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Welcome to So You Want to Be a Leader? Really? A Defy Expectations podcast.

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I'm Helen Honeysett and I'm here today to explore the highs and lows of leadership with our guests and to help navigate the complexity of being a leader, which we know has every aspect from the sublime to the utterly ridiculous and everything between.

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This week's guest is Jared Haslam who is dedicated to bringing emotional wellness and mental fitness to professionals in and out of the office.

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Jared, welcome. Hello.

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I'm so glad to be here. Thank you for having me on the podcast.

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It's wonderful to be here. Fantastic.

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Now, before we dive in you can find out information about Jared on our website.

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So visit defyexpectations. co.

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uk. Now Jared, we love good stories here.

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And we know quite a few have got them, and we also know they're very squiggly.

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You never find a good linear story.

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Can you share yours with our listeners? Squiggly is a good way to describe it.

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So yeah, as you were introducing me, it strikes me that that what I'm doing and the work that we're trying to do is so different than what I was doing before.

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So I came out of the auto industry.

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I was a vice president of product strategy and product planning for a major automotive manufacturer.

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And I'd risen pretty quickly through the ranks, and I'm not saying that to say anything about myself, but had some great opportunities that I was able to capitalize on and, and had a career that that was on a good trajectory.

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And I think I'm probably not unique in this aspect, but found myself, climbing a ladder and then you realize as you reach a certain rung of the ladder, is this ladder leading up the proper building? Am I in the spot where I need to be for my family, for myself, for all of the above? And associated with that is a lot of Well, burnout is probably the best way to put it.

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So I found myself about two years ago two and a half years ago, burnt out, recognizing that the challenges that I was facing personally were not so much of a skillset nature as all the stuff underneath.

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Right. It's the combination. I'd ask for maybe it was a business coach that could help me out and they couldn't touch some of the things that I was really concerned about.

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And so I would go to maybe to counseling and I did go to counseling and they didn't have the context to help me understand what was happening in the office.

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So I recognize that there's a. Of supporting professionals in a really tough environment.

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And so it was the right time for me and for my family to make a transition into a world where we are taking the skillset that actually my wife has, we're a husband and wife business, and my wife is a marriage and family therapist.

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And she could see all of it happening from her perspective She's like, yep.

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Yep. Yep going through the checklist. Here's what's happening and i'm you know in the midst of it all And so she's recognized what was happening to me and, and I recognized what was happening.

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And so we joined forces and we're taking the principles, sound principles of head and heart together, right? It's and how that affects relationships at work and how that affects mental health at work and how you can leverage those principles into so much strength and in a work setting that's, it's really an untapped potential.

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So we left. And we started our own business and yeah, it's the business of head and heart and leadership.

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it's challenging. It's exciting anyways.

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So that's, that's kind of a circuitous path to where I am today, but I don't know if it's one 80 or 90 degrees from where I was before, but definitely a different track than, than what I was doing before.

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So. But that gap that you've recognized is huge between business coaching and counseling.

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It's very interesting. I did my counseling qualifications last year for exactly that.

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I'd had a week period when I had five clients in tears and I just went, huh, I don't quite know what to do with this.

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The business coach in me knows exactly how to do, but that's not what they needed.

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They didn't need coaching at that point. They needed space holding, they needed positive, unconditional regard, all of those things.

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And that's a really interesting niche because I've also spoken to friends of mine who are psychotherapists and they go, well, we can't tell our clients what to do.

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And I'm like, I can, and it's great.

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Yeah. Because actually that's where you can have problems.

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Cause as you said, your wife saw everything happening.

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Yeah that's such a crucial point. I'm glad you picked up on that because I sat down with a coach and I didn't want to go to HR and say, look, I'm really struggling right now because I knew what that meant.

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Or I perceived they probably would have handled it differently than I perceived they would have.

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But, but I knew what that meant to go into HR and say, Hey, look, I'm really struggling with something, you know? Eventually that, that was the case.

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But so I went in and I said, Hey, I need a business coach.

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And because I know that the business, Oh, coach, good, let's go.

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And, and so I met with a lovely person and I would explain some of these things and I would get this sort of conversation.

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Deer in the headlights look on their face and like, well, you just got to do this.

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Like, okay. Thank you very much for that very directive statement.

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I know I need to do this. I am just struggling to do that.

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Help me. And so there is a space in between and likewise when I did talk to a counselor, they're looking at across the table from me and this happens too often, at least here in the States are, we have the employee assistance programs and they leave it up to people to come in.

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Hands off. Here's the Bennett, go, go do it.

