Special Episode: Mental Health First Aid for Leaders with Michael Keeler

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Business of Unicorns podcast, where we help gym and studio owners create a business and a life they love. I’m your host, Michael Keeler. Join me and the Business of Unicorns team each week for actionable advice, expert insights, and the inside scoop on what it really takes to level up your gym.

Get ready to unlock your potential and become a real unicorn in the fitness industry

Hello, my friend. If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you’ve probably heard us talk about our friends over at Gym Member Machine before. They are really our go-to solution for paid advertising for all gym owners. In fact, most of our unicorn society members, if they use an agency to run their paid ads, they’re using Gym Member Machine.

And our friends over at GMM are doing something [00:01:00] kinda crazy, probably, and frankly, we’d aver– we advise them to not do this. But what they’re doing is offering 30 days of their services for free for specifically qualified gym owners. So what’s the catch, you might be asking. You’ve gotta have some sort of proof of concept.

So what they mean by that is you have to be a gym owner that’s already doing 10K per month in revenue, or maybe you have to have at least maybe 30 clients to prove that you have a real functioning gym with a real proof of concept, a service people want. And then when you work with them free for 30 days, you’ll cover the ad spend.

They recommend testing about a budget of $15 to $30 per day, and you’ll cover the usage of any software that, that they need to use, basically the phone system they use as their CRM. And s- and then all of their services to help you run paid ads for 30 days are totally free. All their strategy and thinking and the ads they know work for other gyms, they will use for you for 30 days.

So my recommendation here, my friend, is go a- go abuse this crazy offer. Go right now to [00:02:00] gymmembermachine.com, mention this podcast and claim the offer before, honestly, they come to their senses and take it down forever. So go do it now. Hello, fitness business nerds. What’s up? Welcome to another episode of the Business of Unicorns podcast.

And this episode is part of something we’ve never done before. Every week in our Unicorn Society group, we run something called a live training for all of our gym owners and leaders in our community. And those sessions, until now, have really stayed behind closed doors exclusively for our Unicorn Society community.

What we did is we picked actually four of our favorite live trainings, and we’re sharing them with you here in this podcast for the next few episodes. They may not be back to back, but you’ll see this is part of a series. These, in fact, are like real trainings we actually conduct in our Unicorn Society.

They’re– We’re giving you the frameworks, the case studies, and we’re really sharing some of the kind of the messy human questions our members actually ask during these training sessions. You’re basically [00:03:00] getting a seat in the room for some of these training sessions. Whether you’re a gym owner or you’re leading your team or you hope to one day do one of those things, I think you’re gonna get a lot out of these next four special episodes.

And the one we’re starting with today is called Mental Health First Aid for Leaders, which is a training I did for our Unicorn Society members probably just a few months ago from this recording. And this one’s close to my heart. As you all know or might likely know if you listen to this podcast a lot, I’m a doctoral student right now writing my dissertation on the topic of mental health at work.

And so I genuinely nerd out about this stuff. And so in this training, I teach a very simple but very well-researched framework for how to be there when someone on your team is struggling with their mental health without pretending to be their therapist, which we don’t want. And we talk about where your responsibility as a leader starts and stops.

We talk about the ethical kind of do’s and don’ts of helping someone with their mental health at work. And I give you, in this workshop, a step-by-step approach you can [00:04:00] use the very next time someone comes to you in a hard moment when they’re struggling. My promise to you is that you’ll walk away from this episode knowing how to hold compassion and accountability at the same time.

So enjoy this episode. Let’s get into it. Let’s get officially started. I think this topic is critically important, so much so that I think most of you know I’m currently a doctoral student, and I’m writing my doctoral dissertation right now on the topic of mental health at work. And so I have a lot to say about this.

To narrow down even was painful for me ’cause there’s so many things I’m not saying during our time together. So just know if anyone is really interested in this topic beyond today, I’m a nerd about this, literally. And so come find me at any time, and we can talk more about your mental health or how you can support the mental health of people around you, something I care deeply about.

So we’re talking about mental health first aid for managers, and the first thing I want to say is I didn’t come up with the name mental health first aid. There’s an organization, mentalhealthfirstaid.org, you can go to and learn more about this topic. [00:05:00] They do trainings and certifications, and in fact, the framework I’m gonna teach you today is not my own.

It comes from an organization that’s been doing this for years. In fact, mental health first aid was al- first introduced over a decade ago in Australia. Australia’s often been at the leading edge of integrating kind of mental health into workplace concerns and, like, you know, you Google mental health first aid Australia, they’re one of the kind of pioneers in this space who’ve been doing this kind of work for a very long time.

But the whole goal of this workshop is to make sure that you know how to respond with confidence when people are struggling with mental health in your workplace, that you know how to stay in your scope, and that you, you know how to use this framework. It’s an acronym they came up with. The acronym is ALGEE.

