This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - What Happens When Leadership Becomes Unsustainable: Leader Mental Health with Melissa Doman | 403

Starting point is 00:00:00 Pam, are you here to game with me? In a minute, Ryan, but first, it's time to share what's happening on the 10 News podcast. The 10 News is a kids' news podcast for curious 8 to 12-year-olds that even grown-ups can learn from. What else is there to say? That we cover everything from the Supreme Court in the war in Ukraine to Pokemon and Minecraft and will always tell you 10 things you need to know. And we're available wherever you get your podcasts. Is it game time now, Pam?

Starting point is 00:00:27 It's game time, Ryan. Let's go! Quick pause. We expanded to YouTube because we keep hearing, I needed this 20 years ago. And the next generation shouldn't have to wait. So tell the young women in your world who are scrolling and watching to subscribe to This Is Woman's Work on YouTube. I am Nicole Khalil and you're listening to the This Is Woman's Work podcast. We're together. We're redefining what it means, what it looks and feels like to be doing woman's work in the world today. From boardrooms to studios, kitchens, to coding dens, we explore. or the multifaceted experiences of today's woman, which means we cover a lot of topics. But we often come back to confidence and leadership. Because in order to create whatever it is that you want at work,

Starting point is 00:01:22 at home, in your communities or relationships, confidence and leadership are part of the deal. And if you've been around here for a while, you know that I do not go easy on leaders. Why? Because they choose it. They raise their hand. or accepted the offer. And with often greater income comes greater responsibility, greater impact.

Starting point is 00:01:44 Leadership is a privilege. I believe it's a never-ending growth assignment. You don't arrive at it. You evolve through it. Leadership is a calling. But here's the paradox. Leadership is hard. It's heavy. It's often lonely. You will disappoint somebody and you can never please everyone. You'll get it wrong. You'll be criticized heavily by people who have exactly zero context for the decisions you're making. Leadership can also feel like a great burden. And while we spend a lot of time talking about employee mental health, which definitely matters, we rarely talk about the mental health of the people at the top, the ones carrying the weight, the ones expected to be steady, strong, decisive, composed at all times. Add to that the cultural noise,

Starting point is 00:02:35 the hot takes, the armchair diagnosing of every boss as a narcissist, the casual tossing around of the word toxic whenever somebody feels uncomfortable, and we're creating an environment where leadership feels less like a calling and more like a corner. We say we want better leaders, but are we actually making leadership attractive and sustainable for the right people? Because here's my fear. If we make leadership so punishing, so scrutinized, so unsupported,

Starting point is 00:03:04 the good ones, the ones who care more about people and purpose than power, they'll opt out. And I can't say I'll blame them. And then what will we be left with? The ones who only want the power and the control? So today we're giving some love and some real talk to, for, and about leaders. We're talking about leadership, mental health, not as an excuse, but as a necessity if we actually want healthy cultures and sustainable success. Melissa Domen is an organizational psychologist, former mental health therapist, founder of the workplace mental health method,

Starting point is 00:03:41 and author of yes, you can talk about mental health at work and the new book, Cornered Office, why we need to talk about leadership mental health. She works globally with companies like Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Estée Lauder, and her mission is simple and bold. equip leaders and organizations to have honest, constructive conversations about mental health at work,

Starting point is 00:04:05 including at the top. Melissa, I am so glad you're here. And I do feel like lately we're hearing a lot about employee mental health, which is great. But why is leadership mental health still the elephant in the room, or as you say, in the cornered office? Honestly, I think that history has always set us up to avoid this topic. Even now, I will be very honest with you that as I was writing this book, and I will never forget, I had a call with somebody, and I was talking about the basic premise. You know, leaders are the same species as us, and that if we want them to do better, we need to support them better. And leadership

