Today’s guest ended up in hospital with the burnouts. It was very difficult but also what propelled him to become a well-being activist in today’s episode Nathan. You undress will share his journey. Why companies should focus on well-being and lots of tips for you and your team to improve the well-being and mental health at work. Stay tuned.

Nathan. How did you become well-being activist?

 

Nathan:

It’s a personal story. It’s when I talk about often, you know, 2019 was a really rough year. May be the worst year of my life up to that point. I had several people died in my life and the grief and the heaviness of that was underestimated. I nearly lost my little dog. She was in a terrible accident and nearly died. I was having some trouble at work. I was actually starting to be overly stressed. If we look at 2019, it was also as living in Hong Kong during the protests and this was also a major source of distraction and stress for me and ultimately ended up in the hospital with kidney problems and the weight of all of what I call the stacks. Acts of adversity, sitting right on top of me and nearly broke me, you know, it was causing problems at work. It was causing problems at home. This stress. Ultimately lead to burnout. Burnout is a real thing.

Burnout actually is a slow churn and it’s why they call it burn. You slowly burn down to when there’s nothing there anymore and you’re out and people who are burning out including myself are often Last people to know that they’re burning out and that was a real wake-up call, you know, to go into the hospital. Have these problems. My body was breaking down my mental and emotional energies were empty. And what I found was that my spiritual energy. Purpose was completely missing and purpose for me, was Far Over in this other side to what I was actually doing and experiencing.

So, for me, it was about a recalibration of All those things and it’s it only fuelled my passion to get out there and start helping others to tap into how to get through life’s really hard things. How do you face into and lean into life’s adversities because the one thing that is Constant is change. It’s never going to go away from the time were born to the time. We die change is always happening. So, what are the tools then? What are my tools? How do I help people do that?

And that’s the birthplace of where this activism came from.

 

Rodrigo:

So, you mentioned something very interesting that’s normally with burnout. We are the last people to know it when was the moments that you understood that oh You go, there’s something serious happening.

 

Nathan:

I think it was, you know, in the moment at the hospital or where no one came to visit. I had isolated myself. And I recognize that only, I could have to deal with. This was my problem in my problem alone, but that I had isolated in the process of burning out, all of the, the community of support and my chosen family. And I hadn’t forgiven myself. For some things, I hadn’t dealt with some of the grief. It was also starting therapy, you know, I’m a massive advocate of open Dialogue on having therapists and psychologists and counsellors and coaches in your life because that’s an investment.

And that investment that I made in myself was one where I was able to then recognize through the work that I did with my therapist energy positive energy – activities and we needed to turn that around. So, if you do an energy audit, you know with yourself then you’re going to be able to see where you’re putting your time and how you’re spending your energy.

 

Rodrigo:

Thank you for sharing your personal story. I think it’s so important that we share our stories. And we Aspire others because we all go through difficult moments, right? And if we now go into the workplace to, we talk a lot about well-being. Let’s first, get on everyone, on the same page. What is wellbeing for you at the workplace?

 

Nathan:

Let’s start with a really interesting statistic, okay, ninety-two percent of employees, have mental health issues, that impact there, Work. Okay, so when we talk about creating well-being in the workplace, it just can’t be a post covid or a covid buzzword anymore. We really need to create culture and this is where my activism starts to shine up and to get passionate about well-being in the workplace. We need to create culture. Well, what is culture? Well-being culture is rituals and habits and language, and dialogue, and customs, and practices around well-being. When we create a space for people, that is safe. And that is a comfortable place when we think about all of the dimensions of well-being. We’ve got emotional and occupational, environmental and physical, and spiritual financial well-being. All of these things show up for the person who comes through your door to work.

