Mental health isn't something to be feared. In this video, I discuss how to handle stress and anxiety in a team setting. I explain why avoiding stress isn't the answer, and give tips on how to create an open forum around mental health to foster growth and resilience.
Transcript from Video
The worst thing you can do for mental health in your team or in your business is to avoid mental health. Avoid stressful situations, avoid difficult conversations, and avoid anything where you think people might get slightly offended or upset. The only way that a human builds up a good threshold for stress and resilience to stress, and the ability to handle stress is by exposure to stress, no different than through physical exercise. And if a business wants to grow and a team wants to grow, they're gonna have to go through stress.
Stress is a natural part of the growth cycle. If we wanna move away from what we know and achieve bigger things, which all businesses and all teams should be trying to do at all times, we have to go through stress. So try to concentrate and focus on not just having a fear mindset around exposing your teams and your managers and your people to stress.
Try to have a more proactive mindset where we focus not on avoiding stress but I'm training people and developing people and working together in teams on how to handle stress and how to handle anxiety and how to handle tough situations.
Probably one of the most powerful things that you can do to how people in this area as a manager or as a leader in a business is to be really open and honest about the stresses that you feel, the syndrome that you get negative voices, you'd be amazed at just how talking about what you experience has such a therapeutic impact on the wider workforce. What tends to happen is people in leadership positions and management positions feel there's their responsibility to be strong and not show any weakness which then creates this false image to your teams that for them to get to the position that you're at because they will look up to you in a spot to be like you they have to get rid of any of the negative emotions or stuff that they have because you don't have it.
So by trying to not share any of that with your teams and your people, you're actually making it worse because you're creating a false image of what a human is. So I'm not saying you need to go on camera and start crime, but what I am saying is that be really open eyes with people about whether I'm a bit worried about this or I stress or I have impostor syndrome or I find myself overthinking things sometimes or I struggle to sleep last night because I was waiting on this problem. share that thing, share those things with your teams, create an open forum around mental health, but don't hide away from what try and protect your people from stress because that's not the way forward. That's just gonna create a society or a culture within your business of stress avoidance, which means you can't grow, which ends up with people feeling very unfulfilled and very unhappy in their roles anyway.
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Mike Jones Better Happy Founder
Mike founded Better Happy in 2018.
He now works with a variety of businesses ranging from small accountancies up to large organisations such as Travelodge on improving employee happiness. Mike's vision and the vision of Better Happy is 'Every employee happy, every business thriving'
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