Starting point is 00:04:43 mental health is heavily ignored. This person got so triggered, and I mean genuinely triggered by the definition of the word, I saw them get visibly upset and start ranting about all the leaders that have let them down, culminating in their thesis of, I don't care how leaders are doing. And so lots of people feel that way history has taught us that we don't need to care about leadership and adult. And in fact, if we do have to care about their mental health, maybe they're not cut out for the gig. And so I think it's a big combination of long-term narrative and building up leaders into something that, honestly, they never were, just symbols, not humans. And I just don't see. how that is sustainable, healthy, or reasonable, especially in this current kind of descending

Starting point is 00:05:34 into the seventh circle of hell dumpster fire climate. And I, you know, will be damned with my logic apparently because, you know, I lay it out a lot in the book. And I'm like, well, let's follow the logic line. And then people's big feelings are like, fuck your logic. And I go, okay. Well, okay, so I have so many thoughts, and I'm going to potentially take us down a tangent, and you can tell me to shut up. Oh, I have full ADHD, the real kind, not the TikTok kind, so I'm all about, I'm all about tangent. So you'll go with me. All right. Oh, please, yes. I'm wondering if we think about leadership historically, we often think about men and is generally like created under this masculine lens, power, control, decisiveness, authority. having the answers, being strong, stoic. And I don't know that that serves any gender.

Starting point is 00:06:36 And I do think that what we're being called to or asked to become more of as leaders, what I'm seeing more of as vulnerability, transparency, collaboration, relationship, which tends to lean a little bit more feminine. And I think we each individually need to figure out the appropriate balance for ourselves, and it's not the same for everyone. But I'm just wondering if this sort of masculine take on leadership is doing a lot of damage to all of our mental health.

Starting point is 00:07:10 What are your thoughts on that? So I think it makes total sense that as you were asking that question, that you were trying to think about, you know, what's the way I want to ask this? there is a concept that I created for my first book that sadly is still very apropos based on where we are now called gender-based emotion shaming. The reason I'm bringing this up is because would you agree that there is a lot of very kind of rigid social norms, expectations, biases around emotional expression attached to gender, and especially at work, right? Absolutely. So you were naming, you know, very traditionally masculine traits, very traditionally feminine traits, which if we think about it, are very socially driven.

Starting point is 00:08:03 In addition to the fact that, yes, if you are, if you identify as female, you're biologically assigned, you know, sex as female, et cetera, that we naturally are more relational, more collaborative, more empathetic, et cetera, et cetera. Now, that doesn't mean that that's mutually exclusive. to the more masculine traits and, you know, vice versa. But if we think about the fact that there is such a strong binary within this, I think that in itself is what screws a lot of people in leadership, where we view these in these two separate buckets that are assigned based on gender.

Starting point is 00:08:44 And the moral of the story is with gender-based emotion shaming, it doesn't matter what gender you identify as. everybody is screwed when it comes to social rules around emotional expression and especially in leadership. And so I think that actually having that dichotomy of masculine versus feminine assignment of those traits is almost part of the problem as opposed to having it assigned to just good, effective, well-rounded leadership because of things like toxic masculinity or there's something else I mentioned in the book called Girl on Girl Crime. Now, the reason I say that is because, let's say, for example, that one female leader is trying to display more balanced behaviors, that is, let's say, a balance of masculine and feminine energy, and then other women may attack her. I call this girl on girl crime. And men also do it to each other. I don't have a, I don't have a fun name for

Starting point is 00:09:45 that one. But I think that the way that we look at this kind of gender assignment, of characteristics and behaviors within leadership is, while it's completely common, is actually kind of part of the problem as opposed to looking at it as more of those gender neutral, very effective leadership behaviors. So what I'm hearing is let's just call it leadership, all of it. Leaders get to be decisive and collaborative. They get to be powerful and they get to be vulnerable. There is a place and living in that paradox or in that balance can be really challenging. You talked about some followers. I'll just use that term reaction to your work. What about leaders? How are leaders responding when you say we need to focus on the mental health? I can imagine some are

Starting point is 00:10:39 resistant and some are like, oh, thank God and everything in between. You would actually be surprised, or maybe not, but the overwhelming majority of leaders are saying thank you for vocalizing my inside voice because I can't. And the 20 to 25 qualitative interviews that I put in the book, those are not polished. They're not edited. They are straight from the horse's mouth. And now, you know, they're all anonymous interviews where it just shows the gender they identify as, their ethnic background, the industry level of seniority, etc. but overwhelming majority of leaders are saying, oh my God, thank you for doing this. Because if I talk about it, then I'm deemed not credible or weak or I can't do the job or some other bullshit that isn't true. The pushback I've been getting are from individual contributors who are not in leadership roles because a lot of leaders do a lot of bad things and they still are. and the power dynamics at work are so real.

