Stress resilient leadership, and the why, how and what of workplace wellbeing

- Hello everyone. And welcome to another mental health week presentation from workplace health and safety Queensland, a session with Aaron Williams title stress-resilient leadership, and the why how and what of workplace wellbeing. I'm Chris Bombolas, media manager for the office of Industrial Relations. Your MC for today. To open today's session, can I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet today and pay my respects to their elders past present and emerging. I'd like to extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples watching today. Mental health week runs through until October 18 and promotes the importance of mental health and wellbeing and aims to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness. And you may have seen a number of venues in and around you turning purple on Saturday. Well, that was to celebrate world mental health day. This year's theme is take time. So thank you for taking time today, to learn about stress-resilient leadership, and demonstrating your commitment to a mentally healthy workplace. If health and safety in your work place feels weigh down by paperwork, rules, and procedures. This is just the session for you. It focuses on training managers to manage themselves and build their stress resiliency. Your ability to deal with constant change and uncertainty and to recover from adversity and respond effectively. You'll learn about the importance of mentally healthy workplaces and how to manage your thinking and emotions during stressful situations, lead others during stress or crisis, spot signs and recognize when someone is struggling and ask a very important question, are you okay? Aaron Williams is CEO and founder of Mindstar, a leading wellbeing and mental health organization making it easy for people to connect with wellbeing and mental health professionals, information, access online programs and workshops and run employee assistance programs. Aaron uses his clinical insight as a mental health professional to teach about resilience, rediscovering joy and living a more balanced and mentally healthy life. Combining his clinical mental health background corporate and personal experience, Aaron's mission is to crush the stigma associated with seeking support and to give people the knowledge inspiration and tools to focus on and improve and maintain their wellbeing at home and at work. Remember there is a Q and A session after Aaron's presentation. So if you have a question for him, feel free to submit it via the chat box on your screen at any time. So over to you, Aaron.

