Securing Your Sanity: Mental Health Strategies for Cybersecurity Experts: Mental Health Panel

ready to go you doing an intro oh I got the H up from har so all right um I'm just going to stand up real quick uh instead of sitting down here so welcome to our securing your sanity panel uh my name is Michael sping in my professional life I lead the information security team at the University of Alberta um mental health has been a pretty outspoken thing for myself in the last recent years um I've been talking about it quite regularly at various conferences and talking about my own personal experiences with it and uh this year for bsid Edmonton we decided why don't we do a panel um I think it takes it takes a lot of

courage and guts to get in front of a room of people and talk about yourself uh be quite vulnerable talk about your your issues that you've had with it talk about things that aren't maybe necessarily easy to talk about so uh we were blessed to find four amazing people who have all sorts of different experiences when it comes to cyber security uh no cyber security experience at all and mental health so I'm going to stop there and what we're going to do we have a handful of questions I'm just going to pass it down the line and uh we'll get started so very first question uh just introductions and personal Journey so we'll start with um this end

of the thing and share your name role in the community uh and just briefly touch on your personal professional experiences with mental health including maybe some key turning points sure um my name is ernestina malero I'm the founder of an e-learning company uplift learning and we develop and deliver um online and Blended training and we specifically also focus on delivering training about workplace resilience um because when you understand what it builds and affects resilience it's very tied into workplace mental health anyhow personally um my journey with mental health has been really a lifelong journey right I've uh dealt with uh long periods of of depression and also um PTSD and it was actually my own lived

experience that uh drew me into grad school to actually do research um around PTSD and really start to get a handle on you know what's the connection between our lived experience and the state of our mental health and so that research um was it changed it upended my whole life just changed my whole view about how how mental health is and um gave me a chance to look at the research that's you know 40 years old but isn't yet commonly understood by healthc Care Professionals um or the public but it's something that really needs to change um that we come to understand how our lived experience affects our Mental Health um was that sort of it I think so that

was great hi I'm Jennifer smaraka I've been in the IT industry for over 20 years now I started off as a Microsoft certified system engineer engineer Darren and I work together so he can't look at me when I say that I know how funny that is I'm very very technical Al no um NT 4.0 guys so it was a while ago and Darren probably wishes I would stop saying that um um working in it for over 20 years when I first started my career I was a freight train and I was going about a 100 miles an hour and taking a lot of damage it was like I had somewhere to go and I was

going to get there plowing through and I started working for an organization and they um did a training called colors and it personality profiles and that was the first time I realized that how I was built but also how others were built it uh also changed kind of like the trajectory of how I saw people how I thought about myself and my mental health journey I guess so happy to share some insights as the questions evolved and very nice to see you all one thing one thing I want to bring up real quick don't feel bad about about the NT 4.0 so if you see Bud's shirt bud is actually wearing a shirt it literally says M I

took a picture of it earlier Microsoft Windows 2000 Global launch partner so I think I think you beat him with 4.0 but yeah I'm young I don't want to make it an agism thing but we wanted some more experienced people on the panel so I thought I won it with bud but also right like I feel like the conference badge also lends to pretty awesome you know 4.0 awesome go for it Dar I I can tease you but I was right at that nt4 as well so it's fun to tease but I was there uh my name is uh Darren gynan I've been in it now for about 25 years uh security about 18 um my story is more um

I joined pre-sales technical pre-sales for a public company and if you understand that that means public company means stock which means pressure everything is based off of you got to be driving that stock up and that pressure comes from the top down um so over my career I've had um some moments where definitely anxiety played uh you know played a role and it really definitely affected my sleep where I'm at night and my mind is going a mile million miles and I'm just sitting there all night and I look at the clock and it's 8:00 a.m. and I'm starting the next day with no sleep so I've definitely seen how that progressed uh and then we had coid hit

right how did Co help all our mental States it uh it didn't help I went from uh flying 78 flights one year to zero and working in a I call my dungeon a basement and that was not good for my mental health which led me to actually quit my job take a break re Focus take that high pressure off and try to figure out what I want to do next and find the right place to go that fit my own personal policy so that's my story great take it away Bud okay uh my name is Bud van and I have uh I've been in it since 1985 so I represent I guess the Aging side of this population I I would be a

