How honest have you been with your team about their mental health? How honest have you been with yourself? Jason joins business partner Marshall Jones to address mental well-being in the time of COVID from an organizational and personal standpoint. 

The pair discuss anecdotal evidence, offer insights from their conversations with clients, and provide tools leaders can use to create a more empathetic working environment. No matter what you take away from this episode, know that if you’re struggling, you’re not alone. The sooner we acknowledge our shared vulnerability, the better for all. 

Does it feel like you’re working twice as hard just to tread water these days? When people consider mental health, they most often focus on one end of the spectrum or the other: flourishing or depression. The protracted uncertainty of the pandemic has exposed many of us to a middle state: languishing. Even if your organization is doing well despite the challenges, languishing is an invisible weight that seems to burden everyone. 

Then there’s the adjacent pandemic: loneliness. Once the silent torment of the elderly, Millennials report experiencing the highest degrees of loneliness. While no cohort is spared, GenY is a huge (if not the largest) percentage of the current workforce. “Senior leadership certainly needs to take a very active role in addressing this and not just, saying, ‘Well, I know HR has got it under control’ because it's really everybody's responsibility within the organization,” says Marshall. But how? 

Approaching mental well-being challenges honestly is a good foundation on which to build. The traditional route of head-down/push-through doesn’t support personal or organizational well-being. Neither does writing off employees with supposed ‘slacker’ tendencies; there is too much evidence to the contrary that there's something else going on. 

Beyond sharing our struggles with others, there are physical steps that can help ease folks back into a state of flow. Sleep, hobbies, exercise are often quoted because they work! Likewise, gathering the team for a day of community service or other gratitude-based activity can go a long way in strengthening bonds and helping everyone connect on a deeper and more meaningful level than the current crisis. 

Like what you hear? Check out the resources mentioned in this episode:

DT073 - Jason & Marshall on navigating the supply chain crisis

DT059 - Jason & Marshall on harnessing the power of peer networks

DT036 - Jason & Marshall on adapting to opportunities during the distribution crisis

The Lonely Century - by Loreena Hertz

NYT: There’s a name for the blah you’re feeling: it’s called languishing

CONNECT WITH MARSHALL JONES:

LinkedIn

CONNECT WITH JASON BADER:

LinkedIn

***

Distribution Talk is produced by The Distribution Team, a consulting services firm dedicated to helping wholesale distribution clients remove barriers to profitability, generate wealth and achieve personal goals.   

This episode was edited & mixed by The Creative Impostor Studios. 

http://www.distributionteam.com

Special thanks to our sponsor for this episode: HMI Performance Incentives, providing innovative, data-driven B2B incentive solutions.