Mental Health at Work Is Smart Business | Melissa Doman | 722

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 Melissa Doman. She is an organizational psychologist, a former mental health therapist. She's author of two books, The Cornered Office: Why We Need to Talk About Leadership, Mental Health, and Yes,. You can talk about mental health at work. She's the founder of the Workplace Mental Health Model, and she's worked with all sorts of cool companies and been on all sorts of media. And she's got a new book out, which is Cornered Office. Nobody ever says I have an old book out. I, we need like a better way to say that. But anyway, well, welcome aboard.

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. I've been looking forward to it.

Yeah. So let me start with. The how the hell did you get here question, right? So how did this all happen? I get the being a therapist part, right? And a mental health professional, that's usually linear, logical, whatever.

Yeah.

But this whole thought leadership thing, author, speaker, whatever, where the, how the hell did that happen?

You know, uh, I left clinical in 2013 because it felt like I was treating clients in a broken system and a broken narrative. And I was like, this is not gonna cut the mustard. I think as, as hard as it is to leave this work, I need to, if I wanna make an impact larger than this. And I transitioned into very traditional, you know, org psych work. And I still do that work around emotional intelligence, essential communication, helping people share their toys at work. But then I noticed over the years that when I would still say mental health, that people would like proverbially hiss at me. I was like, that's weird because it's not a dirty word. And then I started subspecializing in mental health at work, oddly enough, when I lived in London, because in the UK they were eons ahead of the US for talking about it specifically in the workplace, not how Americans talk about medication and therapy like we're talking about the weather outside of work. And then I noticed that it just really kind of burned my ass how people were talking about mental health is important and we all have mental health. I go, great, what are people supposed to do with that? How are they actually supposed to have conversations? How are we supposed to create any change? Which by just by saying something is important. And so, you know what they say. Well, let me ask you this.

So, but some of it is, you know, words matter, right? So mental health still feels like, oh, it's that, right? Like, oh, mental health, wink wink, whatever. But then, and I think, you know, when we started using the language like psychological safety. It's more of a welcoming term at least to say, tell me more. Yeah. Or I'd like to create an environment in the workplace that is more welcoming that way. Yeah. Or whatever. Uh, but I did see cringe face there.

No, you know what's so ironic is because mental health is literally a medical term. Yeah. It's our baseline social, emotional, and cognitive functioning. I will never forget, I was doing a keynote in London and some guy came up to me after and we were talking, whatever. And then he literally leans over and whispers to me and says, "I have mental health." I said, "Do you mean you have a mental illness?" And he goes, "Yeah." And I said, "You don't need to whisper about either." So I understand, I'm a huge stickler for language. And whenever people start having that reaction, I go, "It's really just a medical term about an organ that governs who we are, how we act, et cetera." So I started being very, very active on LinkedIn and in my work, just trying to really set the record straight and make sure more, make it more of an action-oriented conversation instead of a heart-led one.

Yep.

Which doesn't do anything.

So you move from clinical to organizational and you, you, you talk about that like, oh, that was just like switching jobs. That's not an easy shift, right?

Because, oh, it's very hard.

Yeah. Because super hard. Most, it's like pick a lane, you know, you're, you're one or the other.

And, and back then, that was before everybody did it. And now everybody's doing it like it's the best thing since sliced bread. I did that in 2013 before most people were doing that, before they were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're in clinical. I go, it's the same skill set, it's just a different population, guys. Right? So, but, but now everybody and their mother is jumping from clinical into org psych. It's like a very common thing now. So no one helped me back then. And these days, every week I get a message, show me how you did it. And I go, happy to help you skip all the blood, sweat, and tears I had to go through.

So then even though you still have a foot in the, in the org psych space, now you're in the thought leader space, which is another totally different set of rules and cadence and all that. How did, how did you start to sort of cross over to the dark side, if you would?

The dark side.

It's not the dark side.

Oh, it, there can be because so many people are very like virtue signaling, self-aggrandizing types, which make me kind of vomit in my mouth a little bit. Because if you're gonna put something out there, don't, don't pretend like it's for other people if it's really just for you. Don't, don't, don't go through that exercise. And to be honest, I didn't know I was in the thought leadership space till other people pointed it out.

It was— that's a good thing, right?