Starting point is 00:11:44 And the influence of a leader on someone they manage is as impactful, if not more impactful, than a romantic relationship. It is so present in their lives that if you have this mental representation created in your head of leaders are the enemy, leaders control my destiny, they make me feel like I don't have autonomy

Starting point is 00:12:05 or these other things and they get paid more than me, why should I care about how they're doing? That's a totally valid question, especially if you've been screwed over a lot by people who ended up as accidental managers where they were very technically good at their job. And then they got promoted with no preparation of how to manage people. So most of that pushback has been from individual contributors because of how they've been scarred by leaders throughout their career. I'll also add if they golf with the right person or related to the right person and they get put in a leadership position. without much experience or apparent talent for the role. So I have this operating belief,

Starting point is 00:12:50 and maybe I have it because it protects me, but I believe that most leaders are well-intentioned, and some are assholes. Oh, yeah. I also believe the same with employees. Most are well-intentioned. Most want to show up, do their job well, and some are assholes.

Starting point is 00:13:07 Yep. I do feel like the asseses. assholes sometimes get so much more of the energy and attention that it is just so draining on social media in politics, in real life. Any thoughts about that? Like, how do we separate our bad experiences from our future leaders? So, first of all, you're right. I'm not going to sit here and say that of, you know, for round numbers, the 8 billion people on this planet, that they're all good and then want to do good. That's very Pollyanna, and that's not the human condition. There are some people that do bad things because bad things have been done to them. And there are some people who do bad things

Starting point is 00:13:51 because they want to torture others. So it's just the truth. There will always be bad leaders doing bad things and bad employees doing bad things. We can just be honest about that. But our brains are wired for negativity. The reason for that is because, Because those experiences are so strong to help us not repeat circumstances or encounter stimuli that we don't want to experience again. So we're wired for negativity and how people are so drawn to negative things on social media and in the news, like the rubberneckers with traffic, like you just can't look away. It's in very much the human condition to do that. And especially when people get caught up in something called ants, automatic negative thoughts, which tends to be. be a very not so fun feature of people who also struggle with anxiety disorders and other forms

Starting point is 00:14:46 of mental health concerns, but also just people who may be negative in general outside of having a mental health condition. It can be very difficult to not bring your emotional baggage towards other people who represent something that you've been taught to be afraid of. So how do we separate that out? Let me give you a personal example. I actually was pretty severely damaged by a manager I had earlier in my career who tried to actively sabotage my work because I was doing it well. And the next job I went to, I was so skittish. And that leader actually could tell and kind of made me pause and say, I know you've been through XYZ before, but I'm, I'm, I'm not that person. And I stopped and I was like, oh, my God, they're right. So it can be really, really hard to treat a new chapter and a new person as if they have a

Starting point is 00:15:53 clean slate until they prove otherwise because it opens you up for hurt. It opens you up for damage. It opens you up for feeling like a chump for trusting someone else. But how are you supposed to continue to build better relationships with other leaders at other jobs if you never give them the chance to show you that they won't let you down. So that that's the scary thing to do, but what's the alternative? You know, going from job to job saying, I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop and I'm going to engage in this self-fulfilling prophecy and then I'm going to absolve myself of guilt. These are your options. Well, and I'm curious with even the

