Supporting Mental Health as an Effective Leader
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RailsConf 201728 / 86
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33:11
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:00
So my talk is on supporting mental health as an effective leader. As you can see, my name is Jesse James at Marginal Chaos and pretty much everything.
00:21
So if you want to reach out to me. So today, what are we going to cover? We're going to cover what the problem with mental health is in tech specifically, what we're doing about it now, why I'm here, what we can do about it, and kind of a few variations of remote versus on-site, and then tips and responsibilities for both managers and individuals.
00:42
First off, a thank you, kind of a dedication. Basically, it's a woman in my life who basically helped me through my own mental health issues. And so she was instrumental in me being able to talk about this and do the work that I do now. So who am I? I am a Marine Corps veteran. As Allison said, I'm a developer advocate
01:02
for SparkPost. We do email infrastructure as a service, kind of like SendGrid or MailChimp. I'm a weightlifter, a dog and cat lover, Corgis are the bomb. Currently living in Portland, Oregon, and I love it there. And he, him, his pronouns just because solidarity.
01:20
And also zombies are awesome. If you didn't see them yesterday, it was amazing on the streets. So what is the problem? The problem is mental health rates and suicide rates in tech and just the world in general are increasing steadily every year. There's been a 24% increase in suicides since 1994 to 2016.
01:43
18.5% of all US adults suffer from mental illness each year. One in 25 US adults suffer from debilitating illnesses, where they basically have key parts of their life disrupted by the fact that they have this mental illness. And the World Health Organization says depression will overtake any other illness by 2020
02:02
to become the leader of missed work and productivity in the workplace. So what are we doing? Not nearly enough. Like for all the lip service we hear about it and all the good things we hear and the perks and whatnot in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, we're not doing nearly enough.
02:22
A recent survey by the Open Sourcing Mental Illness, sorry, basically, here are a few of the facts. Most employees don't know what's going on with mental health at their workplace. They don't know if they have benefits. They don't know what the benefits are. They don't feel comfortable discussing them.
02:41
So in essence, we're in a situation where we all know there's an issue, but none of us are really doing much about it. And in the few cases that we are, that's great, but we're not talking about it with other companies. We're spending most of our time just almost pretending it's not a problem. One thing here that I like to point out is while 31% of those who responded
03:02
said they wouldn't bring up a physical health issue with their employer or a potential employer, over 62% said they wouldn't mention a mental health issue. And the thing is, it's the same thing. They're both illnesses. It shouldn't be this disparity of, oh, I can bring up the fact that I broke my leg or that I have diabetes, but I can't bring up that I have PTSD or depression or anxiety.
03:22
And that's just not right. And that's just because there's still a huge stigma, especially in tech, of, hey, if you have mental illness, you can't perform, so they're gonna push you out or they just won't hire you. So why am I here? I am a Marine Corps veteran. I do suffer from PTSD, anxiety, and depression.
03:43
And I have held both managerial and individual contributor roles in a variety of companies. And I've had some of the best and worst experiences at workplaces having managers and the company support me. I've had ones where I felt like everybody going to work was going home, like those were my friends, those were my people.
04:02
I was safe there. I've had companies where I burnt out in three months because I literally dreaded every meeting, every interaction with the coworker. So what can we do? Well, first, we have to kind of set some ground rules. There is no one-size-fits-all approach.
04:20
Any of the things that I'd tell you today may or may not work for your company or may or may not work for your people. You're gonna have to be really fluid and understand that you're gonna have to try some things. You're gonna have to make a few mistakes. That's just the nature of it. What works in an onsite probably won't work that well on a remote and vice versa. Especially if you have a hybrid work site,
04:42
it's gonna take a lot of managerial and like executive support to make these things work. Like you can't just do it on your own and trying to have like, oh, hey, we have an onsite team, then we have a remote team. We do the things the same way for both teams. It's not gonna work that well. Somebody will burn out and you may not know it until it's too late.
