Type: Insight

Regulatory burden becomes costly when judgement becomes cloudy

Imagine this: a regional leader remarks, half-jokingly, that it now takes three conversations and two committees to make what used to be one sensible decision. 

Recognise that feeling? 

You wouldn’t be alone. Most senior people in financial services will have experience of it. Arguably, it’s the impact of more regulation which comes at the obvious cost of  an increase in time and effort. 

However, there is a less obvious cost too and that’s what more regulation does to judgement.

As regulatory demands grow, firms often respond by adding layers. More reviews, more approvals, more handoffs, more caution in language, more people wanting reassurance before anything moves. Some of that is necessary. But if leaders are not careful, the organisation slowly becomes harder to steer.

This is where the issue shifts from compliance into leadership.

Because the problem is not regulation itself. Strong firms take it seriously – and they absolutely should. But issues arise when nobody redesigns decision-making around the burden. Authority becomes less clear. People escalate too quickly. Meetings become more about safety than substance. Senior leaders then complain that the organisation has slowed down, when the real issue is that too many decisions are now travelling through a system that no longer knows what belongs where.

That creates a second-order problem. People become more defensive and business leaders start to feel constrained. Control functions also start to feel exposed, while senior teams spend more time navigating the machinery than improving the quality of the underlying choices.

Good leadership here is not about swagger or pretending the burden is lighter than it is. Instead, it is about clarity. If the organisation knows what is non-negotiable, where authority sits and how decisions should move, then regulation becomes something to manage well rather than something that quietly governs the mood of the whole business.

Ultimately, the real danger is not burden alone but the fog that burden can create. Once judgement becomes cloudy, pace drops, accountability weakens and frustration rises.

Well-led firms do not remove the pressure. They stop it from taking over the system.

Pricing pressure is first a decision-making test

A leadership team reviews another quarter of respectable results, yet nobody feels relaxed. Despite flows remaining acceptable, performance being mixed (though not alarming) and client relationships holding, the pressure remains there. Fees keep tightening, costs keep rising and every investment in capability now has to fight harder for approval.

That is the point at which pricing pressure stops being just a commercial issue and becomes a leadership one.

In many firms, the first response is predictable: reduce spend, slow hiring, simplify where possible, ask more questions of every budget line. Some of that will be right. But the deeper test is whether the senior team can still make clean decisions when the room is tight.

This is where weaker organisations become busier, but less clear. They make more decisions, though there is less hierarchy between them. Important choices sit alongside inherited commitments, internal politics and historical habits. The result? It’s not usually collapse…it’s drift. So while the firm looks active, it is actually slowly becoming less sharp.

The harder (and more useful) questions are more strategic. What are we truly trying to protect? Where do we still have genuine advantage? Which costs are helping us stay competitive, and which are simply part of the furniture? Where are we underinvesting because the short-term numbers are too loud? And where are we protecting activities that no longer justify themselves?

Those are not finance questions in the narrow sense. They are judgement questions.

Pricing pressure forces leaders to face trade-offs they may have delayed in easier periods. What matters most? What can be simplified? What needs defending even if it hurts in the short term? Strong teams do not just cut. They choose. They become more explicit about where the business intends to win and what it must stop doing.

There is also a communication challenge here. People can usually live with difficult choices better than vague ones. What unsettles organisations is not only pressure, but ambiguity. If leaders are clear about what they are protecting, what they are changing and why, the business has a far better chance of staying coherent.

In the end, fee pressure reveals whether a leadership team can still think properly when comfort disappears. That is often the real test.

Is your business strategy fit for the future?

In this rapidly changing world, for any business to thrive, a forward-looking and dynamic strategy is essential. Asset managers are not immune from this reality. Indeed, the pressures on the financial industry are moving at such a pace that a reluctance to strategise and evolve could mean losing ground to more nimble competitors.