Gray beard I guess is what we call those old people but uh I have alope so that is not an option I uh I have uh had spent 17 years at EPS Edmonton Police Service which I consider quite a stressful it role managing cyber security and uh that is really my story of stress um all the other employers I have had uh the the job wasn't really that stressful and didn't uh cause health issues so my hope today is that I can influence you guys and talk to you about this and I really have to pay a lot of tribute to Michael Michael who helped me understand that the stigma of having M mental health issues should be ignored I mean

we're all people we're all human beings we should be able to assess where we're at and treat ourselves accordingly so normalize if we all start talking about it it takes a stick more away and it's uh it's an everyday thing exactly yeah yeah so normalizing I I didn't talk about my history how much um this is going to be the most pretentious thing I'll ever say but just search my name on YouTube uh you can find videos that I've talked about at other conferences so I won't I won't go into details there but my history goes back many many many years hit a massive breaking point in 2018 um there were days where I was

calling in sick to work because I just I physically could not get out of bed um I couldn't get in my car and drive more than like 10 minutes without having a panic attack um yeah it was it was pretty rough ended up uh seeing a therapist so I see a therapist once a month uh for the last 5 years now and one of the key things that that she's taught me over the years is to normalize it it's okay to talk about it I can be quite vocal and opinionated about all sorts of stuff so I have no problem standing up here talking about yeah my my mental health was a train Rec it's a

lot better now but I learned in talking to so many people in the community especially Bud uh that it's it hits everybody whether you've been doing this for decades whether uh you were doing computers in 1985 or you weren't even born yet um it's been it hits everyone just a show of hands if if you're willing like who here is stressed out who here is anxious who here is if you don't put your hand up put your hand up we're all stressed out to some degree uh so it's it's it's it's the it's Universal right what do they say everybody has to deal with death and taxes it's like death taxes and and stress and anxiety and and mental health

so we'll get into the next set of questions here um one thing that uh I wanted to talk about was culture and stigma around mental health I think this this was a good uh good segue into it so how do you perceive the current culture around mental health in cyber security and have you faced any stigmas discussing it um and also how does diversity intersect with with some of those challenges so I'll I'm just going to throw it to the panel and if anybody uh has answers just throw them out there I heard a good saying one time also came from a therapist um and I'm a huge advocate of therapy uh I think it's

extremely important and essential I think that every human should have therapy um but the therapist said what other people think about you is none of your business and I'm just going to say that again what other people think of you is none of your business so that doesn't mean that you can you know do whatever you want or like act in a certain way but you're never going to be everybody's cup of tea and there is a certain freedom to staying true to yourself and whether that's being up here talking about for mental health or being vulnerable about your journey some people might not be ready to be there some people might have feelings or

judgment on that but that has that's none of your business your business is you and the path that you want to go down and I think that culturally that it can set the tone and make it safe for others who maybe are at the beginning of that journey I think that's a good great saying uh I my personal opinion is looking around and being in a number of organization I that there's definitely still a stigma not enough people are talking about it I think people are afraid that maybe it perhaps makes them feel that weak or maybe they think if management or somebody in organization um knows about hey they struggle with mental health that maybe they're not

able to take on another position maybe a higher level position so the way I kind of look at it I'm try to normalize it as much as possible talk about it as much as possible keep throwing out there I you know me and you have had a lot of conversation most of our lunches we talk about mental health more than it nowadays so to me the more we keep talking about it we get rid of that stigma I'll I'll add real quick to that yeah so so like Bud and I we have we have lunch maybe once a quarter and to Darren's Point too like we don't really talk about computers anymore you know we