05:03
Now, the hard part of anything dealing with illness is the fact that HR is gonna wanna get involved. They're gonna have their hands in it and say, hey, you can do this, you can't do that. And that's great from a legal standpoint. But HR is HR. They are not fun to deal with. So your mileage may vary, but I highly encourage
05:23
any of you who wanna start some of these things, just go ahead and do it and ask for forgiveness later in most cases. It's better to have started the program and have some sort of positive change from it than to not have started it and then have people still rolling out. Because HR in certain organizations is a benefit,
05:44
but in most, it's pretty much red tape. So on all sides of this, managerial and individual contributor, you have to be empathetic to your coworkers and to yourself. Like you have to be willing to realize that, hey, people are going through something else
06:00
that I may not know about. And that's one of the hardest things for most people to do, especially on remote teams is you don't have that empathy because you don't see each other every day. You don't know each other. You don't see that Terry or Bill or Mary had a really rough week or you may not know they're going through a divorce. And so things like that really play into just being able to say like, hey, you missed work,
06:22
but I'm gonna trust that you did it for a good reason. Proactive, this is more on the managerial side. Managers have to be proactive. You have to be the one to start the conversations. You have to be the one who reaches out and says, hey, how's your day going? You look a little sad or, hey, you wanna go for a walk really quick.
06:40
Managers who said, oh, I'll just sit back and I'll wait for like, I'll see what they're doing, I'll see how they go, it's always the wrong move. You need to reach out. Now willing to take the hit, this is still more managerial but individual contributor. You have to be willing to take the hit of if you ask somebody or you talk to somebody, they may blow up in your face about it.
07:00
They may say, hey, there's no problem. Why are you asking me this? This is inappropriate. You have to phrase things correctly on one hand but you have to be willing to say, yeah, I'm gonna keep trying. There's something wrong here. I know I need to keep trying because they're not gonna tell me right away. Anxiety and depression and PTSD are scary things to deal with just on your own so now if you have a coworker or a boss coming to you
07:21
saying like, hey, I know something's a little off, you wanna talk about it, you're gonna immediately climb up and be defensive. Open to communication. Communication is the most important thing you can do. Having open lines of communication with your employees, whether that be with direct reports or as a mid-middle manager, like anybody in your chain of command,
07:41
is you have to have it. Like if you have silos where people can't reach out and talk to you, they won't, and they won't talk to anybody else either. Able to set aside ego. Ego is one of the other big factors I see, especially in large organizations, where you get this buildup of, oh hey, like I'm a senior developer,
08:01
I can't lose face in front of anybody, I can't take personal days. Like I have to be there for the team. And so the ego gets in the way like, well, I'm so important, I can't have this problem, so I'll just ignore it. On the managerial side, you don't wanna be the one to say like, hey, there's a problem on my team, we're underperforming for X reason,
08:21
my guys need some time off or my folks need some time off. You always wanna be like, I don't like have to keep pushing forward, like the team will be fine, we just need to cover it up. And so you start turning the screws somewhere else on the team. And so more people are starting to kind of get a little amped up and it's just not going well. You have to be willing to say, hey, no, we're gonna take a hit this quarter. Like things aren't gonna be great, I'm gonna look bad to my manager,
08:41
but that's worth it. And patient. Patience is incredibly important when dealing with mental illness. Myself, it took me a good, well, I got out in 2004 and I really just started feeling really good in the last six months. And it took patience of family, friends, coworkers
09:03
of just like, hey, things are gonna get a lot worse before they get a lot better. So when you confront somebody, not confront, when you talk to somebody on your team and they come back and they keep fighting you like, hey, I don't want help, I don't need help, you have to have the patience like, all right, okay, give them time. When they do get treatment, it's gonna take a while.
09:21
It's not gonna be a six month thing or a one year thing. It may take them longer than that or it may not. But you have to be willing to say, hey, they're a valuable portion of the team and we want them here. And if they're not and you don't want them, that sucks, but you have to be willing to say like, hey, maybe this is in the best position for you right now. Maybe you need to take some time,
09:40
find something that's more in line with what you want. Now on the individual side, you have to be willing to accept that like, you know what, maybe this job isn't right for me right now. Maybe traveling three weeks out of the month isn't what I need to be healthy. And so you have to have in that on both sides. So what kind of things can we put in motion? Kind of taking a more systems-based approach.
