Hear the postcast: Ep168 Mental Health Strategy, with David Burroughs below
Mental health is important enough to need a strategic approach, not just tactics. In this wide ranging conversation, David Burroughs discusses his deep experience in mental health strategy with Andrew Barrett from the Safety On Tap podcast.
The three takeaways from David Burroughs in this discussion:
Takeaway #1: Strategy is underpinned by a clear connection between your objectives, how those objectives make people and the business better, and the plans you need to implement to achieve them. Do you have a mental health strategy? How well integrated is mental health with your health and safety, human resources, and operational strategies? Do you know what indicators you can use, and why? You need a strategy.
Takeaway #2: How will you resource your mental health strategy? Are you competent to do this yourself, or do you need to upskill? Do you need to hire in-house specialists, or can you do with some part-time support from someone like that? A strategy and plans are all but useless unless you resource them effectively, and that starts with you.
Takeaway #3: This is a left-field one, and maybe my biased ears picked this up and amplified it. Dave made a passing comment about his very limited time, and how he picks and chooses what he works on and who he helps. We all have the same number of hours, give or take, to make a difference in the world. If you are listening to this and feeling like it’s outside your area, its in the too hard basket, or you can’t do it justice because of competing demands: we all have the same number of hours. It’s simply a case of choosing how we spend them, and being brave enough to say no to certain things in favour of other more important things.
Safety on Tap have a few more episodes in the mental health topic area. If you’re interested, make sure you have a listen to these mental health focussed episodes:
– Ep155 with Traci Carse, org psych with NSW Fire and Rescue,
– Ep153 with Kathryn McEwan, dispelling some myths and understanding resilience better
– In Ep125 I shared some thoughts on the relationship between blame and learning, remembering that blame could be a symptom of more hostile and poor psychological safety environments
– Ep97 with Clive Lloyd walked through the central role of trust underpinning a psychologically safe climate
– Ep083 with Kate Russel explored the uncomfortable area of conflict, and how it is both useful and manageable
– Ep40 with Catherine Mattice discussed the role of civility in the workplace, again an underpinning foundation for mental health and psychological safety
– Ep39 with Carlo Caponecchia, is a fantastic 101 intro to psychosocial risk at work