- Good day everyone. My name is Aaron Williams. I'm the CEO and co-founder of MindStar. MindStar is about workplace wellbeing and positive inspirational leadership. And I work with everyone from the department of prime minister and cabinet through the Woolworths group, right through to major banks, insurance companies, and then SMEs, construction. And basically it's about keeping it really positive healthy, and engaging your people to be their best every day. So what I wanna do today is keep it really, really simple. I wanna talk about why? Why this subject of wellbeing, workplace wellbeing and stress-resilient leadership is so important especially right now. I wanna talk about how, how you can tell if someone that works for you or someone that works with you or someone you love and care about is struggling and what to do about that. And I wanna talk about what you can do today or tomorrow to improve your own self care wellbeing and mental fitness as a leader. So very quick background on me. I'm a mental health clinician. My background I've spent much of my career working in emergency departments, doing suicide risk assessments on people who've tried to kill themselves not before, but actually have a corporate background. And how I got into wellbeing mental health was that back in 2003, I was living in the UK, working over there living with my younger brother who was playing professional rugby over there. And his best mate at the time was basically living with us. His name was Nick Duncan. Nick was 21 years of age. He was the cheekiest probably most full of life little bloke I've ever met. He'd just debuted for England, English rugby. He ran on to Twickenham second half in, at scrum half inside Johnny Wilkinson at the time, I think it was a youngest scrum half pairing in the history of English rugby and in the middle of a brutal London winter, my brother and Nick decided to get some sunshine. They jumped on a plane. Driven to the airport, they jumped on a plane and went to the Canary islands. They hopped off and Nick got meningococcal and died within two hours in front of my brother's eyes. So I did the big brother thing, we went over, we brought Nick back and I supported my brother the best I could through the funeral. And after that, I crashed and burned. And as a resilient kind of optimistic, semi-successful 32 year old man. I was angry, I'd never experienced anything like that before I tried to drink my way through it. And I became depressed, I was suicidal. My family flew in and said, we'd bring you home. And they brought me back to Brisbane and it took me about six months to come through that. And when I came out the other side, I went, what the hell was that? Why did I know about that? Why are we screaming this stuff from the roofs and workplaces and sporting clubs and the community? Why is it so hard for Aussie blokes to reach out for support and surely we can do better. And so my mission and I hope that every single person who is watching this, all our mission is we need to stop pulling the bodies out of the river. I mean to get upstream and engage with and inspire and educate people well, well, well, before they're even lining up to jump off. So this is what this is. This is the discussion, the most important discussion at the most important time because many of us are doing okay at the moment, but many of us are also struggling. So this is about how do we talk about how do we make sure that as leaders our teams are doing okay. so I'll just jump into the presentation. And what I wanna talk about is there's three parts to this. The first I wanna talk about stress-resilient leadership. The second is workplace wellbeing and self care for leaders. And the third is a Q and A. So jump on plays, putting the comments in, any comments, any questions, tell me I'm talking rubbish whatever it is, please please send them through because the more interactive this is I think the better for everyone. So let's talk about stress-resilient leadership. And as we do take a step back and let's just think about 2020. In fact, let's think about 2019, 2019 in Australia, we came through, we experienced a drought, we had national bush fires. We had freak, hail storms. We had corporate restructures. We had a whole bunch of stuff. People were naked at the end of 2019 saying, bring on 2020. This is gonna be the best year, restart, reset. What happened then? We got smashed by global pandemic. So I think it's important just to reflect on that across multiple industries, that people were already tired. People already feeling pretty spread thin before COVID came on. So I think it's important. Just think about COVID. We actually think about the bigger picture of how each of us is looking after ourselves and our people. So let's talk about COVID and the work I do with organizations is talk about four stages of COVID. The first was that initial shock. This came on very quickly and I think they had to scramble to get all the infrastructure in place. How are we gonna homeschool? How is it different for every single one of us? And the second stage which we're in now, it's kind of riding the wave. So this is a roller-coaster up and down. And it's almost like one of those roller-coasters in the dark, in the pitch black, where you're not sure, when the next dip's gonna come or that big right hand it's kind of an unknown as we're trying to flatten the curve or whatever you wanna call it. So as we go on this roller-coaster, we need to actually make sure that we're looking after ourselves because we don't know how long this will last. We're not sure exactly what it means week to week, month to month. But I think what we need to tell ourselves, the narrative we need to tell ourselves and our people and our organizations is we need to stay focused as well on the recovery, because we will come through this. We know that from world Wars, from other pandemics and epidemics, we know that from global financial meltdowns, we will pass through this. We don't know exactly when and things may be slightly different, but we need to focus on the recovery so that when we do, we're not knackered when we get there. We need to make sure that we look after ourselves and our people so that when we come out the other side, we can actually be reenergized and reunite our people and start kicking goals again when we come through this really challenging time. And I think what we're seeing is that when we do come through this they will be a new world of workplace wellbeing. Because even through the struggle, I've never seen people so reflective. I've never seen organizations that are focusing on workplace wellbeing and mental health so much. And the question we all need to ask ourselves as leaders, as organizations and as individuals and family members is what do we wanna keep from this? What have we learned from this experience? What's the silver lining? And I've heard people talk about everything from, I don't know more flexibility in the work home life. Maybe spending more time with my kids, not traveling as much. Maybe it's not eating out as much and having more money in the bank. It's all these different things about reflecting through this difficult time. What do we wanna keep? And what sort of leader do you wanna be during this process? So I won't go into any great depth with this, but I think it's important that we all acknowledge what the next six 12 months, what we need to do as leaders. So what our people will experience is everything from a whole bunch of uncertainty, stress and anxiety. As we ride this roller-coaster, there's a whole range of financial distress that people will continue to feel. There's all the physical distancing and remote work changes. And I think it's important as leaders that we reflect on the fact that every single one of us is experiencing COVID-19 differently. It's different if you're single and you live alone, it's different if you're a parent, it's different if you have very young children, it's different if you're an older worker and you're thinking about your super or whether this is actually a physical health concern for yourself, life and death. It's different for every single person depending on where you live, your age, your demographic and it can change day to day, week to week. So I think as leaders, sometimes we need to look beyond the behavior we might see or the anxiety or the stress we might see in our partners or in our workers or in our peers. And think about what's happening behind the scenes especially if you're seeing a change in behavior. And this is a point I make not lightly but I wanna make very early in this webinar that this is not just about mental health. Obviously this is mental health week and it's front and center. It is more than just about mental health or mental illness. This is about how do you help your people? How do you support your people with something that's kind of connected? And how do you connect your people experience, and this is a word I invented it myself, very proud of it, how do you help your people with their life shit? How do you help your people with their day to day life shit that we will experience. And what's life shit? It's workplace stress, relationship stress, financial stress, it's about pick out traffic. It's about the cost of housing. It's about job insecurity. It's about just getting out of bed some days. How do we help people early on with their life shit and their normal stress, so that we can deal with it easily there before it moves into psychological distress or anywhere near mental illness. So you can use that life shit. I think if every one of us focused on that every day and to help the people around us, then we'll all make the world a better place. So knowing all this, knowing about life shit, knowing about how we're gonna come, we're riding this roller-coaster. What are the important leadership skills that we need? Dealing with uncertainty is the first one. The old saying in the mental health world is if you wanna give someone an anxiety disorder or heaps of stress, give them uncertainty. How much uncertainty do we have at every single level of our lives at the moment? So how do we help ourselves and our people deal with uncertainty? How do we reduce stress as a leader? How do we increase our focus and concentration in kind of the chaos around us? How do we find out rudder through that? How do we most importantly in some ways maintain empathy for our team and our peers, but also for ourselves. I think many of us are very good at being empathetic for others but how do we actually take the foot off the pedal a bit and make sure we're showing some self compassion for ourselves in a difficult time? Because if we will think that we're still gonna be able to smash it out at 110% in the middle of a pandemic and all this change, I think you're kidding yourself. So it's about self care. And we'll talk some more about that in just a second. So what I hear a lot of leaders say to me, and especially in the Q and A section of these things is actually going how do I actually... That's great. I know what we wanna need to do? How do I do it when I'm leading others who are struggling, when I'm actually struggling a little bit myself through all this change and uncertainty? Well, how do we do it, and it's a very simple concept of self-leadership but it's something that many of us aren't taught. A lot of people are saying hang on, I wasn't trained to handle this. And what we know is that, especially in the last 10, 15 years in Australia, well, I'd say globally but especially Australia, I think the inner world of leaders has been much neglected. So we do a lot of work with operational staff teach them how to use spreadsheets make sure that they're structuring and the rostering is done everything else. But what about the internal world? And so often we don't provide that training with that focus on how to manage