10:02
A lot of companies will do like, oh, hey, here's an anonymous line you can call and things like that. And those anonymous things are great because it removes that stigma. But there's still the apprehension of, well, somebody might know. But a lot of times, non-anonymous things are great too. A lot of companies will have like, oh, they'll play Magic the Gathering at lunch
10:21
or even small social activities, build a level of comfort amongst the team that eases people into that whole like, hey, I can talk about this, these people are friendly, they're nice. And it also gives you as a manager the ability to say like, hey, I see some weird social dynamics that aren't the norm, like somebody's excluding themselves or being excluded. Why is that happening?
10:41
And that can sometimes give you a clue of someone who's withdrawing or feeling like they're being attacked. No repercussions. Now this is a hard one because everybody likes to think that, oh, we don't become vindictive on somebody if they report something. But I've seen it in companies I've worked for where somebody had a health issue that none of us can know about
11:01
because HIPAA and things like that, personal privacy. But as soon as that person started missing work, people were just like, so why is he out again? Like, really? Like, we're all overworked and he's out. And so the no repercussions isn't just from an HR standpoint or managerial, it's also from a team standpoint. Like, your team has to understand that,
11:21
hey, we're all here for each other. And being able to say like, hey, I know he's out, I'm gonna trust, both in the managerial sense and in his sense, or her sense, that it's on the up and up. That there's definitely something going on, I don't know what it is, I shouldn't know what it is, and it'll take care of itself in some way or another.
11:42
Resources should be easy to find and easy to use. It doesn't make sense to have a call line, like, oh, they can call in and they can talk to people, it'd be great. If it's a separate entire entity that you hear about once when you first start, you get a little plastic card, and then after that, oh, who knows the number? No one's gonna ask, because that's the whole thing.
12:01
If you ask for that number, it's saying, oh, hey, I have a problem. And so no one's gonna call HR for sure, because, hmm. And then freedom to change the system. This is where I deviate from the HR thing, where they say, hey, here's our system, this is what we're doing, this is how we handle things. Because sometimes the systems don't work.
12:21
Sometimes you need to be able to say, like, you know what, we were doing that, no one's using it, there's obviously still a problem, what can we change to make this better? And so that's why I advocate sometimes for not listening to HR and just doing your own thing. Now getting into the difference of onsite and remote. Onsite, I don't wanna say it's easier,
12:41
but it's easier to be more aware. Your team needs personal attention. And I don't mean code reviews or one-on-ones here and there, but even just the occasional, like, hey, do you wanna go have a cup of coffee? Hey, do you wanna go sit in a room and just talk, like, I saw you were doing X, Y, or Z over lunch or on your break, like, do you wanna talk about that?
13:01
Like, you have to be willing to go out of your comfort zone as a manager and find out more about your team. If at any point you're like, I really don't know what she's into, like, does she like dogs or video games or comics or none of that. If you have a person on your team where you don't know at least that much about them, you don't know them, and you don't know what they're going through.
13:21
And that's a big, big cause for issues. Safe spaces. Now there's a lot of talk, and people make fun of the whole safe space thing. I think that's crap. Safe spaces are very important for people, because sometimes, especially in tech companies with open office environments, there's nowhere to go. Like, if you start feeling overwhelmed,
13:41
where are you gonna go? Are you gonna go hide in the bathroom? Like, that makes you just feel worse. So having private spaces where people can just go to do whatever, whether it's work or just be alone, is super important for their mental health. And for you as a manager, like, if you see them go, that gives you another opportunity to say like, oh hey, there's something going on there. And you have to make these safe spaces
14:07
open to everybody. It can't just be like, oh, well, that's for mental health right there. So if you need that for mental health, go there. Because you see somebody walking like, oh, shit. But, so it has to be more than just that.