In his seminal work, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There How Successful People Become Even More Successful, the US-based coach Marshall Goldsmith examines the notion that over the course of a career, or a business, reinvention is paramount, because what’s asked of you changes. This applies equally to asset managers: business models which may have reaped profits over the past 30 years might not be quite such a winning strategy now.

Many traditional business models were built for comfort, not speed. While profits remained high, why worry about what was around the corner? But the fates of Kodak and Blockbuster are a salutary reminder of what can happen when we fail to respond to the shifting technological trends and customer preferences. As a result, those business behemoths disappeared from consumer consciousness in a bafflingly short amount of time. Clearly their strategy was lacking.

Appetite for apps

At Goldcrest Partners, we believe that there are three main issues for asset managers. In a commercial sense, there’s a permanent change to how much you can charge for your services and what costs you bear which results in shrinking margins. From the customer perspective, a new generation of client is increasingly more intentional, holistic and altruistic about what they want to invest in, with environmental, sustainable and ethical concerns foremost. And there’s the digital revolution, which has transformed how people want to buy and engage, using high-quality technical solutions which give them play-by-play information at their fingertips via sophisticated apps and data platforms.

Put like that, the situation seems daunting, but with guidance this can be an exhilarating time for an executive team to embrace a period of transformation. This is where effective strategic advisory can help facilitate change from within.

End-to-end solution

From initial enquiry to implementation, Goldcrest Partners works with you to help you identify your strategy, and then execute it. For a strategy to succeed – and let’s be transparent, many don’t – it needs to be focused on the right goal, easy to articulate and simple to understand. The inevitable obstacles need to be predicted and the motivation to overcome them mustered.

Through a tailored programme, we work side-by-side with your key decision makers, offering honest and incisive counsel as your team considers the way forward. Thanks to our many years of experience in financial services, we understand your context and the issues your business faces which we combine with coaching and facilitation expertise to enable you to arrive at good outcomes.

Something has to give

There’s a reason we find strategy difficult – it is! But with candour and clarity comes the recognition that something has to give. Our goal is to enable you to design and deliver a strategy which can be distilled and communicated to the organisation in a way that encourages them to unite behind it.

Propelled by a renewed sense of purpose and clear vision, the strategy can then translate into results, an ability to adapt to changing market conditions, and the business can take that crucial step into a bright future.

Why balance is the key to successful leadership

Look for a model of leadership and you’ll find dozens, if not hundreds, of books or articles extolling a single approach as the key to success.

It might be courageous leadership or empathetic leadership. It might be how to be a more creative leader or a more engaging one.

There are books about how the art of leadership is all about empowering people, for example, or providing a supportive environment.

Unfortunately, leadership is not so simple. If it was all about empowering your people and delegating responsibility, then why does command and control exist?  If leadership was all about support, then how would we hold people accountable and set standards?

Sometimes, we do need to take charge and tell people what to do. Sometimes healthy challenge has a place.

At its core how we behave changes depending on context. How we behave at a birthday party is very different to how we behave in a business meeting. How we behave towards someone who is upset is different to someone who is overconfident and taking risks. We haven’t changed, but the context has, and we modify our behaviour accordingly.

Leadership is about matching behaviour to context

It’s the same with leadership. Leadership is all about behaviour, and behaviour is shaped by context. Good leadership is when we as a leader understand the context and behave to get the best out of our people in that situation.

Take the example of empowering people, although most of the time leaders benefit from empowering their people, there are certain situations where the circumstance dictates that a decisive and directive approach is required.

The art of balanced leadership is to find the most appropriate leadership response in the circumstance.

The spectrums of balanced leadership

Our model of balanced leadership has 6 spectrums of behaviour which we believe are key to fitting the leadership style to the situation. We explore each of them in a series of articles to understand the range of behaviour and how to adapt and adjust considering the context.

For most leaders, this means developing a toolbox of leadership behaviours to choose from, so you have the right tool available at the right time. It also means starting to be aware of your natural preferences, so you’ll know which behaviours might be second nature (and perhaps overplayed) and which may need practise.

