Leaders support mental health in the workplace by taking care of their own first, then building a culture that protects their team. Model consistent habits like sleep, exercise and reflection. Set healthy expectations for the work week. Notice when someone seems off, check in privately, and point people toward professional support when they need it.
- Mental health at work has two sides: the leader's own, and the team's.
- Protect yours with a regimen of sleep, exercise, reflection and a short list of people you can talk to.
- Protect your team's with healthy expectations, a caring culture and private check-ins.
- A leader's role is to notice, ask and care, and to point people toward qualified professional support.
What does mental health in the workplace look like for a leader?
Leaders carry a lot of responsibility and stress. My co-host Arturo Gomez has led teams for 25 years, and he sees two sides to mental health at work. The first is the leader's own mental health. The second is the leader's ability to recognize how the team is doing.
This topic matters deeply to me because I didn't always have it. I lived my first three decades without the habits on this page.
Take care of number one so you can take care of number two.
Why is mental health so easy to neglect at work?
We live in a hustle and grind culture of more, more, more. I was raised in it as an entrepreneur, and my answer to every gap was to work more. The fallacy is that working more comes at the expense of your health, your well-being and your self-care.
I once heard Robin Sharma tell Ed Mylett about people who are money rich and life poor. Most people fill the business bucket and let the rest run dry. Balance across every bucket is the heart of promoting work life balance.
How do leaders protect their own mental health?
Arturo calls it a regimen. He needs consistency and organization in his life, and health is the most important thing.
- Get enough sleep. Arturo's days don't always end on a high note, and they always start on one. Sleep lets yesterday drift away.
- Move every week. Plan the days and the time you exercise.
- Connect with nature. Make time outside part of your week.
- Meditate and journal. Arturo meditates every morning and journals too.
- Keep a short list of advisors. A spouse, a parent, or anyone of sound mind who can be a springboard.
- Protect the first hour. For more than a decade, my first priority each morning has been me. I keep the world turned off for at least that first hour.
If I can show up for myself first, then I can show up better for you and for everybody else.
Rob Cressy, Episode 66
Why should leaders talk about their stress?
Arturo admits this is one of his bigger challenges. He tends to internalize things, because he doesn't want to put the pressure of leadership on someone else. Keeping it all inside can be detrimental, so you have to share it.
The people you can talk to openly are often few, which is why a tribe of leaders matters so much. Some leaders also thrive on pressure. Arturo needs some risk and stress to operate at his best, and many people are wired differently. Either way, what you do with the stress at the end of the day is the key.
How can leaders support their team's mental health?
It starts with culture. When candidates describe the six day work weeks at their current jobs, Arturo stops them. Unless the sky is falling, he will never ask them to work six days a week. He believes in an honest dollar for honest work, and he wants fresh, invigorated teammates.
People want to work where someone cares about their personal well-being along with their professional well-being. A culture like that rests on building trust with your team.
| The area | For yourself | For your team |
|---|---|---|
| Habits | Sleep, exercise, meditation, journaling | Share your habits and routines with them |
| Expectations | Protect your first hour | Avoid six day weeks unless the sky is falling |
| Connection | A short list of advisors | Private check-ins when someone seems off |
How do you check in on an employee who seems off?
Check the temperature and feel the energy in the room. Some people carry hidden sadness or stress deep inside. Arturo calls this a form of empathy, the ability to feel where someone is mentally.
When someone walks in without their usual smile, he says something, privately and never in front of the group. He pulls them aside or sends a text. You OK? What's going on? What's on your mind? Then he listens. Sometimes the answer is a bad night's sleep, and he asks if anything else is on their mind. Those moments strengthen the bond with his team.
A leader's job is to notice, ask and care. When someone is struggling with more than a hard day, encourage them to talk with a qualified mental health professional, and make any support your company offers easy to find.
How do you build healthy habits into a team?
I share the habits and routines I have learned with everyone I work with, because I never assume someone already knows them. Every new team member goes through my personal growth program, watching one short video a day and messaging me in Slack with what they learned. That report back is how you inspect what you expect.
Every person you meet is going through something, leaders included. Helping your people grow mentally and emotionally is part of the job.
Do this today
- Draw your picture of health. Write down what a healthy life looks like for you in a perfect world, and the steps it requires.
- Take the first step. If you are carrying something heavy, reach out today to someone on your short list or to a professional.
Listen to the episode
Mental Health Awareness for Leaders
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Questions people ask
How can managers support employee mental health?