So, we need to ensure that the workplace is a culture of enabling people to be their whole self when they show up. I heard a couple years ago at another place I worked and I’ve been borrowing this this phrase you know when life Works work, Works the whole person shows up and, you know, I say was in my background before, you know, I trained in the, in the Jesuit tradition of Education, Cura personalis is Latin for care for the whole person, when we take a holistic approach, and we think about all those well-being dimensions, and we think about the person that comes through the door. If we’re thinking about those things then, if and we’re thinking about when life works for our people, then the work part can work even better and I don’t think, He’s our employers or thinking enough about how the whole person shows up employers often, think to just you know work that’s the only thing that these people do is they live to work. No. No people also you know, work to live and we need to make sure that that’s a very balanced approach to creating a culture from the very beginning is fundamental,

 

Rodrigo:

It’s very interesting what you say. So, let’s say if an employee is going through a really tough time at home, let’s say divorce or financial problem. Like what do you think? It’s the responsibility of the company in that personal issue, or where is the line between the, the, the responsibility of the company and the employee.

 

Nathan:

Yeah, this is also an interesting statistic, right? 81 percent of employees believe that the workplace is responsible for mental health and we know from the American psychology Association. In that eight out of ten employees are actually looking at. What does the company offer in terms of mental health, support and resources before they even consider a job opportunity? So, when we think about whose responsibility is it, I think it’s a shared 10K and employees have rights you know, to have safe environments where they can be productive. But Employers in a workplace is need to Siddur, you know how they build those workspaces. I think that the duty of care for managers is a real thing. And managers, you know, they’re not trained psychologist, you know, they’re not going to be counsellors or coaches, you know, professional because their job is to lead and manage business and drive results, but I think we also have to do is make sure that the duty of care of which managers are responsible, is something that comes alive and is brought to fruition is it becomes a reality and creates that culture and duty of care. Really is about human stuff. You know, I was just telling my team yesterday, the other like a big part of our job as HR, Human Resources leaders is to help people be more human and what we mean by that is you know, bringing empathy listening asking, good probing questions.

Keeping space for silence reflection and dedicating enough time for that employee and manager to kind of be in a relationship and be in a space where they can work through potential issues or identify issues, that then can be sign posted or give an extra resource. I think that’s what we mean by duty of care. I don’t know how we are doing in that space. I often wonder. I really often wonder. Are we doing enough there?

You know, have we trained selected managers in the right way. Have we also, as HR people looked at putting, well, being in the centre of jobs and job design, and roll design, and team design, and looking at how well-being can be at the centre of that. I’ve said many times, you know, well-being is the birthplace of diversity inclusion and equity. It is where if you show up and you feel good and your workplace is also diverse and inclusive and there’s a sense of belonging then you’re going to want to be there, all of these things fit together. And I think leaders managers have that duty of care to look after all of those things. And that’s why I’m saying we start with culture first, and we build a well being called Start from the inside, then those things naturally occur, and they become the expectation. Not just the not just the rule.

 

Rodrigo:

And in that journey of managers, what do you see? What are the biggest challenges that? You see managers having in that Journey?

 

Nathan:

A lot of managers believe that either. There’s mental health issues, and mental illnesses, you know, not in their workplace, not true. Thirty percent of employees actually miss work due to mental health issues Seventeen, percent of CEOs, actually miss work, because of Mental Health issues.

So, we’ve got to help managers and leaders, understand that actually we all have mental health, we all have it. We is not escaping it, but we need to think about is changing that narrative and what I’d like to you know, emphasize or encourage managers and leaders to think about as we change the narrative and kind of debunk. Some of those, those myths is what if We think about mental health, as mental wealth, and we use the tools of investment in ourselves, not just to think about fixing things that are broken. But actually, going out in investing in our portfolio of living more fully. If we can flip The Narrative of mental health on its head in the workplace where people spend most of their time, then we’re actually going to Able to effect change and I would tell you from having gone through, you know, therapy sessions and counselling and hired coaches for my life. That it makes a massive difference. It might be the greatest investment that you can make in yourself.

So, if we start talking about, mental health, as mental wealth, and start investing in that like, we do our financial portfolios, we can actually, then live an amazing life filled with exciting joyful moments that enable us to kind of live. Fully and ideally Chase into purpose and live the higher meaning things. Yeah, yeah.

 

Rodrigo:

But how do you think we can prepare managers for that because it’s huge. So, we need a lot of people skills, right? A lot of empathy understanding people. How can we bring that into our managers, so that they are able to build that environment that you mention where we care about people and we help people to be more human?