Achieving balance is a process, not an end state

The truth about balance is that we are always working to find it. It is a process, not an end state. Once we find balance, the context changes and we need to rebalance again.

We intuitively know how do this. We learned to walk, ride a bike, dance and perhaps something more adventurous like skateboarding, surfing, skiing. All of these activities require us to find the balance point and continually readjust.

The task for business leaders is therefore to take this pre-existing skill, this implicit knowing and apply it in a professional landscape.

We believe that, if you seek balance as a leader, you will benefit, as will your team and your organisation.

Why you need a thinking partner

Whether you’re new to the C-suite or established in your role, there will be times when you will benefit from a trusted partner to develop ideas with, in a collaborative exchange.

For those who have recently made that exciting next step on their career trajectory, there might be a need to level up in terms of leadership contribution. For example, you could be navigating new stakeholder relationships, while trying to establish your credentials leading teams who, until recently, were your peers.

More experienced leaders will face crossroads when they come up against particularly challenging situations and talking things through and getting a second opinion from a trusted confidante helps provide clarity regarding their strategic choices.

In both cases, a supportive and candid conversation with an experienced partner who has a clear understanding of the financial services industry allows the leader to step back from the day-to-day and do some deep thinking. This results in more incisive and effective decision-making, greater personal assurance and the potential to transform business performance.

Confidence and clarity

Conversations of this sort can help clarify what is going on for your business, for your team and (most importantly) for you and support you work towards finding more confidence in a well-thought course of action.

Of course, this type of relationship has existed in some form for millennia. The word mentor comes (quite literally) from Greek mythology when Odysseus appointed an old friend, Mentor, to watch over his son Telemachus. Some would consider Queen Elizabeth II to be the ultimate mentor as she held weekly meetings with every UK prime minister throughout her monarchy, offering an experienced ear, context and (very occasionally) a comment.

In a similar vein but with some obvious distinctions, the leadership advisory relationship performs the same function for modern-day senior executives at the helm of their enterprises. A trusted sounding board offering a fresh perspective and informed insights can help solve complicated problems. In some ways, there are similarities with the sporting arena where elite performers have a number of specialist coaches focusing on different aspects of their endeavours to achieve peak performance when it matters.

Regular discussion with an expert can help develop self-awareness. We become able to more clearly identify our strengths and also the areas we can improve upon. The learning edge will differ between every leader but the next steps remain the same – now we know where there is room to grow, what will we do about it?

A worthwhile investment

The sporting similarities only stretch so far though. In business, we have to learn and perform simultaneously. We don’t have an off-season to prepare for the what is to come. So just the act of taking the time out within a tailored and sometimes robust conversational framework can help provide the breathing space that helps see old problems with new eyes. Taking this time to invest in your leadership skillset and decision making reaps rewards for the whole business now and into the future.

One client says partnering with a Goldcrest Partners leadership advisor “motivates me to implement impactful business outcomes. They ask provocative questions that guide me towards solutions that balance the needs of my business with those of my team.”

The client had confidence that our advisor “has a deep understanding of the obstacles faced by a leader and is able to share their past relevant experiences as they have worked in the same industry as me. 

“They genuinely care about my success and the success of my team.”

While sharing your professional hopes and fears may seem daunting at first, there’s really nothing to lose and much to gain. Maybe now is the moment to take that next step.

How to have a successful career transition

Transitions happen throughout our working life, whether it’s a promotion, moving to a new city or leaving a job. In this insight piece we explore some common experiences and things to think about when leaving a job.

Who’s calling the shots

A key factor in our experience of a transition is whether we’re in control. Choosing to leave an employer for something new can be exciting, empowering and represent progress towards a desired destination. It is something that we are doing.

In comparison, being made redundant is something that has been done to us. It often comes as a shock and can be scary, disempowering and be a real setback. These experiences can be difficult to process but navigating the unfamiliar territory of a transition is essential to achieve good outcomes.