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And you have no guidance as to who would be the right person or the, even the credentialing is a little confusing.

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And so. I picked somebody and they're sitting across the table from me and I could tell, here's who I am.

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And the deer in the headlights look of like, I have no idea how your context or how to help you.

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And, and so there's a lot of space.

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In fact, most of the issues that we deal with from a leadership perspective, from a business perspective are underneath it all.

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They're very human issues. And there's a core belief underneath all of our behavior that's hidden, that's covered up.

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And until you can uncover it, and sometimes it's through very directive coaching where you can ask the really penetrating questions you can get to it.

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But most often it's, It's not through that, that you're going to really touch the stuff that, that prompts really, really transformational change.

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And, I've since learned a lot about this and, and but that gap is there's such, it's a beautiful space, very fertile ground.

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And also it's one that's fascinating. It leads on to my next question about, why businesses should care.

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So, I mean, businesses are reliant 100 percent on people, no matter how intelligent AI gets.

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But at the moment, mental health still seems to be a little bit of a tick box exercise.

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Oh, you know, sort of free ice creams on Fridays and massage Mondays and all of that sort of stuff.

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But you tell me, Jared, exactly why companies should be giving a damn and paying attention to mental health and emotional fit.

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Okay, so this is, I get really passionate talking about this.

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So the best way to describe this is with an analogy, because I think there's something in our language that prevents us from having the proper mindset about some of these things.

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And it's not just language based, but our language is a reflection of the mindset.

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And so there has to be some change in how we think about some of these things.

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Physical fitness. We know a ton about physical fitness, the language of physical fitness we know all about, and we can describe very clearly chronic conditions that are going to end you up in the hospital all the way through the spectrum to the person that's running an Ironman or doing an Ironman, clearly, clearly on the fitness scale.

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And businesses understand this. It's a cost issue that they're mostly dealing with.

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How do I reduce the costs for the business? At least that's the perspective in the States where the companies are paying mostly for the benefits.

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And so they're looking at, okay, I can keep them from getting sick.

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Then I can maintain a certain level of productivity and lower my costs.

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And so companies are, they have health insurance and they provide health insurance for employees, and then they provide wellness programs.

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The better companies provide wellness programs. They, we recognize that if we can keep you at work, that's a good thing.

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Very few companies are actually investing in.

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The further end of the spectrum to better health like much stronger, some companies will pay for you to go and enter an event, but they're not so focused on that But if I look at the productivity at work, yes, there's a slight increase of productivity But there is no improvement in business performance.

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I should say in personal performance As it pertains to interpersonal relationships, the way I go about work, the way stuff really gets done when you improve physical fitness.

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But there's words for it. We can describe it. Now, if you were to put that onto a mental health spectrum and, and start talking about the mental health spectrum, we lose words for the positive end of mental health.

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We say mental health, but when we say mental health, we usually mean the bad side of the spectrum, someone struggling with mental health or something like that, but we don't have good words for, we're just starting to hear about it.

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The positive side of mental health, but the positive side of mental health is where the work really gets done.

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It's the folks that are practically emotionally intelligent.

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That's why I call it mental fitness and emotional fitness, because it's not just intelligence, it's actual practical application of the principles who are resilient.

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who are calm and collected, who know how to have strong and healthy relationships and good conflict that's going to be productive.

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That all happens on that far side, the right side, the positive side of the mental health spectrum.

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And we sort of talk about it. And we sort of pseudo train on it, but we don't pay attention to it and we don't focus on it.

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And if you do focus on it, then the business results are what happen because it's with the people.

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So if you focus on that and you do that really well, your business is going to be so much better.

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And that's why it's so important to talk about mental fitness.

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Do you think we don't have the language for it because it's a bit fluffy and a bit woo woo and actually what do you mean by resilience and sort of we can test muscle strength, but how do you test emotional strength? Yeah, it's very difficult.

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I think the field and the study of it is growing in enough and there's enough evidence base now where it's not so fluffy.

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There's enough evidence out there. Look up empathy and empathetic leadership.

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Sounds super fluffy, but the data clearly shows that the leaders that can be described as more empathetic have much stronger engagement with their employees, much better innovation that's coming out of their groups, much better retention.

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All of the things that the business can measure.

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But the connection drawing that it's a bit challenging and most people can't see that direct connection.

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So I think that's one of the reasons why we don't pay attention to it. What I can't see, I can't measure, I can't perform.

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And so we're not going to pay attention to it, but it's all that stuff that's underneath.

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That's really hard to get at. So, yeah, I agree with you in essence.