Starting point is 00:16:36 premise of they won't let you down, if we believe that leaders are humans, then they likely will let us down at some level in some way. And if we expect perfection from our leaders, then everybody loses from the get-go. So if we're going to reset expectations of what it means to be a good leader, a capable leader, a whole leader, a balanced leader, what should we be looking for, how would you define healthy leadership? So I think that we're not necessarily redefining it. I think it just has a missing piece that needs to be supplemented in. So there's a lot of really, really powerful, effective leadership theories that are already

Starting point is 00:17:29 out there. And I'm not going to knock those because, for example, like servant leadership, that's a wonderful model. You know, there are so many models that are good. I just find them to be incomplete. Where I think there is a lack of humanization showing how success and struggle coexist within the same body, within the same leader. And how focusing on self-awareness and self-management aspects of emotional intelligence are not focused on more because it's, it seems like there's this wrongful correlation between effective leadership and only showing the positive part of the feelings wheel from Dr. Gloria Wilcox where all the neutral and negative stuff is kind of pushed out of the way when it's just not reasonable. It's not sustainable. So I think if you're looking at balanced whole, you know, whatever we want to call it, leadership, that has to be inclusive of the human condition. That's it.

Starting point is 00:18:35 All theories plus that. Now, it can't just be that leaders are talking about struggles and humanizing themselves. It can't just be that by itself. It has to be, okay, if you're going to talk about a certain struggle and they're certain they're not appropriate to speak about in a leadership position. But if you're going to, you better talk about what you're going to do to manage it. We can't just be talking about these struggles and not what we're going to be doing about it. That's where a lot of people tend to to miss the mark. And oftentimes, by the time they get to the point where they are talking about their struggles, if they've been suppressing it for so long, they go off like a volcano. And then you don't exactly have a receptive audience for that reason. Yeah. Okay. So all of that

Starting point is 00:19:18 makes a ton of sense. We acknowledged that leaders might or probably will face some backlash if they begin to talk about their mental health or emotional health. You talked about appropriate And I think that's important, right? Like there are some things that are team conversations. There's some things that are private conversations. There are some things that are therapist conversations. Right. And as leaders, I think distinguishing between those, any tips or ideas of where a leader might

Starting point is 00:19:49 start if they want to include their humanity in their leadership? Absolutely. So the first thing I'd recommend is not even jumping into a leader. a conversation. The first thing I'd recommend is doing some background kind of self-assessment. If you're a leader and you want to talk about your mental health at work, why? Who do you want to talk to? What do you want to share? We're not doing an ironclad door. We're not doing an open playing field. You have to decide what your fence is with slats, what you're keeping in and what you're letting out. What do you want these people to do with this information? What are you prepared to do

Starting point is 00:20:26 with this information. And most importantly, is this work environment safe to have this conversation? If you can't answer all of those questions, you cannot have the conversation yet. You know, oftentimes a lot of these conversations, regardless of title tenure or industry, when we're encouraging people to talk about mental health at work, a lot of reasons it goes badly is because people just start spewing words into the infinite abyss with no structure or guidance. So that's the first thing I'd recommend. And if you honestly feel that your work environment is showing you and telling you that it is not safe for you to have this conversation, I would listen. Because not all workplaces, not all teams will ever be okay to have this conversation, but some will. So that would be

Starting point is 00:21:14 what I'd recommend is start with that back-end reflection so you can do it with intention and purpose. And then if you are going to have these conversations, depending on who you're going to be talking to, I would have a statement of intention ready as to why you're going to do it because you can't just start disclosing without a statement of intention. You can't start disclosing without a clear reason or what this change is. You can't just expect people to immediately warm up to a narrative change. There is going to be a learning curve and there has to be some sort of transition between those behaviors. Excellent advice. I couldn't agree more that. And I am guilty of maybe skipping some of those steps. Most people are.

Starting point is 00:21:58 Okay, so in your work, are you seeing some typical mental health challenges with leaders that rise to the top? Is it anxiety and depression? I guess maybe that should have been the starting point. When you're talking about mental health, I'm assuming you mean all of it, but is there anything that you're seeing that seems to be prevalent specifically with leaders? And you are right. I'm talking about all of it.