stress, how to manage uncertainty, how to manage frustration. And at a time like now it's never been more important, because what we know is that this is actually the source of both professional success or professional failure. And that's the same, whether you're a corporate Titan, whether you're a elite sports person, whether you're an actor, it's actually how do we manage ourselves and perform at an optimal level. And how do we, as a leader show the key leadership traits that we should really be displaying all the time but have never been more important than in times of crisis. And there's three key things. The first is authenticity, vulnerability and empathy. So authenticity is being yourself being able to talk to your people and being real, not pretending that you're, often we think resilience is about being bulletproof. It's not being bulletproof. It's how you respond to adversity. How do you bounce back from tough times? So be authentic, be vulnerable, tell your team, look, I'm struggling a bit with this as well. I don't know exactly what's gonna happen but I will talk to you and take you on the journey. So if you show that vulnerability what you create is all a sudden, a safe space. If you show a bit of vulnerability, then they will and you're creating a culture of psychological safety 'cause what you want your people to do is to talk up early if they're struggling, either in an operational capacity or if they're struggling from a wellbeing lens, the early they put their hand up, the better the outcome for all. And to do that as I said earlier, you have to show that empathy for others, but also some self compassion for yourself. That's great but in the context of COVID-19 and in the context of it, many of us who actually work from home remote world how do you tell if someone is struggling? And the problem is we all struggle from time to time but it's hard to tell when someone who you live in the same house with, who you sit next to at work is struggling. You know why? We fake it. That's just what we do. Every morning we go to work, we've put in a corporate mask. When we wake up, just think about... Some of us did work in a building, you'd walk in the front foyer, you go hop in the lift. The CEO comes in and stands next to you, good morning how are you? What do you say? Yeah, good thanks? You could have had the worst night of your life. You didn't sleep. Your cat ran away. You lost your phone, your baby cried all night. How are you? Yeah, good great, thank you. We fake it. It's just what we do. It's kind of the gig. So knowing that it's difficult for that early awareness and that early intervention because that's the most crucial part. So what I wanna do is just very quickly run through a list of things that are just little red flags that you need to look out for, okay? And as I go through this list what I'd love you to do is think of someone real, someone you know, whether it's your colleague at work, one of your employees, could be a partner or your brother or whoever it is. I want you to actually think about who bet someone real. These are the little things to look out for. The first is becoming distant from friends or family. So not replying to texts or phone calls. This is especially for blokes. They just, what we do is if we're struggling, we just retreat to our cave and try and push through. It's probably the worst thing we can do. I know with my brother, if I call my brother and he doesn't answer, then I text him and I texted him again and he doesn't answer the phone. I know something's up. So we've got a deal that if I texted him and I haven't heard from him, I'm like, mate, you better text me back or I'm gonna drive down, drive the two hours and be on your front footpath. So if someone all of a sudden just starts dropping off again at the face of the Earth, and you're going hang on, just keep out check in with them, check in with them and follow them up. If people are more cranky or angry than before, some people are like that all the time. But if they're more, if they're just different if they're more stressed or worried, if they're losing hope that things will never change, we know that's a risk factor for suicide. So if people lose all hope. So if people are starting to talk hopeless, it's a little flag. If people are sleeping more or less eating, more or less, if they're drinking or drug use is really going through the roof or it's just stopping or changing their usual activities. If any of those things, they're just little bells that you should should think about. And I think it's a rule of thumb to go. You know what? Things are a bit different. Others need to look out for them. And sometimes it's a gut feeling. If you have that gut feeling, then you need to reach out. You can never, ever make things worse. If you ask, like, are you okay? And how you do that is basic are you okay for steps? You ask you make a quiet time where you can say maybe you go to a cafe when it's not service. You sit in the corner go, hey, hey, I was just wanna talk to you. Just wanna check you're okay because I don't know maybe it's I know how busy you are at work. I know you're working from home and you live by yourself. Maybe I know you and your husband just separated. So you just ask and then you listen, people think they're good listeners. We're not where we've actually a brains are computer, problem solving computers. So we actually don't listen. People start talking about a problem, all of a sudden you're jumping over them. You know what? This time I know my brother did this and my sister did this, I know this person that you just don't listen. So we need to make sure we're listening. And as they're listening, you're nodding and smiling and going, wow, that sounds really hard. Well, they say, of course, it's hard. We just separated, there's the kids. And so it's listen, encourage action. Whether it's the employ assistance program, whether it's, I know a great GP, whether it's why don't you get camping for the weekend turn your phone off, encourage action, and then check in. So it's checking in with them and coming in back to them and saying, how about we catch up again this time next week or I'll give you a bell in the morning and let's see how that went connecting with that GP. So it's basic, are you okay? And there's fantastic stuff on the Queensland government website about how to do that. So the next part is the part that I like love and is equally important. And it's about what you can do today. And the last thing I want from some of my businesses, I come and chat at you, you watch this, you turn off your laptop and you go back to your normal gruesome schedule. What can you change today and do differently today or tomorrow to change your life? And so what I talk about is three really simple steps to wellbeing. The first is work life integration. The second is how to stress-less. And the third is bringing back the joy. So let's talk about work life integration, every single working Australian should ask themselves the two very difficult questions. The first is, how am I showing up at work? How am I showing up at work? My second is, how am I showing up in life at home? Because in a perfect world the two don't overlap they do, of course but in a perfect world, you don't bring your shitty day home to your family, or you're not at home with your family thinking about how many emails you have to answer. The big meeting that tomorrow. You're present with the people that you love. And it also it's you refilling your buckets. So you're a better employee. How am I showing up at work? And how am I showing up in life at home? Because every single one of us struggles with that. And especially if you're working from home, because sometimes the difference between work and home is turning off your laptop in the spare bedroom these days with the COVID or it's walking from your spare bedroom into the kitchen. So the easiest thing to do is look at buffer-time. And how do you actually look after that buffer-time in between work and home and give an example of how to do it. My wife we work together. We have a stressful day. She finishes every day what she does. She takes 10 minutes listen to a podcast between work and home. She can be super stressed listen to a podcast and I'll walk out in the family. Hello everyone. I work with a CEO who obviously has a very challenging job. He comes home from work, he gets to the front door, opens it up, comes in and everyone goes dad, he goes, hang on, everyone, give me two minutes. He goes into his bedroom. He takes off his work clothes. He goes into the bathroom. He has a shower and literally, and symbolically washes the day away, goes back in, puts his dad clothes on and then walks out, hi everyone? Hugs all round. So just that buffer-time either before work or after work or both, or even in between workdays, which is like, back-to-back zooms put those little buffer-times for your day. 'Cause it's really gonna... It's the way to keep you very, very healthy. The reason is we need to refill our buckets. We all have six buckets of wellbeing. You need to make sure that none of your buckets are running low or empty. They're never gonna be all full. That's not realistic but you need to make sure that none of them are running low. 'Cause if one runs low, they pull all the others down. So our buckets are work, physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual, and relationships. And let me give you an example of how one bucket can pull everything else down. You could love your job. You're the CEO of a unicorn. You're a physical a donors. You go to the gym 15 times a week your muscles are muscles, you're psychologically and emotionally balanced. You meditate on a rock for two hours every day and you're spiritually awakened but you work so hard and do all these other things so much that you actually never really engaged with your partner or your children. And you don't see your mates. That's gonna pull everything else down. We need to make sure that there's actually all of those buckets, at least half full it's essential. And what I'm seeing now through a lot of people, what's suffering or which buckets are running low during COVID-19? Relationships. So we need to connect be socially connected twice as much as normal, especially if it's via virtual conferencing or video conferencing or through texting and different ways. So we need to make sure we're concentrating on our relationships as human beings. What you need to know then is which bucket runs low for you and then what do you need to do to refill that bucket. I'll use this. This is a little tool which I'll tell you how you can get for free after this. And basically it's a tool I use probably once a month now just to kind of as a little check in and go rodeo what are the things, how am I going at the moment? Because things are challenging at the moment. So it's which bucket of mine at the moment is struggling? So that's the first step. The second is great, but how do you stress-less? I think it's hilarious now that stress seems to have become kind of this thing that we accept. You ask anyone, hey mate how are you going? Oh, stress mate, busy, very busy stressed. It's become this normal response. I'd just like to meet one person who you go, hey, hi how are you going? Yeah, no, I'm good. I'm on top of everything. Yeah, easy. You think you lazy bastard, but it's not. It's actually, it's stress has become this normality that we've tend to accept and it doesn't have to be that way. And the reason is this is basic psych 101, it's a triangle. Okay? And what happens is the way we think affects the way we feel, which then affects the way we act. And what that does is then change our perspective or shift our perspective of how we see the world. And so the beauty in that is little tiny changes in the way that we think can have massive changes on how we see the day to day, especially