 

Nathan:

Yeah, I think part of it comes from training and I also, Part of it comes from bringing shared and lived experiences to the workplace. So, let me talk about what I mean. I think one of the ways to help managers learn is to put out some big taboo topics out into the space where intersectional Crossroads you know, get tricky and uncomfortable and as an activist that’s where we want to be. We want people to lean into that uncomfortability so that they can learn something and bringing taboo topics. I’ll give you A good example, as an LGBTIQQ leader, an out-and-proud LGBTIQQ L. You know, we’re not talking about LGBTIQQ issues in this part of the world, right? And we’re also really afraid of talking about mental health issues in this part of the world, because of the stigma and, and, and some of the beliefs around, what, what mental health is and isn’t. But I said, baloney, let’s put mental health and LGBTIQQ in the same conversation because guess what? LGBTIQQ people particularly in Asia, Pacific, and Asia have a unique experience with their mental health In the workplace, let’s blow that up. Let’s create a conversation so that people can learn from real people.

We put a panel of LGBTIQQ people Asian sitting in this part of the world on a conversation, a dialogue about their own mental health Journeys in the workplace. Fascinating, but what happened is we actually Able to bring awareness education, realism an open conversation, and slowly, you can help pick and pull apart, some of the misconceptions that managers and leaders have. And then recognize oh, we actually, we do have, you know, people who are challenged with mental health, things that I never thought about it would do the same thing around menopause. No one wants to talk about menopause, and I’m a massive advocate of putting more Around menopause. You know, we have the world’s population who are going to go through this natural event, why aren’t we talking about that? And it’s a taboo topic. We can blow these topics up by bringing lived experiences and in help leaders and managers learn. Then also start to adopt this culture of care. And then the second part of this answer is really, what should we be doing in terms of skills training? It really is about, you know, doing what we did at my company. He most recently was how to have the well-being conversation training.

We got Executives from the very top to co-sponsor a session, where we trained all of our people managers around the world and how to have a well-being conversation with your employees and it included some real basic tools that we use every day, like listening probing questions, thinking about, empathy, bringing empathy and space to your employee. but also, how to build trust it comes from building, you know, you using this beautiful trust formula that the out there in the coaching world

and, you know, allowing managers to practice.

These conversations are actually not that difficult because when we’re being human, you know, and we’re thinking about people and a human way, you know, as a fellow human being. Then we’re able to, you know, create good practices where people can feel safe and have those conversations and ultimately, hopefully get the help that they need.

 

Rodrigo:

So, this is such a huge topic, which is a lot of times people don’t open up about their mental health issues at work. This is sometimes because of stigma, or fear of negative consequences and this is huge. So, people don’t cannot open up about this. How do we debunked these myths in order to so that people can openly share about their mental health issues? And how can managers support them?

 

Nathan:

Yeah, I think as I was saying before, I might be repeating myself as debunking. The myths is really about bringing awareness and educating leaders and managers about truths and facts, you know. And I think I said before, you know, the statistics are alarming. When we look at all of the mental health issues in the workspace, I think the World Health Organization said it’s about one trillion US dollars that affects the global economy from Lost productivity. So, when we start with that kind of metric and you’re talking to leaders and we’re talking to managers and we’re talking to the c-suite, you know, you want competitive advantage in your business or do you want to lose it?

Then we need to be thinking about how do we educate our leaders and our managers around, you know, creating really great spaces. Does that thrive spaces where people can be super productive, be resilient, and also be themselves so that they bring their best ideas and Innovation and thinking and productivity to the workplace, right? But as I said before, you know, we all have mental health and we’re all going to ride up and down life’s challenges because that’s life. And as the intersectionality of adversities, you know, cross sacked in in various ways and shapes as they do. In our day-to-day life, as I was getting ready today and I cut myself shaving, you know what am I going to do? You know, we have these moments where we just need to move on and that’s where I think teaching resilience helping leaders and all people get clear on who they are. Having values-based conversations creating values-based workspaces that are authentic and psychologically safe for people. Then enable our leaders to kind of get a better view of how productivity can look in the future. I think, also, what’s happening today, A lot of times leaders, don’t know the size of the problem in their company.