don't really talk about it anymore it's more how are you you know it's it's almost it's how are you doing it's how are you feeling like let's what's going on in your life these days and and same with same with same with Darren Darren will come to University and and we'll have lunch and it doesn't even have to be like a formal setting it's just just these nice one-on-one discussions with people you can be open and honest with each other um my therapist said something very similar so for my for my personal issues um what she said was was Michael if other people think you're great at your role that's their problem and that was like no one had ever said

that to me because I was always chasing these achievements and these Ambitions and I had to look good and be awesome and and one day she's just like Michael but if people think that that's their problem not yours and I was like I never even thought of it that way and it just allows you to just relax chill and and stop worrying about what other people think of you um and use use your own inter Compass right like your own set of values that you think are important yeah I was having actually this conversation uh literally like 5 minutes ago about you know I was just sitting out there by myself just looking at my phone catching

up on stuff and like I was feeling good and I was like normally I would have been you know felt obligated to attend a talk or go do this or go do that and it was like no I I'm allowed to just sit here and do what I need to do so anything you want to add to that ernestina sure when I think of workplace culture um and just generally the attitudes that we find towards Mental Health health and Society the conversation needs to change currently whether it's spoken or not when you're dealing with mental health issue what's not often said is or yeah maybe what's unspoken is that the stigma is around well what's wrong with you what's wrong

with you if you can't keep putting up 80 hours a week and trying to deal with the rest of your life what's wrong with you that you can't keep up and um really the conversation needs to change to you know at work and everywhere uh towards what's happened to you right is it normal for anyone to be able to work that much for so long and um and our sort of like grind culture you know productivity culture it needs to be really exam re-examined because human beings you know we need more than 80h hour work weeks to be healthy and to be functional so when I'm thinking of things at work like workplace burnout and that kind of

thing we need to really start thinking about um what is the support that that the culture that the workplace needs to offer that we need to offer one another as staff um those are some of the things that come to mind about workplace culture and when it comes to say um people um people of color uh different cultures that those folks might go about their Wellness practices in a different way and that that also needs to be considered I'm thinking of my indigenous friends for example and how they approach uh workplace Wellness in in different ways and to make space for people that come from different cultures and have different backgrounds so those are two sort of lenses on culture that

come to mind so uh it's not what's wrong with you it's what's happened to you or what you what you've been going through and it's totally predictable that after a pandemic like you know Mass Collective trauma right a loss of choice a loss of control increased sense of helplessness those are the key drivers that affect our mental health at work and personally right and so um it makes perfect sense that we're having a mental health crisis after a pandemic because that's what happened right whenever we lose a sense of choice control and feel helpless that is when we're most likely to have um significant impacts to our um mental mental health and workplace mental health I'm hoping maybe the whole coid

and and making the mental health uh pandemic like a second part of it is maybe now we're bringing enough exposure to mental health that maybe in a long run it will help I really like that it was it was interesting for me because like I've been seeing a therapist for 2 years pre pandemic and then it was fascinating just to hear her advice on how things Chang in those initial months when everybody had to adjust to working from home and not being around people and then 3 years later now seeing the opposite of those adjustments and now seeing people having uh that's normalized and now having to talk about the issues with with people maybe

wanting to have to come back to work or not wanting to come back to work and you know we're kind of three years into this this interesting social experiment like I can tell you had I not been going to therapy for the last three years I would not have dealt with Co nearly as well as as I had um bu was there anything you wanted to add on the the diversity side I was going to add one thing about the soft stigma or the stigma in there's there's this soft piece that I hope maybe I can get through to people um if if you don't think that mental health is something to ever affect you you may not

be aware of the programs available through your employer I think I felt that way is there a phone number to call or is there how do you start the ball rolling if you turn a corner as a result of hearing realizing that you're having a mental health problem uh however the many ways that happens um do you have are you aware of what's available through your employer and how do you start the ball rolling I I feel that's a piece of ignorance that I think I had and maybe other people have had so I thought I'd bring that up so I think that that actually leads right into our next Point um I'm sitting here kind of thinking

