Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Operations Room.

I am Brendan Bensinger, joined by my lovely co-host, Bethany Errors.

How are things going, Bethany, today?

Today I don't know where I am.

I've been traveling so much.

I was in India from Saturday trying to think.

I clearly I'm jet lagged because I just don't even know what day of the week it is.

Then flew home Wednesday night, got into Thursday, and now it's Friday.

So I had a night in my bed.

Yeah.

So you're fresh on the jetlag?

I would say.

Yes.

And also just like so excited to be in my bed because the week before I was in Manchester and was home for less than 12 hours.

So this is my second time sleeping in my bed in almost two weeks.

But I am just exhausted.

I don't think I was there long enough for jetlag, but clearly I was

because I woke up at 5:00 this morning.

I know for you, five is totally normal.

It is not for me.

So I'm just a bit groggy.

So I did upgrade and take a business class flight home from Abu Dhabi.

So the last leg from Abu Dhabi to London.

And I'm always conflicted on business class.

Like, do you stay awake and enjoy all the loveliness or do you take advantage of lying down flat and just ignore it all?

And I went for the second option.

This time we were boarding at 230 in the morning and they oddly were telling us Good morning.

As we boarded the plane, I was like, this, this is not good morning.

This is the middle of the night.

So I was in Manchester and I was in Jaipur.

I love Jaipur.

That city is awesome.

Because it has somewhere between three and a half and 5 million people depending on what source you look at.

So it's probably doubled in size since you were there, I would guess.

And it's a small city as far as India is concerned.

It's very much a tier two city.

The traffic was unbelievable, the driving.

At one point we were in tuk tuks because we one of the women who works with us was in charge of entertaining us on the Sunday.

And so we went and saw everything in the Old City and then wanted to take us to a ceremony in a temple that was also in the old City.

And we had to take off our shoes and run through just throngs of people.

A lot of the team members were afraid to leave their shoes so that they're going to be stolen.

And she just looked at them like slightly offensive and incredibly stupid.

And she's like, Just leave your shoes.

Don't take them with you.

Unsurprisingly, they were still there when we came back.

So we've got an amazing topic today, which is how to tackle mental health in an organization.

We have the perfect guest for this, which is Chris Hadfield.

He is the author of Cells Psyche and is a mindset and wellbeing coach.

So before we get to Chris, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions.

So the first one was sometimes not all the time, but on occasion the situation where you go to bed at night and your mind is racing, your mind is racing about work in terms of sensation of being overwhelmed, establish a ton of stuff to do and you're kind of worried a little bit.

Or you've had a distinctly negative experience that day that you keep playing over your mind again and again, wondering how it could have been different this, that or the other.

And the question is, how do you get yourself out of that state or how do you prevent that state from occurring in the first place?

And I'll just give you one example that Chris dropped on us during the podcast and we'll hear a little bit later.

But, you know, we talked about the the brain dump exercise, which is at the end of the day to go through your four quadrants.

And as you described it, the four quadrants were a, to recognize what is pending.

So just recognizing the tasks ahead of you in terms of the next day or the next week or what have you, reflecting on your wins that you had that day.

Identify what the stressful moments were coming out of that day very specifically.

And then to think about some of the solutions that you already have in mind and the whole point of this brain exercise, according to Chris, is just to get your mind in a state where it feels reassured, you've kind of put your mind in a position where you've kind of addressed it to some extent.

The question back to you is, A, what do you think of that?

But more broadly, what do you think about this kind of mind?

Is racing nighttime scenario and how to deal with that?

Well, so I took a class with Chris a couple of years ago and learned the brains of exercise.

So I do sometimes use it.

I don't want to after the class, I used it regularly and then realized that all four quadrants were kind of unnecessary and it was a bit too much.

If I'm going to really, you know, have a huge amount on, I'll definitely do the pending just to make sure that I've captured it all.

And quite often the the wins like I want spend a lot of time, but I'll just think through what are some of those wins.

And part of that isn't necessarily for that day, but I do keep a list of times when I've been awesome so that when I'm freaking out, I can go and visit my also list.

And so I might add, I might reflect to add on to my awesome list, but basically for the same one, for those days when I'm not feeling awesome, I can go and remind myself.

So that's what I use with Chris.

But from Chris is in the brain.

But for me, going to bed at night isn't my issue.

It's the 3 a.m.

wakeup.

And it's kind of that witching hour, isn't it?

You know, like babies wake up three, four in the morning.

I think there's like a moment in our sleep cycle where we're not quite as deep.

And then if there are issues happening, I'll definitely wake up then.

And then also before I started taking HRT, I don't know if I mentioned my my sleep issues.

Like I was waking up

multiple times in the night and 3:00 a lot.

Now that I have estrogen in my body, I sleep much better.

So to say anybody else can't sleep, there's a woman out there and of a certain age, I'd recommend exploring.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

But anyhow, when I wake up in that 3 a.m.

and my mind is racing, there's all different kinds of advice.