14:20
Oh, awareness and acceptance training. Going back to that OSME survey, most companies don't do mental health training. Like, they might do racism, sexism, like, things like that, but as far as mental health goes, no one really talks about it. And so it's one of those things where we sit there and we all deal with the problem,
14:41
we see the problem, but our companies are basically just like, well, I don't wanna touch that, so that's all on you guys. So the knowledge of resources and benefits available. This goes beyond just the initial HR, hey, we're gonna reach out to all the new hires, let them know what's going on. You have to make this a proactive thing. At least once every three months,
15:01
reach out to your team like, hey, guys, just wanna let you know, here are the resources that are available, this thing might have changed, but nothing changed, but here they are again. It kinda removes that issue of that little plastic card for the call line. If every three months everybody gets it, everybody still has a constant reminder of, okay, these things are here, the company wants me to use it. They're expecting me to use these things.
15:21
Work from home allowances. Now this one, you will get pushback on sometimes because it's scary to let employees work from home. Like, are they working, are they not? And people will take advantage of it. That's just human nature. Somebody will eventually be like, well, hey, I can just game that system. That's a small price to pay for the people who need it
15:41
to use it, especially for mental health reasons. Like, to know that I have a big office, I love my coworkers, but I'm having a really rough time right now, but I can just stay home for like a two, three days, get things done still, and then come back when I'm better, that's incredibly beneficial. Like, I've had environments where no matter what I had to come in because like a personal day
16:00
or a sick day required like a doctor's note, and I don't wanna bring a doctor's note that says, hey, like, his PTSD was going nuts, and so he didn't wanna go outside at all. Because he wants to take that to the manager because they look at that like, oh, okay, that's creepy. And then private space is kinda back to the safe space thing. Just, even if you don't have dedicated space
16:20
for like a room or something like that, just have a certain section of the office that is like, hey, you know what, there's a desk over there, if you just need to focus on something, not be around other people, just go to that desk. No one will ask you questions, people will just leave you alone. And that could be good just for, hey, I just need some quiet time to work on this, or it could be, I'm having a rough day, I just need to kinda focus on something that's not work.
16:43
Now remote, I find remote management, especially with mental health issues, is a lot harder because you don't have that personal connection with anybody. You oftentimes don't know your team. It's like, hey, you know what, I gave John and Mary a Jira ticket, and then three days later it was done.
17:00
Great, they're happy, I'm happy, things are going fine. You'll see them in Slack, and Slack messages are fine, there's emojis, everything's great, but on the other end of that computer in Slack, they're sitting there and they hate life. They hate the job, they feel like no one likes them at work, they're going through personal crises, and literally the last thing they wanna do is log into Slack or talk to anybody that day,
17:22
but they feel they have to keep up with that presence, like oh, if I don't, they're gonna fire me. Now community for remote positions is kind of a hard thing because there's companies who wanna gamify that, like oh, if you participate in Slack or the forums or do this or that, then you get points and you can get swag, which t-shirts are great,
17:43
but it's not everything. I think true community comes from developing people's interests. So yes, have Slack groups that aren't work-related. Like have things that are just like hey, a lot of the people here like Magic the Gathering, let's just create a Slack room for that, let them do whatever they want to in that Slack room.
18:00
Talk about it. A lot of it is it's gonna cost money out of our budget but let's fly some folks in, like just have them here and we won't even work. Like for two days, we'll just come to the office, we'll go do something, we'll hang out, we'll just get to know each other. Like having that in-face time is paramount to not only you as a manager knowing your team but the team knowing each other,
18:21
is that way you can have that kind of trust that oh hey, I know Tina, like she's gonna be out for two weeks for whatever I don't know, but she's a good person, we had fun, and yeah, it was good. Another big thing for management, and this is especially true for me in the military, was oh, if I don't hear anything from anybody, things are fine.