like we're we're we sound a little depressed which might be May part of the panel let's let's Spruce it up a little bit let's talk about how we how we've been doing better um education and initiatives what educational resources strategies and support services have you used to teach yourself and others about mental health let's focus on on some of the the good stuff that's gotten us to where where we are today again I'll throw it to the panel I think this is probably a good time to talk about when Darren and I work together and back to what I was talking about with colors or Myers Briggs or personality profile because I had done it in the job that uh

previous uh when I came into the employer that great uh that Darren and I worked for there were culturally some um hard undertones that were happening within the teams and so one of the things that I did was knowing how impactful it was for me is I brought colors into for the team to do and I also invited their spouses to attend cuz it was you know you're you're a whole person you're not just a professional version and a personal version and sometimes um I certainly encountered this is how once I found out how I was built and so I I have a probably like a lot of you in here have a data brain

that wants all the information about all things but I'm also very impulsive and so I have a hard time sitting down for a long period of time to get that information and a person like me that is moving very quickly and speaks quickly thinks quickly can be chaotic for people that maybe are emotion based or maybe like structure or like to do a sequential task and so I would guess if you think about your spouse or your partner or your significant other probably the opposite of you like I don't know why that happens in life but we tend to attract the exact opposite person of how we are so when I went through that I was like oh that makes

sense this I'm built this way I'm married to this person and so I thought with the team bring like let let help them understand each other and the strengths that each of us brings some are emotion based some are databased and then also their spouses I think there was just a lot of like good learning there it it was as the person who took it from what you organized and I brought my wife to it I found it I found it so valuable to understand my own personality understand where my wife fit and then one of the co-workers that we worked with went and sat with my wife on the 100% emotional side and I was like I

would have never guessed that suris and every day I came to work and I had a desk that faced him we had we faced each other and every day he's nice and happy and this one day he came in and he did not look good and I remember thinking okay I understand he's really emotional I just looked at him I know do you need a hug and he's like yeah I need a hug and that was very foreign for me but I got up he came over and gave him a hug and he instantly relaxed and he felt better for the day I love but the fact that you know the personality and that was I'm not the hugy type but I

understood what he needed I want you gave me a huge hug when you saw me earlier I sensed you needed it okay but anyway it's um I think understanding your personality understanding how you can relate to others and how you can help others is so valuable my own personal Journey on trying to manage my own mental health and that I definitely know that when things get tough I stop wanting to exercise and do those things that need the most um like Michael I I ended up seeing a psychologist for a number of years I found it very valuable not only to you talk to somebody third party that I didn't necessarily know everything about me but also felt that I

could be very open and get a another opinion and she also directed me a lot of ways like hey you're in this situation you should protect yourself this way so it felt like I had somebody else in my corner which is really really good um and I it's a subject matter expert too right if I had anything to do like a security like question or I would go to Darren because he's a subject matter expert in that it's the same with mental health right like we're we're not subject matter experts on it we go to professionals who have done all of the schooling the education who been in it for years seeing a large data set of

different mental health you know issues and then they can guide you through that so I think that's a I love that you're going to see that person and so so one thing speak speaking of subject matter experts ernestina you you did your research on this and you you have a company that offers educational resources as a service so if it's something you want to not to interrupt you guys just just curious what did you yeah let's hear what you have to say on that topic too sure um you know when I went into like looking at trauma research that's sort of like going into the dark side it's really heavy you know and and thinking about how that plays

out in the workplace in terms of like workplace aggression bullying um those kinds of of really difficult behaviors um but that's sort of why why I ended up on the topic of resilience because we need to balance you know we need to be honest about like what's difficult at work but we also need to uh take the time to look at ourselves and say well what have I got going for me what are my strengths what do I bring to the table and where do I need to you know what are the skills that I might need to learn to boost my resilience how can I have more compassion how can I show up better for my co my colleagues

and actually I think this also really needs this message needs to come to leaders right because leaders are the ones that can really make the difference in terms of creating environments that are safe enough for staff to speak about what they need um and we need to start having different kinds of conversations in the workplace around around workplace mental health um and resilience so um for me when I'm thinking about resilience that's one of the core things is thinking about um you know what is it what strengths do I already have and where might I be able to learn and grow you know what are the skill sets that that um that might accompany resilience

