Sticky Learning Lunches #23: 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:

Good afternoon everybody. Welcome to today's Sticky Learning Lunch. I'm not leaving the room, I'm just getting my phone. I've left it on the other side again. Good afternoon everyone. Hello. Hello. Welcome people just joining the room. Great to see you. Vicki. Lovely to see you again. Tracy Bravida, Matt, Laura, Carolina. Hello again. Jason, Gabrielle, Colin, Adam. It's great. I'm getting some regulars. Some old friends, some new friends. Hello, hello. Getting some hellos coming up. If you wanna say hi, please type, type, hi.

Nathan Simmonds:

I know you and then you are, you are with me. You are fully attentive because I can see when you're not on the little box over here, I can see when you're looking at other webpages, people, how are we on a scale of one to 10, how are we feeling? One terrible, 10 amazing. Where are we on this scale ourselves. Let's check in with ourselves. Mental health isn't just about the people you are working with. It is about yourselves. I talk about self-leadership as a, as a technique, as an understanding. If you cannot lead yourself, you cannot lead anybody else.

Importance of having a mental health conversation when working from home

 

Nathan Simmonds:

So it's super important that when we're working with mental health and mental wellbeing, that we're checking with ourselves to make sure we're okay. Let's think about focus. What is the best part of your week so far? Let's get this into the, the questions box as well. I, I share some of these. What is the best part of your week so far that is filling you with joy, appreciation, love, gratitude, whatever it is. And I wanna see some of them. 'cause in that it then balances off me as well. Had a pretty good morning clearing the decks. Nice knowing Friday's, two days away, Adam. Don't be like that. The sun. Nice

Nathan Simmonds:

Session's in place for mental health week. All filled. Nice. Nice self development. Seeing my own son develop so much from homeschooling. He is loving the one-to-one. Yeah, absolutely. The people homeschooling and people are saying, you know, they're seeing their, their children developing so much. It's amazing. Sticking to the running, ah, sessions in place for the mental health awareness. We call Phil, they, maybe we need to have a conversation. David, there's maybe there's some synergies here that we can share and bounce off with each other, right? We are all in the room.

Nathan Simmonds:

Amazing to see you all. Good afternoon people. So David, if you feel any need you would like to reach out, please do. Just lemme know. I'd love to have a conversation. See how I can help with that. Hello Andrea. Good to see you. I set you all up for success. Always David, thank you. Just come and follow me on LinkedIn. Drop me a connection or, or an email or whatever. I'm happy to share. I'll get the, my email address in the chat box briefly and we can continue that conversation. Let's make sure we've all got their phones out.

Nathan Simmonds:

Phones first. Everybody on flight mode, a hundred percent attention on you. This is all about you. This is a selfish 30 minutes, which is all about you. And I'm not gonna sing any songs. It's no, we're not gonna do that. A hundred percent attention on you. What we're gonna share today and continuing the dialogue around mental health, mental health awareness, and the tools and techniques that I use and I use with other people to support them. Making sure you've got a fresh page in your notepad available. At the top of that you're gonna write keepers. This is for you to get those things you wanna remember and the things you wanna bring back to your thinking when you read back through your notes. Super important we do this and making sure you've got a drink available for this session.

Nathan Simmonds:

Welcome to today's Sticky Learning lunch with myself, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM Making Business Matter, the home of sticky learning and we are the soft, the leadership development and soft skills provided to the grocery and manufacturing industry. Today is day three. It's gone like a, it's gone super fast of the mind model, which is a unique model we created, I created to support leaders having stronger, more robust and more eloquent mental health conversations with themselves and with their teams. And today we're gonna be covering n for network is all about the people around us. So quick recap on Monday. Monday was all about mindset.

Nathan Simmonds:

It is all about yours and theirs. It's all about making sure that we're helping to support, uh, or find out where the focuses are, helping them to deescalate the emotions and come back to center so you can have a conversation. They too, yesterday it was all about importance. What we're putting the importance on. The other element that's really important is to understand and deeply comprehend, super important that if this is not in the right place, you cannot move the conversation forward.

Nathan Simmonds:

It doesn't matter what questions you think you want to ask or you would like that person to get to, is absolutely imperative that they have brought the thinking down, that the breathing has started to be more controlled. That the you, that they can focus their thinking and create new emotions so that you can continue the rest of the dialogue. Jumping this and try and get to here and to hear into the network or the, the next steps or direction is only gonna cause more friction, more frustration and more agitation and just cause that person to spiral deep more deeply into the situation they're in.

Nathan Simmonds:

Is everyone with me on this? If everyone see, see the importance of making sure the mindset is right. Let me know in the box, yes or no. Yes. Good, good, good. Yes, yes, yes. Good. So we help to understand, to lower the imp help to people to lower the importance that they're putting on certain things. We help to adjust the focus 'cause the brain can only focus on one thing at a time. Then we get into a network,

Nathan Simmonds:

Three elements to network you, the team and then the support mechanism. So we're gonna look at all three of those in a minute. The phrase that I had up at the beginning of this and that I shared in the LinkedIn post earlier is, your network equals your network worth. You may have heard this in other circles in other groups of people. We have to understand, you know, well when it comes to this idea is you don't just have a financial bank account, you have an emotional bank account.

Nathan Simmonds:

Okay? Most of us live our lives though, thinking that our financial bank account actually equals our emotional bank account. I'll be happy when I earn, I'll be happier when I get this. We're not gonna go into that too deeply, but it's understanding that actually your emotions, your emotional bank account will create the financial bank account.

Nathan Simmonds:

The emotional bank account though in this context is really getting to understand how you are putting credit in that account. How you are looking after yourself, how you are taking time to make those investments of time for yourself and with other people. There's a Jim Rowan quote that I will paraphrase here is in show me the top five people that you hang out with and I'll show you the content of your bank balance gift will take 5% or 10%.

Nathan Simmonds:

It's the same with our emotions. So we can start to see who we're surrounding ourselves with and how that's actually impacting our emotional and mental bank account. So it is really important that we start to understand who and what is in our network and how that is potentially impacting us or impacting the people that we are supporting. So the first thing for your network is you.

Nathan Simmonds:

Who here knows the Mental Health England First Aid, um, acronym of algae? Yes or no? No. Okay, I've got some nos coming up. I scribbled it down here. No. Okay, so they have a model, it's called algae, A-L-G-E-E. By all means, please look at it. The first part is to assess. Is to know, to assess the situation. The L is to listen. The G in this, um, is then to, um, give support

Nathan Simmonds:

In, in appropriate ways. And then the e is encourage them to get expert advice. Encourage them to get support. Again, I haven't got all my documents with me just to make sure that we're completely on point with that. The first part though, in the network is understanding that when you are supporting someone in a mental health situation, episode moment, there is an appropriate amount of you that you need to give to this conversation. It is not for you to be there 100% of the time. You are not the counselor, you are not the Samaritans.

Nathan Simmonds:

Um, you are the leader, the HR responsible individual, whatever it is, there is a certain amount of you that you can give to this. You are not there to give advice. You are not there to be there constantly. You are not on the end of the phone at three o'clock in the morning necessarily. And it's about making sure that you've got the right elements of you in there to support those individuals.

Nathan Simmonds:

After we, the the, when we are, when we are working in the space, the analogy is, you know, talking about carrying baggage, other people's baggage. As a coach, as a mental health first aid, as, as someone who works in this space, I am happy to help other people know, put their bags down. I'm happy to support them while they're unpacking their bags and working out what they truly wanna be carrying on how they wanna be moving forward.

Nathan Simmonds:

At no point though, will I be picking those bags up for them?