The first step is to quickly restore the control that has been diminished.

This is why transition coaching is so highly valued. Choosing to work with someone who is an expert in this specialist area brings certainty where there is confusion, connection at a time when there has been disconnection and confidence when there might be self-doubt.

Most importantly, in that action you are taking back control.

Time to reflect

There are some strong practical motives to get straight back to work. As a rule of thumb you’ve got more chance of getting back in if you act quickly. So there’s a bit of a sprint when the headhunters are interested and your knowledge is most relevant.

There is also an impetus to move quickly away from the sense of grief. Many people identify with their role and when that role doesn’t exist anymore, it can present quite an existential crisis. So there can be a psychological and emotional rush to get back as well.

Despite the urgency, making some time to look back and reflect can be hugely valuable. Exploring how things ended, re-evaluating your time in the role and what led you to it in the first place is an important way to learn, clear some difficult emotions and come to peace with the way things played out.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s seminal five-stage model of grieving describes how we transition from denial to bargaining. When this doesn’t work we get angry, that doesn’t worth either so we get depressed before finally finding acceptance.

Understanding this serves as a good roadmap for career change and can also be helpful in personal transitions e.g. divorce, bereavement, empty nesting, retirement.

Taking stock

There are often a few core things to figure out when in transition:

  • Core identity: who are you beyond the various roles you perform? In life we have lots of concurrent roles and what we do for work can be central to our identity, self-esteem and self-confidence. Paradoxically we tend to feel happier and do a better job if our sense of self is independent and not conditional on what we do for a living. Getting clear on this can be life changing.
  • Core skills: what are the things you are good at that have a use in different environments. Developing a comprehensive sense of your transferable skills is great for confidence and also opens up new horizons where what you bring will have value.
  • Core needs: in light of the above what are your options? How do you balance your financial needs/ambitions with your wellbeing, your interests with what someone will pay you to do, the urgency to get back in with a moment to slow down and smell the roses.

Setting new goals and taking next steps

David Kessler, who co-wrote a more recent update with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief through the Five Stages of Loss, expanded the process with a sixth stage – finding meaning in the experience – which is well articulated in his HBR article ‘That discomfort you’re feeling is grief‘ published during the pandemic.

The meaning we make of the event is what surfaces when we make time to reflect and take stock and fuels our new goals and next steps.

Your goal might be as simple as looking for a similar job for similar money as quickly as possible. Conversely, you may wish to make a change. You may be at a stage of career where you wish to go plural with some NED/Advisory positions coupled with some consulting work.

Whatever the goal, getting really clear on what you would like to accomplish and how best to go about it is critical to success. Working with an expert transition coach can help you set these goals, plan how to execute them and support you as you progress.

It is often said that getting a new job is a full-time job in its own right. It is certainly a challenging but rewarding process that can pay-off in your next role, your self-confidence and the other transitions that life presents.

The power of networks

We all know people in organisations who just seem to be really well plugged in and good at making things happen. So what is it about them?

Working at an asset management firm some years ago, I met Fiona, an investment director on a fund desk.

It wasn’t her job to connect with people or help them out but she enjoyed it and was good at it. She became known as a person who could help you to move things along.

What is a network node?

Fiona was a network node. An unglamorous term for someone so brilliant and so generous with her time. A network node is, in this case (because there may be other definitions in the world of computer science), an individual who holds many relationships and through whom informal influence and communication can flow.

All organisations have people like this and sadly, particularly in financial services, the value that they bring is not always fully appreciated. Often it is not until they leave an organisation that people notice that it is harder to get things done.

When you lose network nodes from an organisation, you’re not only losing the technical competence they bring, you’re also losing all that connectivity.

Companies which fail to recognise the value and keep hold of their network nodes become less effective. In times when so many of us are hybrid working, these people are more important than ever. Informal engagement becomes critical to building the kinds of relationships that make this mode of working viable for organisations, productive for teams and personally satisfying for individuals.

