designed and co-designed with colleagues within Zircon, and it seems to me that you get to a point at the end that you're able to give real clarity to the client organisation. What are the risks? What's happening that is negatively impacting people's wellbeing, but what happens next? What's happening that is negatively impacting people's well-being, but what happens next? What do organizations do as a result?

Kristian Lees Bell:

The next step is providing some really detailed but useful practical recommendations. Looking at trends and joining that with the focus groups and some structured questionnaires to get an understanding of some of the broad experiences across the business, we can actually recommend tailored interventions that are, at this particular time, the right thing for that organization to do. It helps us to advise senior management on where to either make small tweaks or sometimes major changes that can help with stress and or boost morale, drive engagement. For one client, for example, I can think of this involved rolling out new initiatives to better balance their workloads and improve their training for managers, because there was a gap in management training and confidence. So it can really give us an idea about where the gaps are and where to focus their attention, because their budgets might be stretched and they might have limited resources and I think sometimes this well being offerings can be. You can do so many different things.

Kristian Lees Bell:

So such a good point it could be overwhelming, can't it? So, some people, we do a well being training here and there, or, you know, fruit Friday can be really valuable, but it's not the whole answer, is it?

Dr Amanda Potter:

It's not addressing the root cause.

Kristian Lees Bell:

It's not addressing the root cause. Yeah, and we know that it's prevention is a better ROI, it's a return on investment far, far better than actually further downstream and dealing with. You know the problems that you have.

Dr Amanda Potter:

I love this conversation because being someone who's passionate about psychological safety, because psychological safety is a vehicle for high performing organizations, which is, of course, the aspiration of all of our clients, whether they are non-for-profit or a commercial organization. Resilience is a precursor to psych safety, so therefore, we need to help people feel well and be resilient and be courageous and so on, so that they can create an environment of psych safety. Do you actually ask questions around psychological safety when you do your wellbeing audits?

Kristian Lees Bell:

We often do and I think the reason for that is is you know, we mentioned before about the stigma that's still attached to mental health and having conversations and managers being able to have those important conversations is really critical, and so the reason why I mentioned and we asked questions on psychological safety as part of the audit process is for a number of reasons. So it's to understand feelings and perceptions of employees, how it feels to be in this team and organization. And also, with going back to the stigma topic, do employees feel safe? Is their environment conducive for them to speak up about maybe a mental health concern they have, or to actually speak up and have a conversation about, you know, their colleague that they think is struggling. It's so important in terms of looking at the culture and the sentiment and we know that the links between psychological safety and perceptions of stress.

Dr Amanda Potter:

I can see how they're connected. So, in other words, in order for me to ask for help, I need to feel safe to do so. So, actually, we need both those things. We need that psychological safety in order for us to have those really honest conversations and in order to ask for help, honest conversations in order to ask for help. So what's the benefit of a wellbeing audit for an organisation? Then, in your mind and from your research, I'm biased but I think the benefits are huge.

Kristian Lees Bell:

I think it's not just about, you know, sticking to regulations or compliance even though there are very real legal obligations for organisations to know what the stress and mental health risks are for their people and to do something about it.

Kristian Lees Bell:

But I think audits most of all give us some intel so that we can make genuine improvements and make a difference to people's lives. So they might inform changes to or improvements to, leadership training, for example. They might involve changes to people's work, to how much flexibility they have or how much, say, that they have in their work. If we know the factors that are probably the most pivotal and linked to some of those stresses, then if we can improve those areas, then it has a ripple effect across the whole organization and the culture. I'd also say that organizations will benefit through audits because they've got now a benchmark. They've got a clear, data-backed understanding of why their people might be struggling. They also understand what the pressure points and the particular stressful situations that maybe certain teams or geographies or departments are facing. So then they can tailor interventions to those particular areas. We understand that much more in detail.

Dr Amanda Potter:

Do you know what the point being data is?

