Imagine you’re a manager in a meeting where the SVP shares bad news: The company is laying off 8,000 employees over the next two months. Your team will be affected. That’s all they can tell you. They’ll be back with an update in a few weeks.
The room shifts. People tense up, fidget, ask hostile questions, tear up, go quiet. Everything feels volatile. You know there are a lot of difficult conversations ahead, and morale will suck.
But you’re okay.
You notice your breath is tight and your stomach is jumpy, and you recognize that as stress—which makes sense here. Your brain feels jumpy and in a swirl, too—which you recognize as anxiety, your old friend. You know your anxiety gets triggered around financial uncertainty; it’s an old story you’ve been working with. You know you tend to catastrophize when you feel uncertain and worried, but you know your anxiety is just an emotion that will come and go, and is not the truth.
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So you take a breath. When your brain jumps to the scary “what ifs,” you bring it back to the present, even though the present is uncomfortable. After all, you can’t stop the layoffs. You can take care of yourself and your team, and help them navigate the next few weeks. Right now, that’s what you have agency over.
That’s mentally healthy leadership in practice.
The World Health Organization defines mental health as “a state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realize their abilities, learn and work, and contribute to their community. It has intrinsic and instrumental value and is a basic human right.” We often conflate mental health with mental illness. They are different! But we can feel anxious, sad, fearful, and upset without experiencing poor mental health; tough emotions are just a part of life.
A scary moment
It’s a scary moment to be a leader with constant uncertainty, relentless change. Even in good times, we bring our big feelings to work because we’re human, and work gives us plenty to feel. The difference between leaders who thrive during change and those who burn out isn’t that the thrivers feel less; it’s that they understand what they’re feeling, and they know what to do with it.
This is the premise behind what I call mentally healthy leadership: a framework for leading with greater clarity, resilience, and humanity—starting from the inside out. Frankly, I think of it as a tool kit for surviving work right now. Mentally healthy leadership draws on organizational psychology, neuroscience, and mindfulness—not as abstractions, but as practical tools for the moments that actually test you. I’ll be writing this column regularly for Fast Company because I want to share everything I’ve learned with you.
4 pillars
Over this series, we’ll dig into four pillars:
- Self-understanding: how your personal history, your personality, and your neurotype shape your approach to work and leadership.
- Emotional flexibility: the ability to notice, name, and suppress or express emotions according to the demands of changing situations.
- Stress literacy: managing the impact of both good and bad stress on you and your team.
- Mindfulness: the ability to focus on the present moment and make clear decisions.
Each one builds on the last. You’ll learn from the stories of leaders who don’t suppress what they feel, but use it effectively and strategically.
In every column, I want to end with a practical takeaway that will help you practice and evolve your own mentally healthy leadership.
Say you’re facing some uncertain news, and it’s making you very anxious. You’re in the middle of your workday, though you can feel the racing heart, sweaty palms, adrenaline rush, and racing thoughts of anxiety.
Pause what you’re doing. And tell yourself: I’m anxious. I’m really feeling anxious. This is hard. And take a breath. Give yourself a moment to settle.
We can get anxious about feeling anxious, and that makes things worse. Try not to blame yourself for feeling anxious or worrying about your anxiety. You’re anxious. It’s okay.
Plant your feet on the floor. Notice where your body is tense. Breathe into it, and feel the gravity flowing from your head and into your feet on the floor.
Look around and notice: What can I hear? What can I see?
Are there people around me? Can I hear them?
The goal is to “contact the present moment,” as Dr. Russ Harris, one of the world’s foremost practitioners and trainers of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), says.
Do this for as long as you need to come back into your body, into the moment. Breathe.
And then ask yourself: What do I need to do right now? What is the task at hand?
Define a concrete task—for example, the next hour of work you need to do, or a clear output like writing three pages of a report or a section or a presentation or a forecast. Use your adrenaline to think through the task, anticipating challenges and outcomes. Put that deep brain to use! For example, if an issue around money makes you anxious and you’re diving into a financial projection, ask yourself what set of figures you can run through that might quell your anxiety.
As you work, try to stay in the moment. Stay focused on the task. If your brain goes into overdrive and starts thinking 10 steps ahead, tell yourself to come back into the moment and stay focused on what your immediate task is. As your task absorbs you, your anxiety will lessen.
Finish when you’ve done what you set out to do, and give yourself a reward. You’ve earned it.
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