and some of those skill sets are things like you know what are my communication skills like how am I at resolving conflict right conflicts being like this is kind of a scary touchy subject that probably no not very many of us like but our communication skills really affect our ability to um to advocate for ourselves and to also deal with Conflict at work so I think there's there's quite a few levels to it you know that that I address in in the training that I offer one one thing I noticed just just everybody's aware so um these questions were all shared last week with with the panelists we've had some time to think about them but I I noticed in that email

chain your uh your email signature says yours in resilience followed by your name and I'll be honest the first time I read that I didn't know what that meant so I went and Googled it and learned oh there's this whole like like I learned some actually I found some of your stuff some Talks on YouTube on resilience and and learned quite a bit of that um I'm going to go to the next question here but I want to start with you on this one as I think uh this was on the managerial uh side of things so for those in managerial roles how do you identify and support team members facing mental health challenges and uh how can peer

support and mentorship assist individuals so take it away that's a tough one I uh I think that one of the things we're going to be watching for is uh uh changes in behavior and and uh unusual things that are happening to uh uh but I I don't feel that I'm an expert in observing that type of stuff and observing people I know that the five or six guys that work for me uh we all talked every day and tried to share a lot of stuff but I I don't think uh I don't think I really add too much insight into how we would try and help our coworker and and say you're having a tough time

how have you explored the options for for helping yourself I mean we do just normally I don't think it's it's anything above and beyond the normal work or relationship in my experience yeah go for yeah I've I've been in leadership for about 15 years and I think it's what you already talked about it's that connection and education to what your employer has to offer I think it's vulnerability which you have displayed and when you sit down with somebody like the two of you go for lunch you know that there's a a place of vulnerability there and I think when you have people reporting to you they can sense that they know whether it's safe to share something that you know might

they're worried about judgment or that they could be terminated or that there will be backlash and so I think you as a leader model that and create that safe space and I've been in organizations where above me is not safe so I create a protective shield around the people that are on my team so that that allows them and sometimes I'll sit down with them and say how are you doing if I'm seeing any of that type of like if I'm sensing that something's off I'll say oh like how are things going how many of you here have said good yeah good we're all great super like no we're not great like we're stressed out we're yeah that just means

it's not safe and I think what we're going to see over the next 10 years in workplace mental health is actually a really strong shift towards um workplace uh psychological safety Canada is a leader in developing uh a a psychologic safety standard that's being adopted by um uh World Health Organization and so building and developing psychological safety at work is probably something that's going to make a pretty tremendous difference um meaning that people will feel safe enough to express their concerns safe enough to ask for help that they need and the support that they need without fear of reprisal and uh and or or being fired and that kind of thing so I think that's a trend that's coming

that we're going to be seeing in I think what what leaders you know something for leaders to consider is to you know getting psychological um safety training right and and then but also training with training it's the minute training is over is sort of when training starts so we also have to start thinking about you know what's the learning retention on these kinds of trainings so that's something also to consider it's funny bud you said you said it's difficult like like as a manager you know to kind of kind of start those conversations i' I've experienced that myself um a smarter uh moderator would have just deleted this question so we we sound better but um no it's it it is a

challenge so almost almost my entire team is in is in this room right now I'm not going to out them out they know who they are but uh it's I loved your comment about good um I had I had a director I used to report to and every time you know he'd see me he'd be like how you doing Michael and I would say one of three things I'm either I'm good I'm busy or I'm tired and one day he said to me he goes you can't say that anymore he goes you he goes everyone's good everyone's busy everyone's tired he would say say something more interesting and uh I I don't enforce it across my

team but I have one direct report who does it consistently and I'm pretty sure it's just a troll me now or every time because they they they know this right and and it Tak how you do it good I'm like oh I can't tell if you're serious or you're just like trolling me but uh uh it it it is true right and part of it I learned like it was a coping strategy where maybe I didn't necessarily feel the trust that I wanted to because yeah there was a lot of stuff I wanted to talk about but not necessarily with with that that supervisor you know so when I would say oh I'm good oh I'm busy I'm