Dr Amanda Potter:

Power, isn't it? You can't create change without understanding the situation and understanding what needs to change. So I really like that fact that all of the data gathering, all of the analysis, helps you to identify what are the critical elements that will have the greatest impact for change, that will have a positive impact on people's lives, so that they can be as resilient as possible to do the job that you need them to do and they don't fall over. You need them to be on their feet, not literally, but emotionally on their feet, so that they can cope and withstand all of the different pressures that they have every day in their lives. So I really like that. And if we go back to that burnout research that we identified, there are three main predictors of burnout in people and 55% of us are going to burn out in our lives and they are toxic relationships with a line manager, relentlessness of, or volume of work, and complexity or lack of clarity. So we know from our research across multiple organizations that they are the predictors of burnout.

Kristian Lees Bell:

But actually, what might be causing problem within one organization versus another, to your point, might be quite different I think, um the relentless expectations piece that you mentioned, I mean, we see that quite often, don't we, where organisations have incredibly talented and driven, motivated people, and sometimes those people are working incredibly hard, but if they don't have the space or the time to reflect or to celebrate where they've been, celebrate their successes and to think about next steps, sometimes so there's almost firebreaks within sort of long sort of periods where they're just working and grinding, that can be a real risk.

Kristian Lees Bell:

I think and you've mentioned burnout there as much as every organization is unique. I think what we do see is that, yeah, relentless expectations, that feeling that sometimes people might feel powerless or not have that sense of certainty that we've already talked about. People tend to like, and so that change, the relentlessness of change, is something which is universal. I think we're seeing a real pressure point for organizations. We want people to be innovative and to be adaptable and to agile. We talk about this, but that relentless speed of change also means that individuals need to change mindsets and also to stay at that same pace, don't they? They also need to psychologically show that agility, and sometimes people need some support and guidance with that challenge, that mindset change.

Dr Amanda Potter:

And I think another point I think is fascinating is that gap between manager capability and what is needed from them, particularly given your very first message, christian. Around the generation differences and the expectation of employees is changing. So with alphas coming into the world of work soon, their expectations is going to be even greater of their manager, of their employer. Yet we constantly hear about the fact that people get over promoted or get promoted due to skill or competence in their subject area, but not because of their management capability. So my last question, actually, christian, which is from all of the work that you've done and all of the years of experience that you've had, which is decades now, what would be your advice to an organisation who wants to embark on focusing on wellbeing or focusing on the mental health agenda within their organisation? It might be something they want to do themselves, or it might be something they want to work with an external partner on, but what would be the things that you'd suggest that they start thinking about?

Kristian Lees Bell:

There are so many things that organisations can do, so many interventions, but one of the most valuable things that I've learned and that I've delivered is to choose and be guided by a framework, an evidence-based framework that works for your organization. So one example of that is a framework that was developed by a friend of mine and business psychologist, alan Bradshaw, and it's really simple, but I think it's a great structure for managers, for teams and organizations, to understand how they can manage stress and mental health. The acronym is APMR Amanda, so the A stands for awareness, the P is for prevention, m is for monitoring and R is for responding. While it doesn't cover every single challenge or every single aspect, if you think about it, if we start with awareness, we trained managers at the HSC the Health and Safety Executive in the UK and Department of Work and Pensions to give them that knowledge of what, the psychological factors and the reasons why people might struggle. So it's that awareness of mental health, the neuroscience around that, so they can understand what's going on in their brains, for example, in their bodies, when they experience stress. So that awareness for managers in particular is really key. What are the workplace factors, for example, that we know from research are causing higher levels of stress, for example, whether that's relationships or uncertainty or level of control people have. So awareness is key. Prevention so prevention is about having tools, having ways to profile what the stress looks like. What are the stressful situations, for example for a team, for a particular location, that are causing those issues? Prevention is really key because it can provide managers, for example, with ways to proactively help and support their team members. So if they've got a language, if they've got tools to use that are easy and are practical, then because they've got so much exposure that they're talking to their employees day by day to day, they have their role models. They've got an opportunity to really help and support there. So they need prevention tools.