Match what you know with who you know

All companies benefit from informal human networks. When times are good and growth is fast the networks stretch beyond the formal organisational design until it catches up.

When times are tough and an organisation is contracting, efficient adjustment for lost network nodes is vital to retain internal connectivity and corporate knowledge and invaluable to reach outside of the organisation to find new perspectives to help solve the problems.

On a personal level a network has many benefits to offer. More than half of people still get jobs through network connections. A good network enables you to access expertise and information that you likely otherwise would not have. It can give you a degree of influence, perhaps a profile or reputation in your industry that could benefit your future career.

At Goldcrest Partners we do not believe it is necessarily about attending networking events, which can (let’s be honest) feel a little self-conscious and superficial. Rather maintaining a healthy network is an evergreen social activity for the mutual benefit of all parties. Because, after all, a productive and long-lasting network connection is always a two-way street.

7 steps to leading a high-performing team

To the casual observer, a high-performing team can look almost effortless, with a sense of collaboration and cohesion, ease and authenticity that just clicks. Every person understands their role, the goal and is fully engaged in the ongoing success of the business.

But achieving this status doesn’t happen by happy accident, if anything it takes as much work as the “day job”.

So what if we applied the same strategy, research and analysis to optimising the operation of our teams as we do to the service of our clients? How would that look?

Goldcrest Partners co-founder Tim McEwan draws on his experiences of teamwork during his career in the British Army to highlight 7 conditions that he believes are essential to success and take away the guesswork.

The model offers a systemic framework to create the conditions that pull together individual brilliance into collective power, allowing each team to define for itself what high performance looks like for them and the journey to get there. As a process, it’s intensive but the results are compelling.

This will be a series of 7 insight pieces, starting with Trust which you can read below.

Trust

We perform well perform because we trust each other. We trust each other’s alignment to our shared goal. We trust each other’s commitment to work hard. We trust each other’s skill and ability. We trust each other to look out for each other. We trust each other to hold each other to account.

Trust is essential to any high-performing team, and many of the most serious challenges to effective team functioning derive from its absence. Patrick Lencioni’s seminal work The Five Dysfunctions of a Team places trust at the foundation of a functional team for good reason.

By its very nature trust is something to be granted rather than made. We cannot insist someone trusts us, but we can inspire the conditions under which they may choose to have faith in our trustworthiness. The same is true within teams. Trust within a new team needs to built. It can only be based on exchanges completed. Over time it evolves and develops, is galvanised by shared experiences, wins and losses. Teams are rarely static and the high-performing team is critically aware of the varying trust capital within the group as members change, relational bonds tear and repair, and reputations are built.

Effectiveness of action is critical to high performance and trust is crucial to enable this. When a high-trust environment exists within a team, the division of labour can be clearer because there is confidence in the reliability of others to perform their roles. When we trust fellow team members’ word and deed, it allows us to focus on our own parcel of activity without double guessing and inefficiency.

Over time, most of us have developed the critical capacity to evaluate the triggers, cues and data to help us decide whether to trust or not trust. This becomes stretched when we encounter novel situations and a high-performing team is able to calibrate the context much more quickly and accurately than an individual.

In its essence, trust exists when we can reliably predict the behaviour of something or someone (including ourselves). Recognising the value of trust and how to cultivate it to create a high-performing team is a vital first step in achieving team goals.

How to be at your best

Does the very thought of working on your performance mindset leave you with a knot in your stomach? Perhaps it conjures up images of learning survival techniques on an outward-bound expedition or an even earlier alarm in the morning to make time for a fitness regime.

While these endeavours have merit, in the everyday environment it’s not about climbing Mount Everest (although kudos if that’s something you’ve achieved!). It’s about being in good enough shape to navigate the specific challenges your work and life present.

“Mindset” is defined as the attitudes that determine how you interpret and respond to situations. Getting the right mindset to achieve your goals is the first step in identifying what is required to achieve peak performance in your chosen field.