18:41
In a remote, you aren't gonna hear anything. Like you'll get people who will say hey, I don't like this, I don't like that, but if someone's having a hard time, they're not gonna reach out to you. If they don't feel already a connection to where you would already know something's kind of going a little off, they're not gonna reach out. They will sit there and they will assume I'm the only one, I already feel like my performance is slagging,
19:04
and so I'm not gonna say anything because I don't wanna be singled out. People are not Trello cards or Jira tickets. I have been in several companies where the remote team, it was just essentially like all right, here go the user stories, work on it,
19:22
and I'll see you guys in a week. There'd be checkups for like hey, how's it going, are you close to done, are you not, are you gonna be over, but that was it. Essentially, you tracked your entire team by whose name popped up first on things were being completed, and that dehumanizes your team to you as a manager and to the rest of the team.
19:40
Of all you see is that Greg is always three days late on everything. You're just like ah, fucking Greg. So you really have to, from the business standpoint, you do have to track those things. You do have to use Trello, you have to use Jira, whatever your system is for tracking, but don't let that be the way your team interacts.
20:01
Your team should not have their whole interaction being on Jira tickets or comments or things like that because it starts to build that like well, I don't know you, I don't see you, you're just a name, so when you don't do something that I think you should do, I don't like you for it or I like you less. Code reviews are especially difficult
20:22
given that almost all of them for most remote positions are done via text. You just get a pull request and you get a comment back, and normally that's fine, but sometimes if you're having a really rough time, that text that just says like hey, this part right here, I'm not really sure what you were trying to do here, becomes this part right here,
20:40
I'm not even sure what you were trying to do here, and you feel crappy, and so text can work, but I do think you need to send the text if you're gonna do it that way, and then follow up with a video conference or a phone call to explain like hey, here's what I meant about this, and it has to be immediate. You can't be like oh hey, here's this, and I'll talk to you in three days because that three days, that person thinks like I'm crap at my job,
21:02
I have no idea what I'm doing, or my boss is just oh. Preferably, what's worked well for me is code reviews over like RingCentral or GoToWebinar, they don't have to be super formal or anything like that, just sitting down and saying hey, so on these three things, I didn't quite know what you did, but on these things over here, these were great,
21:21
because even in text, if you still give me the hey, this was great, I don't understand these three things or why you did them, but yeah, it was great, you still, especially if you're dealing with PTSD, anxiety, depression, all you see is those three bullets in the middle that said hey, you didn't do what I expected you to do, you didn't measure up, you didn't meet expectations. You will ignore the rest of it.
21:42
Trust, communication, and teamwork. This goes back to that whole thing where, even as a manager, you have to facilitate that for your team, whatever that takes, whatever your resources are, you have to make sure that happens. If you don't build trust between your team, then between you and your team, no one will say anything, no one will talk,
22:01
and it will be toxic. As soon as somebody's gone, for whatever reason, like they have a legitimate reason to be gone for a week, somebody else is gonna be like, so he's gone, they're just gonna start talking in the background. And it's just, it's things like that that start to really kill a team. And soon you have people who are basically like, well, I think I deserve a raise because he was out for three weeks
22:20
and I've been here the entire time. It gets into a really rocky situation where you really don't know what's going on in the team and they don't know, and so they start turning on each other and turning on you. So as a frontline manager, a direct manager, it starts with you. You are the person on the ground right there.
22:41
You really have to know your team. There's no excuse. If you can think of somebody on your team who you don't know something personal about or know how they're feeling during the workday or the weekend, it's wrong. You need to know. Even if it's they are fine, there's no mental illness, they're having a great time, you should still know that.
23:00
You should never be at a point where like, you know what? I really have no clue how their day's going. Clear roadblocks. This is kind of the usual management thing where as a direct manager, you're supposed to be there to remove issues for your team. This means the things I mentioned earlier, like building trust and things like that. You need to remove those roadblocks of communication
23:20
and trust between your team members. Now a lot of this is just you being open and honest with things that you can be. Talking to your team like, hey, you know what? Something's going on right now. So-and-so has to take some time off. We're gonna do these things to make sure this work gets covered and then things will go back to normal. Not just saying like, oh hey, so Sarah's gonna be out for a week, so that's a thing.