tired there's a polite way of me saying I don't want to talk right now but at least I me not to that person so yeah the thing about building up trust I'll sit here and I'll try to tell everybody in this room I hope I've built some degree of trust with my team but knowing that four or the six are here they might be like yeah try hard Michael I don't know but um I I think it's interesting though to like when you said maybe not with that supervisor I our brain is always scanning for little nuances so when that supervisor says to you uh you can't say that anymore say something interesting it's like okay uh versus Say Something

Real you know it's like I want interesting from you he's not saying I want real from you and I don't know like I don't know what the but that little Nuance might have said to your brain you know oh is is that do you mean interesting like connected to how I'm myself and how I'm doing or does it mean entertain me oh yeah interesting for me would be like guess what I found in a peap this morning looking at logs exactly that that would go well that got be like I don't care yeah yeah moving moving right along uh coping mechanisms and burnout prevention so uh share self-care techniques and advice for managing stress and maintaining your

mental well-being in the demanding field of cyber security so what have we been doing to kind of kind of help out and we talked about it a bit but let's go a little deeper I know for myself I've kind of um I was put onto a blog or I shouldn't say a Blog a podcast about leadership and byby manager and what I actually found is it was a great uh session on setting your own personal policy so it's been really important for me to think about what's important to me and what I know that I need every day to make sure that I keep myself healthy I booking making sure I take lunch don't get booked down a lot of times our

calendars are open season for people putting stuff in and I remember a previous job I put in there I was working like 10hour days lunch and my manager was like that's the silliest thing I've ever said I'm like take it out and I'm like well if I can never figure out time to get lunch then I'm going to get more grumpy as I'm hungry but the point is you should be taking your breaks you should be taking your lunch if you need to schedule some time to read something in your industry still relevant to your job but it helps you relax you should be putting those mechanisms in and a in my opinion a good uh workplace good manager

will support you with that and help you with that instead of making you feel silly or saying something negative about it I think think we also need to measure things differently like I was talking um with a couple of co-workers and right now we're measuring either in society or at work like think of time off what if there was some type of like AI or analytics that would like autor route that you hadn't taken enough time off or that you hadn't used any of the services that and I know we can't get sometimes that granular because information is protected but I think part of when you're talking about like education there's like the learning component is leaders but then

if leaders were measuring your how much like massage therapy you were doing or how much you know time off you were taking in a positive way because right now sometimes it can feel like we're not supposed to take time off or we're not you know or we're supposed to like it's a it's a might feel guilty even right or it's good if we work kind of 80 hours so I I think that's like a and then the other the other piece of advice that I give to like younger people people coming up is like pay attention to when your brain is happy and point your life towards that because in this room you guys I'm going to guess are all

exceptionally smart like whatever you do you'll be good at it you can do anything whatever you point your big brain towards you'll be good at that thing but that doesn't mean you're going to be happy doing that thing so pay attention when you're happy and when your brain likes something and try and point your life's path towards that and I think it won't be such a rub I think measurement too is a key word is how we measure if you think of some of the the teams I've been on is the managers are um our team's always 150% a plan we're always doing well but they have people who can't last more than two years in the in

on the team so I think we have to start measuring not based on that but on how happy are people and I will give a plug Jennifer to me you came in when when we were in some turmo on our organization and you created a safe place where we felt like a team you took care of the employees first and then we took care of business business and I think that's a great philosophy which which is Richard Branson's I think from Virgin Galactic and everything that was his you take care of your team first they take care of customers and I truly believe that and a lot of organizations are know clients are number one well you see all

these people leaving coming in and out the door all time take care of your staff they'll take care of the job it's funny you mention that so when when our um when our youngest so he's seven now nope he's not seven he's eight my wife is going to be here later don't tell her I made that mistake um yeah he just turned eight uh we got him in RP like shortly after he was born and I remember the the lady at the bank you know how long have you been at the University of Alberta at that time it was like I don't know eight or nine years and and she's like I've been here two years and I

