Breaking the Stigma: Mental Health in the Professional World | Stephen J. Dietrich | 618

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today my guest is Steven Dietrich. He is an attorney. Don't hold that against him. He is the author of Fear Dynamics, and he's got a really, really interesting story as to how he kind of got into this world of, of thought leadership. So, uh, welcome aboard today, Stephen.

Thanks, Peter. Appreciate the time and the ability to talk about the book.

Yeah. So first, tell us what your day job is, because it's not what one would expect once we get into the fun stuff here.

Well, my day job, and sometimes my night job, yeah, uh, is I'm a corporate M&A attorney, mergers and acquisition attorney. With the law firm Holland Knight, and I essentially spend a lot of my time helping people buy and sell their businesses. I do a lot of work in the auto dealership space, so that's what I do. Very high level.

And then you wrote a book. So tell us a little bit about the backstory of Fear Dynamics. Where did this come from and how did it come to be? Because most attorneys that I know aren't looking for things to do that will take up a ton of their time and reduce their billable rate?

Well, it came about because I started to do a fair amount of introspection and personal work on myself, not necessarily professionally, in 2009, because I needed to do— make some changes in my life on the personal side of things as I went forward. And as I went through that work, I realized I did a lot— I tried a lot of different things, and some were fits, some were starts, right? And other things. And Ultimately, I became a much happier person, but my life itself really didn't change a ton, meaning on the outside. I was still a lawyer, still living in Denver, still married to the same person, but I was a lot happier. And then the other kicker was my business took off. And so I thought, this is sort of unique for me and trying to figure it out. And I thought, I need to tell people about it. And so, as you said, I'm a lawyer, not necessarily someone who can talk a lot about mental health or have credibility. And so I ultimately came to the decision and conclusion that in order for people to engage in these conversations, which was what I really want, I needed to write something that put it all out there, kind of like a calling card. So people could say, oh, this person actually put some thought into it, not just a random blog post. And so the book came from that desire to try to create some credibility and provide a story of hope to people with what I've done. So that's what. Spurred the writing of this book.

Right. So there's not a, and what I found, one of the things I found interesting, it's not a business driver underneath this. This is really a passion play to get this out there. And there's lots of reasons folks write books. Some of this for you was the forcing mechanism to get it down in a concise and coherent and cogent way, right? You could have ended this with an interesting 1,500-word blog post on, let me tell you what I've been thinking about, right? Even if it got a little buzz or, you know, whatever, that could have been cool. But why did you keep going deeper and deeper? And, and I'll sort of put underneath that, I don't work with folks that write self-help books, but I've had many a client tell me, I wrote the self-help book that I needed to help me. Right? So it feels like it, that sort of the, why'd you write it?

Well, I, I think I, I wrote it because I think it's a story that might be interesting to people and not necessarily the personal side of a story. But the concept of life change and other aspects from the standpoint of someone who's objectively successful. I mean, whatever you may know or not know about lawyers, if you look at it, I've actually objectively succeeded in this industry in the last 25 or 30 years. And so no one's talking about these issues and I'm trying to normalize these conversations about mental and emotional health and similar to, you know, if I walk in and I'm walking with a, with a boot. Say, hey, I broke my ankle playing pickleball. People can talk about that all day long. But if I, but the issues of fear and anxiety as they impact both personal and professional, that's not normalized. And I thought maybe I have an opportunity here because of my objective success in my profession.

Yes.

This might be helpful to talk to people and give some people some hope.

And stay there for a minute. Cause if someone were to hand me your book and I didn't look you up, I would make an assumption that's wrong. That's, oh, this is probably some sort of mental health professional. I'm looking to see MD at the end, or is this psychiatrist or a therapist or part of psychological safety or whatever? So it's really, really interesting. You know, on the one hand you'd say, well, why would I sort of take the, I, I don't mean this the wrong way, take the advice of a lawyer on mental health? Like, huh? But then it makes total sense to say, yeah, okay, I get what the professional world says. But here's a professional kind of like me that went through this journey, that learned these things and wants to share it to me in a non-clinical way. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. And what's— oddly enough, one of the reasons I put JD in the title, on the title of the book, it's Stephen Jay Dietrich, JD. One, I'm not a trained therapist. I haven't done scientific research. This is a story about what a, you know, a normal human being actually went through. A lot of what's in the book. Is stuff that I actually did. It's not, hey, I read an article and you should read this article. It's, I actually did this particular work. And so I would try to weave that narrative with these techniques that I, that I worked with and actually did to give a bit of a path. And I do think I mentioned it earlier that it's a story of hope. And I'm, you know, as people read it, it's like, I think a lot of people for different reasons have fear and anxiety in their lives. You don't need the same backstory about it.