It's like, ignore it, don't look, go back to sleep.

Once you look at the clock, you won't go down.

There's you're not going to go back to sleep.

So get up and do whatever you need to do and write stuff down.

Talk to yourself.

You know, and I've tried a variety.

And if I wake up with panic or just like fear in my body, what I used to do is then try and I'll be like, hey, I'm afraid, why am I afraid?

And they would like go through my list of things like, yes, because we're going to miss our number this quarter or because I'm going to have to fire somebody or there's a board meeting and I don't know the agenda, you know, that kind of thing.

And then I would start to freak out about it.

But my therapist recommended when that happens, to not find the reason or fuel the fear, but just acknowledge the fear by itself and find ways to calm my body.

And that has been revolutionary.

So I'll wake up afraid and I won't go.

Why am I afraid of this reason?

And now fuel, fuel, fuel for that feeling and said, I'll wake up.

Go.

Okay.

I'm afraid I'm safe.

I'm in bed.

It's okay.

I'll just feel this feeling and then I'll go quite quickly.

And then sometimes that's enough to go to sleep in the middle of the night if I really can't sleep.

What I find most helpful is to do some sort of guided meditation because then I at least calm down and sometimes go back to sleep and sometimes I don't.

But it's better than staring at the ceiling if I'm getting up and writing it down or doing the work is doesn't help because then I'm just up from three in the morning and that's the start of my day.

I find it quite soothing to put my hands on my upper chest.

I try and separate what my might be thinking versus the sensations in my body and what I'm feeling and just be like, okay.

I'm feeling this feeling body.

You're okay.

And then the other one is if people do wake up in the middle of the night, one of the reasons might be blood sugar.

So it's a point where if your blood sugar goes quite low, your body will put in cortisol to wake you up and to balance things.

And then that's why you wake up at three in the morning.

And so having a small snack before bed might help keep your sugar level constant through the night and then you don't wake up anyhow.

Is the.

I've done a lot of research.

The second thing I wanted to ask you was Chris, Krista talked about normalizing the conversation of mental health by always asking the question in a 1 to 1 of how do you feel on a scale of 1 to 10?

And I guess the question to you is maybe two parts, one of which is, A, how do you just fundamentally normalize the conversation of mental health in the organization?

And then how do you activate line managers on it?

And this little idea around asking a 1 to 10 scale of like, how are you doing?

Do you think that's a good way to enter into that conversation?

So I like the idea of the question.

I've never used it.

You know, once he said, it's like, yeah, I was supposed to use that question.

I need to try to remember to do it.

So maybe I'll stick a posted on it.

As a reminder, in terms of the normalizing mental health, I really don't know what to say because I'm conflicted.

There's part of me that thinks that we should talk about mental health and talk about what's going on and be able to share more of ourselves everywhere, including work.

But then there's also a part of me that thinks that we've just gotten a bit too into it.

And now I'm going to sound old fashioned.

Like life can be hard and there could be ups and downs, and having a level of resilience is really important to survive work and the world.

And I'm not saying that we should have horrible work environments, but I sometimes wonder if talking about it so much has stolen people's resilience.

And so how do you find the balance between not being a toxic workplace where everybody is afraid but not being so accommodating is not the right word, but like so aware of it.

And so I guess accommodating is the word that keeps coming to mind that that people can't get better, that everybody's expecting the world to bow to them rather than a little bit of both.

I know exactly what you're saying.

I think there's really a balance to be had here, and I think it's the line manager.

Sometimes it becomes quite obvious that you need to start asking these questions.

Like the person comes into the session, you have a bit of a chat, everything's okay, yada.

But you can see in their eyes and you seen their behavior and they see the way they're kind of talking about things, that there's something happening and that at that point you're like, okay, I need to start asking some questions here in this respect.

And maybe this is the balance that you're talking about, which is we don't need to have a mental health conversation every week.

But I think by having a relationship and having trust between the two of us and me being able to pick up on cues that actually make sense.

There is a time and place to have these conversations and to help that person.

And one example that I can think about as I was talking with a very junior sales rep, she was new to sales and she was having confidence issues and she was trying to cover it up and trying to mask it from me in some form.

And I remember having this conversation with her and I could see the tears behind her eyes, as it were.

This weird how you can sense these things.

I something.

Okay, Something's afoot here.

And then I started probing a little bit.

And then, you know, the next thing you know, matures or flowing.

And she's expressing to me that she's deeply concerned about her ability to be an effective salesperson and this and the other.

And we had a wonderful conversation.

We had a great outcome.

And she's turned into a fantastic seller.

So I think it's really those kind of spot specific places where you need to land.

S in a way that's useful and effective without your point going overboard.

While you were talking about your sales person, for example, it suddenly made me think about we're a bit lazy in the way that we talk about these things and we lump it all in as a mental health and we just kind of be like emotions, messy stuff.