Starting point is 00:22:24 You know, when I'm talking about mental health, I'm talking about our baseline, social, emotional, and cognitive functioning. Everybody is mental health. And I'm also talking about stress, you know, good levels of stress, bad levels of stress, because stress itself is actually neutral. It's when we encounter a stimulus that requires adjustment or response. You can have too much good stress, too much bad stress. And it all ends up showing up the same way in our brains and nervous system when they start giving us some symptoms saying, what the hell is going on out there, this is why we can't have nice things. And also mental health conditions of which, you know, the common data is that, you know, one in four people has a diagnosed

Starting point is 00:23:04 mental health condition. That is an underreported number, especially now. I had included some stats in the book saying something like the data is going in the direction of one in two people will have a mental health condition in their lifetime because gestures to everything. So the common, yeah, mean, how the hell not these days? Start with social media and go from there. Oh, I, yes. So the things I'm most commonly seeing, and then, you know, I'm not even going to necessarily go towards the clinical nature, just the more intense out-of-the-box emotions that

Starting point is 00:23:40 we're all pre-programmed with naturally. So I'm seeing a ton of consistent worry, a lot of imposter syndrome, a lot of negativity, where they feel like there's nothing I'll ever do. Someone will always be upset with me, piss off at me, think I'm the enemy, etc. Some people having issues with panic, catastrophizing thoughts, you know, thinking the worst will happen. We'll call it accidental martyrdom, or in some cases, intentional martyrdom. Also, I mean, gosh, there's just such a long list, but if I had to narrow it down to a few buckets, it's definitely centered around, worry and anxiety, a sense of helplessness and hopelessness, and also focused on learned negativity.

Starting point is 00:24:33 Those are the buckets I would put it into. It's interesting. All of that resonates. But as you were talking, I was really thinking about this experience of, I put all of my energy, talent, effort, care into something, knowing it will never be. please everyone. Somebody will always have, like, I think of an event. My husband's also in a leadership role and he threw this event and it was wonderful and amazing and he put so much into it. And, you know, somebody was like, the room was a little cold. And it's like, I feel like going,

Starting point is 00:25:14 well, get a fucking jacket and shut the fuck up. I know. I know. Listen, someone will always be unhappy. Like, I told you, people are wired for negativity. And, And it just people bond over that shit. People bond over negativity. They bond over hating others. It's sad. It is sad. And it's, you know, I wrote about this in the book.

Starting point is 00:25:35 And I'm not a sports buff by any means. But did you see the film air about Michael Jordan with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon? No. It's on our list, but I haven't seen it yet. It's on Amazon Prime, I think. It is such a wonderful movie. And again, not a sports buff, but it's. It's just so well done.

Starting point is 00:25:53 And there is a monologue from a character named Sonny Vaccaro. These are real people. And it was about the then pre-famous Michael Jordan. And when there was competition over signing Michael with Adidas or Nike or Converse, and when he went to Nike, which had a teeny part of market share back at the time, and Sonny Vaccaro sits him down and say, you know, Michael, people, will build you up into something so incredible that you can't even imagine them. They'll hold you up.

Starting point is 00:26:27 And then they're going to tear you down. And they're going to do it over and over again because it's the most predictable pattern in human history. And I was like, I was like, say more, girl. And I put it in the book because that is so true for leadership where I have lost count, the number of leaders who in like leadership coaching sessions would be literally freaking out to me about getting cancer. over the smallest thing.