Kristian Lees Bell:

And monitoring, I think, is also another key area here, and I don't mean sort of big brother monitoring, it's kind of monitoring by consent and cooperation. So this is even more important, I would say, post COVIDVID, because a lot of us are interacting through screens, aren't we? So it's harder to get a handle on how that person's feeling, whether they're, you know, responding and reacting in ways that are probably, you know, not how they'd normally respond when they're feeling well and they're feeling healthy. So monitoring by consent and cooperation is about agreeing with certain routines, strategies, so we can check in with each other. How do we do that? How should I check in with you If you're struggling? If I know how you'd like to be supported or how you'd like me to respond, then we're all going to feel more supported and that's really important in terms of managers and organizations, reducing, preventing and managing stress.

Kristian Lees Bell:

Lastly, responding there is a real big gap here, I would say, particularly for people managers who might lack the confidence to you know, we talked about generational differences. If they have somebody, a younger member of their team who's coming to them with a personal story or situation, do they have the confidence but the competence to actually have that first conversation? It won't always be a matter of OK, go and see the mental health first aider or the well-being champion. How do managers effectively respond and have those conversations? Respond and have those conversations. So we train managers to have a framework, so they feel more in control and they can have those first points of contact, conversations and leave people feeling empowered and we can signpost them to appropriate help within the organization that is there. So I think having a framework like that is important because people are speaking from the same language, they're using similar tools and you know there's real clarity and having a framework there and managers can really, you know, make a big impact if they know what to do in those situations.

Dr Amanda Potter:

Know what is expected of them. I think that's great. I think it's a brilliant answer to the question. Actually, people may not use that framework. It sounds like a good one, but having some structure, having a framework to use so that everybody understands what the steps are and how they can support the process, seems to be absolutely key. That is brilliant, christian. Thank you so much. Thank you. Any parting thoughts before we close today?

Kristian Lees Bell:

oh, so many parting thoughts podcast can go, go on, couldn't it? I would say self-care is key. So for myself, I know that my energy can flag during the day and if I don't take care to go outside for a walk or to take a breath, have a glass of water and just be more aware of yeah, just recharging during sort of the transitions during my day, if I don't do that, I feel as my well-being and my outlook can really take a hit. So I would recommend that people become really aware of where they feel energized and what situations where they feel positive and uplifted and then try to build in those situations and opportunities for rest and recharge during the day. It's so important to navigate the transitions where our energy can be drained if we're trying to constantly focus and we're under relentless expectations.

Dr Amanda Potter:

Nice final point around healthy habits. Very nice, thank you, christian. Well, that draws us to the end of the podcast. Christian, thank you so much for being the guest.

Kristian Lees Bell:

Thanks, it was an honour.

Dr Amanda Potter:

Christian looks after our wellbeing practice and our resilient practice. Thank you so much, and also thank you to everyone who listens to this podcast. It's such a joy that we are still recording these. Four years in. We're now 70 plus episodes and we've had 55,000 downloads something like that. I mean incredible numbers of downloads. So I wanted to say to you, as you're listening, thank you so much. If you think our podcast is useful, could you share it with a colleague or a friend who might find one of the episodes is going to help them personally or professionally. That would be amazing. And in fact, an old, old school friend contacted me, christian, which is a crazy story. She was looking for a podcast for her wife. She found my episode and she found my face. She was like oh my god, I know amanda from when we were literally young teenagers. As a result, she contacted me via the cpo address and just said hello, long time no speak. So it goes to show people are sharing, which is lovely, they really are.

Kristian Lees Bell:

Yeah, we're famous. Oh yes, in a very small way. In a very small way In the business psychology podcast niche, exactly.

Dr Amanda Potter:

Anyone who is a psychologist or HR who listens to podcasts maybe. Anyway, thank you everyone for listening. Thank you for sharing. It makes a big difference and we love recording these and christian thank you so much for being today the main attraction fantastic.

Kristian Lees Bell:

Thank you for, uh, yeah, giving me the opportunity.

Dr Amanda Potter:

Really enjoyed it thank you so much and thank you everyone. I hope you have a wonderful and successful day.

People on this episode

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Dr Amanda Potter

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Tim Hepworth

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Caitlin Cooper

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