during difficult times, and especially as leaders 'cause you get to choose how you walk into that room. You get to choose how you jump on that zoom call. You get to choose how you treat the people that you lead. And so the question that I asked leaders is what's the easiest way to start thinking more positively every day? Not the gold standard research based, what's the easiest way because the last thing we want is people to go, oh great. Now I've got to think about my wellbeing every day as well. What's the easiest simplest 1% way to start thinking more positively every single day? And the answer is, it's the way you start your day from the very moment you open your eyes. And it's something that I've called. I made up a name for this one. I call it morning glory because who wouldn't wanna start every single day with morning glory. Thank you those people who were smiling at home. So morning glory, the very first challenge for morning glory is this, get your mobile phone out of your bedroom. I've found that about 90% of people use their mobile phone as their alarm clock. So what happens in the morning, . They wake up their phones, they reach over, they swipe the alarm off and guess what they do? I'm just gonna check my emails. I've had 13,000 emails come through overnight, or I'm gonna check my newsfeed. How many people have died from COVID in some country overseas? How many innocent civilians have been slaughtered in some corner of the world? Why put that stuff in your mind? You've just woken up. You've been awake for two seconds. There's someone probably lying next to you in bed. And you've put yourself into the office. You're stressed, your cortisol and adrenaline running through your brain. You're not present. All of a sudden you've started stress from the very first five seconds you're awake. I'm not saying don't stay aware and check the news but just keep yourself the first five minutes of every morning to control how you start your day in a more positive way. And I swear to God, I do this every single day hand-in-hand that this, and I'm telling you this, 'cause this changed my life. It was a very simple thing that turned my whole life around. And I did this for the very first moment that I opened my eyes. And this is not my stuff. This is from the Dalai Lama. This is how the Dalai Lama says you should spend what you should do the minute you open your eyes. And I do it every single morning of my life. The first thing is you open your eyes and you tell yourself, I am lucky to have woken up. I am alive, because you are one day you won't wake up. And I saw this for the last 10 years, my 92 year old grandmother who died in January, for the last 10 years she wake up in the morning open her eyes and go sweet another day on the planet. 'Cause the closer we get to mortality the more we appreciate every single moment that we have. So why wait til then? Why not remind yourself every morning of your life, I am lucky to work it up, I'm alive. The second thing to tell yourself is I have a beautiful life because you do. We live in an amazing state, in an amazing country. We have so much freedom. We don't have any bombs falling on our head. You probably have enough food in the cupboard to last year, three weeks. If all the shops closed, you have a beautiful life. And especially in mental health week, if you feel like, if you think you don't have a beautiful life there's something wrong and you need to do something about it because you do. And the third is I am not gonna waste this day. Okay? If you don't do that, all of a sudden, you're an autopilot. I'm not gonna waste this day. I'm gonna live this day. You're driving the bus of your life. You're in control. Sometimes it feels like we're not in control. We are absolutely in control. So I'm not gonna waste this day. 'Cause if you don't break it up, you feel like a hamster on a wheel. It's just nonstop. I laugh at, I find that it cracks me up. People who... You hear that can you believe it's October already? Look, of course I bloody can. We had January, February, March, April, May. Yes, it's Friday I can't believe it. Why not? What are you? How was your life and fast forward. So open your eyes every single morning and tell yourself those three very important things. The next thing I dare you to do, you won't do, but I'll dare you and go and get up freezing cold shower every morning. And don't start with warming and then go cold, freezing cold, people in Tasmania, go, you mad go. My kids think I am insane. Like dad's screaming in the shower. Again, you get up, you put it on, you set your mind. You jump in the shower, you scream, you're alive. It's got all these physiological benefits for circulation and obesity and a whole bunch of depression, a whole bunch of other things. So I dare you you to have a freezing cold shower every morning. People email me and go, I'm doing it. It's awesome. It's called a James Bond shower in the UK. So once you do that, bang bring on the day. So you've done that. You've set your mind all of a sudden, you've had your cold shower you're up, but then you experience real life and the stressful things that happen through the day. How do you deal with that? Very simple. There's a very simple tool called the three two five and it's a breathing exercise and it's amazing. And it was designed for elite athletes in the U.S. and what it does is for runners and swimmers and sprinters. And actually it helps them bring their anxiety down so you can use it for stress, you can use it for anger, frustration, and it's changed people's lives. It's an amazing tool. And this is how simple it is. What you do is you breathe in for three You held the two and you breath out that out three five. You breathe in for three. You held for two, breathe out for five. And you repeat it. You can do one as you walk into a stressful meeting, or before you have a fight with your spouse or your child, you can do 10. I do 10 to sleep. It'll put you to sleep. And oftentimes I wake up at 3:00 a.m. And I'm in the office being busy mind counting on my fingers, do 10, three two fives. It's seriously give it a try. And we develop this little animation. So you'll be able to try it and you can do it on your phone. And all you do is learn it. You don't need to do animation now all the time you actually can do it. And then you remember it and you can internalize it in your brain. And all of a sudden you can use it whenever you want wherever you want. And it's there for you to utilize. A lot of people in the elite sports people, public speakers use it because it just, it does it grounds you beautifully. So to finish off, I wanna talk about something that sounds very simple, because it is. And it's about bringing back the joy. Now I've been running around the country, talking about joy for a couple of years. People think I'm weird, but then last year Harvard business review came out and said, talked about joy in the workplace and how we seem to have lost the joy in the workplace in a lot of industries. And the reason this is a problem is why do you think joys related to everything from innovation, creativity, employee engagement, being an employer of choice. So joy, if you have people who experienced joy in what they do and their interactions with their peers and their colleagues all of a sudden, it's absolutely linked to productivity. So I think it's a huge thing to think about joy for the workplace but also as a leader, joy for yourself. I work in the executive, wellbeing coaching work, I do. I work with too many leaders who I say to them what brings you joy? Senior leaders, too many of them say, well, I used to, I used to play cricket. I used to buy touch footy. I used to have girls weekends away. I used to be in a one club, whatever it is used to, when was that? 10 years ago. So what do you do for joy now? And they've got nothing. That's absolutely not the way to be successful at work or in life. So it's what joy does is allows you to stop sweating the small stuff and there is a fantastic book. It's probably 20 years old, probably more it's about that thick. It's called Don't Sweat the Small Stuff, and it's all small stuff. So if you're interested, grab a hold of that it'll take you an hour to read. Because what we know is that there are so many things that we struggle with, that come from trying to control the things we can't control. Those things that we go ah, and we just, it's something we don't care. Not that you shouldn't care. It's just that use your positive energy for the things you can control for the things that are positive instead of freaking out about things that you actually can't do anything about. And that could be things like, I don't know, global politics. It could be like Trump, get off the phone, stop freaking out about stuff overseas absolutely stay informed, but put your positive energy into things that you can actually do things about. And I found this... It's a psychological phenomenon that you may have heard of. It's called the overview effect. And it's a fantastic, I think, example of perspective and what they found was that astronauts. And they did the tests before they left and they went up in space and they did the moonwalk space walk thing whatever it is, and what they found was astronauts when they look back on Earth on the planet. And so Earth what it is, which is just a little blue ball floating through a sea of nothingness, when they returned to Earth and went back to their normal life. The testing found that the little they'd stopped being so concerned with all the little things like the neighbors or the father in law, or global politics. So they just started to stop sweating the small stuff 'cause they had a new perspective. And so it was, they could really connect with the things that are controlled and the most important. So my final question to you and the challenging one, but I want you to think back and think about what brought you joy, real joy as a seven year old child. As a seven year old little boy or a little girl, what brought you real joy? And so for me, it was really, really simple stuff. It was like, being a cricket nerd, I was like putting on my whites on a Saturday morning or it was body surfing a wave or fireworks, really simple stuff. And people say things like riding my bike or hanging out with my friends, my Barbie dolls or climbing a tree or going to the ocean. It's the really simple things that bring us the most internal fantastic real joy. And so what happens through life is as we grow up, all the shit gets piled on top of each other. And we lose that ability to reconnect with that real joy. So what do we do about that? Schedule joy back into your life. How ridiculous is it that I didn't stand here in 2020 and tell you and recommend you go to schedule joy in put it in your phone, put it in your calendar. You can go home to your husband and say, Aaron said for clinical reasons I need to have a girl's weekend away in Toowoomba. This weekend at a winery. Do something that brings you joy. Surround yourself with people that make you laugh and make you be your best. And the reason why this is probably my favorite quote it's about joy. And it says life can be hard. Laughing is how we come to terms with all the ups and downs and cruelties and uncertainties that we face. And if you wanna deal with the uncertainties of 2020, give yourself some joy and have a good laugh. So I'll put this up. If you want to grab any of those tools, the six buckets challenge, the mental fitness video, all the three two five that will help you sleep or deal with stress or uncertainty, then jump on line and grab them. They're all free because there's never been a more important time to have this conversation. So please send through lots of questions, comments, tell me I'm talking rubbish. But thank you so much in your busy day for taking this time to put an hour aside for yourself. Cheers.