can't wait to get out of here and like that was always it was always an interesting thing for me because like like even you know people you hear oh you've been somewhere for 9 years I've been at the UFA now for 13 years and people are like so when are you going to leave and go experience other jobs and I was like but I love my job I love the people I work with I see because of that and and if you ask other university people thank you five minutes um I'm a I'm still early on in my career like like there's people 35 40 years so we just got the 5 minute warning um let's

uh let's go to the last question here um bud I think uh I'll pass this one to you so future outlook and workplace policies um what changes or improvements would you like to see in mental health um and how mental health is addressed in the cyber security industry in the future any policies or anything our our workplaces can do to make this better you know I I saw that question when you distributed uh and uh I don't really think I have any good suggestions there because um you know I don't want to bash employers or anything like that but it's just uh difficult to try and even think of a solution that I could think of

that's for people I guess in the industry but my personal solution is uh if anyone wants a therapy they could try out is retire in golf a lot re got years to wait but it's something to look forward to you know can I ask I want to ask but a question so when you retired did you now find you had a new set of stress like what to do with yourself did that create another anxiety type I would think it would stress doesn't isn't just the job stress is up here yeah and so yeah I I did retire I'm doing some uh helpful work for a nonprofit my sister runs and I still find my getting pulled into the

stress sphere right yeah so that's the other part mental health is with you no matter what employer you're at I think I'm going to jump in here the policy that I think everyone should be really watching out for um and I wouldn't surprise it's going to tie into occupational health and safety more and more in the future and it's psychological safety there's one thing that um I could ask everyone to take away is to start thinking about how do we build more psychological safety at work because it is something that really affects um people's ability to stay at work to be effective to prevent burnout and um to decrease the brain drain that comes from um people leaving their jobs

right uh it's a huge expense when people are like I can't take it anymore and I'm quitting that costs everyone so much so there's a lot of incentive to um address these issues why don't why don't we just jump right to the end then so um we had key takeaways but why don't we just do closing thoughts and resources so uh if we we'll just share share your final thoughts and uh recommended resources or suggestions and then we'll we'll call it a panel um I would say for managers the thing that comes to mind the ultimate tool anyone can use is curiosity right instead of saying what's wrong with you it's like hey what's going on for you or

I've noticed and you know I'm here for you and being curious bring curiosity to the table instead of judgment is one of the most powerful tools any of us can use for anyone in our lives at work or personally um and I think also like I said exploring psychological safety and also resilience are key key topics that I think need to come into the workplace yeah I I think that's really I really like that as well and I I think also like seeking to understand I find that I'm a quick to like react and then I have to like give myself a five minute and then I go in with a seek to understand and if I ask those questions

in that way it will bring down the kind of tension that's happening and then the other thing that I do um within the workplace is I uh have somebody that is I can bounce that that has my same values thinks about things the same way that I do and I have them as a soundboard and so now like I would use Darren as that right if I if I'm in something and I can't see it clearly or Darren Darren knows me he knows like I can run a little hot or my freay train or whatever so I'll I'll check in and just say hey am I looking at this the right way like you know my dysfunction I

say that lovingly uh you know you know am I do you have a another Viewpoint and then I feel safe with him so he'll share with me what even if it's hard sometimes right about what I could be doing better or what or validate what I'm saying so having a person I think is really important I I'll add that real quick I've been doing that a little more recently too like just being a little more honest about my Stakes like I walk into you know my boss as our cio's office and just be like I screwed up and you know I've learned not to just you know address it that way but that's the general gist of it right and and

sometimes it's like I don't I don't feel good about how I address this situation I think I upset somebody which is it's out of character for me help and just to have that other person to Bounce It Off absolutely demonstrating vulnerability and you're demonstrating um self-reflection yeah it's it's that statement too like I'm not going to make I won't I won't make that mistake again or I won't make a mistake and it's like oh don't do that to yourself like you're 100% Going to make a mistake like you know just set that bar like that's what we should measure your mistakes and then how you respond to that or react to that Darren take away you guys took a lot of

