Peer Effect

Creating a Culture of Well-being: Mental Health Insights for Founders & Teams

• James Johnson • Season 3 • Episode 31

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In this special mashup episode of Peer Effect, we bring together insights on mental health, well-being, and sustainable performance from leaders who are making it happen! 

Michael Matania, Sam Rosen, and Dan Brownsher share real experiences on cultivating a workplace culture that prioritises authenticity, trust, and sustainability.

Learn about:

  • Creating psychological safety and fostering open feedback
  • Moving from high-intensity performance to sustainable, balanced growth
  • Practical strategies for building a resilient culture remotely

Links:
Follow Michael Matania on LinkedIn!
Follow Sam Rosen on LinkedIn!
Follow Dan Brownsher on LinkedIn!

More from James:

Connect with James on LinkedIn or at peer-effect.com


Speaker 1:

So how do we see reality? Clearly, we need the soft skills necessary to create a culture where there's authenticity, there's feedback, there is psychological safety and there are also intelligent working practices, so that we're actually performing at a high level sustainably. We want people performing at a level where they can maintain it for six years, not six weeks, and there's an over-focus on peak performance, which is basically inspired by elite sport. The challenge is that when organizations come to scale soft skills development the soft skills required for sustainable performance practices and a new form of culture basically they rely on e-learning, because that's what they've done before right, compliance training. Give everyone e-learning, let's all click through and let's all get streamlined understanding. But actually the problem now is that e-learning doesn't work for soft skills development for a number of reasons. Firstly, it's optimized for cognitive processing rather than emotional processing, and in order to have lasting behavior change, you require shifts at the emotional level, and so emotional processing is inversely correlated with cognitive processing, which is why you get so many, for example, heady blokes who are terrible at processing and regulating their emotions or intuiting the emotions of the people around them, despite the fact they're very cognitively complex thinkers around them, despite the fact they're very cognitively complex thinkers. And so that's the first piece if you've got an e-learning that's optimized and dials up cognitive processing, cut and doesn't address emotional processing. And the second is that even those scaled interventions that do address emotional processing, it happens in a silo. I'll be using my headspace app sitting on my own again, focusing on my stress, my, my anxiety, my burnout, my meditation, and at no point do we get into the world of culture, because culture exists in the relational field. I'm not having the crucial conversations that are required to shift the culture. We're not practicing new ways of being with each other. It's me on my own doing my thing. I am overwhelmed, I get sent off to my EAP. Other, it's me on my own doing my thing. I am overwhelmed, I get sent off to my EAP.

Speaker 1:

And by bringing together a few different modalities that we've identified over the last 10 years of my journey as the necessary ingredients to do soft skills development at scale, and to do that in a way that takes the burden of really busy leadership development teams and well-being teams, who often just don't have the time and resource. Most organizations, even in the tens of thousands, will have one, maybe two people looking after culture and the practices that are required to build new cultures. So they also need to be automated in a way that busy teams can press a button when it happens, and that's also what we've been figuring out how to do that. Luckily, with developments in AI, ai, we can now do that. So we're in the sort of inflection point where we're now able to take what we've been doing in a smaller way, working with leaders, and actually be able to bring it to people who aren't leaders all stuff and actually that's what I'm much more interested in.

Speaker 1:

I end up doing the majority of my work with leaders, but I'm actually way more interested in solving this problem for just a common ordinary person who comes to work, does their thing, goes back home, does their Sainsbury's shopping, looks after their kids. Maybe they're not necessarily on a leadership track, but for me I'm really interested in how do we help those people, because it's not just organizations that need an up leveling their soft skills development, it's the entire landscape of society. Just happens to be the case that within england in particular, the primary way you get soft skills out into the general population is for businesses, because we've spent the last 10 years decimating our community mental health and so really the only institutions with the kind of resources able to deploy this at scale are organizations, and so that's why I work with organizations.

Speaker 1:

Actually, if I could go straight to households I would, but it is also really fascinating working with organizations and working with high performing teams and helping them solve their problems, and particularly those teams that are working on problems that we really feel needs to be solved. You know, I'm not as hyped about helping people get incrementally better at selling shoes to teenage girls, and that's something that it's really hard for founders to think about because everything is just right there in front of you and very immediate. That's much harder to think about. Things like ethics and the wider, you know, impact being a being, a social impact company. Um, for me, I think we set out to do that from the very beginning. It's like how do we, how do we be a company from the start that wants to have impact, but also about how do I actually show up as a leader in not just my company but my community, my ecosystem, so that I can orient myself towards a regenerative planet.

Speaker 2:

So the big win comes when you get the mycelium effect and everyone like you, say the me problem into a we problem. It's like how can we really solve this? Say the me problem into a we problem. It's like how can we really solve this?