I have no idea why they picked ALGEE as their acronym. Doesn’t make any sense for this topic. But it’s a framework they’ve been using for decades. It’s very well-researched and well-respected, so that’s the one I’m teaching you today. So say a little more about our takeaways. So my promises for today is that by the end of this hour, [00:06:00] you will have a better sense of what your scope is as a manager in terms of what are your ethical responsibilities.

What are the parts of people’s mental health journeys that you really do have a responsibility to care for, and what are the parts that you really do not have a responsibility to care for? Where can you draw some clear boundaries or lines in the sand about what is your role and what is not your role?

I know it’s a big challenge for this topic, and I want to help you leave with some clarity on that by the end of this hour. Next is I’m gonna help you use this kind of ALGEE model to respond to mental health or substance use concerns when they appear at work. So when you do recognize that someone is struggling with their mental health, that you have this framework to go on, and ALGEE is, like I said, an acronym I didn’t make up, but is really well-known and taught around the world.

The third thing I wanna promise you is that you’re gonna leave here with some real practice applying these frameworks to real world scenarios. So I’m gonna give you some case studies in a, in a little [00:07:00] bit to actually work on this with, ’cause the most important thing for me when I do these weekly live trainings or any talk at all, is that I don’t just give you just academic knowledge that just sits in your brain and it doesn’t go anywhere else.

I wanna give you this knowledge so you can actually apply it to your interactions starting today. So I’m gonna spend part of this workshop giving you some case studies to work through so you can apply this framework to real scenarios and think about how… what would you do? How… what would you do differently?

So hopefully that starts to get your wheels turning and your juices flowing for how you can use the things I’m teaching you today in your real life starting tomorrow. So some basic ground rules here. So today what we’re doing is practicing skills. At no point today or in any point in this process I’m teaching you, are you doing therapy.

You’re not doing therapy, I’m not doing therapy, we’re not therapists. That’s not what this process is about. This is about practicing your skills. The skills I’m teaching you are not therapeutic skills. You’re not meant to diagnose [00:08:00] or treat or fix anyone’s situation, whether it’s a condition or any… It’s not your role in all of this.

So at no point are we gonna talk about diagnosing what’s actually wrong with people or improving their mental health outcomes or becoming someone’s therapist or counselor. That’s not what we’re doing today. We’re teaching you some skills to help people get the support they need, but at no point are we doing therapy.

Next thing is, this is just a request for obv- obvious reasons. When we start to… If we ha- as we have conversation and as you start to play around with the case studies and we talk a little more towards the end of this workshop, I would just discourage you all from naming any employees that have had mental health concerns.

If you wanna out yourself and share your own experience, great. That’s totally allowed. You’re allowed to share your own experience, but I wouldn’t share any private details that are not yours to share. Just know for some people, talking about mental health in general can be anxiety-inducing, so I’m not here to make your day harder.

If at any point this gets triggering for any reason, you’re welcome to [00:09:00] take a break and step away And last but not least, one of the things that I encourage you to do anytime you’re talking about mental health at all is make sure that p- people know they have resources available to them, right? So for you, on your team, you might have a specific person you want person to– someone to go to.

A, uh, EAP stands for employee assistance program. So you might not have a formal employee assistance program, but you might have someone at your facility who really is your HR person, that is the go-to person you want people to go to when they have concerns about their mental health. And at least in the US, we have a number we can call, 988, which is a crisis support line.

So instead of dialing 911, if you have someone having really a mental health crisis, you wanna w- spread the word that dialing 988 is much better. Whether that’s suicidal thoughts or just general anxiety, depression. No matter what the symptoms are that you see, 988 is a great place to call, unless there is an actual true emergency where people’s physical, physical well-being is, is a challenge, then you [00:10:00] wanna call 911.

But letting people know that 988 is a great resource for anyone, at least in the US. And if you’re another country, let me know, and I can find out what that number is for you, or you might know it already. But just know that those are resources available to your employees and for you, and making that clear anytime you’re talking about this topic is a good standard.

Making sense? Great. Awesome. Let’s keep going

What makes mental health conversations at work hard? Mike, you have anything you wanna share out loud? I am not a therapist. There it is. That’s a good phrase, right? Which is I’m not a therapist. I don’t know what to do when people come at me with their emotions, their challenges, their highs and lows. I don’t…

I’m not a therapist, I don’t know what to do. Ross points to that with a single word, which is boundaries, right? It’s really hard to know where my responsibility to help this person starts and ends. Ben says here, “Hey, Vogel, being able to meet people where they’re at.” Fantastic. So understanding how to actually meet them where they are at the moment when they need help.

Yeah. Alicia [00:11:00] says, “Serious.” Yeah, can often feel very serious. Patrick says, “The setting.” Yeah, oftentimes our gyms are busy social places with no, no rooms with closed doors besides a bathroom, right? Where do you go, in some cases, to go have a quiet private conversation? Yeah. Connor says, “Can be uncomfortable.”