Model healthy habits, keep the work week sustainable unless something is truly urgent, check in privately when someone seems off, and make professional support easy to find.
What should you say to an employee who seems stressed?
Keep it private and simple. Arturo Gomez pulls the person aside or sends a text: You OK? What's going on? What's on your mind? Then he listens.
Why should leaders prioritize their own mental health?
You can only take care of others after you take care of yourself. Rob Cressy protects the first hour of every morning so he can show up better for everyone else.
Is a leader responsible for an employee's mental health?
A leader's role is to notice, care and support. Arturo Gomez sees helping people grow mentally and emotionally as part of leading, while qualified professionals provide care beyond that.
Full transcript
Episode 66: Mental Health Awareness for Leaders
Welcome to Leadership DNA, a podcast for those who aspire to be a better leader. Alongside Arturo Gomez, I'm Rob Cressy. Today's topic, mental health awareness for leaders and Arturo May is mental health awareness month and that gives us an opportunity to talk about mental health. And this is an area that is very important to me, both in the creation of who I am as a leader, but also because I didn't always have it.
As leaders, entrepreneurs, husbands and fathers, we've got a lot of responsibilities, challenges and oftentimes stress going on in our life. How do you prioritize your mental health so you can be the best for those who count on you? Man, it's a regimen. And I think that to me when we were kind of flushing out the themes and the concepts of the show today was to me, there's two sides of it.
It's one, obviously the mental health, the importance in the mental health work for actual leaders. And then I think there's another side that was kind of coming to mind and it's the importance of leaders to recognize mental health amongst their team. And so what does that look and feel like? I'll start with at least for myself and I think that the critical piece is it's regimented in the sense that I really need consistency.
I need organization in my life. And that is from the amount of time and the amount of days that I exercise on a weekly basis. So for me, health is paramount. It's the most important thing, I think. Getting enough sleep, getting enough exercise, being able to connect with nature. Those things are very critical for me on a weekly, on a daily basis.
Meditation is something I do religiously. Try to do it every day, every morning. Journaling is another thing. Obviously I think that it's really important as well for all leaders to have a short list of advisors, councils. And it's as easy as your wife. It's as easy as your father, your mother. Anybody that you think is of sound mind that can be a springboard, I think for me, that's probably one of my bigger challenges.
I tend to internalize things and sometimes I feel like there's the burden of the things that you're dealing with as a leader. That it's maybe you don't want to bring that pressure and that stress to somebody else. And so you refrain from bringing that to the table because it's like, well, why would I want to stress them out with all this stuff?
And so that's a challenge because it becomes very helpful to be able to do that. And it can be very detrimental to internalize that and to just keep that inside. And so you have to be able to share that. But I think for me, those are the critical pieces of being able to have that sanity. 100%. And I'll work backwards on what you said, because I totally agree.
Last month, I created a community for entrepreneurs and leaders where we can talk about all of the things going on in our life, from our self-development to our well-being, to the way that we're building our brands, to artificial intelligence. So certainly it's a forum of candid communication and organic conversations of leaders. If this is something where you're looking for a tribe of people to where you can talk about the things going on in your business and your life, I would encourage you to join us.
Go to creatingunlimited.com. For me as a leader, I live this as a lifestyle so much so that I teach it and encourage it for others because it is so important. And it's actually contrarian to the way the majority of the world lives because mental health is something that is very easy to not do because we live in a hustle and grind culture of more, more where certain things are prioritized or highlighted.
So, and I know this because I was raised in hustle culture as an entrepreneur. That's if I have not yet created what I want, I'm just going to work more. But the fallacy is that working more comes at the expense of your health, your well-being, your self-care. And I was listening to a podcast with Robin Sharma and Ed Mylett recently, highly recommend.
And Robin Sharma had a term of money rich and life poor. And think about how many millionaires and billionaires sitting on yachts that are unhealthy, unfulfilled, unhappy or don't have friends because they didn't prioritize the things that actually matter. So for me, this is a non-negotiable. And it's why every single day for the last 12 years, the number one priority for me when I wake up in the morning is me.
I don't turn on the world for at least the first hour of every single day. And it's usually significantly more because if I can show up for myself first, then I can show up better for you and for everybody else. And Arturo, I want to re-highlight some of the things that you said because they are so important to me as well.