Speaker 2:

if you can, then, as the founder of business, help your entire organization function like that, there's like a big positive externality effect yeah and then you kind of like sounds like you create these like mini mycelium networks where kind of people take these skills and go out into the wider community and start disseminating it, to kind of take them home and can they sort of get their family operating with these principles yeah, so it sounds like. There's kind of like. There's like a. There's many positive externalities. But even if you did it for yourself, yeah, there's benefit.

Speaker 1:

Well, there's also a very clear link between, particularly as a founder, modeling and mimicry explain a huge amount of social behavior and organizations. People take their cues by those who have higher status within the system and so, as a founder, if you're practicing sustainable performance and you're normalizing sustainable performance, then it's much more likely that the people underneath you will also see that as well. That's just how things are done around here and they will also start to adopt those practices and also you are able to encourage those practices in them from a place of integrity. You know, do as I do rather than do as I say.

Speaker 1:

Most founders don't actually understand the relationship between their role modeling, the culture, the subculture of their team in terms of the norm system what behaviors are rewarded or punished, both explicitly and implicitly, and the performance of that team.

Speaker 1:

People don't understand the relationship between role modeling, culture and performance and I think if they really did see how deep that rabbit hole goes, this whole putting your own oxygen mask on first would actually foreground itself as an issue that's genuinely really critical for them to invest some time and resource in. Of like how do I, as a founder, design my life? What behaviors am I normalizing in my team? Am I doing what is required to cultivate a high performing and sustainable performing culture within my team in terms of my own behaviors, habits, rhythms, etc. So these are all questions that we should be asking ourselves and ultimately, it's why it's so good to connect with other founders, because often found being a founder can be very lonely and isolating and we need to be able to have spaces where we can think out loud with other founders, because often we're all making the same mistakes in different ways.

Speaker 2:

It almost feels like the question flips how can I be more resilient? Like, how can I deal with these things more? Actually, maybe it's not about how to be more resilient to our current behaviours. It's actually to flip it and go what is sustainable performance? And then maybe resilience becomes a little less of an issue, because you're not killing yourself in the first place.

Speaker 3:

I'm curious if other people have offered this advice and it's something that I've gotten a little slack about sometimes but it's this notion of slowing down, I think, like in this game that we play and the sort of rat race of it all it's so often it's go fast, make decisions quickly and fail and learn from that, and I'm all for all of those things, but to me, what's been like, I think, a really important tool in my toolbox is the ability to slow down and take a beat, and especially when it comes to like decision making important decision making often there's like this imminent demand, like we have to make this decision right now, we have to move forward right now, we have to take action now, and there's a lot of like, I think, pressure around that, and those are the moments that I found are really helpful for me.

Speaker 3:

To actually do the opposite, which is to stop, is to take a beat. Take a breath, take a night step away from the problem, is to take a beat, take a breath, take a night step away from the problem, and I find that I really tend to find a lot of clarity and focus and a lot of the emotion of the decision-making goes away in that process.

Speaker 2:

Was there a particular instance that really caused this change of approach?

Speaker 3:

You know, it's been something in my career that I think has happened over and over again.

Speaker 3:

So I think often, when it comes to decisions around funding, like around hiring or firing, like, there's people that I've often acted very emotionally to, and I'm kind of an emotional person, so there are folks that I think maybe a younger me or a less disciplined person of myself would have been rash in either acting emotionally in a decision to let somebody to go or to say something that would be like a net negative and by kind of taking the beat, having the patience.

Speaker 3:

The other thing that I think is kind of interesting about this tactic is, in the heat of it, it's two ways, so some, especially in like a discussion or in a fight, in that space, I tend to find that it gives room for the other person, like the person your counterparty, to do the same odds.

Speaker 3:

You might have been before where, like, both have had some time to empathize with the other person's position and, though it might not be, hey, I've changed my mind completely, but I've like taken the time to think about your point of view, your perspective and let's, I can kind of come to the table again and I don't know. To me that's kind of like that vulnerability and and and that is where the magic happens. So I know that's not like the most specific examples, but for me it often has to do with like gut emotional stuff with people where I don't, where, like I feel triggered, and that triggering, um, makes me want to act very responsibly and, uh, that beat allows me to take a break and what I find is just, it works two ways. It works for me, but it often works for your counterparty.

Speaker 4:

Leaders have this idea in a lot of cases that they have to know everything right and they have to always be definitive and they have to show strength and show that they know the answer and they are convicted and confident, and all those things are important. Right, you have to display that behavior as a leader. Certainly, at times and in maybe in most cases but there are times when you gotta take the armor down and take the shield down and really disarm yourself, because, it's true, it's being authentic to yourself. We do this exercise called the stick figure exercise. We've done this at the leadership team level and even the staff level, where, in essence, everybody introduces themselves who are you, where are you from, where have you been?