- Thanks Aaron. We'll set up for our question and answer session. Thank you for all your questions so far, I've seen a number of them come through during Aaron's presentation. Just quickly Aaron, while you're getting ready for our question and answer session, you mentioned the physical Adonis, and I thought you looked at me when you said that, and then you laughed. And then you said 15 gyms sessions a week. So I knew you weren't talking about me then 'cause on flat out attending one to be brutally honest. And I don't exactly have that chiseled body you were describing. But as I said to you, we've got a number of questions. We'll try to get through as many as we can. And I'd like to pose a couple of scenarios to you that would help the people who've watched the presentation. Maybe take a couple of the points that you said a little further. The first of our questions comes from Nicole and we say, thanks to Nicole for joining us. What if you use your phone for meditation mindfulness app at night to go to sleep, right? So the phone's got a positive influence in her life to get to sleep. Is it okay to have your phone in your room if you're using it for this purpose? Others like parents like myself will say, I have that phone there 24 seven because my children may need me.

- [Aaron] Yes.

- Is that just an excuse?

- I think the key thing is here is not jumping on your phone the minute you open your eyes and sending yourself off into the office. So if you have the self control to do that I tend to sleep, I have young kids. So they're in the other room. So I'll put mine on flight mode. So I'm not tempted to actually jump on and there's no texts for the night, but I think other thing you can do is plug it into the corner. So if an emergency phone call comes through--

- You'll hear.

- But when you wake up, these things are amazingly you reach over it. All of a sudden they pull you in, they draw you in. So that's the point.

- And it's just as bad, the mobile phone. If we jump on it and we start scrolling social media and everything like that. So, I might say, well, I'm not going to the office. I'm not looking at texts. I'm not looking at emails, but I'm just doing those ones.

- And that's 100% that we're seeing a whole jump in health anxiety at the moment through COVID. And what people are doing is jumping on six different news sites, looking for information and it becomes almost addictive and obsessive. And that's when people's anxiety go up. So pick one, pick one source of truth, pick one news site and actually something that is actually, you can trust. And just review your news in that one spot.

- Great advice. I'm gonna try and bring that in. So I'll use the word try 'cause I have a failure rate that's pretty high. Susan, tanks for joining us as well. She's waited patiently to ask this question of you Aaron, how important is being a good role model for your team and in your workplace. It's really hard to manage self care when I'm trying to manage a large team all stressed, any tips on juggling this, you mentioned about looking after yourself and we usually put ourself last and we try to help others. So a great question from Susan.

- Thank you Susan. Yeah, now, I think the first thing I'll say around that, and there's a whole host of research around mindful leadership and what mindful leadership talks about is that knee jerk reaction. And I know as a leader, sometimes you slip that knee jerk, something happens and you react right away. You reply to that email, you bite back. So what I would suggest firstly, is being aware of having that little gap between something happening and the reaction of having those self care tools like the three two five or anything else that brings your anxiety down before you make that phone call, before you walk into the room, before we have that conversation with the team, because the truth is you actually control. You get to choose how you walk into that room. You get to choose the leader you are. And if some of us find that we feel like where, I have lost that ability to choose then I think it's going back to some of those really simple tools to make sure that we have that self-leadership then turn leadership. Not saying it's easy, but it is simple.