But mental health, because we lump it all two in together is really wide ranging from some imposter syndrome through to suicidal ideation because there's a really horrible possible end outcome.

We're a bit afraid of it, and then it all comes together and then we just leave it there.

Whereas your conversation that you had, I don't even know if I would put that down as mental health like we do just because we put it in this bucket of not standard old school, but really it's around high performance, isn't it?

Like you have somebody who's not performing well because they don't think they can and are so afraid and in their heads that in order to get them to be a high performer, you need to understand what's holding them back.

And I would argue that has nothing to do with mental health.

And that's around resilient.

And being able to have difficult conversations.

So I'm thinking now maybe we should start to be clearer.

Not you and I, but in this conversation.

Emotions does not mean mental health.

So we have some things set up.

We have mental health first aid ers so we can direct them to them and at work who've had training.

And then we also have access to free counseling via our insurance or our pension or whatever.

And people can speak to somebody on the day, and then there's X number of sessions.

So my advice would be, don't try and solve it yourself, don't take it on, but make sure you know what resources are available and send them to the right resources.

But also at work, we do have to deal with people's mental health, as in people who have depression.

People have anxiety disorders, people that have OCD.

You know, there's like loads neurodiverse with certain issues, actual, you know, health issues.

And I feel like because of that, we just overindex on on this mental health issue.

But maybe we should be separating the people who need proper support and everybody else who needs some help in coaching, getting out of their own heads in order to do a good job.

Yeah, I think you're right.

I think there is a distinction here because things like depression and ADHD and so on, those are actual conditions.

Some people have those conditions and some of those individuals do work in your company.

So having a very clear strand of support for that distinctly makes sense.

And you're right, that is kind of separate from generic business context challenges are having with people's confidence or anxieties or what have you, I suppose.

So there probably is something there.

Last question related to this.

Just from a policy standpoint, if you're a CEO, you're in a scalable company.

Is there anything else that you would see as kind of core to the mental health plank within your company?

So now I'm thinking we should really define it, which is not something we've done.

But just from today's conversation and my ideas of what is the point?

Like, why are we focusing on mental health rather than it just being a trend?

And it sounds good as an organization.

And for me, there's a few reasons why you focus on it.

One is purely the element that you need to have policies and protections and make sure that those who need support have support because you're legally required to.

And then you have in order to have a high performance team.

Arguably, you shouldn't have a toxic culture.

And what does not having a toxic culture look like?

And in our modern world, that includes a feeling of inclusivity, able to show up as yourself, able to say that you are struggling and not be ostracized for it.

And I think that's a lot of what we lump into mental health.

But for me, I don't know if it's mental health.

Like I think I now need to redefine what I think of as mental health.

And then that is in order to enable people to perform at their highest level.

And then in order to do that, you need to support your managers to have those conversations, because people are afraid of having difficult conversations with emotions because we don't know what's going to happen.

Like what if somebody cries?

What if somebody gets angry?

What if somebody says they think they're a failure?

How are you going to handle it?

And so giving your managers training and support to have those conversations and to feel comfortable with them and also for them to be able to shake it off afterwards, Because I think there are some times we ask a lot of managers, managers will overtake all of their team's feelings and you need to make sure that they're okay as well and are well-resourced and resilient to deal with what sometimes is a lot of emotion that they're dealing with on a daily basis.

Love it.

So why don't we park it here and get on to our conversation with Mr.

Chris Hadfield.

What is anxiety?

So I am definitely someone who's very familiar with it.

But there's not necessarily even to this day, a wide ranging understanding.

And also it seems to be quite often coded as like a woman issue, or at least women can talk about it.

So I think it would be interesting to understand it and how it shows up in men.

I suppose the example I use is for people because I know plenty of people, I don't really get anxious, you know.

And they come from a place of wanting to understand it.

And most people do.

I speak to some people are like, I just don't need to be anxious.

It's not choice.

But it's almost like the analogy I often use is like someone is about to spring a test on you and you don't know when the test will be, but your life depends on it and it will likely be on questions you don't know the answer to.

And it's that constant feeling of uncertainty, of that kind of what's going to happen.

I don't know what's going to happen.

Here's all the worst case scenarios.

And even being anxious about not being anxious when everything is, it's almost like that.

That stability, that calm is when that can provoke it as well.

It's it's not even saying that.

But when everything is fine, you're okay.

Is that.

Well, no, it's more about your internal kind of weather forecast rather than the external.

And I avoid so just defining it because it shows up so differently for so many people in terms of like where it sits, how it feels, what those kind of thoughts are.

But it is it's a signal.

And sometimes it might be it's like the smoke alarm going off.

Sometimes the smoke alarm might be a little bit faulty and I might need the batteries changing.

It might just need to be doing some inner work for that.

But sometimes it might be trying to tell you something ahead of time.