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Yeah. We hate that split.

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And I use that word very deliberately talking about language between soft and hard skills.

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Cause Yes, some of the softer skills are simple, like treating people with common decency and empathy, but that is not the same as easy.

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These are hard and they also have hard business results associated to them.

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That's right. And what makes them so challenging is that businesses rely on people to just have them.

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And you either have them or you don't have them. And we expect society to have.

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Given this to people in a reality, everyone comes from different backgrounds that offer a wide spectrum of capability in all of these underlying languages, underlying capability, this underlying intelligence about some of these things.

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And because businesses rely on them, we don't train on them and training on them is really tough.

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And how do you train on them? My wife likes to call it doing the work.

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So when she's with a therapy client, You have to do the work.

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And it's, it's called work for a reason because you're doing some hard stuff.

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And if you haven't done that type of work before, then it's like, what is this? How do I do this? And how does it apply? Very, very challenging that way.

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Yeah. I love using the phrase, no pain, no gain.

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Cause we use it in physical fitness, but actually it's even more so with emotional and mental fitness.

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You've suppressed this pain for so long. You're gonna have to feel it at some point.

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Yeah, we protect ourselves from the pain.

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And when we protect ourselves from pain, if it hurts, don't do it.

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Right. If, if the doctors will say doctor hurts when I do this.

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Okay. Well, don't do it. But when it comes to mental fitness, when it hurts, we avoid it.

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And when we avoid it, we don't resolve it.

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And it shows up in all sorts of ways.

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It showed up for me as a leader.

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It showed up a lot. There were a lot of things that I haven't done the work for quote unquote.

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And I'm looking back now with a fresh new set of eyes and saying, Oh, that's how that showed up.

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Oh my goodness. Yes, this is what, and I could see these things showing up where it's the pain avoidance that we're really trying to, and it just shows up everywhere, especially as a leader because it's magnified with your people, with everything.

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And that's why it's so critical for leaders to be paying attention to this.

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And I think that piece where we don't define what some of it is that you mentioned.

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I had that conversation with my son recently.

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I went, concentrate. And he went, I am.

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And I went, no, you're not. And he went, well, what do you mean? I was like, it's a really good question.

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We say these things to people, be empathetic, concentrate.

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We use these words and you go, Well, what, what does that actually look like? What do I have to do? And until you've broken that down and gone, right, this is what you need to be able to do.

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These are the skill sets behind this behavior.

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It's really difficult for people to buy into. It really is.

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And there's, there's a behavioral element of, okay, I can do this.

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Without having the really underneath emotional foundations like you can do that, but you can only do it so far and there's going to be a point where if you want to get to the next level of leadership of personal performance of life satisfaction, you have to go back and do the work.

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You have to break down those barriers that are internal that are keeping you from from pain.

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It's like our own immune system. There's a fantastic book that's been pivotal for me.

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It's called immunity to change and it's the things that we do to protect ourselves from the pain of having to change.

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And cause it's painful. And if you can get at the root of that, Even in business relationships and on your team, if you can get to the root of, okay, here's what's happening.

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Then when we say, here's what you need to do, it makes a ton of sense.

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And you're like, ah, okay, I'm not going to just act without the knowledge.

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I'm going to act, having done the work. And that's very, very powerful.

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So you mentioned earlier that it's so important for leaders to do this because it becomes amplified and we've spoken about actually doing that work, but what roles can leaders play to develop that greater mental fitness within the organization.

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What can they do within that remit? So there's a whole gamut, just a whole spectrum of things that can be done.

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And some are very tactical things. So we'll, I'll speak tactically paying attention to just overall mental health and the skillset of mental health.

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will pay dividends. And that could be from, Hey, let's get some folks in here.

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And by the way, I would advocate very strongly with trying to join with the mental health community and practitioners of mental health, because they know how to do this very, very well, but have them come in.

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And provide some practical day to day skill sets for people on how to manage stress, how to have positive interactions, how to manage when, when things don't go well.

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And you can have those kinds of seminars on a day to day basis.

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Just bring people in, create affinity groups for people to have a place speak to and talk, to create awareness through c campaigns, to invite and include mental health as part of the overall work experience.

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So those are some basic tactical things all the way to some very focused and dedicated training on this side of our experience for your direct reports train them on mental health.

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First response. What do you do when you've got an employee in crisis? I've talked to so many people.

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I talked with another gal the other day, and she said, I've had three employees in the last six months commit suicide.

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How do I deal with that? Mhm. Huge, right? Those are massive questions that impact.