 

Rodrigo:

Yeah. And you in our previous conversation you mentioned one of your stories in Hong Kong. Yeah. Where you organize the session? Yeah. And suddenly that there were more people Interested about that top. Then new thoughts. Yeah. Can you tell us about that story? And what were the insights that you got from there?

 

Nathan:

What came from that space? Where I was in that suffering? As I mentioned in 2019 and I recognized I certainly can’t be the only one suffering alone. What can I do about that? And so, I organized an opportunity for us to learn a little bit more about well-being. And there was a gentleman from one of our Partnerships that that also was Championing, you know, mental health talks and things like this. And so, we collaborate and we created a space where we were able to watch a film, about depression screen, the film and then have a talk back and I thought, I don’t know if anyone’s going to show up at this thing. I have really no idea, but I know that I need it. I’m going to show up and lo and behold, I think seven people showed up but seven people showed up and that was the signal for me to say, actually there’s something here and in that year of contacts for myself, okay, fine. But seven, people showing up means that the context of what was happening in the workplace, or around the workplace or in life. Also meant that other people needed that.

And as a result of that, you know, I was able to start to Champion bringing in some mental health providers. In fact, another great thing that we consider doing was to look at how do we get people to start talking so that they can deal with the stress? Because we didn’t want people to burn out. I was burned out and it took me to hit that Rock Bottom to realize it. I didn’t want people to go there. So, I brought in, I think two days’ worth of psychologists and created a very Anonymous way to sign up for people who wanted to maybe explore having a therapy session with a professional therapist. Yes. And I put the sign ups up thinking. Hmm. No one’s going to sign up. But then I thought seven people showed up to the, to the film screening and the mental health talk. Let’s see. And wouldn’t you know that every session was filled? Every session that we offered for signup, 1 to 1 counselling and therapy,

got filled meant that over the course of two days. You know, 10 to 15, people had therapy sessions in our workplace and this is a go radical companies that want to create well-being culture should be thinking about, how do they create these spaces where actually it is 81 percent of people are expecting that, you know, in the workplace and the workplace to be responsible for it. Then then be the radical employer. That takes a chance and offers that on hand. Because if you have it in your medical Benefit Plan, great. But it still requires, you know, your employees to take advantage of that, but if you put it in the space and environmentally influence people around, you know, that this is a good thing.

And again, we’re changing the stigma and changing that narrative to an investment in your mental wealth. Then you get a better reaction and you get a better result because people are going to say, wow, this company really does care. And actually, I’m working through my crap and I’m getting through life’s adversities and I’m going to be all right.

Interesting. I never expected that we would have that kind of turnout and that’s what really got the ball rolling for me. And Bang. So, imagine in so many companies. The issue is so much bigger than people think.

 

Rodrigo:

And I think what you did is a, it’s an incredible way of just helping people confidentially. Yeah. And so, I really, really love that. So now, if we go like, imagine for leaders in their company, what are the steps that they can take in order to create a strategy for well-being?

 

Nathan:

I think we start at the top, you start with the c-suite, you start with the CEO, you start with the president and the leaders of the business. When we start there, then we’re signalling that this is important, this is apriority. And when we start there and we start to introduce the ecosphere of practices, you know, in my current company at the body shop, we practice mind, body and soul, okay, this language exists, but when you have clear pillars, when you create, an Eco sphere and practice of culture and it comes from the top, and the top is saying, we doing this. And the top is also You know, in an in an appropriate way, modelling and, or sharing, and being vulnerable in those spaces, you know, they’re not trained psychologist either, okay? But they can certainly role model and create space for wellbeing or mindfulness or present moments for employees, so that we’re actually demonstrating that duty of care and creating culture, I say, start there.