My experience with anxiety is that I'd like the fire alarm analogy in that everything's tripping the fire alarm when it doesn't necessarily have to, and that I can almost handle more than when I just feel fear and there's no story in my mind.

And I'm not stoking the fire.

But no matter what I do, I can't get away from feeling afraid.

And I find that really upsetting because there's no control over it, because I'm not thinking things.

And so those times I kind of just, like, try and calm my physical body.

Gravity, blankets, Distraction.

I try not to numb it with alcohol, but sometimes numb it with alcohol and just know that it'll pass.

Have you experienced that kind of anxiety as well where it's not tied to anything?

Yeah, and it kind of links that piece when there isn't anything to be anxious about.

There is no one single thing.

I'll ask you a question first.

Like when you're when you're feeling like that, are you trying to do something to stop yourself?

Feeling anxious is out there.

And trying to survive it.

So I'm trying to just get through it, knowing it'll come out the other side.

But feeling scared is a really uncomfortable feeling.

Like even just as I'm describing it now, I can feel the tightness in my chest, I can feel the tightness in my stomach.

There's like a level of panic that is physically in my body, and it's an uncomfortable feeling.

And if it like passes in a minute or two, fine.

But that can last days.

And at that point is how do I cope until it passes?

And then I'll just add this as a side point.

I have started HRT and all of my anxiety has gone away and I did not realize how bad it was for the ten years is like a bathtub filling.

So it's like drip, drip, drip of anxiety.

And I didn't notice it until the point that I was basically having panic attacks and I was like, okay, there's something going on.

I'm of the age of maybe needing HRT.

Went to my doctor a couple of times is like, because I'm very high functioning, No, you're fine.

And then I finally guess what it's like, This isn't right.

Finally took it.

Two days later, the plug in the bathtub was pulled.

All the anxiety went away.

And I was like, my God, I forgot.

This is how I used to feel because it was a ten year process.

So I'm now actually trying to imagine the anxiety that I lived with constantly for such a long time.

I think there's two things here.

I think one is I think it's always important to be patient with yourself when you do feel a certain way.

I think when I talk about these things, I'm also conscious of knowing that sometimes you need to sit with that feeling and that's okay.

It's it's knowing that there isn't going to be anything that's going to try and move it in the same way.

If you had a cold, you know, yes, you can take remedies.

Yes.

You can wrap up warm.

Yes, you can take the snow, the tablets, you one, but you're still going to feel a certain way for a period of time.

And if you took a lemon sip from, why am I not better already, you're only going to make yourself feel worse.

The worst thing you can do is judge yourself for it.

So I think that self-talk is a big piece there around how you initially respond to it without judgment and observe that.

One thing that can help here is giving it a name, like naming that feeling.

I was working with someone last year that had panic attacks around public speaking, so they'd have very real examples of not just I'm feeling anxious, I've had a panic attack here and.

They named theirs James, James or someone they went with.

And whenever they suggested something, James would get super anxious about it.

So he started using, James is starting to feel a bit anxious about this presentation.

James is a bit anxious about this QB.

That hasn't even been put in the air and I haven't got anything to be anxious about, but I am.

And he just found an issue like straight away.

There was such a different response to it because it wasn't him.

It's not you, it's not you are not your anxiety.

And then the second thing I think that can help is when you are filling in that state is thinking about what am I trying to move towards rather than away from.

So if I'm trying to stop myself feeling anxious, all I'm thinking about is being anxious.

If I'm trying to stop myself from feeling scared, I'm just going, Am I still scared?

So it's almost thinking, what do I want to move towards?

Do I want to feel calmer?

Do I want to feel more relaxed on a feel focused, motivated?

So it's thinking about what's the state?

And then I might still do the same thing, wrap myself with blankets, I might still write journal, whatever it might be, but I'm doing it with a different kind of intention in mind and one that I can maybe better understand and measure how I'm doing towards it, whilst also knowing I'll do these things.

And sometimes it might pass in ten minutes and it might not.

So here's a question for you, Chris.

So when does it become or start to become a problem whereby you need to be proactive about it, either in terms of yourself or line management or the company?

I think where it becomes a problem is where, first of all is occupying your mind constantly.

You know, it's stopping you from fitting present with your partner and your friends.

And the evening it's taking up your weekends.

It's maybe driving you to think you always need to be checking emails.

And this is where the balance is, of course, because anxiety can also help you be proactive with deals that can make you think about what could go wrong.

Where I think it's healthy is where you're thinking that and then you're acting on it.

Whereas unhealthy is when you're thinking these things and you're just allowing it to consume you and it's almost paralyzing you and you know, you're not taking any actions as a result of it.

You're just letting it project in your mind and therefore not showing up in the way you want.

And you have identities outside of work.

And even the identity and work is it's causing you to go into situations feeling less confident or more apprehensive or more uncertain about things or even pessimistic about things.

And then if you want to put the company or the line manager in a position to start to be proactive about mental health, proactive about anxiety or proactive about burnout, what are the initial set of tools or techniques that you can arm a company with or ally manager with to start to identify what is happening with employees and then B start to do something about it that's useful.

