I've helped companies in industries from fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) to aviation, finance to telecommunications, entertainment to marketing, supply chain, R&D functions, and many more. I've worked up and down the food chain with everyone from interns to CEOs. Irrespective of the many variables that set one company apart from another, I have observed the same set of blind spots in all of them when it comes to mental fitness.
The first is that leaders come to me with a multitude of culture- and business-related goals and challenges that they think they need help addressing, but they are not usually the ones that really do need addressing. Companies do not always diagnose their issues correctly to begin with before settling on a solution, and so, the wrong things repeatedly get addressed. Or at least, the real issues are not being tackled and therefore continue to fester.
For example, leaders will often say of their organisational challenges:
‘We need to increase productivity!’
‘We need to refresh our strategy.’
‘We need to define roles and responsibilities.’
‘We have to create a “ways of working” manifesto,’ and so on.
Indeed, these may be the outcomes they seek, and they are possible to achieve, but they are not enough on their own to ensure ongoing productivity, happiness, and creativity from everyone throughout the organisation at every level. Because they are all tangible and visible, whereas we need to equally explore what lies underneath these. What beliefs, values, and mindsets are within the people working towards the business goals? If I were to take every brief of this nature at face value, I could deliver exactly to such expectations as the ones listed above, and the clients would be happy upon delivery, but their challenges wouldn't be resolved.
Here are the four fundamental reasons why:
The person who perceives the team's challenges and has the authority to act on them and do something about them is usually a leader. By the very nature of their position, they don't fully know what is actually happening ‘on the floor’. It's much like when parents of teenagers don't have the full picture (and I'm not saying company executives are like teenagers). It's simply human nature to shield details from those in authority.
By focusing on the assumed best solution – for example, the new strategy, organisational chart, roles, and responsibilities – there is an underlying assumption that the ‘problem’ presented is the right one to be solving.
Briefs for change created by leaders, usually, unwittingly, work on the ‘symptom’ level and rarely seek to uncover the ‘cause’, because the symptoms are confused as being the cause.
In the fast-paced world that we work in, results and outcomes are favoured over process. This means that the time in the journey from current Point A to desired Point B is crunched to accelerate outcomes. Because of this, the outcomes are diluted and often superficial. I find that the more energy and focus are invested in the ‘how’ (the journey from uncovering the underlying cause to introducing solutions), the better, more impactful, and longer lasting the results, every time.
Team and company leaders' perceived challenges are valid. They are very valuable indeed. But they must be considered as just one input. Other valid perspectives on the real issues with teams and culture also include those of each member of the board, leadership team, wider team and people who work with the team.
Only with that complete bigger picture and a view of the teams ‘inner game’ can you start to build a view of the mental fitness levels within your company, separate symptoms from cause, and know where to focus your energy. You can then point at core problems, reframe them and do the work to really know which challenges need to be solved first. More often than not, core problems are not always immediately visible, because they are at a mindset level. Therefore, seeking to work on both the visible and invisible obstacles to performance can be a game changer for any team.
Mental fitness is grounded in emotional and social intelligence, and it's this insight that then prepares us to embrace change, be resilient in the face of setbacks, and effectively manage emotions, ambitions, and behaviour. It's a journey, one of self-discovery and awareness, and one which can (and does) take years.
In the following chapters, I seek to show you how and why this insight matters. I will demonstrate how small but significant changes to your perception, thinking, and mindset can make a difference to how you experience, and subsequently show up in, life and business. My intention is to demystify the workings of the mind by sharing some basic neuroscience and behavioural psychology and showing you how to use this knowledge to unlock behavioural change within yourself and your teams.
I encourage you to read this book with yourself in mind first; play with the subject matter and complete the exercises for yourself. In doing so, you'll see the power that small tweaks to your perception, thinking, and belief systems have to completely change your experience of life. Once you've experienced this insight first-hand, take it to your teams and to your organisation. I have a number of ways I can support you in this, which you can find at www.symbiapartners.com.
A word of caution though: the temptation is to think ‘I know this’, and it's true that there's a chance you will have come across some of the thinking I'm going to share with you in different ways at different times. But here's the thing: are you actively using this knowledge to help you manage the stresses and pressures of business and work life? Have you applied the understanding to help you navigate conflict? Is it being leveraged to enhance confidence? Are you using it to help yourself out of ‘thinking traps’ and self-criticism? Are you applying it to get the best out of your teams? Are you actively using your values to make decisions that are both right for you and for your business? Knowing (or simply having heard something before) is not enough. Changing your behaviour because of what you know, is.
Most boards consider any topics related to our inner world (emotional, social, mental) the ‘soft skills’ that are distracting from what really matters – business metrics and results. But it is the wise and empathetic leaders who know that these skills are the real skills that matter. Empowering your people to leverage their most important asset, their own minds, is fundamentally the best investment any company can make.
If you told me you'd read 500 books about how to fly a plane, I still wouldn't get in a plane with you in the cockpit. The mistake many of us make is that we stop at knowing. This book is designed to encourage application.
As a result, I have made sure to include a variety of exercises throughout the book. These have all been trialled and tested in our workshops over the past decade, so I know them to be effective. You can also access further electronic resources here: www.symbiapartners.com/mentalfitnessresources.
I don't want this book to be a complete workbook, but I do want you to begin applying what you're learning as you're reading. This book, however, doesn't sit alone. It supports my Mental Fitness live workshops (which I've been running in corporate organisations since 2016), my interactive webinars (for a variety of clients including Coca-Cola, Peet's Coffee, and L'Oréal), and my successful Mental Fitness online course, which (in various bespoke versions) has already been implemented with great success in Unilever, Jacobs Douwe Egberts, and a prominent global bank – so you're in good company. If you want to learn more about this work, you can visit www.symbiapartners.com.
But for now, settle in, suspend your assumptions, biases, and beliefs, open your mind, and be willing to think differently.
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