Yeah, it can be uncomfortable for all parties. It can be uncomfortable that I have to come to my boss with this challenge, be uncomfortable as the boss, say, “I don’t know what to do to help you.” Geraldine, hey, Geraldine says, “People may feel isolated and insecure,” right? So people are bringing all kinds of emotions to these conversations.

Billy says, “Confidentiality and boundaries.” Yeah, so boundaries repeated again. And Billy, this is a great one. Confidentiality is an important one. We’re gonna talk about that because one of the things that’s hard about these conversations is that you can’t guarantee confidentiality. We’ll talk about why in a second.

And so one of the things I wanna make sure that you don’t do in these conversations is promise people that no matter what, you won’t tell anyone else about your conversation, ’cause you can’t do that. You can’t do that, and we’ll talk about more in a second. But thank you, [00:12:00] friends. I think we can all see there’s a theme here.

There’s a theme here that talking about mental health at work is complicated for a lot of reasons. I’m not sure where my responsibilities stop and start. The nature of these conversations, they could be heavy or serious or uncomfortable. People might be bringing feelings like isolation and insecurity.

All of that is so true, and I think that paints a picture for why the skills we’re gonna talk about today are so damn important. So let’s get, let’s dive in. So I, I covered a little bit of this already, but I wanna just tell you a little bit more about from a research perspective why this matters. So why mental health first aid at work?

First is that it builds literacy, and one of the most im- one of the things we see in research about mental health at work is stigma, a negative stigma about talking about mental health prevents most people from getting the help they need. Not having the language and the tools to even have the conversation creates this stigma where people are afraid to speak up at all.

So learning things like [00:13:00] mental health first aid helps, helps people have these conversations with confidence and develop a clear plan. In the same way that CPR prepares you and your team to respond to a physical emergency, someone having a heart attack, this mental health first aid prepares you to respond emotionally and have the confidence to know what to do in situations where emotions are high.

And this also, having this language and this training, like I said, breaks that shell of stigma around no one talks about mental health at work. So when you as the owner say, “Hey, not only do I wanna make it cool for us to talk about mental health at work, but I wanna provide us with the training. I actually want us to learn together how to support each other, mental health at work.”

Boom, stigma almost gone. There might be a stigma for other reasons, but at least you know you as a manager or a leader are not the reason for the stigma. You’ve welcomed these conversations, right? Other people might have other reasons for holding back, but you wanna make sure that you’ve created a culture that reduces stigma, which is the whole second point here, which is evidence shows that training improves mental health knowledge and reduces stigmatizing attitudes [00:14:00] in the months after training.

So when you provide the space and the time to talk about mental health at work and provide some training or knowledge, hell, use this slide deck, give them this talk, share this video with them, that you are reducing that those stigmatizing attitudes, ’cause sometimes the stigma comes from the culture around us, and sometimes the stigma comes from inside the house, right?

Sometimes it’s our own sense of shame and embarrassment that prevents us from speaking. In some cases, the environment around us that teaches us speaking up is not safe, and we wanna reduce that stigma on all fronts The other thing that this training helps do is increases helping behavior. So what happens is that trained supervisors like yourselves after this hour, you notice stressors, you connect with workers to support them, and you model a culture where asking for help is normal.

So you increase what we call helping behaviors, that when you open up the conversation about this on your team, people are more likely to notice other people on the team getting stressed out. You’re more likely to connect with each other and [00:15:00] proactively reach out and offer support. And you’re– because of those things, you’re creating this culture where asking for help and support is normal, right?

And that, again, helps break the stigma and makes sure people can get the help they need. I think down below, OSHA has done a lot of studies on this and, and they say leaders can reduce stigma and connect workers to support without prying or trying to treat, right? And that, that, that piece at the end is really important.

The things I’m teaching you today, again, are not about you spying into the personal lives of your employees or your coworkers, right? I- please don’t. It’s none of your business. And it’s not about you being their therapist and trying to diagnose and treat them. You can be incredibly supportive without doing any of those things.

So let me talk a little bit about the manager’s role. So I, I wanna answer the question about what is your scope and responsibility as a manager or leader at your gym? So the first thing that you are responsible for is maintaining safe operations and performance standards, right? And this, ensuring safe [00:16:00] operations means that if there’s some place that is unsafe physically or emotionally, your job is to make sure that we try to minimize that risk as much as possible, while at the same time upholding the performance standards that you set in your business through your SOPs and your onboarding and your training.

And you can see right here already, there’s a tension there, and we’re gonna talk about as we go through the framework I’m gonna give you, tool- I’m gonna give you tools for resolving that tension. So in some cases, you’re like, “Sarah came to me saying that she really needs to take more breaks because she has– she’s having real trouble sleeping because of her anxiety.