Yeah, I think one of the biggest things is just the types of conversations you have.

You know, if you wait until someone is struggling to try and have a conversation with them, they're going to feel like, actually this is a trap.

Like, are you just asking me this because you've got some redundancies coming up or you know, you need to get rid of me or I'm not performing.

So now you only care about my numbers when I'm not performing.

But when I was or when I was doing in the middle, you weren't asking about this.

So I can come across very insincere, of course, when you do it that way.

So I think it's normalizing.

The conversation is asking questions even before you think there is a an issue or a problem if someone is showing you care, I think scaling questions could be really useful because the last question we asked you on a daily basis, how are you?

How are you?

Alright, I'm not bad, you know, and it's just this automated response.

So I think even scaling questions and getting into the habit of asking people like, how do you feel on a scale of 1 to 10.

I You mean by scaling question Because I'm just like, how do you scale a business?

How do you hire more people?

How are you feeling on a scale of 1 to 10, just in general, not like your anxiety or anything.

And some people might say, I'm, I'm A70, what makes it seven?

Well, you know, this is going on.

And here is you're going into what are you feeling rather than how are you feeling or what's on your mind?

And someone might be like one week or seven, they might go, I'm an eight.

Okay.

Like, what's changed?

What are you doing as a result?

What are you still doing?

Someone might start to go, I'm a six, I'm a five.

And throughout that you can go, What's changed here?

Or if someone has dropped a few numbers, For example, you might go.

When we spoke last month, you were here.

Like, this is what you said you were thinking, feeling and doing.

What would you say has changed since then?

And sometimes they might not be anything.

And it's good to reassure someone that, look, you're still doing the right things.

It's okay.

People can allow the numbers to dictate how they feel, of course, or that process to think everything is working is going well.

It is.

This is where, you know, people say trust the process.

But I think you've got to trust yourself before you trust the process.

I think that's the missing piece.

I think a manager also being prepared to be vulnerable.

You know, vulnerability builds, release, ability and vulnerability and accountability don't go on separate scale was just because you're more vulnerable.

It doesn't make someone less accountable.

Or the more you encourage someone to be vulnerable, it doesn't mean they're less accountable.

As a result, they actually sharing.

I felt like this and not even just when someone is sharing this, but proactively.

This is how I felt six months in and this is how I felt when I when I'm.

Stay on the steal.

And here's what I did as a result of it.

You know, normalizing it rather than what people can look at as managers and leaders and go, you're just this superhero almost sometimes, or you don't know what it's like.

You've not being where I've been and you're not doing it in a way of going, I've done what you've done and, you know, trying to outshine someone.

Just try to humanize yourself, really.

Just as a side note.

One of my biggest surprises as I became more senior was that I was still me.

And I just mean like, because when you're a junior person looking at these fancy execs and their big houses and their big salaries and like, why would they have any worries in the world?

And they have everything sorted.

Because I found my 20s really hard.

So anybody who looked like their lives were sorted, I was just in awe of.

And then I kind of became that person.

And I have a bigger house and I have a bigger salary, but like, I still have all of my worries and the anxiety and different problems and school fees and like, are my children going to be okay?

Are they going to launch?

Are they not going to launch?

Lost my parents, lost my grandparents.

Like life is still very complicated.

Even if on the outside you have things that somebody who's more junior wants and they don't realize that you're still a person.

And I'm projecting how I felt when I was that age, and I didn't think that senior execs were people that were relatable.

So I think that there's an element of just sharing that you're a full person for a lot of people is quite a surprise.

I still remember that conversation we had both when you came on the course that did the stress and burnout prevention, and you sat down with someone who was feeling overwhelmed and went through one of the exercises and talk about being yourself.

And you did the same time, didn't you?

And even doing that was like, it wasn't you weren't doing it in a disingenuous way to go, Well, I've got problems as well as who are you?

But it was like relate ability is it's kind of I'm being vulnerable here as well, and not just sitting here from my high top chair judging you for it.

Should we talk about that exercise?

Actually, because it was one that I found really helpful.

So just put a bit of context.

I joined a meeting and the person in the meeting was in total overwhelm.

They started talking and immediately started to cry.

Had too much work, too much pressure and did not know where to go next.

And I had happened to be on your course and we had just covered one of the exercises and it was amazing to have that tool in my arsenal.

Yeah.

So it's the stress container.

Exercise is a couple of different versions.

We have a level of stress that we can manage before it starts to fill to the top.

And if you imagine it's like a bucket, every thing that comes in big, small, positive or negative, we sometimes forget that.

But even positive things, we can have positive stress that will contribute to a stress.

And when it gets that top and you don't have the taps to release it, that's where it starts to spill over.

That's where burnout can occur.

That's where overwhelm can occur.