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They just impact everything. And most people don't know how to handle those kinds of crises, especially that bad, but train your people, get somebody in to help you train folks on mental health, first responders on.

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The work to overcome some of your own personal biases, their own personal issues and challenges that are affecting performance.

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Get some training on that. And then do the work yourself, really challenge yourself as a leader.

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To pick some of these things that are critical for mental fitness.

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And I'm going to talk about emotional intelligence, emotional resilience.

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I'm going to talk about calm in the face of, of chaos.

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I'm going to talk about positive relationships and do the work, get the self awareness and model that yourself as a leader.

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If you can model that as a leader. it will pay dividends to your people.

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They will gravitate to that as you are leading from a much more healthy and positive perspective.

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But those are a few things, some practical and some some very tangible and some that you got to kind of dig in personally to do as a leader.

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So there are quite a few ways to build your self awareness, but what would be the one thing that you wished everybody, every leader did to increase their self awareness? The one thing I, 360 reviews.

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But those tended to be less effective because no one was really sort of honest with you, right? The one, listen, just listen and listen.

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It's not 360 degrees. Listen 720.

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What, what messages are you getting? Spoken and unspoken from the skip levels down your leadership chain, like the line employees.

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What are they saying? What are your peers saying? Language and actions.

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what are your friends saying? What is your spouse or significant partner or significant other? What are they saying? You'll start to see some alignment.

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Around things that are really uncomfortable, especially the ones that are willing to speak to you, invite it, breathe it, taste it, just really, really understand that.

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And if you do, the mirror becomes pretty clear about the things that are really challenging.

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And then ask, is this an issue? And if you've got the guts to ask, you better have the guts to listen.

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Because they will tell you, yeah, that's it.

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That's, that's a big one. You got to work on that one.

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You got to fix that one. And when you do that, it's a huge gift, but you'll hear it and you'll see what the work that you have to do to get through some of that and be a much more effective person.

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much more effective partner, much more effective leader.

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It starts there. Fantastic.

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Thank you. Now, my last question to you is one that we ask all of our guests, and it's a little bit about us.

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We're called Defy Expectations because we'd like to be a little defiant, a little bit maverick.

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So we ask everyone to think about and share and pay forward this pearl of defiant wisdom, specifically for younger people who are thinking about leading.

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Yeah. I've, I've been thinking about this for quite a while as we, as we've been interacting and talking about this and it changes for me depending on my situation and, but we've talked a lot today about doing the work and doing the work from a psychological perspective, which is the foundations for leadership requires that we come to know and come to appreciate and love.

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Ourselves with a capital s self.

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If you don't know who you are, you don't appreciate who you are, you will never be as effective as you could be as a leader that confidence that comes from really understanding yourself and appreciating who you are, is the confidence that's required to do all of the hard things of leadership.

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That when you don't do them makes it just so much tougher.

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So that'd be the wisdom. Spend some time to do the work, to know who you really are and love who you really are and know what you stand for and know what your values are.

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That's going to be the foundation that will allow you to step into leadership confidently and vulnerably.

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And when it gets really chaotic, it's not going to throw you around because you know who you are.

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That's what I wish that I would have known coming into it.

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I think it's incredibly wise because when I was growing up through leadership, I didn't think any of that mattered, as long as I was doing what was needed and getting stuff done, hitting those targets.

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But it's when chaos does hit, that you realized how much that can unseat you if you don't know, appreciate and love who you are.

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So I, I think Likewise, wish I had to know that decades ago.

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Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

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It, yeah, that's looking back.

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That would have probably been one of the single largest influencing factors for my leadership journey.

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And so I wish that others would take that and take that seriously because we think it's all about doing, and it's not, the doing as a result of being.

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And if you can learn how to be, then you're doing will be so much more effective.

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And I think the word appreciate yourself, which you used is very interesting because that links back to value when all you do is value your ability to hit a number, whether that's, target or whatever it is, you will hit a point where you start to question who you are.

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You can appreciate your value because of.

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How you make people feel, how you interact, what you bring, rather than just what you do.

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It's a game changer and you're right, that confidence it gives you is phenomenal.

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It is, absolutely. Well said, Helen, well said.

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That's, that's exactly right. Yeah. That's exactly right.

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So thank you so much for sharing all of your insights.

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Well, if you've been as inspired as I have with our amazing guest, Jared today, please check back in as we run these regularly and we cover every aspect of the skills, behaviours, mindsets and capabilities leaders will need to continuously develop and evolve to thrive.

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Do look at our website, defyexpectations. co.

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uk and remember to follow us to get notified of our next episode.