This is when the highly trained experts at Goldcrest Partners can help. We take a holistic approach to the pillars of performance – cognitive, physical, emotional, physiological – and focus on what is important for you to perform better more of the time. It’s a complex, inter-related dynamic, but get it right and all the elements will slot smoothly into place – leaving you better placed to perform (and enjoy) life at work and at home.

Don’t follow the herd

Whether you’re a fund manager or a firefighter, in essence, performance coaching asks, “How do you do what you do better?”

To achieve this, there’s been a tendency for ‘business’ to over-borrow techniques from the worlds of elite sport and the military. This choice is natural as they are environments where performance psychology has been an implicit and explicit part of training for decades and is a highly developed area of competence.

The reality, though, is that the financial workplace is a different environment with a different timeframe and different operating rhythm. Some qualities like discipline and teamwork tend to crossover well, but as the performance criteria and the persistence demanded are different, so is the emphasis of the performance coaching.

At Goldcrest Partners, our observation is that financial services over-index on cognitive performance, physical conditioning is the go-to stress management activity, and the emotional and physiological dimensions are most often overlooked. This makes sense because from an autonomic nervous system perspective, high achievers in financial services tend to be sympathetic dominant with a bias to action over rest.

This approach can work, but it is akin to driving through a muddy field in a 2-wheel drive. The car can be as high-performance as you like, but until its power is distributed evenly, it just spins away and potentially burns out before reaching its destination.

This behavioural tendency can also play out in the way finance professionals demonstrate an over development of technical and tactical skills with more emphasis needed on interpersonal and strategic aspects that are crucial to successful performance of the most senior roles.

Role specific

An accurate diagnosis of the key actions required to execute a role is essential.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Different roles in the finance industry are unique and evolve over time, so the performance criteria are different to begin with and then change.

For example, successful investment decision-making takes cognitive clarity and emotional intelligence, so a focus on those elements may be the primary areas of focus to elevate performance. Effective leaders of organisations benefit from having a clear purpose, being physiologically well-regulated and forming strong relational bonds, so that could be the emphasis for boosting performance in those roles.

What is consistent is the accurate identification of the capabilities needed to perform a role well and focus on these. Other elements that may be the most important in other elite performance environments could just be hygiene factors or not relevant to high performance in the financial services industry.

Individualised and effective

The assessment of the needs of the role is complemented by an internal appraisal of the individual. How you are doing, both personally and professionally.

This ‘diagnostic’ process can include many different inputs and tends to massively raise self-awareness which informs where to build up and balance out our capability to perform the task at hand.

We then work with you to design an easy and enjoyable framework that takes into account your professional and personal values and goals.

But a bit like business strategy, the success rate for a process such as this is low. Plans are often misguided, don’t get started and if they do, they seldom stick and that’s where the value of performance mindset coaching comes into its own.

Support, challenge – and have some fun

It takes practise and time to change habits. A combination of support and challenge in the right balance is a winning formula.

Receiving permission to rest and guidance on how to develop parasympathetic renewal techniques is important support for those who tend to be ‘always on the go’.

Shifting mindset that the process doesn’t need to be a painful 180° switch in lifestyle is invaluable. Often the smallest changes can have the biggest impact. Consider the 1 in 60 rule in which pilots learn that flying just 1 degree off course means after 60 miles they’ll miss their target by an entire mile. Now flip that on its head and apply it to the trajectory of your career, a small change to your direction of travel today can make a big difference to your destination in a few years.

Challenge lives in the coaching relationship and in the things you commit to do. It can take the form of acknowledging fixed mindsets that don’t serve you or your goals anymore. Holding you accountable to your plans and actions. These might be as simple as getting up an hour earlier to incorporate some exercise into your routine – or hitting the snooze button to get an hour’s extra sleep because you don’t really need to be in the gym six days a week. It could be a challenge to develop new interpersonal skills and upgrade your communication to transform the way you engage with your teams, peers and leaders.