Starting point is 00:26:55 And there is a difference between cancel culture and call-out culture and people pretend like the latter needs to be done as the former. They're not the same because call-out culture, when you're calling someone out, you give them the opportunity to apologize and course correct. But the online angry, you know, interweb mobs, they don't actually want people to change their behavior. They just want to be mad and they want to voice and opinion. Now, there's a lot of bad stuff that does need to be called out and a lot of bad shit that

Starting point is 00:27:27 really needs to change. But like you started at the beginning of this episode, the good leaders get tossed out with the bad ones because it feels easier and more gratifying to be angry and to highlight what doesn't make you happy as opposed to what does make you happy and is enough. And I could go on forever about this. This clearly hit on the nerve for me. No, and my brain is like, I want to ask this and then this and then this and I'm like, ask whatever you want. We'll have to do another episode someday. If this is true, if what was said in the movie, we're going to get built up and then torn down and built up and torn down and we accept that that is the water we swim in currently. As leaders, what are some of the things

Starting point is 00:28:18 that we need to be doing, prioritizing, to protect care for, prioritizing, to protect, care for, prioritize our own mental health? Because I have to imagine it starts with us. Oh, 100%. So I'm going to keep it simple and just talk about a couple of things because the paradox of choice tells us, starting with less choice is better. If you start with too many things, you won't do any of them. So I think there's the personal mental health management piece. And then there is the outward management piece. So we could even look at this as two areas of emotional intelligence. One is intrapersonal. One is interpersonal. So let's start. with intra-personal. So I talk about a concept in the book that I've talked about for a number of

Starting point is 00:29:00 years. And I like talking about it not because I created it, but people tell me it works. So it's called the mental well-being non-negotiables. Now, the reason that I created this is I was so tired of the wellness industry basically telling people, this is what you should do to help your mental health feel good. And I go, okay, what if that doesn't work for like 70% of people? Are they just shit out of luck? So I feel that managing mental health is just as important as sleeping, eating, bathing, and breathing. However, when you're really, really busy, and especially if you're a leader and you're responsible for a lot more and you have a lot more on your shoulders than someone who doesn't hold a leadership role, managing mental health isn't usually very high on the list of to-dos and tends to fall off. So you're not going to do something for your mental help if you don't actually enjoy it and if it doesn't feel achievable. So you have to pick something that you actually like doing, not that the wellness industry tells you you should like doing, at an achievable cadence.

Starting point is 00:30:01 So you're not sending yourself up for failure. And doing it barring cases of death, dismemberment, hell, high water, or illness, and I'm not playing. Let me give you an example. I'm a former therapist. I don't like to meditate. That shit doesn't work for me. Yoga is exercise. It doesn't relax me.

Starting point is 00:30:17 So my mental well-being non-negotiables are I go salsa dancing a couple times a month. That to me is my yoga. When I got three surgeries on my left leg, which is basically a decorative limb, now, kind of hard to do that. So whenever I was on crutches or I had my little knee-zumi thing when I had an ankle surgery, I was blasting salsa music and like hobbling around the house, so I didn't lose my mind. Got to be in nature once a week. I live in Colorado. That's easy to do.

Starting point is 00:30:46 Playing with my dogs every night, even though they physically parkour off my body. and I'm riddled with bruises, but it's really fun. So I don't care what it is. You want to go, you know, through vinals at a shop once a month for an hour. Fine. You want to do coloring books with your kids on the floor on Sunday morning. You know, fine. If you want to get, you know, a blow-up ladybug costume and you want to, like, rage to

Starting point is 00:31:14 Metallica in your kitchen on Friday nights, whatever's your bliss, go do that. But if you don't have one mental well-being non-negotiable, you're screwed. You've got to have one, just one, and make sure that you do it. Now, outward-facing, interpersonal, what I recommend is focusing on kind of a low-hanging fruit around communicating capacity. And when you communicate capacity, you are also naturally humanizing yourself to people. But you've got to have explanations ready for when you're, you do that. You can't just humanize yourself to someone and talk about capacity without

Starting point is 00:31:53 rationalization and logic behind it because someone will always challenge you. So let's say, for example, that a fellow leader or, you know, your team is expecting you to act like a superhero and you don't even get the outfit, which is ridiculous. I posted about it on LinkedIn today. I was like, stop acting like superhero because you don't get to wear the outfit and people keep getting you to act like, or wanting you to act like. like that. Unless I'm getting a cape, I'm not interested. Correct. And so you got to have explanations ready. And I talk a lot about this in chapter nine about how to communicate capacity in a way that is structured, that it's reasonable. You can monitor a success. You can adjust your scale. And it's all,