Yes. It wasn't a conscious effort.

Anybody, yeah, anybody in the world according to me that goes out there and calls themselves a thought leader is somewhere between a jerk and a narcissist, possibly both. Yeah, yeah.

And I, I didn't even know that was happening until my husband was like, you do realize like this is what it is? I was like, nope. And then LinkedIn reached out to me and made me part of their top 10 voices on mental health globally, and I like ugly cried into my coffee because I wasn't expecting that. Like, I wasn't trying to do that, right? And then it just kind of happened. Um, and I get messages from people on LinkedIn, and I'm still not used to this. Somebody messaged me last night because I, I messaged them to thank them. They were saying they— the whole leadership team worked through my book together, and I was like, oh, that's great. So I messaged, I was like, hey man, that's so great, I'm so happy to hear this. If there's anything I can do to help further, let me know. And he responds saying, I'm actually kind of starstruck That you messaged me. I was like, why?

Really? Oh, that's funny.

It's just why? But no, it, it wasn't a goal. It just kind of happened.

Uh, and that's, that's fairly common where it's just serendipitous, reactive. One thing kind of leads to another or whatever. But now there's a part of your business that's based on it. Right. And you have to figure out how to— yeah. So huge part. How did you, how did you figure that piece out? Right. Because now add entrepreneur, add a whole bunch of other things.

Yeah.

You have to test because sometimes the market responds to the ideas.

Yes.

Doesn't mean they'll support you with dollars. Right. And those are not correct. A like button is not the same as a buy button. So tell me how you figured that piece out.

Or, or, you know, the market was telling me back in 2018 that it was ready for this because I was working on a people and leadership development contract, uh, very traditional org site contract. And they were like, hey. You used to be a therapist. Could you do a mental health awareness campaign? I was like, yeah. And so normally their workshops get 12 people. Yeah. This one got 100. I was like, okay, my fans are here.

That tells you something. Yeah.

And so I just started sharing what I know to be true, and I found that if I shared what I knew to be true with no personal goals in mind, with education that I was trying to spread for the sake of making sure that people knew helpful things. That's all it took. And then the pandemic hit and it was right place, right message, right time, right service. And the market responded extremely well because there was a need. There was a need where people were like, oh my God.

So stay there a second. So I think about when I'm looking at someone's work, there's sort of two things, right?

Yeah.

One is there's the evergreen nature of your work, right? So it doesn't matter who's in office in the White House. Did the stock market go up 1,000 points today? Are we in a recession? A depress— like, whatever. These truths are true. Gravity is gravity, right? That's a, that's a truth, right?

Yeah.

But then there's things that are happening opportunistically that make it more relevant or less, right? So like, mm-hmm. COVID happens and that decreased demand for a lot of things and increased, like we were doing less like corporate offsites, like zero. We were doing less like, oh, how's the food? And you're like, a lot of that stuff went to zero. But then it was like, oh, how do we do this work remote thing? How do we keep a culture remotely? How do we retain top talent in a remote? Like there was all that phase.

How do we not internally combust during all of that?

Yeah. Right.

Yeah.

So now that I would, you know, we're clearly post-COVID, so it doesn't mean everybody's all fine and dandy now, but the craziness of the demand where it's like, poof, you know, this is on fire. How did you— you're not the pet rock anymore, right? So how do you sustain it?

That's a very good question. And the thing is, there are plenty of companies who have reverted back like they've learned nothing. Yeah. And there are plenty of companies where they took it as a long-term sustainability wake-up call. So while 2021 and '22 were banner years.

Yeah.

For my business. Yeah.

Right.

Uh, I'm entering year 6 and I'm doing just fine. And, uh, it's because the conversations have to evolve as the systems evolve where those conversations are happening. So I talk about 3 things. I talk about mental health, communication, and team dynamics in the workplace. Those will always be relevant, but you have to talk about it in a way that people actually give a damn about. At the point in time in which you're talking about it. So my under—

but stay there for a minute, cuz if you were to put those 3 things on a whiteboard, mm-hmm, I think a lot of people would say, wait, mental health? Like, okay, the other 2 I hear a lot about, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But wait, you're, we're doing this through the lens of mental health. What does that mean? What does that look like? Why?

