3 Ways Leaders Can Help Employees Struggling with Stress, Anxiety, and Depression
“Mental health problems exist everywhere,” says Sagar Parikh, MD at the University of Michigan’s Comprehensive Depression Center.
That top-performing person on your team. You know the one: always on time. Goes above and beyond. Astute. Insightful. Courageous. She’s the anchor submerged in the trenches of daily team routines and tactical implementation.
Or maybe your anchor is like a pillar of consistency. Quiet. Confident. Always on time. He isn’t innovative, creative, or exceptional, but without him, you can’t succeed, because his stoic presence is the unwavering foundation of
a team faced with an onslaught of challenges.
COVID being the greatest of these.
“Depression causes feelings of sadness and/or a loss of interest in activities you once enjoyed. It can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems and can decrease your ability to function at work and at home.”
It’s Monday morning and you need to prepare for your weekly team standup, but the anchor on your team isn’t answering your slack messages. So you do something unheard of. You pick up the phone and; she answers. You noticed a slight inflection in her voice. A delayed response that’s usually a confident resolve. In the background, her dog barks at a passing car. She snaps out of it and seems to be herself again. So you brush it off and get on with your daily routine. Phone call complete. You move on…
…while she continues to recede into isolation.
Forgotten. Unheard; stress and anxiety persist.
It doesn’t happen all at once, but it happens often. And since the discovery of COVID-19, we’ve seen an exponential increase in workplace stress, anxiety, apathy, and depression.
The issue: companies are just now starting to discover the impact of mental illness in the workplace.
According to the American Psychiatric Association (APA):
“Depression is a common and serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act. Depression causes feelings of sadness and/or a loss of interest in activities you once enjoyed. It can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems and can decrease your ability to function at work and at home.”
Serious mental issues like depression are usually brought on by a traumatic experience, socio-political events, and adverse changes in employees’ personal affairs.
For Americans, it’s not just COVID-19: the most traumatic experience of our lives. It’s a poorly-led Presidential Staff. It’s social unrest due to the unjust death of black men and women. It’s no wonder our mental disease stats and suicide rates are off the charts.
©2020 Qualtrics Mental Health Study Since the COVID-19 Outbreak
Below, I list some valuable ways to be proactive in how you take care of your team(s).
As a leader, this can be daunting.
Instead of taking the time to check-in on how people are processing the socio-political and cultural unrest around us, all too often we say to ourselves, “I don’t want to be unprofessional by making it too personal, we have deadlines after all dammit!”
It’s so easy to brush it all off and simply move on.
Whether you are affected by them or not, these social stressors have changed the way we work. Leading Psychologists are saying that recent traumatic events have “triggered a rise in mental issues of historic proportions in the workplace.”
The data speaks for itself.
As leaders, it’s our responsibility to get ahead of it all!
©2020 Qualtrics
3 Easy Ways to Take Action and Help:
1. Be Watchful for Early Indicators:
Micro-Signals Defined: Micro-signals are key indicators of how people may be feeling. They are nuanced behavioral changes in an individual. Leaders need to identify them early and often to ensure they get employees to the right programs before their situation becomes more serious.
According to Quelch and Knoop in their recent book Compassionate Management of Mental Health in the Modern Workplace, these “signals” can be as small as “An employee suddenly drinking a lot of coffee at work, receiving more private mail at work, including credit card bills, or getting more personal phone calls at work.”
Here are some of the early indicators of mental issues at work:
Absenteeism: more missed workdays
Personal stuff: personal calls, messages, extended lunch breaks
Apathetic: Not being fully present by being tardy, impatience, and unsettled non-verbal behavior, lack of interest in team discussions
Loss of interest in activities that used to be interesting
Cognitive Impairment: Difficulty tracking/concentrating
Agitation, Sluggishness, Fatigue
Increased intake of alcohol
2. Partner with Human Resources:
Follow up and be intentional in scheduling a series of “one-on-ones” with struggling employees. And be sure to have HR present at each one. This will reduce the fear most employees have (unknown to most supervisors) of getting personal. It also liberates the supervisor to speak freely as well. Make sure you don’t make the mistake of transference. Transference is when a supervisor brings his or her own unresolved conflict/personal issues into the situation. It’s critical to recognize and respond through listening and empathy as primary modes of support. Because as leaders, we are not therapists. I repeat: we are not therapists. Our job is to help catalyze meaningful connections to professional care and support systems.
Quick Checklist:
A) Involve HR early and often regarding troubled employees. Because the employee has a power/fear dynamic with the employer, it’s often not advised that a supervisor get involved without the aid and protection of HR.
B) See what kind of EAP’s your company offers and make sure you have programs that support the Emotional, Environmental and Social side of things
C) Wellness programs (not just exercise and nutrition), but therapy, coaching, and community service projects
D) Health benefits regarding coverage for mental issues
E) Know the legal implications of helping a struggling employee
3. Be Intentional About Self-Care:
In a recent People Good podcast interview the Executive Director of Harvard Business Research group, Carin-Isabel Knoop, stated that “Managers need to see how their behavior not only impacts the Organization and other employees but themselves as well.
Starting with the manager’s personality and experience is the best way to go about helping others. First looking inward. Knoop calls this Reflection.
Understanding how your personality can have a positive and negative impact on an individual’s mental state of mind. Helpful to understand your polarities, and how those can create a welcoming and safe environment or hinder it.
Oftentimes managers don’t look inward before they focus on their team. It’s important to take time off to learn about your own issues. Take personal time to interview those close to you, research your personality traits, take a personality test, and be sure to be mindful of areas of tension in your own life. Stress and pain often transmit. That means leaders need to guard against transferring that into the professional setting.
A Call To Be Better Leaders for the Mental Stability of The Workplace:
We can’t be so focused on the company’s financial goals that we miss the simple changes in those we have been privileged to lead.
“We know that in order to help people, we should go where they are rather than waiting for them to come to us.” — Parikh
It is no longer permissible for leaders to miss early signs of mental unhealth and instability.
We need to get ahead of the issues that are already on the rise.
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