Starting point is 00:32:40 it's all in there for people. But for the naysayers, you have to have explanations ready. So it could be something like, I'm telling you where my capacity is so that I can do ABC well and I know that, you know, FGH can wait until tomorrow. That is a very self-aware, responsible thing to do as a leader. Can you help me understand why you don't agree? I'm not stepping out of bounds. I'm saying what I'm doing. I'm saying why I'm doing it. I'm showing how it's a good part of leadership and I'm inviting a conversation. Usually people's buttholes will shrink up because they're not ready for someone to say something like that. But this is what I read this. It's like my new goal. I just want to walk around to making other people's butt holes shrink up. Yes. I have a new mission in life. Thank you.

Starting point is 00:33:33 Make your asshole shrink. That's the goal. And so that's that's really what it is. And again, there's certain organizations where those boundaries will make people angry. So it, It's about that consistency. And again, it depends. There's so many nuances on who you're having that conversation with. But it can be as simple as saying like, hey, I'm only operating at 50% today. If I'm acting differently, you know, it's not because of you. I'm doing what I need to do to manage it.

Starting point is 00:34:01 You know, people are not mind readers. And if you continue acting as if your capacity has no bounds, they will keep expecting it of you. And your mental health will go in the toilet. So there's a big, long explanation in child. about how to communicate capacity, set up those measures, and how that is a mental health self-management tool in leadership. Okay, so so many good things in there. Like you, I despise one-size-fits-all solutions. Just everything from like the health and wellness, like, it all

Starting point is 00:34:34 feels like you're trying to give me more shit to do, and that is the very last thing that I need. So starting with something we already love and prioritizing it makes sense. I'm with you. superheroes, martyrs. I'm always like, spoiler alert, they get dead. Like, that's what it is to be a martyr. Is that the goal here? This doesn't make any sense to me. Okay, so that's what we can do as leaders. Any advice as followers? Because I do believe that we are all leaders and followers in aspects of our lives. So if we are serious about prioritizing mental health for all of us, How do we support leaders as followers? Just start.

Starting point is 00:35:18 Seriously, I don't mean to sound simple in my reasoning, but everybody in the workplace is a chronologically aged adult. It is okay to ask leaders how they're doing. I'm not saying, you know, the 21-year-old entry-level employees should be trying to support the CEO. Like, let's use logic and reason. But there is no reason. that a team member can't support a leader and say, you know, how are you doing? Is there anything I can do to help you? I understand that power dynamics makes it feel like those were precluded from doing that. I get that. I understand that. That doesn't make it right.

Starting point is 00:35:56 I know several people who have been very supportive to their managers just because they saw them as the human being behind the title. What is wrong with that? And I understand that it can make the dynamics feel kind of sticky. I'm not saying to have a damn therapy session with them. I'm just saying to give them the permission to say how they're actually feeling so they don't have to lie. Yeah. Can I also add, and you can challenge me if I'm off base, but also I would add giving people the benefit of the doubt. Like, I don't like this decision, but maybe I don't have all the information that they had when they made it. The benefit of the doubt would be a great place to start.

Starting point is 00:36:36 I agree. Or not even, let's take it even simpler. Not even just necessarily the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I don't have a right to have a feeling about this decision because I don't know everything that went into it. Yeah. People don't like doing that because they want to feel, how do I want to say this without sounding like an asshole? They sound like an asshole. I love it. They want to feel justified in their disapproval. Now, there are many cases where leaders do make bad decisions. They make incomplete decisions. They don't listen. Of course these things happen. Of course they happen. However, people don't like to have things thrust upon them that they feel they have no influence or over or opinion towards.

Starting point is 00:37:26 I get that. I do. But just putting fire under leaders' feet without giving them, you know, you know, an opportunity to explain and constantly holding them to that standard. And then when they start getting upset, when they say my feet are burning, is just absurd. I don't know if I'm making any sense. It's just, it's this paradox that I wrestle with where I'm like, your feelings matter, their information, they shouldn't be dismissed or whatever.