Right. So, so A, there's this relatableness, right? Because if there's a. If you're the doctor, I'm by default, my role becomes the patient, right? Well, I am less than you when it comes to this because clearly you're smarter than me, you know more, whatever. You're just another guy that went through this. And I, you know, I like the, the comment that you made earlier around, you know, someone walked into a meeting and their, you know, foot was in a, a boot or, or, or their arm was in a sling. You'd say, Peter, what'd you do to your arm? Right? Like, oh, oh, I, I tripped up the sta— you know, whatever. And that might be a, oh, I hope you feel better. Like, whatever. So these, this is sort of the invisible piece. That being said, what do you hope now that the book is in sort of that launch phase? If it was a year from now and the book was wildly successful, however you choose to define that, tell me what that might mean or what success is.

You're— I, I think success would be that people, whether I'm involved or not, are talking about these particular issues with whoever they may be. I've had a few people who've read the book already and said, hey, I really appreciated the book. My, I've given it to my spouse to read, and we've been talking about these particular issues. Or I had one, I had a friend of mine who read the book and said, you know, my wife read it and said, we need to talk because there's like 3 things in here that are spot on about you. And so there's some conversations going on. So the definition of wildly successful would be people are talking about it with me or without me. And then if I'm really going to get wildly successful, I'm able to talk about this, whether it's keynote speaking or working with companies, somehow or another, talking to people about these issues in the context of their businesses. Because I think there's a lot to be said here that could be helpful to businesses out there. So that, you know, if you said, what's, what's my shot and what's my moonshot? It's that.

If you're enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com/LTL and share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps, as well as at thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast. Well, let's go back to that because on the one hand, if you had to categorize this book, some might say this is a self-help book. This is helping individuals deal with stress, anxiety, et cetera. But I love the twist that you've put on it, which obviously resonates with me, is wait, there's a business benefit. You said your business took off, right? After you watch these things, right?

Yes.

One might think counterintuitively that, wait a minute, if I'm, if I'm a leader of a business and I'm giving my people agency and the bandwidth and all that to talk about, deal with these things, they're going to put in less time, less energy, less focus, whatever. Business will go down. It will be detrimental to the business, which is clearly and absolutely not true. So you didn't go through this as a young lawyer per se, not that you're old, right? But like clearly seasoned and already successful. Give me a sense of the, without getting into too many details, the metrics of what does more successful mean to you for your business and how does that translate to others that go through this from a business outcome perspective?

Right. Well, shortly, the I interact with people a lot. It changed my relationships. And so I was able to deepen my relationships with my client. I changed the way I interacted with my coworkers and the folks that I supervise and otherwise. And so there was just this more, there's a freedom in those relationships, which means solve problems easier. We work together better. And I had clients that would trust me more deeply and have better referrals. And so the short answer on my particular business is I picked up more clients, more business from my current clients, and deepened those relationships. And so that in the practice of law is going to mean more business. And therefore that's the short version of sort of how my business picked up. The revenue for my practice increased materially, you know, going forward.

And I want to double-click on the deepen relationship side, right? Because you already had the CV, the credentials, you're with one of the top law firms in the world. Yeah, et cetera, et cetera. It wasn't like you were at a stage in your career saying, ooh, I need to figure out how to build my pro— you're already sort of top of the world from the outside, right? In a big firm. But I think by deepening relationship, you're talking about not talking about your accomplishments and your CV and the stuff they can read in your bio and, and all that stuff, but the personal side of the relationship, the human side, right? I already know that you're clearly qualified as an attorney, right? Many of your clients prior to this change that you went through didn't really know Stephen the human.

Well, I think by, yeah, I think that's a fair point. And I, by deepening would mean I was more genuine. I was more risk-taking in those relationships. I was more vulnerable and I was more resilient. And so I was more efficient in what I was doing. I also, given the being more open and more vulnerable to folks, by deepening that, they're like, all right, we're engaged in a problem-solving exercise. You know, I did, we buy and sell companies, we're trying to solve problems. And so, really became much more of a team player and much, much more part of that, those relationships. And you had a trust that was built and developed in there, both with my clients and then with my team. And so all of us were just hitting on more of our cylinders more cleanly. And so we were much more efficient and more trusting with each other. And that just made the business run a bit more smoother and, and provide, you know, people wanted to work with us. Yep.

And I would say in order for that to happen, You have to have the coverage of modeling. You can't wake up one day and say, you know, I want to have deeper relationships with folks and keep that idea to your head, right? You have to have the courage to model the transparency, the vulnerability. And if you, you open with a little bit of transparency and vulnerability without telling people, they're going to naturally sort of open it up a little bit more. And I mean, I might tell you their deepest, darkest secret. You don't want that, but just a little bit or just a little bit.

