This session sets the foundations needed for your leaders to become supportive and mental health-aware people managers. It helps your leaders make good mental wellbeing a tangible and achievable target in the context of today’s economy and society, climate change, and global inequality.

We help time-poor leaders recognise that this isn’t another “thing to do” but instead is about evolving how they support their team, by making mental health a strategic imperative. We explore what their role is – and crucially what it isn’t.

We offer practical and easy-to-implement advice on how to prioritise mental health, get in touch with how others are feeling, and start making proactive changes.

Key Learning Outcomes:

• Understand the human and commercial imperative for prioritising mental health
• Have a clear and shared understanding of what mental health is, why individual experiences differ and have the language to talk about mental health in a supportive way
• Understand how to improve their own mental health and act as a role model for others
• Be more confident and look for early signs of stress, distress and burnout in a hybrid work environment
• Understand what is and what is not in their responsibility when it comes to building healthy teams: protect, promote and provide support rather than fix or solve
• Start taking small steps to invest in their team’s mental health and build a supportive psychologically safe team culture

This session equips your leaders with the knowledge and confidence to have effective and supportive conversations. It helps break the stigma of talking about mental health while empowering people through coaching and live case studies to make changes to improve mental health.

In the first part of the session, your leaders will learn a simple but effective way to have conversations to support mental health, be given the opportunity to practice the conversation, and will overcome common barriers to opening up, such as the fear of “getting it wrong.”

In the second part of the workshop, we explore the workplace influences on mental health in more detail. We look at the small, evidence-based changes that can help ensure that work intensity is at a level that motivates rather than harms people and discusses the role of the leaders as coaches in encouraging people to make positive changes.

Key Learning Outcomes:

• Know how to create a safe space for sharing and how and when to ensure confidentiality
• Practice ways to support others through commonly faced scenario-based case studies and sharing in the group
• Be more confident and look for early signs of stress, distress and burnout in a hybrid work environment
• Learn how to consider others perspectives through listening, asking better questions, responding to show they understand and empower next steps
• Know which powerful questions can open up a conversation, learn how to listen with compassion and empathy, be clear on the steps for signposting support and know how to ‘recover’ after emotive conversations
• Start taking small steps to invest in their team’s mental health and build a supportive psychologically safe team culture

The session will help leaders take a long-term approach to creating a culture of positive mental health that will then fuel high-performing teams.

Firstly, the workshop takes the supportive conversations framework a step further, offering valuable insights and examples on how to have coaching conversations that help build individual mindsets that will help people cope with pressure. It helps embed the learning into your leader’s day-to-day experience by exploring common challenges, such as the intersection between mental health and performance, and how to have conversations about this.

Secondly, your leaders’ will explore systemic influences on mental health in the organisation and will understand how to revamp day-to-day work practices together with their teams to ensure they build healthy cultures and reduce the risk of mental health problems at work.

Key Learning Outcomes:

• How to follow-up and provide ongoing support to someone who is struggling
• How to evolve key moments that matter on the employee lifecycle, including performance reviews, to take into account the whole person and their health
• How to create positive, healthy change to high-performance working practices, such as workload management and team collaboration
• Coaching techniques to empower your people to build mindsets that underpin good mental health
• Tangible ways to overcome cultural barriers or norms that are getting in the way of positive mental health
• Discuss what to do when a mental health challenge is impacting team or individual performance