In 24 hours I’ve been in three conversations calling into focus the gap between the rhetoric and reality of mental health awareness. Sadly.
The separate conversations reflect that in some quarters mental (or emotional) health is little more than lip service. The mental health of employees to be outsourced to an EAP programme, to be achieved with an awareness week here and there, a plaudit putting people at the heart of everything. And, yet the behaviours on display, the conversations engaged in, the attitudes that prevail do anything but recognise the humanity of the people we work with and alongside.
Vulnerability can only be present when it is safe to be so. It can only be safe to be so when those with whom we would be vulnerable are able to sit alongside and with, the discomfort of the vulnerability we bring.
If I cannot sit with my own discomfort around your vulnerability I will not be able to support you, to be present to you. If I avoid my discomfort in that moment by pushing it away, blocking it then I cannot support you.
Mental (or emotional) health awareness is going to change the nature of required leadership.
Can you sit with another’s discomfort?
Do you want to - at work?