Well, to me, I basically go, we spend the most time with people at work each week. And it's really tough out there and really tough in here. So wouldn't it make more sense to have the conversational literacy to talk about the struggles you're having, the support you need so you can be productive and function and perform for the company?

Well, and, and, and so I would say yes, and, and if you were to ask people to say, let's talk about the last 5 issues, however you choose to define that you've had at work in the last year.

Mm-hmm.

It's probably not technology. It's probably not a system. It's probably not a process.

It's pro—

it's probably a people thing. We might call it politics or something politically correct or whatever. We might call it, uh, something else, but it's usually people-driven, right?

Oh, I, I look at the workplace as just an adult playground. We just have different toys and different kings and queens of the jungle gym, and people who don't share their toys. So it, it is always an evergreen topic, and it's just how you name it. For example, when I work with certain leaders, I may not talk about leadership mental health. I may talk about the emotional toll of leadership because the optics of those words need to change depending on who you're talking to. And the thing is, all the data has been proven about lost business dollars due to poor mental health and poor cultures of mental health. This is all, this is all proven information.

So stay there for a bit because I would argue that when you were coming up on the clinical side, that language probably didn't exist, right? In terms of the, the business impact of mental health in the corporate workplace. Like, your business—

2013? No.

Yeah.

So, no, no.

So you had to retool and say, I gotta meet them where they are. Because guess what? At the end of the day, there's only, you know, life isn't that complicated. 6 or 8 things that every company cares about, right?

Mm-hmm.

Their profit. Are they growing? Are they satisfying that? Like, you You know, whatever. We can put that checklist there. Those haven't changed. Those will never change. Don't we talking about AI now? We're talking about things we weren't and whatever, whatever. But you're looking at, at those things, right? So you're, you're basically meeting them where they are saying the impact.

Yes.

Of people not, uh, getting along well, not collaborating, not communicating honestly, whatever. Here's how it impacts your bottom line. That's really the brilliance of the thought leadership for my 2 cents here. In terms of—

well, thank you, sir. And that's why I, I literally tagline— I trademarked the tagline, uh, the Workplace Mental Health Method, where I— what was it? I'm not remembering my tagline— where mental health meets smart business, right? Because it is smart business. My God, like, it has been proven in endless studies in the past, like, 6 to 8 years, literally showing here are the billions trillions of dollars lost globally or in the United States from people who don't feel supported at work. They are going on sickness absence. Like, yeah, it's all there. So if you see the data and you want narrative and bias to override dollars and logic, then you're being stupid.

So let me, let me ask you this then. So I've worked with lots of folks over the years, and I'm thinking of someone in, in particular now who is an amazing clinical guy. He was one of my mentors, right? His name was Dr. Mark Goulston and wrote a bunch of books, whatever. He was a clinical guy in LA and kind of got bored with the clinical thing. And then being in LA, a bunch of his clients were CEOs and he's, they started to talk to him about their issues in the workplace. And they're like, well, hey doc, could you come in and help me? He's like, I don't know. A profit from a loss. Like, I don't know any of that. And then he was able to reframe it and say, well, actually, you know, a leadership team is really kind of like a family. They're just dysfunctional. Here's a bunch of people that are forced to be together in this environment.

Same skillset, different population. Yeah.

It's the same thing. But you know, this is like, you know, years ago and it's like, oh, they're just a dysfunctional entity. Right? They don't, they're not related by blood.

It's an ecosystem.

Yeah.

It's an ecosystem of, of organisms that either are jiving or not.

So my question for you is really, where did you go and how did you pick up sort of the, the business savvy language to meet them where they are? 'Cause there are other strengths that you pop into sort of the corporate world.

We don't use the S word, Peter.

Therapist. So yeah, that's right there. But there are other mental health professionals that get popped into the corporate world and can't hang. They could be as smart or smarter than you or whatever, but because they're not fluent in business, they get discredited as, oh, that outsider. And academics do this too. How did you, where did you realize like, oh, I better learn some business stuff?

Through my own meandering experiences and mistakes. I, I actually listened to people.

Mm-hmm.

When, you know, when I was trying to explain certain things, I can't even remember who they were at this point, but they were like, you have to speak to people who are not in your profession. Yeah., and I was like, oh my God. And so I really learned how to take myself out of clinical flowery, esoteric, high-level language to very concrete, logical, action-oriented, business application-focused only language.