Consistency in organization. For me, this is habits and routines. Your ability to do the same things because the quality of your days is the quality of your life. Therefore, our ability to say, all right, if mental health is a priority, you inspect what you expect. Show me what you are doing on a consistent basis to prioritize self-care and mental health.
You said it. It's the most important thing. And for me, this is about all buckets of my life. And I think this is the biggest area where most people fail in mental health. They fill up the business bucket. You and I are prolific at what we want to create. We understand what it takes to operate at the highest level.
And what it actually takes is meditation, journaling, talking to others, prioritizing our fitness, and doing the things that allow us to be the best version of ourselves and having those people that we can talk to. There's oftentimes not a lot of them, which to me is why it is so important to have a tribe or even a podcast like this just to say, you know what?
That resonates with me. And today we had our 12th call of Unlimited. We're doing two calls a week. And the number one thing that we are hearing from the people that are a part of this is we love the energy. We love the communication. I feel like I've found my tribe. I need this, and it's been missing in my life.
And when we look at mental health awareness for leaders, it's what's missing sometimes or how can I get more of the stuff that's going to feed me and serve me to be a better leader? So Arturo, let's now transition this to the second thing that you said. Mental health awareness for your team. And what does that look like for you?
Because obviously, lead by example is one of the first things that you're doing as a leader to prioritize mental health for your team. But what does this look like because you lead a lot of people? I mean, it's it's it's the discretion of culture and this idea that that that these things are important, right? And so, you know, in any in any interview or recruitment that I have, I will tell people point blank.
I said, you know, I asked them kind of what their work work life balance currently looks like and wherever they are and what that work week looks like. And more often than not, I hear people, you know, talk about six day work weeks and blah, blah. And I'll stop them there. I said, unless the sky is falling, I will never ask you to work a six day a week.
And I said, the reason why is because I believe in paying somebody an honest dollar for honest work. And so I also believe that you're going to need to. I want fresh. I want I want invigorated teammates. I want people to believe that we truly are not only looking out for the best interests of the organization, but we're looking out for the best interest of them.
That's what people want. That's where people want to be. They want to be in a place where they feel that somebody is is nurturing and caring for their for their for their personal well-being as well as their professional well-being. And so I think as a responsibility of leaders, I think you you have to be, you know, able to check the temperature and feel the energies.
And so sometimes, you know, there's there's hidden, you know, sadness and hidden stress. That's that's deep with inside some of the people on your team. And I think it's a really tremendous quality to be able to feel that to me, it kind of runs in parallel with this idea of like, you know, of empathy. It's not necessarily being able to side with them and their feelings.
It's more being able to actually feel where they are mentally. And so I will I will pull people aside like I don't I don't allow myself to see something that I feel is irregular and not say something. And so when somebody walks into the room and I don't see the same smile that I normally see, I don't say it in front of, you know, the group that we're with or whatever.
But I'll pull them aside or I'll send them a text. You OK? What's going on? Is everything is everything all right? What's on your mind? And and I try to I try to do my best to pull, extract an answer. Hey, I didn't have a great night's sleep last night. OK, no problem. Well, why would everything anything on your mind you want to talk about? So to me, being a defender of that is is is is a very important piece for me.
But it also, I think, strengthens the bond that I have with my team and allows them to really truly understand that it's not just looking out for the organization and the profitability and the numbers at the bottom line that I am looking at everything that I can, inclusive of their mental health. So I think that's that's but I think in order to be able to do that, you have to be of sound mental health yourself.
You it's it goes to the kind of the number one principle that we've always spoken about. It's like if you can't take care of number one, you can't take care of number two. And so so yeah, that it's that to me is equally important. You have to just be on the lookout of there's there's hidden dangers all over the place.
And we want to make sure that our teams in the right place. Yeah, now, yes. And what you said in one of the things that is so important for me is that I share the habits, routines, mindsets, ways of being and lessons that I've learned along my journey with my team members, my friends, my clients, anyone who works with me or anyone who even doesn't work with me because I know what it's like to not have this.
Like I said, I did not have this stuff for the first three decades of my life. And I just so happened to reverse engineer the way that I created myself into a high performer who prioritized filling up all of the buckets of my life. So anyone new who comes on my team has a personal growth program that they go through.
And it's actually very simple. So if you want access to this, I'll give it to you for free. Go to built for the game dot com. It's my personal growth and life optimization platform. And this is from anyone from someone working with me on a daily basis to a virtual assistant in the Philippines, because I am never going to assume that anybody has learned the things that I have, because at some point I didn't know any of this.