So the idea behind the stress container is thinking about, first of all, when you can even do this for a particular day or you're working on it could be a particular challenge in your life.

It could be your anxiety that we've talked about.

It could be everything almost going, What's everything going in my stress container right now?

I would really encourage people when you're doing this to to write like not just type but.

Right.

Because when we write, we use the rational part of our brain as well that the idea behind the issue you draw everything down.

First of all got right here's everything that's going into my stress container and even that in itself straight away, sometimes you might be like, there's not as much as I thought, or even just looking at it on paper if it was more manageable or that does feel quite a lot.

And that's where that compassion can come in and go, Hey, look, if a friend was telling me this and I sit and I and I said I wasn't overwhelmed or stressed, they would think I'm a robot or they would think, like, why do you don't care?

Like, all of this is going on.

So it can work both ways, really.

Then what you want to do is you then circle what's within my control here.

So what can I do something about?

What can't I control?

And sometimes just even writing those things down and labeling that, you know the phrase I used, the scene you accept to wall is all the less time and energy you spend trying to push it over.

And I ask people sometimes if they come to a session, how did you get here today?

The tube?

How long did it take you?

An hour.

If you went straight from door to door in the tube, it would be 20 minutes.

Why didn't you get annoyed that you couldn't get a tube straight from your house to here?

When I come because I can't control?

Exactly.

There's so many things already.

Each day we choose what we we get annoyed about or stressed about, and there's a lot of things we just accept.

So then it's going okay out of what I can control.

Let's put a little asterix to the 2 or 3 biggest things.

If I think right now, what's the thing that's taking up the most space?

What's the thing in the bucket that's causing the most weight?

It's going okay.

It's this is this thing is this feeling is this situation.

And then asking for each of those what's 1 or 2 things in my control I can do right now to reduce or remove this?

So what it allows people to do is to take that bird's eye view to identify what's in their control, but also to come out with.

Some very action orientated steps, 2 or 3 small ones that they can take and boil it down from a feeling and to an action which makes people feel more in control.

And when we feel more in control of something, we automatically reduce our levels of anxiety or stress because it's a very present feeling that we can do in the moment.

So when we did it together, we did not actually get to the action part just because I think we were doing it together and it was a great way to help them transition from overwhelm and just that transition from overwhelm and the writing it all down.

Got it from the swirling in your head where you kind of put it down, pick it up, put it down, pick it up.

So it seems like it's five things, but it's actually one thing.

And when you write it down, you realize what are the individual things that are going on.

And then I think the only reason we didn't get to the action part was because I did it at the same time.

And they were so surprised by mine that it kind of like changed the conversation in a way.

And so it had the right effect of moving out of overwhelm.

And then it had like a bonding effect between us.

We were a bit in it together because I think one of my concerns was I'm not doing a good job and I'm going to get fired.

And they were so shocked by me writing that down again, kind of to my earlier point of junior people thinking senior people are amazing and don't have those fears and also would never be fired because clearly, like, not clearly, but from their point of view, I was doing a good job.

So why was that even in the list?

I just remember that one moment and their face, like seeing that, just the shock and confusion, it just shifted.

Everything calmed them down.

And then we were I guess we did have an action plan, but we didn't do the circling.

I probably forgot about the circling, but we had a okay, so what's the next most important thing on this incredible list here?

Here's a prioritization.

And then they were able to go.

Often focus on the one thing.

Yeah.

And I think that exercise is, you know, going back to your question earlier on, Brandon, I would encourage groups do that even before they get to that point of overwhelm as well.

Even even sometimes at the end of your day, if you've had quite a busy day and you don't feel necessarily massively stressed, but you just think there's a lot going on in your brain that is going to cause you to overthink.

There's a separate tool I've used for this, the brain dump exercise that I just wanna reference.

One last analogy for that piece there.

I think when you when you get all your thoughts down on page, it's a bit like looking at a jigsaw puzzle in a box.

It can seem like you just can't solve it, but you throw it on the table when you like, okay, there's some corners like I'm nowhere near finish this, but at least I know where to start with it.

And I think that's the most important thing here, is that we know that we don't always need to have an answer, but if we have a starting point and some controllable things we can do, that's enough for us.

A lot of the time to go right is when we feel out of control.

It's when we feel helpless, when we don't know where to start.

It's where we are thinking about all the things we can't control.

The brain dump, exercise.

The reason I mention it is because, again, I think this is another proactive tool, because it is often we're so busy in our day, we don't have time to reflect on it.

You know, it's a bit like being in a CGI film.

You're so busy filming behind a green screen, it doesn't make any sense until you watch it back at the end of it.

It's kind of like, Well, what was I doing?

Like, you know, I was the lives of people in just green outfits.

I just that weird let me watch the film.

And when we don't have that, our brain then starts thinking about the day and then our primal brain, the amygdala, the slowdown and shake thing that sits in that.

It's like that smoke alarm that's often where all of our irrational thoughts or anxiety, our emotions are feeling set will go off.