23:42
And I've seen companies do that. You have to tell your team exactly what's going on and clear the roadblock of not having information by sharing. Like hey, here's our plan, here's how we're gonna handle this, and here's all I'm gonna do to repay you guys for the extra hard work. And also, you need to be a roadblock for upper management, because they're gonna push back. They're gonna be like, what do you mean
24:01
you're gonna miss a deadline? Or, so this person's taken another two weeks of leave for whatever. You need to be the one that says like, hey, that's fine, talk to me about it. Don't go to them. I don't wanna see emails from HR going to them asking what's going on. Like, you need to be the person who intercepts all that noise. Because as somebody who's had to take time off for those things,
24:21
like getting that random email from like a mid-level manager or HR like, hey, so we noticed you were taking a lot of time off. Like, what's going on with that? It freaks you out, because you don't know this person. There's no trust built up. And all of a sudden, now you're getting those questions that you don't even wanna answer to people you know. And it's corporate, so they're pushing for it.
24:41
Focusing on people is way, way, way more important than focusing on metrics. And we all have to focus on metrics. There's just no way around that. But the thing is, you have to be willing to say like, hey, this metric is for this person based on what they can do right now because of their mental state and physical state.
25:02
I've worked at a company where one of my co-managers did not like an employee. An employee did have severe depression issues, and so he was just always very down. And so this manager just kept looking at his metrics. Like, we'll see his metrics are going down here, here, and here. Like, he shouldn't be an employee here. Like, he's just always a bummer to be around.
25:20
And actively focused on getting this guy removed from the company. And he was amazing at his job. Like, the rest of the time, he was great. Instead of supporting him and saying like, hey, do you need help with this? There's something we can do. He just focused on reminding him of all the negative things he had done. Like, he didn't measure up here or here like last week. You were like 20% less than anybody else on the tickets coming through,
25:41
so what's going on with that? There was no support. Then lastly, in the military, there's always this saying like, mission accomplishment comes first, then troop welfare comes second. And I have always had a huge issue with that. Troop welfare is the most important thing. Troop welfare is what gets you mission accomplishment.
26:01
Those tickets you're pushing through, the work you're trying to get done, it's the people you work with who are doing that. Those numbers aren't, that work isn't coming out of thin air. You have to support the people, and if you support the people, the work will come. That's the only way you have to do it. You can put the work first, but you're gonna burn people out, you're gonna have churn, and it's gonna get worse and worse.
26:22
Now, mid-level managers are a special kind of crazy. These people have the power to make things happen. These are your VPs, your directors, sometimes even C-levels, like CTOs and things like that, who have the ability to make things happen. They can say like, you know what, go ahead and do that.
26:41
Your team needs a little time, do it. I'll cover it, we'll figure it out, don't worry about it, we'll make it happen. These are all the same people who are like, no, these metrics need to be met, like we have a quarterly business review coming up, like what are you guys doing? You're killing me here. The ones who force the teams to work, the 12, the 16 hour days, the weekends, when they're already stressed out, because all they see is the metrics. They don't see the people.
27:03
What you have to do at that level is give your direct reports, so those direct managers, give them the power to make those changes, give them the resources to do that, and then give them the leeway to say like, hey, that didn't work out, probably not the best idea. We won't do that again, but let's keep reviewing it. All too often it's like, you get the one who's like, oh yeah, go ahead and do this thing.
27:20
It doesn't work, and they're like, oh, never again. You never get to do something special again, because it just didn't work this time. Another thing is, especially in big organizations, it's like, okay, well this worked well for the engineering team, so this is gonna work for QA too. No, they're completely different teams. They're different people. You can't apply the same solutions to each one and expect it just to work across the board.
27:41
You have to let the teams build their own solutions. You can help facilitate that, but you can't force it on them. And like I said before, numbers matter, people matter more. Yes, you're a business. You have quarterly business objectives. You have tickets that need to be done. That's important, but people matter more.