Starting point is 00:38:00 And your feelings don't run the show. Like, it's okay to have your feelings. feelings, but your feelings shouldn't have you. Lisa Kalman says that. And I always, it's like, enough already. Grow the fuck up. Oh, girl preach. I often talk about, you know, we don't choose to struggle with mental health and mental

Starting point is 00:38:21 illness. We choose what we're going to do about it, provided we have the willingness to do so, access to resources, and the finances to use them. So I, you know, the weaponization of emotions in the workplace, that is a podcast episode for another day. We could do a full hour on that. And also, very importantly, bad behavior in leadership,

Starting point is 00:38:46 emotional struggles in leadership, while valid, are not a valid reason to abuse teams. It explains it, it doesn't excuse it. Exactly. But we have to look at the source of why it's happening. Is it because they're unsupported and they're, you know,

Starting point is 00:39:05 an emotional ticking time? bomb and they can only take so much. Is it because they're just an asshole? Is it because of the work environment? Is it because they've been dehumanized? Is it all of the above? We have to look at the reasons that these behaviors start happening because they don't, it's not just like a switch got flipped on one day.

Starting point is 00:39:24 So there are so many different aspects to it. And this is why I feel like I'm rage writing about these topics or just like, but lots to talk about. I, too, am fueled by rage, so I completely understand. I asked about leaders and followers. One last question, and I really do think we could do another hour-long episode. But one last question, what's one thing companies and cultures could start doing right now to better support the mental health of their leaders?

Starting point is 00:39:53 Allowing them to communicate capacity. I think that so many organizations, the majority of organizations, treat leaders and depict their leaders as boundary lists. You're just screwing them in every sense. So I think allowing them to communicate capacity is a simple thing that can be done, even if they're not ready to have the mental health conversation and leadership which selfishly I'd like them to be.

Starting point is 00:40:24 You know, allowing them to admit capacity and talk about capacity is a key feature of emotional regulation and leadership. There's no reason that they can't try to birth that narrative. Yes, we expect better of our leaders. They have more responsibility. They have more power. They have more influence. You know, yes, we expect a lot of them. And they also have their limits. That is a missing piece of the conversation. And just because it's unpopular doesn't make it logically untrue. And I will die on that hill. I love the hills I'm willing to die on too.

Starting point is 00:41:07 Melissa, thank you so much for this conversation. I said before we hit record that I try to keep the episodes to around 30 minutes. And we both agreed that nobody has time for longer episodes, except that every once in a while, I wish I had two-hour episodes. And this is one of those times. So thank you for this conversation for your incredibly important work. And listener, go order the book right now. It's called Cornered Office. It's available on Amazon, wherever you buy books.

Starting point is 00:41:35 Let's keep our local bookstores in business. And then I would also encourage you while you're getting one for yourself, order an extra, and gift it to the leader in your life that you want to encourage. And if you're looking to find out more about Melissa and her work, you can go to melissa-domin.com. We're going to put all of the links, all the ways to find and follow her in show notes. All right, friend, if there's one thing I hope we walk away with today, it's this. leaders are not machines. They're not brands. They aren't just positions on an org chart. They're human. And yes, of course I believe in high standards. If you choose to lead, you accept the weight, the responsibility, the impact, and the consequences. But holding leaders accountable and stripping them of their humanity are not the same thing. And right now, we're blurring that line. So here's the uncomfortable question. If we keep making leadership unsustainable for the people who care,

Starting point is 00:42:29 For the ones who actually want to serve, build, and grow, who do we think is going to step in to fill the gap? Because if we keep abusing good leaders, we won't get better ones. We'll get the leaders we deserve and we'll hate every second of it. So before we point fingers only upward, let me say this. Woman's work isn't just about leading well. It's about following well too, because we all do both. So let's protect the humans and the mental well-being in both roles, because that is woman's work.

This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - What Happens When Leadership Becomes Unsustainable: Leader Mental Health with Melissa Doman | 403

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