And on the other hand, we don’t have breaks. We’re a gym. She needs to work for the whole hour. What am I gonna, what am I gonna do with this? The standard is our training sessions last an hour. I need her on the floor for the entire hour, but I’m also getting this request that she needs some breaks. What the hell do I do with that?”

So there’s often a tension between maintaining safe operations and helping meet people where they’re at with their mental [00:17:00] health and upholding standards. But your job is to try and find– is try and do this dance that honors both, and we’ll talk about how to do that more in a second. Next is your job as a manager and leader is also to connect on a human level and really have your ears and eyes to the ground listening for signs that your team’s not doing well, right?

So often this happens in one-on-one meetings, team meetings, quarterly or annual performance reviews and check-ins, right? Casual social outings as a team. These are all moments where you’re connecting with people on a human level, where you’re checking in with how are they doing, how is life, how are they feeling, and your ability to connect on this personal level and build a relationship based on mutual trust and understanding and seeing each other.

These are the things that make your intervention into helping with mental health much easier, right? When someone knows that you care about them as a person and you’re checking in with them and having conversations about how they’re doing on a regular [00:18:00] basis, it’s much easier for you to be a support system for you than if you’re, if you never have one-on-ones with your team, or you never sit down and are talking about their performance or how they’re doing or how their life is.

Those check-ins are really important for both Connecting and building a relationship, and maintaining those standards we just talked about, right? So when we talk a lot about, in Unicorn Society, the importance of these kind of one-on-one meetings and team meetings, it’s because they really matter. They serve an important purpose, even in this topic.

And last but not least is your job is to connect people to support. You yourself may not be the support they need. Oftentimes you’re not. So your job is, again, not to be their therapist or their counselor, but to help them get the support they need. So not treating people, but giving them the guidance they need to get the support they need.

And that might mean escalating things when there’s an emergency, when things are really pretty acute. It might mean once in a while dialing 911. It might mean once in a while dialing 988, right? You might need to get them [00:19:00] the support they need quickly. And again, this phrase at the bottom I think is a phrase that encapsulates a lot of the work we’re gonna be doing in a second which is it balances this tension.

“I can’t be your therapist,” so I have a real boundary there. That’s not my job. “But I can help you get support you need and figure out how to succeed at work.” Right? That, for me, encapsulates what a manager’s role is. I can’t be your therapist, but I can help you get support. I can help you succeed at work.

Those are the things you’re here to do. So I want to go through a list of some ethical dos and don’ts, and then we’re gonna jump right into the, kind of the ALGEE model. So I’m gonna go through these relatively quickly, but feel free to stop me or unmute yourself if you have a question along the way. So some ethical dos.

These are great habits to take on. One is when you’re working with someone who is in the middle of a mental health challenge of any kind, your job is to use the facts, to avoid interpretation and avoid focusing on your feelings about what they’re doing. But when you’re interacting with them, you wanna notice facts, and the thing that you want to focus on are observable [00:20:00] behaviors, things you can see, things you can hear, and those are the things you want to hold them accountable to.

“I notice that you’ve been late three times this week.” “I saw you on the training floor crying with that client.” “I saw you…” whatever the case may be. “I heard you…” whatever the case may be. But using facts when you’re dealing with this topic. Two, asking for permission. When you do want to work with someone and check in on how they’re doing and how their mental health is going, always get consent.

“Is now a good time to check in?” “Do you have a moment to talk about what I just saw?” “Do you have a moment to talk about the session I just witnessed?” “Is now a good time for us to talk?” You want them to be at a good place to have this conversation, so it goes well. Use private settings to protect their dignity when possible.

I know that’s hard in a gym. At Mark Fisher Fitness, for many years we didn’t have any closed door offices. So I would say, “Hey, do you wanna step outside for a second? I wanna have a conversation about how you’re feeling, and I wanna kinda get away from everyone else.” Or I’d wait till the end of a shift or an end of a day.

But I think the more private you can have these conversations, typically the better [00:21:00] And if in some case, for example, this happened to me on many occasions, I will notice in a meeting, a meeting with lots of people, that someone’s energy or attitude is not right, and, and I will ask them in the meeting say, “Hey Ross, how are you f- are everything okay?

All right, just wanna make sure that you’re all right.” And then I’ll say… And then I will invite them after the meeting to stick around and talk. But I’m not gonna address the thing in the meeting. But if I notice something’s really going on with someone, someone really looking down or glum or confused or, I’ll check in with them in the moment, but I’m not trying to have the full conversation in front of everybody else, right?

So I’ll leave that there. You wanna state your confidentiality limits. So I mentioned this before, which is you all have an obligation as employers that if someone is, has a risk, I think this might even be in your training certifications. I think this might be in your ethical guidelines as a certified trainer, that if someone is rep- representing the, a risk to themselves or other people, you have an obligation to speak up As an employer, as a [00:22:00] trainer, as, frankly, I think as a human, if you think someone is really at risk of hurting themselves or hurting other people, you have an obligation to speak up.