And, but you didn't go to school for that. You had, you had a, no, I had to learn on my own.

Yeah.

And I think that's—

This is before AI. I learned on my own with no help from AI or anything.

Or is that the new— so is I learned it before AI the new, like our grandparents used to say, you know, I walked to school uphill in the snow both ways?

Is that the new thing? Maybe. I think it's the new flex. It's the new flex. I did undergrad and graduate degree and licensing and boards and 2 freaking books with my own brain. And no AI. That's the new flex.

That's so retro. That's—

I know, so retro. Me as an elder millennial being like, I did it before this help was available. Help, crutch, whatever we want to call it.

Yeah.

Um, no, but I learned it on my own. Like, you didn't— I didn't learn this in my master's in counseling degree. And there's still plenty. I have attended sessions of clinicians that try to do workplace stuff I can't even sit through it because it's so esoteric and hard to follow. Yeah.

Yeah.

Like, this isn't an academic conference. You can't, you can't speak to these people the same way.

Yeah. And I think some of the greatest thought leadership out there happens at the seams or at the cross-pollination of two disciplines. If you go back to behavioral economics, mm-hmm, the behavior folks, their thesis is people are crazy. And the economist is there's this one thing called rational man, which no one's ever met. Right? Like, no one's, like ever met that. And then they got together and basically said, well, actually we're both kind of right. Like what if economics is based on ration, but you're dealing with people that aren't always rational, logical, whatever. Right. And those two things had to come together, but they learned each other's language. Right.

Oh yeah.

And I actually referenced, and they're both right, you know?

Yeah. I referenced the EAST model, which is a behavioral economics, uh, model in my new book.

Yeah.

To make, if you want people to do stuff, you have to make it easy, attractive, social, and timely.

Yeah.

And I, I build that into how I work with companies. It has to be easy, attractive, social, and timely. And I think that there's such a marriage of those things and psychological theory, sociological theory. It all works together. You know, how do you think people love Brené Brown? I mean, she made social work and sociology accessible and cool and interesting to understand. She's honest.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it was the vulnerability that was probably her secret sauce of why people leaned in early on. And then underneath it, she had the goods. She's smart, right?

So she's extremely smart.

Yeah.

So, uh, I think that it's, you gotta, and you have to figure out how you're gonna solve an actual problem in a way that's demonstrable, not just by talking about and observing the problem, which is what a lot of people do.

Well, not just demonstrable in a way that an organization's willing to pay money for.

Yeah.

Right. 'Cause you could, you could solve, there's lots of problems that I could solve, but like, do they have any value in the marketplace is really the other question.

I have found when I speak to companies that if you make it feel more like an advisory conversation based on best practices, because people want an expert in their field, they don't, they don't generally want a, a generalist. And so if you make it clear that you are the expert in this one thing, and this is how I'm advising you. This is best practice. That's a totally different—

and you stay in your lane and you stay in your lane.

Exactly. The value in a lot of ways proves itself as opposed to being like, well, you, you need this because— nope. People don't like to make decisions under pressure. You know, it's, uh, you know, when I've seen these problems occur, here's what my clients have found have worked for them with me, right? Social proof.

Yep. So as we start to wrap here, what would you, what would Melissa today tell Melissa of 2013 to make the journey quicker, easier, maybe skin your knees less falling off the bike on the ride?

Oh, you're making me think about childhood in the '90s.

No, don't go that far back. No, I'm not. No, I'm, I'm not your parent.

No, no, no, no, no. I meant, No, I know what you mean. No, 'cause I heard falling off a bike and skinning your knees and it just reminded me of doing that as a kid.

Uh-huh.

So I would tell her the transition is gonna be really hard, but you have no concept how much it will be worth it 13 years from now. Love it. Stick with it.

Great stuff.

I, I never would've dreamed that I would've gotten to this point, let alone having my own team and writing 2 books and like, you know, speaking at Google and Dow Jones and Progressive. I'm like, what? But it happened. It's happening. So I feel grateful.

Well, this has been fun. I appreciate your time and your candor. And, uh, good stuff. Thanks for listening.

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