Right. Well, the best example I can give is I've now extraordinarily comfortable with telling clients I don't know. And that, that in the past would've terrified me to tell a client, I don't know the answer to something. Whereas now I'd say, look, I don't know, but I know how I'm gonna figure it out. Or you can engage in actually solving the problem with them without fear of them being, oh, you're an idiot, or other aspects. You're like, look, I may not know the answer, but you know me well enough and we're working together. I'm gonna figure this thing out. Let's solve this particular problem.

And, and I think for a lot of folks in professional services, consultants, advisors, attorneys, accountants, et cetera, et cetera. There's a difference between I'm not capable of answering that, or I don't know right now at this moment, but I love what you said, but here's what I'm gonna do to go figure that out. I gotta do a little research. I'm gonna call a couple co— whatever it is. And then they trust you to say, yeah, you'll get it. And I think oftentimes we feel like we have to know right now in the moment. And that's really not, you know, we're not Google, right?

Oh no, exactly. Exactly.

I don't, and I think we're living in that world, so Go back a little bit now. If we think about the business outcomes, one of the things that I talk about with clients is, okay, think about your intellectual property, your thought leadership, and then create a little chart, individual, team, and org, and what the outcomes are on each. And I think it's typically really easy to fill in the blanks on the individual. If you're an individual and you read this book and you take these concepts and, and thinking to, to heart, here's the outcomes. You're gonna feel better. Your, your practice is gonna grow. You're gonna have better relate, that's great. What do you think those benefits and outcomes are at a team level and an organizational level?

Well, I think at the team level and organizational level, just to be a little bit more efficient, they, they likely have similar aspects. And what I think really works is if you're working with a team and you model some vulnerability, you model creativity, you model the fact that people can ask questions and, and the fact that people may be dealing with anxiety or fear, and it's all natural. You're going to create a comfort level for your team members to raise their hand and ask questions or to even acknowledge and say, hey, I've had a rough day or something is affecting my life. I know I'm a little off in my game or I suspect I'm off in my game. And you say like, okay, great. We understand that. Not that the expectation of the productivity or the result or the work product is any lower,, but just the fact that there's some comfort level of, hey, we get it, we understand it, and let's see how we can work within the team or the organization to address that, that there's, there's an understanding of the human element within all levels of an organization.

Inherently will change the dynamics of the team from low trust to high tech trust. Yeah. Low engagement to high engagement, to lack of innovation and creativity being more creative and innovative.

Right? Exactly.

And then it probably would show up and, you know, in things like retention and employee SAT scores and all those other things.

Exactly, exactly. I mean, if you have that flexibility and that fluidity, the environment itself will allow people to be a little bit more of themselves and also a little bit more open and asking for help when they need help and taking help when they need the help, which will make the whole team more efficient. That means people won't be looking to leave, so you don't have to deal with human capital leaving and then having to retrain all of them, right? The teams stay together, the institutional knowledge deepens, and you're all rolling in the same direction. All of, all of that will build on itself to have a better business outcome, I think, at all levels. And then the other kicker is the people involved probably on a personal level will be a little happier as well. So you get the, the professional and business side of it and the personal benefit, which is great.

So lastly, talk now to someone that's out there listening. That doesn't fancy themselves an author, a thought leader, a keynote speaker. They're an accountant, they're an attorney, they're whatever, whatever they may be, but they've got this thing like you did that transformed the way they think and behave. And now they're toying with the idea of, I want to do some, I mean, there had to be this phase you went through. So I gotta do something with this. What would you, what would you say to them or even to you 2 years ago? Maybe.

I, I think I would tell them, What exactly is your goal? What do you want to, when you say I have to do something, is it, you want to make yourself better? Do you want to help people? Do you want to inform your business about what's going on? So I think it's all about figuring out what is actually going to resonate with you. I started and said, well, I might, I might draft a memoir, but that really wasn't going to be satisfying just to tell my story. I wanted to, hey, how did I actually get here? I thought it'd be helpful for people to see the particular path and I was comfortable sharing. You know, my history in order to give context to what I did. So I think the person out there who's like, hey, I've got something to say. I think you need to figure out exactly what do you want to say? What's your goal? My goal here is to provide hope by reading and looking at the book and then also to start conversations. This is the way, the path that I did that. If it's just pure information, you know, to your part, another part of the book that helped me that I didn't realize when I was writing it is just writing it helped me order a lot of things in my life, which helped me even if I never published it. So I think you need to figure out what your goal is and then go from there. And there's a lot more opportunity with social media and otherwise communicate those things out. So figure out what's going to actually make you happy and go from there.

Love it. Appreciate your time and I wish you all the best, Stephen. Thanks for spending some time with us today.

Thanks, Peter. I really appreciate it.

To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at thoughtleadershipleverage.com. To reach me directly, feel free to email me at peter@thoughtleadershipleverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.