- Aaron that reminds me of the tools that we were given early on in business is if you've got an email, a tricky email to address don't address it straight away, address it, walk away from that original email before you actually hit send, go back and review it when you're in a better frame of mind. And you'll answer that with much better flow.

- Most definitely, how many emails I've sent you got oh, you hit reply all So I think it's actually, it is. And it's being aware of exactly what you're talking about, how you're feeling, where is that emotion? And you can do it by doing a writing. It's almost, if you think internally, if you're sitting at 90 K's an hour with frustration or anxiety or stress, don't send the email, get back to 60 K's.

- And that could be the phone call, email, text, whatever it is. It doesn't matter what form of communication, step back from it, take a breath.

- Yep.

- And then maybe respond.

- And works equally well for the workplace, in marriages and also with kids, I think it's been careful that you are not doing .

- Take a bit of time, excellent. Lauren has a question for you. She asks, can you talk about how coaching and mentoring can be used to support leaders?

- Yeah, most definitely. I think there's two aspects to that. The first is especially now, I mean, this is an unprecedented time for business, for the economy, for any of our lives potentially. This is probably one of the biggest crisis, I'm 47 and I think this is the biggest one on a global level. So I think we can't do it alone. I've got a mentor, I've got a coach best thing I ever did, because it helps me navigate and just also bounce back ideas. So I think every leader should have some sort of mentor either internally in the organization as a helicopter view or externally. And there's amazing through chamber of commerce. That's how I got MindStar through the chamber of commerce. It's incredible. So find out where you can get a coach or a mentor, but then it's how you coach your people and it's old fashioned, but it's kind of they'll follow what you do more than what you say. So it's yeah, you've gotta be... And especially the younger generation are looking for that coaching. They wanna be better. So it's really setting that time aside and understanding your role. And it's about communication and being... There three things I think, authenticity, it's the vulnerability and the empathy. If you're displaying that, that's powerful.

- And look that in communication and engagement is vital. And sometimes people provide their own answers. It's just that opportunity to chat with somebody that they may admire, or they respect like a mentor that they've actually got the answer within but just talking about it with someone helps bring it out.

- The best ideas I have is driving to the mentor to see my mentor. And I am going, what am I going to talk about? And you go, oh, hang on. And you reflect just stuff and you do. And that's what I do as a coach. My role is to put myself out of a job. So I'm coaching senior leaders to coach themselves. So if you do your job well and you're--

- You'd be out a job.

- I pretty much have party already am.

- All right a question from Mikaila and Robin, can you suggest any podcasts that are good for self care and leadership? And do you have a podcast for that matter that's available?

- Yeah, I do. It's different. It's a show called Unpack, which is on the MindStar website. Once out of and it's just it's conversations with remarkable people from all walks of life. So incredible people like Gus Ball and Triple M, cricket, tragic talking about his mentor, suicided. People like Matt Golinski, the celebrity chef who lost his family tragically in the house fire, Samuel Johnson, the gold lucky winner. So just people with incredible stories.

- Lost his sister to cancer.

- Lost his sister to cancer, his mother's suicide when he was younger. So just really raw stories. And yeah, we're actually launching one tomorrow. I did an interview series with the CEO of Microsoft, Boopa GM from Woolworths and just, amazing and so amazing health and corporate. So yes is the answer. So they keep an eye for that. But yeah, look, there's a lot of good stuff out there now. I think it's changed, two years ago it wasn't front of mind for people, but I think what I'd recommend is look for something that's inspirational. I think that's, we talked about it's an internal world I think during a time like this what a perfect time to start the journey internally and look at what's important to you deep down.

- All right, let's move on to Andrew's question. And Andrew asks us any advice about looking out for all or nothing thinking in ourselves and how to move on from this negative thought process.

- Yeah. It is it's it is our thinking.

- Yeah.

- And I think especially now so I'll give you the short answer, but my favorite book in the world is a book by a bloke called Victor Frankl. And it's a book called Man's Search for Meaning, and he was an Austrian psychiatrist who was put into the death camps in the second world war. And it sounds tragic. It sounds morbid, but it's an amazing book about survival. And so from this book and his survival through this horrific experience he'd find joy in little tiny places. So they, Victor Frankl writes about finding joy and he's digging trenches at 4:00 a.m. Hasn't eaten in three days and he'd find joy through a dewdrop on a leaf and the sun coming through it. Or thinking of his being reunited with his wife who was in a different death camp or the little bit of joy that the guards would show sometimes to the prisoners. And what the book talks about is that if you know your why, if you know, what's most important, deep down then you can put up with anyhow, you can endure anyhow. And so I would say to Andrew it's, if you know your why, if you know, what gets you out of bed in the morning, if you know why you're playing this silly game and you can get through anything no matter what it throws at you. And that it acts as a rudder through the chaos of the modern world

- Look in general as humans, do we put too much pressure on ourselves to be successful in inverted commerce? Whether that's financially or whatever like we measure success in such a dollars rather than I've had a great day, or my kid rode his bike for the first time or it's little moments that mean not much right at that point, but are significant moments in life. Yet we put those away and we're all driven by the dollar and finance and money and future and all this sort of stuff. We put pressure on ourselves for a stop. That's why our stress levels are so high.

- And it doesn't work.

- [Chris] Yeah.

- And even Richard Branson of this world are saying, have fun, the money will come. I think it's finding what makes you tick? And for me, I know what my three core values are is am I being a good husband? Am I being a good father? Am I living every day the best I can? And I know that's--

- Have you said yes to all three of them?

- Not always.

- Well, it's being honest.

- But if you say no, absolutely. So I'm in the shower, that's always the shower and I'm doing it and I'm stressed about it.

- You must have a huge water bill. You have a lot of time in the shower. At least it's only cold

- I am on tanks.

- You can share with .

- So it is it's those three things. And no matter how stressful things are if I know that I'm trying to get those things, right like you say, everything else falls away. And it's as simple thing and we saw it in our grandparents who had so much--

- The hard thing, we have become so conditioned that success equates to money and a big shiny car or new things or whatever it is. It's not really, it's not a successful life. It helps and it might make you comfortable. Does it make you happy?