So as a leader, I know that one of the things I speak every day is I am that I care the most because I genuinely care not only about myself and my family, but about everyone, about you, your friends, your family. So if I can help someone live a better life, I will do it. So I'm going to create that structure and process.
And it's very simple. I just say, listen, here's access to my platform. Watch one video a day. There are three, five or seven minutes long, super short form. And then I just want you to write me back in slack what video you watched and what you learned. Was there a little light bulb moment? Why? Because that's the accountability.
If you tell someone to do something, but they don't report back, you're not inspecting what you expect. So now they're being thoughtful about what they're learning, because it's not just a thing to check off their to do list. And in the process of doing this, what I continually hear is, thank you for changing my life, Rob. And this isn't about me.
This is about the impact that these people can create in their lives and then their families lives, because Arturo, we both know when you're on this frequency in this energy and you've got the structure to support this for yourself, where you're like, I didn't even know that this existed. But this can be super simple when you're intentional and you're consistent about it.
So for me, for the team, this is completely by design. This is what I've built, essentially a large majority of my business around is helping leaders be better leaders or helping leaders teams be better at business by being better at life. Yeah, I mean, it's it's I think everything we're talking about is so important because there's so many people right now that, you know, are struggling, you know, deep inside.
And I think that and you know, there's there's been people that have come to come to realize that were people that are high performers that just were dealing with some remarkable and unbelievable stress that they were, you know, incapable of actually sharing and speaking to people about. But and for some people it it it ends it ends it ends badly.
So I think it's important that those that are chasing this idea in this pursuit of leadership, that being healthy and sound of mind is is really should be a primary focus of our daily lives, because that's that's what will give us the fuel, the energy, the courage to be able to continue down down this path, because it's really never easy.
And there's some ridiculous amounts of pressure and stress that people in the position of leadership encounter on a daily basis. Like we're gluttonous really for pain. Like it's I've always told myself and I've spoken this before, but I have to exist in a high stress environment to really operate at a at a at a maximum at a maximum level.
For me, if there's not some form of risk or stress in the equation, it doesn't it my that for me is a requirement to propel me. But a lot of people are not like that. And, you know, the important thing is like how you actually end the day and what you do with that, you know, internalized amount of stress and pressure is the key piece.
And so I'm able to, you know, I'm able to I always tell people my my days don't always end on a on a great and a high note. My days always start that way, though. And so when I go to bed, when I go to bed and I get the sleep that I need, everything drifts away. I'm able to approach the next day as a completely new moment.
Anything that was yesterday is completely yesterday. And we're now living in the present, a complete opportunity to refresh, restart. But that's mental wellness. Finding some group of advisors, creating some consistency, some organization in your life, really critical. Make sure you're paying attention to the well-being of your team. Don't be so focused internally in terms of what you're looking at for your organization and for yourself.
There are people around you that are in constant and constant need of help. And it is your obligation. It is your obligation as a leader to help them, not just in a career professional sense. It is imperative that you help them mentally, emotionally evolve along the way. 100 percent. I totally agree with that. And you said this literally every single person you meet every single day is going through something just because they're a leader.
It doesn't mean that everything's puppy dogs and rainbows. And I see this on a consistent basis with virtually everyone that we work with. But we're all doing this in the name of improvement. So, Arturo, let's get to the action item or takeaway. And for me, it's a very simple one. If you are challenged by something right now on the mental health side of things, hit me up.
I will give you every resource that I have. I will have conversations with you. If you're looking to have something more consistent, that's available as well. But know that it takes the first step. This is my olive branch to say, I'm here to help you any way that I can. You can hit me up, Rob, at Rob Cressy dot com.
Or I know we do our socials at the end at Rob Cressy on Instagram or LinkedIn. I genuinely genuinely want to help you or your team. If you're challenged by this or those levels to this game, you want to improve it. Hit me up. What about you, Arturo? What's your action item or takeaway? I mean, the action item is is, you know, really draw what this what this life of of of health looks like, you know, really sit down and and lay out in a perfect world.
You know what you think you need to create this level of you know, advanced mental health, personal health, well-being. What that what the what that looks like, what those steps require. And and embark on the journey, embark on the journey. And there's really there's really nothing that we can't achieve. It really starts with a desire. And you have to have a plan to be able to chase it down.
And so that's that would be my my my first step that I would advocate for for people to really do is just to write it down and make sure that they actually draft what it looks like in their mind. To become a healthier, more mentally sound individual.
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