28:01
At the end of the day, no one's, for the most part, for most of what we do, no one's going to lose their life if we don't get that code chip today. Yes, something might not get out the door on time. We might lose money, but from a human perspective, the fact that you're taking care of people means more in the long term.
28:23
Now, on the individual level, we all have a responsibility to ourselves and to those around us. So this means if you do have mental health issues, you have to take time for yourself. You have to be willing to say like, I know the team's counting on me, but I have to do this for me. And on the other side of maybe you don't have issues,
28:40
or you do, but it's not currently a problem for you, you have to be willing to say like, hey, I don't know what's going on with Mary, but you know what? That's okay that I don't know what's going on. She's a good person. I'm just gonna go ahead and have that responsibility that I need to help out in case she can't.
29:01
This is kind of a side note. One of the big issues with depression and anxiety and things like that is, especially in technical folks, we try to think our way out of it. So we spend a lot of time like, if I sit here and think about this problem long enough, I can get through this, or if I just plan my day a little bit better,
29:20
I can get the same amount of work done, I can keep pushing, keep pushing. You can't think your way out of a cognitive issue like that. This is one of the biggest things that I had a problem with is I just kept thinking like, I'm an engineer, I can figure this out. Okay, I got a bad thought process, I'll just do this, this and this. You can't, because the whole problem is you're coming at it from a wrong standpoint of think,
29:42
not wrong, but a affected standpoint of thinking where you can't make those connections. You really don't know because you're part of the problem. But the furthest, the furthest, the first hardest and most rewarding step in asking or in getting help is asking for the help,
30:03
being willing to take the help. All too often, that's the biggest hurdle, because once you get into help, it's tough, but you've already made that first jump. You've already said, hey, I have a problem, I need to get help, what do I do now? Admitting that you have the problem is 90% of the battle in the beginning.
30:23
Being able to say, yes, okay, there is something wrong here, but I can take care of it, or I don't know how to take care of it, but I know something's wrong. So what are our takeaways? Supporting mental health is a team effort. Managers, all up and down the chain of command,
30:40
individuals, we all have to be part of this. It can't just be, oh, that's management or HR's problem, not my problem. I'm just sitting here, I'm a mid-level or senior dev, I'm just gonna do my work and everybody else can just kinda screw off. Communication and empathy are key. If you aren't talking to people and they aren't talking to each other, you don't know anything.
31:01
That's the only way you can know is if people are interacting. Systems are a great thing and anonymity does promote action through ease and privacy, but it's not enough. You have to be willing to go the extra mile and have those volunteer day events or times like, hey, we're just gonna all go out
31:20
and do whatever. It can be something as simple as, hey, there's a local animal shelter that you can go take tours and pet dogs for an hour, because that is amazing. I have done that and, like I said before, managers need to know their teams in and out. Don't get creepy with it. Don't ask what they, yeah, don't get creepy with it.
31:42
We'll just leave it at that. But you should still know. I've had teams where one of the managers didn't even know that somebody was married. They had worked there for three years. And it was just like, how do you not know if somebody on your team is married? You've had company functions.
32:02
What happened there? But I've been on teams where I can sit there and think, oh yeah, I remember Sarah. Yeah, she got married and they had two kids. I think Jeff and John are the names. They think they just recently moved over to Hillsborough, Oregon. Yeah, they're good people. There's a whole gray area in between there, but you need to focus on at least being able
32:20
to talk about members of your team like you actually know them, not just like, oh, the HR sheet says he's 34. But yeah, like I said before too, learning to accept help is the hardest but most rewarding step. And this is on the management side too. As a manager, you have to be willing to accept help from other people.
32:41
It's like, hey, I don't know how to handle this. Like something's going on, what do I do? Now that might be from other managers, it might be from outside assistants, HR. But you have to be willing just to say like, I don't know what's going on. Something might be, I don't know enough. And that's it.
33:01
I'll give you guys back seven minutes. So thank you all for coming. Yeah. Thank you.