And so when I say you can’t promise ult-ultimate confidentiality, that’s the exception I’m talking about. So if I’m having a conversation with someone like, “Hey, listen, Alicia, our conversation today is completely between you and I, but just know if any point this escalates and I feel like you might be a risk to yourself or to anyone else, I do have an obligation to speak up and try and get you and other people the help that we need here.

So, but other than that, this conversation is completely between you and I.” And I have to make sure that I include that caveat ’cause I don’t want them to think they can tell me they’re having suicidal thoughts or thoughts of hurting other people, and I’m not gonna do anything about it. I want to make it clear that if it escalates to that, I do have to do something about it, right?

So we wanna make sure we’re really clear about our confidentiality agreements here. So you wanna be able to offer options, not ultimatums. I know it’s very easy when people are not struggling or struggling to meet their standards at [00:23:00] work. It’s very easy to get into this mindset of, “You gotta get your shit together or I’m gonna fire you.”

And that’s an ultimatum basically, right? And so I think what we do when people are really struggling with their mental health, when possible, it’s not always possible, but when possible, we wanna offer options instead of ultimatums, whether that’s an employee assistance program if you have one, or time off, or modified duties, or, uh, other HR-oriented solutions, which we’ll talk more about in a second.

You wanna offer options instead of ultimatums. And last ultimatums, I said that funny. And last but not least is you wanna follow up with a clear next check-in date. Oftentimes, conversations around mental health are not one-off conversations. They’re often a series of conversations over time. So you wanna be really clear about when you’re gonna circle back.

There are some ethical dos. Here are some don’ts. So don’t diagnose or label, right? So we’re gonna stick with the observable behaviors. We’re not going in there making assumptions about, “Clearly you’re depressed,” right? Right? “Clearly you have some sort of bipolar problem,” right? “Clearly you have ADHD,” right?

I’m not going in there with all these fancy [00:24:00] armchair psychology phrases, and diagnosing people. I’m gonna be– I’m gonna reflect on the observable behaviors that I can see and hear with my own eyes, but I’m not interested in diagnosing or labeling. I’m not promising total secrecy to anyone for the reasons we just went through.

I’m not becoming the only person that they get help from Right? We wanna avoid s- sole dependency on you. So one of the things you’re gonna do in the p- model we’re gonna talk about in a second, you’re gonna encourage them to get support elsewhere. You’re gonna encourage them to talk to family and friends.

You’re gonna encourage them to maybe get a therapist or a counselor. You’re gonna encourage them to join a support group. But if they’re, you are the only one they’re talking about the, about this problem, that’s an issue. You don’t wanna be the sole supporter of folks. I will say this, that I’m thinking of an example where we had someone at Mark Fisher Fitness at one point who was experiencing domestic violence, and they came and talked to one of the managers about it at the time.

And clearly that’s something that was very secret, we don’t want to get out. But they were, we were very clear, the manager did the right thing, was very clear, “Hey, if there’s real violence happening here, I might have to talk to someone about it.” And what [00:25:00] they did is they actually got permission to bring in another manager.

Well, I think it was, I think it was me. They brought in me to, to talk more about it. So that person knew that they weren’t the only one they were talking to about it. So sometimes you have to bring in a friend, a colleague, a coworker, right? That’s also okay, but with their permission, with consent, right?

Say, “Can I bring something else, someone else in so we can get another perspective? Can I bring someone else in so it’s not just you and I working on this together?” So you wanna avoid dependency, and bringing other people in can happen with their consent. You wanna avoid investigating their personal life to confirm your suspicions, right?

“I think Maddie might be depressed. Let me go check her Instagram and see what she’s been up to for the last few weeks.” Stop it. Stop it. That’s not your job. You’re not a detective, right? Leave it alone. If you need to go do any research, you’re walking the wrong path, right? You don’t need, you don’t need to.

It’s not your job. Don’t ignore safety concerns. While someone, while you might be helping someone get the support they need, if at any moment there is a sense of lack of safety for themselves or other people, your job is to speak up. So don’t ignore the [00:26:00] fact that there’s a lack of, there’s a real lack of safety at any given moment.

Your job is to make sure people stay safe in your space. And don’t confuse compassion with a lack of accountability. I think this may be the most important one on this list. This is the one I see a lot. So the thing I want you to think about right now is your, part of your job here is to hold both of these things at the same time, right?

This is complex, but you can do it. You can be compassionate and supportive and still hold people accountable to doing their job and showing up the best they can to be a good team player at work. You can do both. Is there a little give and take on each side? Is there a little dance you might have to do?

Yes. Right? But it’s not all or nothing. If you’re only focused on being compassionate, offering the support, and you’re letting everything else slide- That’s a problem, right? If you’re only holding them to the rule of law and making sure they hold every standard 100% of the time no matter what, and there’s no compassion, that’s a problem.

