Having a Mental Health Conversation Bothers Me

Use this 4-part model of M.I.N.D to have an effective mental health conversation. This is especially important when working from home.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Amazing. Good afternoon everybody. Welcome to today's Sticky Learning Lunch. We're just clicking onto the hour. We're waiting for the people to come into the room. Welcome everybody. Hello. Hello. Good to see you. Good to see some friendly faces, some long-term friends in there, Carolina, great to see you Matt. Fantastic to see you Susan. Great to see so many regular people and new people coming into this space. Excited for today's content.

Nathan Simmonds:

Thank you for being here. It means a lot to me. This subject means a lot to me. Just gonna give it 30 seconds. While we're waiting for the last few people to arrive in the room, let's make sure we're setting you up for success. Drinks at the ready. Jason and Vicki, thank you for being here. Tracy again, Gabrielle, thank you. Let's just get these last people in the room and then we'll get into today's content. Welcome everybody. Hello Carolina. Thank you. It's great to see you here. Thanks for being here. Just gonna give it a moment. Let's make sure. First things first, phones. Crikey. Where's mine? Mine's over there. I dunno if it's on flight phone yet.

Master having a mental health conversation with this 4 part model

 

Nathan Simmonds:

As always, let's get your phones out. Let's make sure you've got them on flight mode. Let's zero out the distraction and maximize the attention on you. Let's maximize the attention that you're gonna give to yourself and your development in this process. As we go through this today and as I share these ideas, that's one flight mode, two drinks, absolutely. Three. Let's make sure you are setting up your notepad in the best possible way. Clean sheet.

Nathan Simmonds:

Again, no distractions on that piece of paper. This is about your thinking and what you want to get from today. What you want to down the load from the thinking, what new ideas come up. So at the top of that fresh page, you're gonna write Keepers, keepers, can I put my children on flight mode? If there was a button for that and either you or I invented it for working from home, we will be very rich people, Caroline.

Nathan Simmonds:

So let's make sure you've got that clean page, fresh at the top. You're gonna write keepers and keepers are the things you want to keep hold of the place where you want to put the new ideas and thoughts that are coming up that you want to, um, remind yourself of and reinvigorate when you look back through your notes later on. So the objective of today and the objective of that is to write more than three things that you want to take away from today. So Pen's, paper, app, the ready to take this information off. Last few people I think have arrived, just says, great crowd in today. Great to see you all.

Nathan Simmonds:

It's amazing. I just remembered to take it off. Share screen. Let's get into the day. So what are we covering this week? Ah, back step. Welcome to Sticky Learning Lunches with me. Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM making Business Matter, the home of Sticky learning. And we are the leadership development and soft skills provider to the grocery and manufacturing industry.

Nathan Simmonds:

I deal with these lunchtime learnings, these micro sessions is to help you upgrade that thinking, help you be the best version of you right now in this current moment when you are working from moment and also preparing you for that return to work that we have no idea is when, when it's coming due to the confusion of yesterday. But this isn't a politics discussion.

Nathan Simmonds:

Today's session is all about the I in mind. So mind is a four stage process that I have designed through my coaching techniques and coaching ideas to help leaders have more robust conversations with the people in their teams that may be experiencing mental health challenges, is to help encourage those leaders actually have the conversation.

Nathan Simmonds:

Because it doesn't really matter whether people have got qualified as coaches as mental health first aiders or practitioners. If your leaders are nervous or you are nervous about having that conversation with that individual, doesn't matter what tools you've got, you're still gonna feel, uh, a reticence to go and do that and you'll get nervous and huge sways and huge percentages of leaders currently are nervous about having that conversation because they believe they're going to say the wrong thing or they're gonna get it so wrong.

Nathan Simmonds:

It's gonna cause more damage in the majority by saying nothing actually causes the most amount of damage by making people feel like that you don't care or you are not thinking about them, just compounds the issue. You can say anything to anybody as long as it's done with absolute love and respect and humanity. So as a leader, being a leader is all about being humane.

Nathan Simmonds:

It's about being human, it's about being emotional, and it's about bringing that to the table When you're having these honest conversations with people, as long as you're doing it again, like I say, with that love and respect, you can have that conversation. You can work with them to help them find their way through because it's not what we tell them to do.

Nathan Simmonds:

It's not about giving advice, which we, we don't do as mental health first aiders. It's about asking the right questions so that person can come up with their own solutions that's gonna help solve it in the way that's right for them. Not what we believe or wish to inflict upon them. And as Jeff Birch told me or taught me, uh, last week, you know, is a change inflicted is a change resisted, and it's through our questioning and the way that we direct people or help them to direct their focus with those questions, that's gonna help them to come up with those solutions, which is why this model is important to me and to the people, um, that I work with.

Nathan Simmonds:

So, quick recap from yesterday. Question from me to people that were here yesterday or have seen the replay. What did you take away from yesterday that was useful? Fire it up in the questions box. Let me see what's actually sunk in from yesterday. Let's build on that because we're gonna do a super quick recap on yesterday and then we're gonna go into today's importance. Four Fs model. Good brain shifting.

Nathan Simmonds:

Absolutely how someone thinking may change when it's in a crisis. Absolutely. Brain shuts down ownership and getting them to feel safe enough to talk. Absolutely. Brain is a validation machine. Questioning and signposting huge. Guys, thank you very much for taking this on board. Quick recap, mind. It is mindset . The mind is the model mindset starts with yours and theirs.

Nathan Simmonds:

It's not all about them. It's all about you as a collaboration about making things work. Number two is yes, the mechanics of the brain and how it's actually working against us and playing tricks on us. But it's doing that based on 200,000 years of evolution to keep you safe and alive so that you can pro procreate and continue the species moving forward. We just have to understand that part of our brain, which it thinks is doing us a favor, is actually holding us back from progressing or keeping us stuck in certain protective loops that we've learned in traumatic or, um, crisis like situations.

Nathan Simmonds:

The way to help shift out of that is asking questions. You want better answers, you ask better questions. Whatever question you put in your brain will create an answer or response based on what you put in the equation that I use for this is HQI equals HQO. High quality inputs equal high quality outputs. Write that down if you need to. HQI equals HQO. How do we wanna shift this? Then when we get into importance, what is important? He says,

Nathan Simmonds:

Importance is the thing that we put on certain parts of our life. The importance that we put on things makes, uh, raises that up in our priorities or our scheduling. So when we look at time management, is it urgent? Is it important? When we're looking at things that are, um, we're connected to now, we make decisions when we're doing house clearances. Okay, well what does this mean to me? What is the significance of this?

Nathan Simmonds:

What's important about this to me? So importance. And when you look at the mind model, so by the way, there's gonna be a link in in in the chat box about the, the mind coaching cards, the health, the mental health coaching cards that are designed. The I in in the mind model has a finger. And when we're talking about important importance, it's what are you focusing on that know that you are applying your importance and your significance to.

Nathan Simmonds:

This is what the importance is as we point the finger, we then decide what is in our focus. You can only focus on one thing at a time. Other elements may be blurry. And this is how your eyes work. As I'm looking at the camera rather than the image of me down there, I can see the little tiny circle and everything else is blurry. The clock behind is blurry, the light is blurry. I can only look at one thing clearly at a time.

Nathan Simmonds:

And we all do this. You can't think of multiple elements. You only ever think of one part of it at a single point in time. So the importance is of understanding where is your focus at that moment. When you are dealing with a crisis situation, a mental health challenge or episode or moment, whatever you would like to frame it as.

Nathan Simmonds:

What is the person you are working with or supporting? What are they focusing on? Open question to everyone in the room. When you are dealing with a situation like this,