- And this is exactly what I'm... It's not just me saying this. It's the work that I do. I love doing this executive coaching stuff. I'm working some men and women who are making more money than I could even dream of who were saying, I feel empty. I don't have any meaning. I didn't sign up for this, the stress. So what I've seen as I get the second half of my life is that it doesn't always add up. It helps if you're broke, it's not much fun, but there's somewhere in between.

- Yeah. All right, let's go to another question. Katrina, thanks for joining us today. She says Aaron, thanks for the advice on how to start your day. Do you have advice on how to start your work day? So we've started the day on a positive note. We'll take that as granted. Now let's start the Workday. I feel that answering emails may not be the best start. So most of us log on straight away as we get in. And we got bang straight to the emails.

- Yeah, look, I think there's two things with that from an operational point of view or a productivity point of view. I'm again old fashioned. I talk about writing down the three things you wanna achieve that day on a piece of paper and put it in your pocket. And that's what you wanna do 'cause otherwise there's so much noise. I haven't met one person yet who says I'm on top of my inbox. It's the great fallacy of our life. It's so inbox. It's just because what if it pops up? You go from top to bottom and she may not get it always noise. You don't get to the important things.

- So it dictates you.

- It does.

- That will dictate what you're doing and your mood perhaps,

- And people are obsessed with getting on top of their inbox. It doesn't happen. It's a flow, it's forever.

- Isn't that ironic because you take some leave, you feel good and relaxed. The first thing you do is log on, there's 300 emails and you've got to get through each 300 of them. And some of them are not pleasant.

- That's right.

- But you've got to deal with them all at once to get rid of them.

- And it's like, what holiday?

- Yeah.

- Yep.

- That's five minutes in?

- And your cortisol's back. And so that's the stress. I think you could just, have you been looking through my windows? it sounds like my life. So it's absolutely do that. Like, you've go the important things. And I think the second thing is, and I'm saying this through COVID, it's the human connection we're missing. So especially this new remote work from home world what people are saying, and this is even Commonwealth bureaucrats saying we miss each other. We miss each other. So what I strongly recommend people do and leaders to do, take the first 10 minutes to connect especially if you have a remote team. And for the first 15 minutes check in, talk, start with the quietest person in the group. Don't talk work. How are you doing?

- Well, interesting you say that because in one of our earliest sessions from Dav from New Zealand who joined us in an electrical safety presentation.

- Yep.

- He came up with a great line that we should ask and never be afraid to ask this question, what's happening in your world?

- Love it.

- Great way to go, isn't it?

- love it.

- What in five words what's happening in your world? It leaves it open for someone then to open up to you.

- Love it. 'Cause that's... And I once did a workshop at one of the unis and I had afterwards this student came up to me, adult student said she was from overseas international student. She is, when she first came to university, one of their first training courses, they did. They got them on the room and said, look, Australians, always ask you, how're doing? They don't really wanna know. All you wanna say is good thanks. It's just a social thing that we do. And so I think if you really want to know people are? You need to ask that question, that's brilliant.

- Okay, what's happening in your world? says I'm keen to hear further advice please. When we see someone in our team who may be struggling for step one, any advice on how to ask if someone is okay? That is a question that we're all a bit tentative of asking and it's always an ice breaker. It's a hard question without just getting the yes I'm answer. And step three and tips on, step three is tips on how to encourage action. I would think just going straight to three we're not experts. And I heard you say before you encourage them to do a couple of things or maybe seek professional advice. 'Cause there are professionals to help deal with the situation

- Like completely you're a connector. That's all you are. You're a connector. And you're walking alongside them as they connect with the professional. Most of us aren't, in the workplace we're not psychologists or counselors or GP. So it's actually how do you best connect that person either internally in the organization or externally? So I think to answer that question, you can jump on the website, which has some fantastic stuff about this, but I think the first thing is it's almost, it's not formalizing the process but it's actually making the effort, to go let's have a coffee or a virtual coffee. Let's jump on a zoom call, at 4:00 p.m. have a coffee together. And just so you actually sitting down and connecting with each other on video or in person, then you ask the question and they may say no like, I just wanna check, are you okay? Because then it's white. And if for any reason they say, no, that's fine. It doesn't mean you can't ask again. Or as a leader, sometimes your team won't tell you 'cause they think it might affect their work or the stigma or whatever it is. So then you can kind of nicely maybe just connect some of the people, their peers and go, why don't you guys check in with such and such and you have to give any details. It's just, it's kind of, it is that caring kind of approach.

- We're humans and often in despair, somebody reaching out and someone the notion that someone cares for me could save somebody, could actually get somebody to take action in the end.

- Most definitely.

- Yeah.

- And that's the most rewarding thing I get after the workshops. And because people think that if they ask, they might do more damage and that's, if people remember nothing else from this chat, then you can not do any damage. And I've worked with too many individuals and families who had that gut feeling that something was wrong and they didn't reach out. And I had an organization I work with, woman, Bleeder had a feeling something was wrong and didn't ask and said, oh, I'm so busy. I'll do it on Friday. And she knew, she's having a hard time working at home, turned up to the store on the Friday, had flowers and a card and the store didn't open up five past nine, 10 past nine, and she'd kill herself on the Thursday night. Tragic, not the woman's fault, tragic circumstances, but she will never forgive herself because she wished she'd asked that question on the Tuesday. So if there's anything I would beg people to do it's if you have that feeling make the call connect in and all you can do is be there.

- Yeah, great advice. We've got some feedback from Lizzie. It's great to see such a focus on self awareness and mental wellbeing in all aspects of life, including work. So work life balance also great seeing two men discussing these topics because let's just be honest here men, don't talk about this subject. Traditionally, the tough Aussie mile, it's seen as a weakness to discuss things like this.

- Come from absolutely.

- Yeah.

- Absolutely. And the tragic figure is that 75% of people who die from suicide are men. I mean, women attempts. We know that, but the death rate in men and yeah. I think it's such an important conversation and is being led more and more by elite sports people and corporate leaders. And we need to do it more. And there's a fantastic show on ABC I view called man up with Gus Wallen does three episodes. It's funny. It's sad. It's brilliant. It's it's basically

- It is an emotional role. Some of his stuff on triple M as well in the mental awareness space is fantastic.