Right? What we’re looking for is for you to hold both [00:27:00] and try to do this dance with both compassion and accountability at the same time. It’s complex, but it’s not impossible. This process will teach you some steps for how to do that, right? But that’s part of what makes this job a little bit difficult.

Let’s dive into the ALGAE framework. And again, I hate this acronym, but I didn’t make it. We’re rolling with it. So let me just tell you what it is, and we’re gonna go through each of the step in more detail. The A stands for approach, assess for risk, and assist, right? That’s a lot, right? But basically it means decide how to approach the person, figure out what’s going on, what’s the challenge here, and try to look for some path towards support, right?

That’s the A in ALGAE. I guess they picked ALGAE ’cause it’s a really easy word to remember. When else do we talk about algae in life? So anyway, if you can somehow in your brain connect mental health with algae, you’ll remember this alcra- acronym. The L is for listening without judgment, which I know many of you are really good at already, and we do this with our clients, I hope, all the time.

But I think particularly when it comes to mental health, part of the stigma people [00:28:00] have about not wanting to ask for help and get support is for fear of how people will respond. So making sure that you’ve really practiced responding and listening well, and we’ll talk more about those. The G stands for give assurance and information.

So your job is to say that, “Listen, we’re in this together. I’m here to help. Let me get you access to information you need to take the right fir- few first steps.” The E, the first E is encourage professional help, and the second E is encourage self-help, right? So they separate those into two categories because professional help is one thing, right?

Getting a therapist, a coach, a counselor, a support group. And self-help is another. How can you yourself change your own behaviors to, to make things easier on yourself? And as I said before, I wanna give full credit here. I did not make up this framework. Some of the ways that I talk about it, these slides are my own, but this framework comes from mentalhealthfirstaid.org.

So if you wanna learn more or even get certified, they do a whole certification for individuals and teams. Let’s go through these steps in a little bit more [00:29:00] detail. A, approach, assess, and assist. These are the things that matter in this step. That when you go to approach them, that you can do hopefully, like we talked about, privately, hopefully calmly.

If you’re in a place where you’re just as upset as they are, how helpful are you gonna be? So if you need to take a moment to get your own shit together, take a walk, grab some, grab a drink, go get a snack, right? If you can come to this conversation calm. We know emotions are contagious, right? We know emotions are contagious, right?

So if you’re coming to this conversation, you want the emotions you’re bringing to this conversation to be ones that are calm and soothing. You wanna approach quickly. You don’t wanna let this linger. If you see someone’s really struggling, you don’t wanna wait days and weeks and months. You wanna lean in as quickly as you can.

You wanna watch for warning signs early on to see, like, how serious is this issue? We talk about assessing. We’re not talking about diagnosing. Assessing just means, like, how serious is this? Is this talk of suicide or self-harm? Is this person [00:30:00] intoxicated on the job or high on some substance? Is there escalating pain in their body in some way?

Are there threats being made? These are all warning signs that this is more serious, and that will help you determine whether or not, am I calling 988 or am I calling 911? Is this someone who’s really in a crisis right now and is gonna be a danger to someone else in this room? That’s probably a 911 situation.

Or is this someone who really is at war within themselves and it’s really acute and serious, and I need to call 988 and get them on the phone with a professional now, in this moment. So just like when you do– I’m sure everyone on this call has done actual CPR and first aid training, right? The first thing they ask you to do is assess the scene.

Look around. Is there anything dangerous that’s gonna hurt you or the other person and make things worse? That’s this step, right? Is how serious is it? Do I need to act now, or is this a more calm, slow-moving conversation? Making sense? Great. That’s the assess. Approach, assess, and assist. Next up, we got the L, the listen.[00:31:00]

The goal of non-judgmental listening is to help people not feel ashamed for having this experience, to hopefully increase trust between you and them. But we’re not listening here to find solutions. We’re not listening here to debate. We’re not listening here to try to minimize or shrink down the problem.

So some listening phrases are things like, these are good questions to ask that elicit more talking are, “What’s been feeling hardest lately? What would be most helpful right now? I noticed that you weren’t really making eye contact in that meeting. Can we talk about it?” So all of these are really soft and gentle ways to really start a conversation where you can listen to and learn more about their experience and what’s going on for them.

Is that making sense? So that’s the L, listen without judgment. The G is give assurance and information, right? “I’m really glad you told me. You don’t have to handle this alone. You’re not defined by what you’re going through. This might not, this probably will not last forever.” So what we’re doing here is [00:32:00] we’re validating that they have some courage enough to talk to us.

We’re reducing the sense of isolation by saying, “You’re not in this alone.” And we’re normalizing the struggle, right? That actually I’ve talked to many people that are going through a similar situation in the last few months. You’re not alone. This world can be a crazy place, right? These are all ways to validate their experience and give them some assurance.