The most effective approach to support and challenge is carefully calibrated and, most importantly, fun. Not only can it be enjoyable, but we also believe it has to be, otherwise it is just another chore on an already never ending to-do-list.

Perhaps this is the biggest mindset shift of all. It is easy to sustainably elevate your performance and enhance your long-term wellbeing while having fun!

How to talk about mental health at work

After what we’ve all been and continue to go through, it’s perhaps no surprise that mental health issues have increased dramatically in recent years.

The fact that mental health is more of a high-profile talking point now than ever before is a good thing. It is helping us shed the stigma around the topic and brings it into focus as a challenge we should engage with proactively.

Like the old BT advert said, “It’s good to talk.”

But like all pieces of advice, on closer reflection, the wise answer most often seems to be, “It depends.”

Talking about mental health challenges in a trusted and confidential relationship can be a huge part of getting the support needed to manage and hopefully overcome any issues.

However it is important to understand our personal limits when discussing others’ mental health with them.

This may come across as counter intuitive, so allow me to explain.

Know thyself

Personally, I sometimes feel at a disadvantage when discussing mental health issues. I can sympathise but not empathise, because I am lucky enough to have never really experienced anything I would describe as a mental health challenge.

Despite my career in the military, I have never experienced PTSD. I don’t often feel stressed. I have never battled with depression or anxiety. I don’t often let obstacles get me down. When I do feel stressed, I am able to put things in perspective and bounce back reasonably quickly.

However, by recognising this about myself it helps me understand how I can and cannot help others. I can still be a great resource and support to those who are struggling but am better off leaving the more nuanced conversations to the experts.

Stiff upper lip

The reason I welcome the increased profile of mental health issues is that in Britain our social conventions have not always invited the necessary conversations around the topic.

Put it down to the traditional ‘stiff upper lip’ mentality, perhaps. But, whatever the cultural factors, it seems to me there are a couple of practical reasons why we shy away from these conversations:

• We might not be familiar with expressing and handling emotions out in the open which can impact our confidence to do so.

• We don’t know where the conversation will lead or what to do about it.

Often this type of uncertainty and discomfort can motivate us to withdraw just at the moment we could be helpfully proactive.

3 Skills to boost your confidence around mental health

Step 1: Listen

Learn how to be a good listener.

This won’t be the first time you’ve heard this advice and that is because listening is possibly the most important skill we are not taught at school. Plenty of public speaking but not so much public listening.

I find this really difficult because I am an extrovert and I tend to fill empty space with noise. I have to work hard to get comfortable with the gaps and the pauses.

In that sense, I have to work hard to genuinely listen to others. I have to consciously and actively listen and avoid the temptation to jump in.

Often, when a conversation goes silent, I become uneasy. Yet I am sure that the person I’m talking to actually values the fact that I’m giving them space to think and feel through what they want to say.

I believe that when a colleague or employee finds the courage to raise a mental health issue with us the very least we can do is give them our full attention.

If I can do it, you can.

Step 2: Know what to do when you don’t know what to do

This is true of any problem to some extent, but never more so than in the case of mental health.

When someone comes to you to talk to you about the stress they’re under – or that they’re depressed – what we must be really careful to avoid is trying to fix them.. We could end up doing more harm than good. Pointing them towards the appropriate resource within your organisation is often the best thing to do.

Increasingly organisations have nominated ‘mental health first aiders’ who have some relevant training and are able to offer short term help while connecting the colleague with HR and more sustainable external professional support.

Step 3: It’s an ongoing process

Mental health problems do not go away overnight and need to be managed in the broader work context. Awareness and sensitivity are key to enable recovery and support ongoing wellbeing.

It is also important to manage our own resources and be careful not to take on too much of the emotional burden of colleagues. If we do that’s not good for anyone.

Take the opportunity to develop your listening skills, your emotional intelligence, and your resilience to be more capable and confident about mental health.

Click here to find out more about Mental Health Awareness Week.