the stuff I was going to say already I I'll finish off with uh be kind to yourself so I mean it's really hard if you're really like me OCD that likes everything to be a certain way and and I hold myself to a really high standard if you make a mistake you got to be able to let go I did a panel about two or three weeks ago and I blanked on one of the questions and I answered it and I was like that was the worst answer ever my manager was like you did fine you could have done it differently but I was I was I didn't sleep a little bit that night and next

night and I finally had to say to myself oh my God just let it go do better the next time be a little more prepared think of it differently and just try to be kind to yourself so that's what I've done Bud you're you're the only one standing between yourself and the golf course so last one no pressure last thing I would say is uh have something that takes you away from work great point for me it's golf some people meditate a lot of people read read books and that puts them in a different world have something you know we can't work 24/7 awesome well that's that's the panel um I'm not sure if we have time

for Q&A or not I'm looking at the back room there uh Michelle take it away I think we had a yeah har vender could make time for us this is an important we got five minutes all right har says we have five minutes there's no lunch up those doors yet so I I'm uh first of all I wanted to thank all the panel this is exceptional uh I'm a big person who believes in therapy and and self self-help um I'm transgendered by the way and I went through eight years of therapy to be able to make the decisions that I need to be able to make in my my life so therapy is is absolutely critically important I do

have a question and it is related to my personal experiences from a work perspective I was with the same employer for 19 years of my life and then I ended up having a manager change and that manager was very micromanaging of me I immediately recognized that I didn't like it and it's what caused me to leave the company that I was working working for I then made a conscious decision to move to a different company and ultimately ended up reporting to the CEO is very narcissistic uh and and one of the things from a society perspective that I see is is that we see seem to reward narcissism within managers uh all we have to do is is take a look at Elon

Musk from the perspective of probably the most narcissistic person in the world but also the richest and so so how have you dealt with micromanagers narcissism and the work from the perspective of your own mental health and I wish that we could do this panel for the rest of the day no problem you know I just took a deep breath when you said how do you deal with this because I bet you everybody has faced that it's one of the reasons I left one of my jobs as well where you know you were somebody's in your calendar every day checking what you're doing justify that you're busy uh we're having a meeting let's have a discussion I better know

everything you're doing it it it overwhelms you with the micromanagement so it to me that is so anxious anxiety building it makes you so stressed so I I find it very difficult for me I I almost came back to what one of my therap my therapist said to me was do you have a mental health issue or do you have a work issue mhm yeah and I quickly realized that I had a work issue and I quit I moved on I think the best thing and it's not that easy it's not easy sometimes to quit a job there's don't get wrong like we all have a lot of us could have wives kids husbands ET we

it's not so easy to say you're taking um a loss of income and you'll be able to function but I do think that you need to if you're in those situation prioritize your mental health and maybe start thinking about an Exit Plan yeah I I love that I for yourself I think you just did the right thing like it's you have to if there's a rub happening there it's going to affect you and you're going to start like your nervous system is a glass and you can only put so much in there before it starts spilling out like short-tempered can't sleep those mean that there's something not sitting well so from a personal standpoint I

love that from a professional standpoint when I've been in cultures that have been not great or toxic I'll start um in a roundabout way having conversations about measuring things things that I know where the answer is going to lead like retention so if I think that somebody is a narcissist or they have a really kind of toxic personality as a leadership level I'll start bringing out like where are we sitting uh in Industry standards uh for our retention and oh we're uh in the bottom percentile you know and it's like what what what do you guys think at the table that we could do you know to help that and then inevitably the answer right becomes and

you by the way board of directors too like you know that's a great way to start saying do you guys think that there's an issue there with the because it impacts also profitability you start speaking their language and it rolls down right our vendor our vendor is telling us to wrap it up so cool thank you everybody thanks everyone thank you thank you thanks for joining that was awesome thank you great