We’ll get to the information part in a second, but really just the most important thing I think you can do in this step, the G step here, is to really give some assurance Then the last two E steps here go together. One is about encouraging professional help, and the other one is encouraging kind of self-help.

So professional help looks like a lot of stuff we talked about already. Employee assistance program, if you have one. I should say this, not just big companies can have employee assistance programs. Even if you don’t have full benefits, there are companies out there that will offer you as a small business, like an 800 line people can call for mental health support and emotional support, right?

So we can talk more offline if you want to… Some examples of employee assistance programs. [00:33:00] But even if you don’t offer people benefits, there are employee assistance programs for small businesses. Certainly, if they have benefits and you wanna help them navigate those benefits to help find a therapist or a counselor, right?

And the kind of professional helpers we’re talking about are often primary care folks, therapists, coaches. ‘Cause for some people, they don’t need a mental health professional. Sometimes just a coach is enough to help them move in the right direction. HR pathways really refers to the kind of professional help coming from you, meaning that you will provide some retraining for them if they’re doing…

If their mental health is getting in the way of performing well at their work. You might provide some accommodations to their work to make their work a little bit easier. Again, we might help them navigate benefits if they have them. SUD is basically when people have a su- a substance problem. So if you know someone is having a problem with showing up at work smelling like booze, or you know they’re a little lethargic ’cause they’re showing up a little high and giggly all the time, or more serious drugs, including prescription drugs.

If you have any sense they have any sort of substance problem, you might need [00:34:00] some help that’s specific to substance abuse, right? And so that’s examples of professional help that you might try to connect them with, right? And your job is not to be an expert in any one of those things. You might just sit down in front of the computer with them and say, “Hey, Sarah, I know that you’re struggling with this.

Are you open to finding a therapist? Great. Let’s go on the computer right now, pull up your insurance if you have it. If not, we’ll go find people who don’t take insurance. Let’s see if we can find one in our area together.” So you’re really just a partner in helping them find the support you need. I don’t expect you coming with a list of recommendations, right?

That’s not your job. Your job is to be a support in getting them the help they need. Self-help and support looks like maybe adjusting their workload, modifying their duties for a little while. And we’re not trying to lower the bar, we’re just trying to lower the lift, right? We’re trying to– We’re not saying forget about our standards here.

What we’re saying is, “Let me make it a little easier for you for a little while.” Yeah. Schedule changes, shift swaps, time off requests, helping them think through their sleep routine, their self-care routine, think through the social or peer support they have. Some people have a lot of support at [00:35:00] home. Some people have the opposite of support at home, right?

You might need to pair them up with other employees, maybe find a buddy system for them getting some help and support. There’s a lot of other ways you can facilitate support besides just connecting with professionals. Is that making sense? Cool. So as a reminder, that’s the ALGEE framework. It’s not that complicated.

It’s not that many steps. So we’re talking about approaching, assessing for risk, and trying to find some assistance. We’re listening without judgment, asking questions, getting them to talk, giving some reassurance that they’re not in it alone, and we’re gonna provide them with really useful information.

And the information you’re gonna provide them with are things like some professional help or some ways of s- getting some self-help or help from peers in your gym, right? So that’s the whole process. One other layer I wanna add into it before we do some case studies is I wanna make sure that it’s clear that throughout this whole process, you as a manager, as a leader, you’re allowed to have some boundaries.

You’re allowed to have some guardrails. And in each of those process, each of those steps in the [00:36:00] ALGEE framework, there’s room for you to set some boundaries. And when I think about boundaries, it means maintaining the professional limits that keep you both safe Right? There’s no use in you being a support system for them if it damages you in some way, right?

So you wanna both be upholding the performance standards while offering a clear path to support. So again, we see that, we see you trying to balance those two things at once. So here’s what setting boundaries might actually sound like. These are just a few examples. Those… It can sound like lots of things.

But the one I mentioned already, which is, “I can’t be your therapist, but I can connect you to someone who can help with this,” right? Or, “I’ll keep this conversation private, except if there’s a risk of safety or some sort of policy requirement that we have here, but I want you to know that up front,” right?

“Which is a boundary I have, which is if the minute you’re a risk to yourself or others, I do have to escalate that and tell someone,” right? Or, “I care about how you’re doing, but I also need to find a solution for those shifts you have missed, so let’s work on both at the same time.” That last [00:37:00] one really resonates with me, ’cause I think that’s maybe the best example, at least in this slide deck, of doing both, right?

“I care about how you’re doing, I care about your mental health. I also care about making sure we find a solution for when those shifts you need to miss. Let’s work on both together.” Right? That’s the, this hour that we’re talking about here, right? Is if you can be both a support to them and someone who still is holding the standards of the business, that’s really your role.