Speaker 4:

What disappoints you about you, what are your three biggest accomplishments in your life and your three biggest regrets in your life and, ultimately, what we're doing. What's happening is we're allowing people to tell us who they are and where they've come from and what sort of baggage or insecurities they have. It could be hey, I never graduated college, or I never got my high school degree right, and that's a chip on my shoulder that I have, and that's why I show up in certain ways or get defensive in certain ways because I'm insecure about that right. So I think doing exercises like that and seeing the results that we get from our team and really pushing that throughout the organization, it shows.

Speaker 2:

And how does that sort of show up practically? So you'd like this idea of like you're, you're, you understand, you're better. You're showing up differently, but how does that practically translate into like better performance, closer teams, better culture?

Speaker 4:

I think it creates space for people to have more effective conversations and it creates a level of trust, because if I know you and I know your baggage or what your insecurities are, it's much easier for me to talk to you, as opposed to me making up stories about who you are and why you might be behaving the way that you are. It's like hold up. I know you're triggered, all right and you told me you were going to be triggered and you told me this is what happens when you get triggered and you told me why you get triggered. Now I can work with that. I get that, yeah, as opposed to me saying why is this guy talking to me like that? What happened?

Speaker 4:

Is it me? Does this guy resent me? Is it me, me, me? No, it's not me, it's not me at all. It's them and where they're at and the headspace that they're in and they're triggered and that's okay. Everybody gets triggered. Everybody has their moments. Everybody has their issues and their insecurities moments. Everybody has their issues and their insecurities and so if I know you and I know that about you, it changes the dynamic of the conversation because I can trust you right and vice versa. I can receive this information and not use it against you right or vice versa.

Speaker 2:

So does that make sense? Do you update this exercise as well in terms of could I imagine people work on this stuff. They change over a period of time. Do you update this periodically, this story?

Speaker 4:

Sometimes. I mean so we'll do the exercise. Sometimes we add new people to the team or we add somebody new to the leadership team. We'll do the exercise because we want to get everybody kind of reacclimated in and we want to have others that haven't done the exercise before do it because we want them to be introduced. Now, some people have done this multiple times per year for seven years in a row, and sometimes the story is the same and sometimes it changes, which is fine, right. People think differently over time, or they recall something differently, or they think about themselves differently, and so it's a kind of finite story, right? It's a very fluid and dynamic story that can change over time.

Speaker 2:

Do you encourage people to back of that sort of explore things with coaches or to identify behaviors to work on alongside, or is it really just about it's about understanding more than more than development?

Speaker 4:

we're. I'm always, I would always encourage our team to seek coaching or get coaching or provide coaching if we can. The idea is around and why we do it is is the exercise and the result of the exercise and it aligns with our values or one of our key values honest and effective communication. What does that mean? How do you get to that? Well, you get to that by by building trust with each other and creating space for, for trust and conversation, and that's rooted in vulnerability, and so we use that in line with our values, and then we've got a conversation model that we've used also. That tie that ties into that. So it's really the focal point is behavior and culture and alignment with with one of our key values.

Speaker 2:

Because because you were saying you're, you're now like a remote first business, yeah, building that sort of culture of trust remotely, is it harder, doing it remotely and makes these sort of exercises even more important?

Speaker 4:

You know I'm a proponent of remote work for certain business types Certainly my business type, absolutely. I think it's a competitive advantage to be remote. But you're right, we have to create space for people to connect with each other and communicate with each other, because they're not walking around the office and passing by this person and checking in with them or seeing them in the lunchroom or having a water cooler conversation. We have to create space for our teams to interact with each other. So, yeah, I think that's part of the equation. Now, if I was in an office, I would still do the exact same thing. So to me, it's not about having a remote work environment or an in-office work environment. That is irrelevant to me. Now we just need to be more intentional with how we create the space for those connections in a remote environment because, again, you don't get it passively or you get it less so passively. But again, if we were in an office, I would still do the exact same thing.

Speaker 4:

It's not easy and I think it probably makes some people uncomfortable, and I think it probably makes some people uncomfortable. But if somebody, a leader in the organization, goes first, right, if I go first and I model that behavior and I put it out on the table, then it's okay. Right, if there are other leaders in the organization that do it first, their boss goes first, it makes it okay. And maybe they're not fully sharing, and I understand that and it takes time to build that level of trust and some people have challenging past or backgrounds or some very much high insecurities, which that's life, right, like that's life. It can be messy at times but if we model the behavior as leaders, then it makes it okay.

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