And that part of our brain doesn't know the difference between the past, the present and the future.

So we all think everything that we're thinking about needs to be solved right now or is going to happen right now in its current state, which is why we're lying in bed at 10 or 11 p.m.

thinking about all of these things.

So the brain dump exercise is four quadrants.

It's pending wins, challenges, solutions.

Say the first quadrant.

You write down everything that's on your mind.

So maybe some of the similar things that you've written down in that stress container.

And the idea here is that when you're writing it down, you're sequentially telling your brain, we're not going to forget about it.

Anyone who has kids will know.

Like when you write things down, it's why kids get given timetables at school.

It's why putting things on Netflix, If your kids are asking you for something, write it down.

Go.

Look, we're not forgetting about this.

We will come back to it.

It's a good little technique, but it works for the same for our brains, is that we don't need to keep this top of mind, is there?

And our brains don't understand, even if it's in a calendar on us, on a spreadsheet behind 72 by the top, that isn't the answer.

So you depending, then you do wins.

The wins is about that reflection.

I think again, a big part of overwhelmed burnout imposter syndrome.

All these things comes from a lack of self reflection, comes from not recognizing the progress we're making.

So we're constantly thinking we're not there yet.

We're not there yet.

We need to keep pushing and just giving yourself that moment.

Each state is 2 or 3 things that went well today know what happened, but what did I do?

And it could be as simple as I got out for a walk at lunch, for example, or, you know, what was the controllable thing.

I start I sent an email to this person and started this conversation.

Challenges is going right rather than just going, It's been a super stressful day or I've had a terrible week is what made it that.

Like what made it a stressful day?

There's very rarely a stressful day.

It's probably 2 or 3 moments in the day, so write those things down.

Did you get co-operative email?

Did you get coins for meeting that you really didn't need to be part of that actually challenges then your solutions is, Well, what can I do tomorrow or next week to proactively avoid this?

Can I check the urgency of this conversation before I have it?

Can I ask this person for an agenda for the meeting beforehand?

Can I close down Slack or LinkedIn before I start making prospects and devote myself getting distracted to things?

So when you have this, you have a blueprint that you can look at at the time again, regulate you, but throughout your evening or your weekend, you have a plan.

You can look at it and it reassures your brain straight away when it starts to come up and go, what about this is too look, we're okay, we've got this.

So if we just pull back for a moment from the individual level to the company level, let's imagine that I'm a CEO, which I am, and I'm joining our organization, let's say 150 people.

And mental health as an actual thing has not really been discussed in the company to date in any real formal way.

Perhaps it has on the individual level, but not on the kind of company corporate level at that point.

So as a CEO and joining that company, what are some of the initial things that I should do to get the ball rolling on that front?

Or what would you recommend?

Anonymous survey to address all the elephant in the room.

How well supported do you feel on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you feel on a scale of 1 to 10, How supportive do you find the managers?

What do you think is in our control to support you?

It's like just lay out on the table and don't just do that as an anonymous survey.

Take away, share it.

If you really want to take this seriously in the same way you put sales numbers up there and you wouldn't pretend that, you know, what we're doing really well know is like everyone knows we're not.

Because they can see the numbers.

It's the same with everyone.

How they're feeling is just cause you're not talking about it.

The sales team are with each other and if they're not, it's even more unhealthy because they're talking about it with their partner.

And if they're not, it's even more unhealthy because they're just keeping it to themselves.

So I think do that survey, have an open discussion and say, look, we listened.

Here's what you said.

Here's the things that some of the stuff we might not be able to control and that's important to address as one guy.

This is the nature of where as a business or where we're as a company or just what we do in general or the nature of sales.

And that's okay as well, is to is to be able to go, we can't do anything about this.

And that's all right.

And knowing what you can and what you can't do, but then going, here's what we can do, then here's what we're visibly going to do.

I think that would be the most important step for me because it just shows people that you really do care about this.

It's not just a tick box.

It's not just a mental health awareness Week is coming up and we're going to get someone to come in and talk.

So that would be my step 1 or 2.

So I'm very interested in step three.

So we've done the survey.

We want to do something.

I guess the question of what's the initial thrust like, what would actually make the most sense to kind of cover off the 8020 rolls, the stands?

The piece I mentioned that Iran is one power that is encouraging managers of even giving them education or training around how to have these conversations, even like mental health, first day training could be useful thing as a maybe, not as initial step, but as a in the future.

Like here's something we do sign up for just to give people greater awareness around it and how they bring it up in conversations.

I think giving people space of almost making it part of onboarding as well as an important piece.

You know, when people go is best practice of what a week looks like.

If you're an A, B, D, R, and B or CSM is is a best practice Well being as well, like incorporate that.

So I think it's having that in the onboarding, it's having that best practice of here's how to take care of yourself.