That’s really the scope of what you’re here to do. I wanna leave time to answer all of your questions. Let me just do a quick wrap-up here, which is the things I want you to take away from this is really noticing what’s going on with your team, staying connected with them to make sure you’re building relationships based on trust, being that kind of guiding, supporting role in their lives to do both that dance we talked about of upholding your standards and also connecting them to the support you need.

And that follow-up is a really important part of this process. It’s very rare that you’re gonna have this, something like this happen once and never need to be talked about [00:38:00] again. So continuing to follow up I think is really imp- important. This is not about diagnosing. This is about leading well. And leaders care about the whole person, not just the worker.

Not just that we care about the whole human. And so I think this is a really important toolbox, tool to keep in your tool belt. Last request from all of you in the chat box before I open it up to Q&A, what’s just one tool or sentence or thing that you’ll be taking away from today’s presentation and using?

What’s one thing, put in the chat box, that, it could be a tool, a sentence, a, a thing that you plan to use from this workshop Great. Thanks, Patrick. Boundaries, just having those clear boundaries. Yeah, I love that. Great. 988, I love that, Connor. It’s great to know that we have somewhere professionals at the ready 24/7 that people can call.

Yeah, giving reassurance and information. Yeah, that’s great. Making people know that they’re not alone, we’re here to help, we’re here to support them. Great. Awesome. Looks like there are a few other folks typing. [00:39:00] I’m gonna stop sharing my screen for a second. All right, while people are continuing to type, any questions, Ross says here, focusing on opening with the observed behavior before jumping into solving?

Yeah, I think it’s so important, Ross. We’re not here to solve or diagnose yet, we’re just here to say, “Here’s what we see.” Yeah, thanks Billy. Yeah, boundary sentence, follow-up, 988. Great. Any questions? Any lingering questions while folks continue to type? Things I can help with. Yeah, a few weeks back, my wife was chatting with one of our employees who…

And she told me this a day later or something, but he basically said he was just dealing with hard,

just hard things in life. Yeah. Dive d- much deeper with him. She sent him a nice card in the mail, and he seems to be fine in work, but I haven’t addressed this yet, so this is a great framework, I think, just to approach with open arms. Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s it, Ben. I think sometimes this doesn’t appear like a real acute crisis.

I know some of you have to run. Thank you for those of you who have to run. [00:40:00] Thank you, enjoy your day. Thanks for being here. The slide deck will be posted with this recording in the next hour in Circle, so it’s there when you need it. But yeah, I think, Ben, that’s a great point. Some people are just having a hard time at life, right?

And that just means a little bit of anxiety and maybe a little tiny bit of lowercase D depression. Maybe it just means they’re having a hard time focusing, right? But it doesn’t have to be… It’s not always a giant crisis, right? And so I think this is a great example of just being there to support someone, a handwritten card, an offer of help and support.

Those things can go a long way. What would you– What would be, like, the next steps you would do to address this, knowing that we haven’t fully addressed it yet? Yeah. Yes. I think the most important thing is you can keep making offers. You keep making asks. Yeah. Or the next time they’re in a one-on-one call, be like, “Hey, you mentioned last time,” or, “Told me that you said that you’re having some trouble at home.

Is there anything there you wanna talk about?” How’s that stuff at home impacting you here at work? Anything we can do at work to make things a little easier for you during this time? Anything that’s just opening up a dialogue [00:41:00] to say, “Let’s keep talking about this. We don’t wanna sweep it under the rug.

We wanna make sure you know it’s okay to talk about this for as long as it’s going on.” Got it. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks, Focal. Ross says, “Thoughts in, affect someone’s payroll if we greatly diminish their responsibility short-term or long-term. We keep paying them the same or reduce rent,” or reduce rents, reduce amounts, called it rent, “reduce pay.

Realize reducing payroll makes them less likely to accept the change.” Yeah, I think, Ross, I think the short answer is it really depends. If you’re really gonna reduce their role in a meaningful way, I think part of those negotiations would obviously be a reduction in pay. And if that, depending on how long-term those changes were, I would negotiate a reduction in pay and get that agreed to in writing by them.

But I think it’s totally appropriate, especially if you’re making significant changes that last a long time. If I’m making big changes just for a shift or a week, I might not go through the hassle of reducing their pay. I don’t think you probably would either. But if this is something we’re doing that’s meaningfully different in your job and it’s gonna be [00:42:00] lasting a little while, then I 100% would get that documented for how long it’s gonna last and how the pay will change as a result.

Okay. Cool. And I get with that, too, it’s like it’s nuanced, and there’s not a black-and-white answer for it. But th- that sort of thought’s kind of the answer I was looking for- Yeah … just kind of where and when you might do it, and that g- if you do it, to have very clear stipulations about what it is and to have- Yeah

documentation for it. You nailed it. That’s exactly it. Cool. Okay. You nailed it. Awesome. Anything else? That’s it, man. Thanks. Thanks for being here. We’ll talk soon.