And when you start there, as I mentioned, when we did some of our training, Meaning I had every executive across the c-suite, then co-sponsor one of those trainings that we did for how to have the well-being conversation. But guess what that’s a great opportunity for those leaders to build relationship with people and people managers outside of their department outside their function of expertise and demonstrate their own vulnerability and create a deeper connection with people but also a deeper credibility of saying actually I find this important too. We need to do this together, the sense of togetherness. When we talk about well-being in the workplace can be a real rally cry for empowering, you know, a workplace to be Progressive and to actually then drive better results when happy people are, you know, doing work, you’re going to have bigger and better results. But if unhappy people are selling your product or, you know, struggling with whatever they are in the mental space or at work. Stan. They’re not going to have that same kind of productivity. I think you start from the top. You create an Eco sphere of language, you create tools, simple tools that people can remember and put it out there so and demonstrate it and role model it and make it happen.

I’ll give you a good example. On one of our global town halls of this must have been in 2021, maybe 2020 during the pandemic care. I insisted and I had the ear of our CEO. I said I insist, we need to have a mindful moment on the call. People are so scattered. They’re isolated, they’re not in the office.

Humans, love to connect. We need to do something just to reground everyone. And I was able to do a mindful moment. Semi meditative, 700 of our employees on a conference call and took a timeout, just to reground people, and our leader said, let’s do it. And that signalled on a global town hall where we’re saying we’re talking about business; we’re talking about these other things that are important.

We’re talking about how are we going to, you know, be resilient to the adversities that we’re facing through the pandemic that actually we need to just stop for a minute and take a breath, I say often and in my coaching sessions with leaders, and managers is pause and consider. If we’re not pausing and considering for a moment in that moment of reflection, then we’re moving too fast. You know, we can create shift and I think you’d a couple series on, you know, shift happens. Just like shit happens and shift happens to. But what we have to do is create the space for our brains to actually move from the lower brain to the upper brain and process. When we do that, then we’re creating a space for people to kind of come back and reground. It clear again and it’s also about simple things. You know encouraging people to hydrate get regular. We did a variety of well-being, treatments and sessions and webinars on these topics. But when we start to create that and its signal from the top, and it’s practiced in a very huge way across the organization in that way. And at that time, it makes a difference and that’s what leaders need to be thinking about. Yeah, and I love and I think a lot of times it’s not just about thinking about I’m going to focus on well-being, so I’m going to give to someone in my team too. To head that project. I agree with you. It needs to Body it by the top leaders, you know, it needs to be a part of their, of their way of acting and being and that’s how it’s going to report quick late to the, to the rest of the of the company people were blown away now after that too. After that town hall. I’m sure like we have never seen anything like that. Yeah, well, you know, wow, yeah. We’re what are we saying here? We actually are living this value of taking care of people. We have a value called the joyful Collective.

 

Rodrigo:

That was powerful. Yeah. So maybe you can give an example of a story from one of your companies or that you heard that company that really got it right in terms of well-being.

 

Nathan:

I think we get it right. I think about that question. I think that there’s no one-size-fits-all to the well-being solution. Okay. And I really think that companies need to be creative in what’s appropriate for their culture and what’s appropriate for their people and for their business. And, you know, there’s startups that are going to have different element of well-being that they need to incorporate to well-oiled Machinery. Massive Fortune, 500 companies that are going to be able to have resource and money and investment in well-being. So, there’s no one Size fits. All what I think is important is that leaders are thinking about well, being as this birthplace as equal and is important to diversity inclusion and belonging and Equity. They all go together when we think about that Paradigm, and I think that that’s a filter, a really great filter. What if we started to remake Andre shift our companies to have, you know, instead of HR, you know, Equity leaders who through that lens of equity, then think about Out, diversity and inclusion in belonging and well-being, we’d have different workplaces in that space.

So, is there a company that does it really great? There are a lot of companies doing really, really important things, and moving, and championing, their Competitive Edge to create well-being in the workplace is. And then there are some that are very alarming that aren’t doing anything. They haven’t thought about it yet. So, you know, I think, as I go to these well-being conferences and I’m listening, you know, there are some companies that do a great job at creating mental health first aiders, or creating ambassador’s around the business, you know, to Champion the well-being Mission and or to destigmatize mental health. So that there’s conversation around there, even in my business, we had, you know, ambassadors around the world that we created. We created think tanks. We had well-being Ambassador think tank for quite a number of seasons to just make sure that we’re all talking about it and that we’re thinking about what can we do to get. To the far reaches of our business. Retail businesses are spread out all over the world, with lots of individual, satellite stores and places that are remote.

