What a pleasure to have breakfast with @JuliaGillard the first female Prime Minister of Australia. She's one of the world’s most influential voices for women’s rights and mental health. We spoke about the long road ahead in de-stigmatizing mental illness, but also the wins.
A major challenge is that mental health is erroneously tied to competence. In so many countries when doctors, members of the police, military personnel and other professionals seek support, reporting procedures kick in and assumptions are made that the person is ‘not competent’.
And so, the very act of seeking out preventative support for anxiety, symptoms of burnout or depression, can literally lead to the loss of a job and livelihood. This hurtful and wrong conflation between mental wellbeing and competence, prevents people from getting the help needed
If you can, please help in this fight. Speak up to support those who are struggling. Lend voice of your struggles so that others feel able to do the same. Ask about the HR policies stop people from getting the services that they need. It takes all our voices to power this change.
Feelings are not facts. You don't need to believe them.
Are they valid? Yes. They are a core part of our experience of the world.
- Should we honor them with compassion? Yes.
- Should they be heard? Yes.
- Do they signpost things we care about? Yes.
Are they facts? No.
*Choosing* to believe a feeling, is not the same as automatically believing it.
I trust my best friend. Can I honor her, love her? Yes.
- Is everything she says a fact? No.
- Do I believe *everything* she says. No, she could be wrong.
- Do I obey everything she says? No.
I may have any number of feelings: that I'm unlovable, guilt that I'm a bad parent, or similar.
Is that feeling a "fact"? Do I *have* to believe the feeling?
- Am I unlovable. NO.
- Am I a bad parent? NO.
A long history of "feminizing" emotion - the notion that emotional capabilities and emotionality are more female than male - has devastating consequences.
One is the suppression of NORMAL yet supposedly "undesirable" emotions by gender and associated mental health costs.
Another is the societal devaluing of the "care" professions especially when those professions intersect with gender bias - like therapy and social work.
The crisis in available care and the underpayment of those who provide it, should be deeply concerning to all.
Another, is the view by many organizations & education systems that the emotional skills that are *essential* to wellbeing and adaptability - and will become more so in an increasingly complex, automated world - are "soft skills."
A leader is someone who instead invites, “trust my compass.”
1/5
It's tempting to present solutions and strategies as if they are defined and incontrovertible.
Yet, the truth is leaders cannot know the answers.
The world - technology, politics, and markets - is constantly changing. There are simply too many variables for a "map."
2/5
Leading from a "map" is a frequent organizational expectation. This is inhumane.
It places extraordinary pass/fail pressure on the leader; it demands teams act in particular ways "or else"; it denies the truth: the future is complex and outcomes are impossible to predict.
3/5