It's it's also giving people not just minimum expectations but lower boundaries, but also upper boundaries, you know, particularly when they first start is yeah, here's what the minimum we expect but also be cautious of going to follow the other way of you know only I think Beth or the shop could regulate when he was at sales off the email people start walking off I thought I can see you on line get off like, you know, like this isn't what we want.

This isn't what we need.

I sometimes might need to do it, but I'm not doing it every day.

And I think that's the other thing as well as leaders communicating things is people often do.

It's not what it is, is how it looks and how you communicate.

That as well is really important.

So I think onboarding is an important part.

I think in one to ones, I think when you're talking about training is going how are we incorporating training around if we're going to do objection handling or if we're going to do how you recall with these other training around like DNI and all these other pieces, how we kind of incorporating mindset and wellbeing training into that?

Like are we giving people a better understanding of here's what stress is like, here's what healthy stress or unhealthy stress looks like, here's what anxiety looks like, here's how to support each other with that.

I think just embedding it and going, this should just be like an adds on.

It should be blended in with managers conversations.

And then we have a space for when people do feel the same way.

And that's the biggest thing is the test that when someone does feel like that, how do you respond to it?

What's the actual conversation?

And a manager shouldn't be like, Go and speak to each other about it.

They should be like, you know, and this is the other thing which I think a lot of a struggle with for this topic is what if I don't know the answer?

What if I can't fix it?

And it's like, you don't need to fix it that need to have an answer all the time.

It's just holding space for someone to be able to talk out loud and show that you understand.

And you might be.

You might not be the person to solve that, but it's being there to bring them to the person or encourage them to find those resources.

When it comes to sales specifically, it's quite unique in a way versus the rest of the company because there's no other part of the company that has a quota per quarter or per month.

Right.

And they're always being held to account there.

Their feet are always to the fire.

The numbers are always there in front of them.

So the question of anxiety and stress associated with that is uniquely related to sales.

And I'm just curious, from your point of view, is there anything I don't know different that a company might think about doing for sales specifically to combat that, the quota system.

Getting rid of quotas?

Yeah.

I think it kind of comes back to earlier on kind of that stress container is really boiling it down to is someone really clear on what's in their control and what they can do about it.

And when things don't go well, are you able to coach someone or give them that space to recognize what they could and couldn't control because knocked back some failure and get lumped in all together?

Sometimes.

And sometimes yes, there is a time when someone could work on something and change something.

Sometimes there isn't.

Sometimes there is the you did everything right, like the complex failure, but something externally happened.

You have control and it's knowing when to keep persevering.

So I think that's the.

Biggest challenge to sales people will go, Well, I was doing this last call, which I've just started doing this and nothing works and now I need to change it.

And I said, Well, not necessarily.

But it doesn't mean you shouldn't.

But it's probably because, again, lack of self-reflection.

A lot of people, particularly in sales and companies in general, will want to celebrate success, but they don't want to analyze it as much as they do failure.

Like if you're going to sit in a room after poor culture and go for it for a day and go, what happened?

Are you doing that for?

When things go well, you spending as much time reflecting on that success as a as a company overall, first for then leaders, then as a team as well.

It doesn't just come from one place, because the more you recognize that, the more you recognize what you're thinking, feeling and doing.

When things are going well, the more you can maintain it.

And then when things aren't, you can check yourself and go, Am I still doing these things?

Yes.

Okay.

Trust the process because I trust myself more.

Here's the things we've stopped doing is the things that sometimes we do because we think, I don't do that anymore because I'm good now.

Because I know you're good.

Because you were doing those things like make them part of the process rather than I don't need that anymore.

And fine is that maybe you'll find because you've been doing this thing.

Kind of like a self retrofit.

But I also think it's about the self retro and actually businesses should do more retros.

So self-reflection and business reflection.

What's working, what's not.

If there's only one thing our listeners can take away from the conversation today, what is it?

Whatever you're feeling, whether it's stress, anxiety, overwhelm is asking what is this trying to tell me?

This is why is this happening to me?

But asking that question, saying as a signal, what is this trying to do was the reason I'm anxious.

I'm anxious because I'm worried this meeting won't go to plan.

I'm anxious that this conversation might be difficult to have and going, okay, well, what's 1 or 2 things I can do to proactively work on this?

So that's one.

Now just and the second thing is be proactively think about something.

Don't just wait until you need something.

You know, in the same way, if it's 2 p.m.

on a Saturday night sorry, 2 p.m.

on a Saturday and you're going out in the evening with friends and your friends on 20%, you charge it because you know it's going to run out back to the evening.

Treat your energy the same way.

Like proactively recharge yourself, proactively do things before you need them.

Because if you don't, because we're going to go on some battery saving mode and that's when you are going to be more reactive.

So the more proactive you are, the less reactive you need to be and the more prior to the of these things, the more likely you are to use them when you really need them.

Thank you, Chris, for joining us on the operations room.

If you like what you hear, please leave a comment or subscribe and we'll see you next week.