You know, it’s easy to talk to people in the office or at the, at the warehouse and the distribution centre. But how do you make sure that you’re getting down to store managers or how do you get into the sales management team that the, you know, are often Alaska or somewhere in South America. It’s about creating the solutions that work and that are It for, for your business. And, and again, not a one size, fits all, but try some stuff out. Like I said, be radical see what works if it works, then do that. If it’s not working, try something else, you know, I think it’s really important to think about how you innovate in this space and send some people to. Some conferences name, You Know, Chief well-being officer, put someone in charge of thinking about this. So that it becomes a muscle that you develop and grow.

 

Rodrigo:

What is the smallest thing that little either can do in order to start the journey on Well-being?

 

Nathan:

The smallest thing that a leader or manager can do is listen and hold that space for their employee. I mean, in my book, I talk about self-advocacy, you know, I talk about the trifecta of self-love. Okay? The trifecta of self-love is self-care self-compassion and self. Because see employees and people need to self-advocate for themselves, right. You need to raise your hand and say, hey boss. Hey leader or hey supervisor or hey co-worker. I need this. Yeah. But we need leaders and managers to do is to also Advocate space and time and energy for that for that dialogue. So, I think it starts as simple as that.

 

Rodrigo:

Wow. So much value in what you said and but I also know. Know that you’ve been putting a lot of effort into writing a book and you came up with a framework, can you share with us that framework and how it helps with helping at work?

 

Nathan:

Yeah, you’re Real Life is the title of the book. We’ve talked a little bit about the components. The book itself is really about how to take authenticity and resilience and in combination, make that a magic power to lean into life’s adverse moments. Challenges and as a result and by-product of leaning in and getting through, those challenges bouncing Beyond to live a life full of well-being. Enjoy reality is a big part of the model. Resilient people know how to face in and lean into reality and move through the reality curve. They know how to channel energy in the right way and they are thinking about their well-being energy batteries. We’ve got four, beautiful well-being, batteries. If we don’t think about those, it would be really hard to get through the crap that we have to deal with in life and really authenticity is about knowing who you are and showing up from your inside out. And then using the outside parts of the world to reflect and become even stronger through purpose. We talked about purpose earlier and love is the last anchor of the real model. And it’s love, really is about self-forgiveness. It’s about creating Community. It’s about language and communication and saying hard things and also its Humour and having a little bit of fun, you know, resilient people and authentic. People generally, enjoy, you know, having a little bit of a laugh. So, I think, when we put this combination of tools together, it really enables people to live through the hard parts of life. Because as I said, change is constant and I thought, how do I want to help people get through the hard parts of life? This is a tool that enables that.

 

Rodrigo:

Well, that’s very interesting, good. So, we can be to the ends and I have one last question. And so, people ask you a lot of questions but what is one question that people don’t ask you often and you would love to answer?

 

Nathan:

I think people like why did you write a book? I wrote it. I wrote the book, not only as a personal challenge for myself but really, as a way to build a tool set for people and give that gift. I hate seeing people suffer in life and having been at that place where I was suffering and been at. Moments in my career or in my life, you know what were the, what were those tools that help me? I wanted to put a tool together. That was not only effective for me and people that I’ve worked with across many 25 years of HR and coaching clients that was backed with the science to say this stuff works. And when you get real and when you follow some of these tools and ideas and suggestions you can have a beautiful life and well-being enjoy and that’s what I want from people. My mission is to bring authenticity and resilience to others. Help them build the skills. So, they can have a beautiful life. That’s what the book is for. That’s what I want for the book, and that’s what I want for everyone.

 

Rodrigo:

That’s powerful. Good. Alright, so we coming to the end. Yeah. I mean it’s been an absolute pleasure to talk with you. I mean, thank you so much for sharing. I mean your personal story, which can Inspire more, but also for being an activist in such an important topic, which is well-being, which I think there’s a long journey. So, I’m happy that I’m amplifying your voice and I wish you all the best. Thank you for it.

 

Nathan:

Yeah, thank you very much, really wonderful.