- He's rule of thumb which I think is brilliant is every person, men especially, but every person should have two people that they can call and go I've had a shit day. So just have that real conversation. And like you say, men, I know blokes who've played golf together for 30 years. Never had one real conversation their life, so it's doing it differently.

- Oh, you got a mate. And after 20 years you discovered something you should have discovered after two minutes of being a mate.

- And it improves your relationship. It really does. It's just, but it is, it's the old saying is it's okay not to feel okay. And it's definitely okay to put your hand up. I did an interview recently with Daisy Thomas, the NFL player, and he talks about rocking up to train and he has his own stuff. He broke up with his misses and he rocked at a training and he said he'd be hysterically crying in the car and then he wipe off and get out and be the loudest jokey has at the bloke training. No one had a clue. So with men really got to be really connected and just keep an eye out for those little signs. And he wishes, he put his hand up earlier.

- Oh, it's a two way street too. Also don't be afraid to show your emotions. Yes, he's a sports guy, a dude who's not supposed to show tears to his teammates 'cause that's a sign of weakness. Well, it wouldn't have been, it would have been a sign of I need help. I'm struggling fellows.

- Yep, agreed.

- Yeah, Andrew says really enjoyed your presentation, Aaron. So you're getting lots of thumbs up out there. I can see that. What are some strategies you would suggest for managers or supervisors who were working for him very pertinent at this stage with remote working because of COVID and the pandemic.

- What I'm really seeing, what we're really seeing is are we have a level of anxiety in our society. That's concerning you. That stress and anxiety. What we're seeing through COVID is people, a lot of people are feeling like they've been unplugged from the mothership. So they're at home and their minds racing. I got an email, I got a text yesterday. People are just, is this happening? Am I being made redundant? There's all this uncertainty. So the rule that I just keep going on and on about for leaders, communication, communication communication, and we need to communicate twice as much virtually to get the same effect with actually that kind of face to face.

- All right, we've got a few more questions to go and then we've got to wrap up. We'll go a little bit over time today, you're okay.

- I've no where to go.

- You got nowhere to go? John Adams says any practical tips on building trust in a team.

- Yeah, that's huge. That's huge. And I think obviously the key traits of leadership, I think that's, it's about being authentic and I might be a bit weird but I think I see everyone as being a leader, you don't have to be CEO to be a leader. You could be in an organization and be in the front desk you could be packing the groceries. You could still be a leader in that group and at home and with your peers. So I think it goes back to it's the hardest thing in the world to be yourself. It takes a lot of courage to actually just put yourself out there and kind of just be real 'cause a lot of us feel like we need to be someone else, have imposter syndrome. Or so I think for that, that's the real connection and that showing that that vulnerability creates a whole new experience.

- Let me put this as just a quick followup. And we've got a couple of more questions. What happens if you're not a great communicator or you rate yourself as a great communicator and you're a bit shy, you don't come out of your shell. So actually sparking that conversation initiating the conversation with a colleague.

- Yeah.

- When you're not an outspoken or an outgoing person.

- Yeah it's the hardest. And that's lots of us. And I've got a whole bunch of anxiety run through my family and social phobia. And I'd say it is that self work and it's being aware of what are the stories your brain is telling you? Our brains are constantly blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, talking away. So it's being aware of that but not accepting those thoughts as reality. So as you're walking into a room going Oh God, no, one's gonna wanna talk to me. So all over a sudden it's like, when you got to do public speaking your brain is screaming at you. You're gonna stuff this up. You're gonna forget everything, your flies on down, whatever it is. And so I think little tricks, one great trick. I think it was the founder of Vinomofo talks about when you walked into a room and he was an introvert. He's a tech guy, walks in, he pretend he's wearing a superhero Cape. So he walks in and he's like chest out, walks in and he's not overdoing it. And all of a sudden this little mental tricks can help you just open up that little bit and you'll find once you breakthrough it becomes so much easier. Once you have that first chat, you have one question. What was the question before what's going on in your world?

- What's happening in your world?

- What's happening in your world?

- Yeah, pretty easy question to ask.

- And you just have to ask questions. People love talking about themselves. So if you ask questions the whole time, they'll go on and on` and on. I think that person was fantastic. You would not have said a word, but 15 minutes later.

- And once you've broken the ice, it's amazing how a conversation will flow. Even between two people who don't really like talking like two Wayne Bennett, who don't really wanna talk. Don't wanna give anything away. But once I get a conversation going and find a mutual ground.

- Yeah.

- That's fantastic.

- Well, Wayne Bennett, Doris Boyd like that.

- That's right, two of the people who don't speak much.

- That's right, what are they talking about?

- Rachel asks as a leader is it more important to be authentic and honest with your people that you to feel stressed or should their health and wellbeing be their only focus?

- That's a tricky one. What was that one again, honestly?

- As a leader is it more important to be authentic and honest with your people.

- Okay, that you feel stressed as well. I understand that, okay. I think if I've met anyone yet who says they're thriving through COVID? You know, a couple of people say they like the structure and it's helped them really focus and their wellbeing. But I think it's not a huge leap to be authentic and vulnerable and say, look, I don't have all the answers, but I think that's what I think that's really important 'cause that creates trust. And as I said before, that communication saying look, I don't have all the answers but I'll tell you everything I can. And I'll be honest with you. And we'll go on this journey together. As a leader, sometimes you can't tell your team everything. If you know, there's gonna be a massive restructure or whatever is going on, but if they know that you've got their best interests at hand, that creates that trust and that creates their own wellbeing.

- Would you also share the fact that you're struggling a little bit?

- Yes.

- That's not a sign of weakness. Is it that a leader is opening up to you? Who he or she is trying to get you to open up to them. So to share something that you may have in common, they were both struggling with this remoteness, were both struggling with whatever it might be.

- There's a fantastic book on Psychological Safety, psychological safety, who's the author? I can't remember now, but basically what it talks about is for example, in hospitals. So they have these teams who are doing this work. And what they assumed was that the best teams wouldn't make mistakes. But they found that the teams that were most successful made the most mistakes. That doesn't make sense. It was because they'd admit to their mistakes because it was seen as a learning opportunity. So all of a sudden they talked about the mistakes. They become a better team, a better organization because--

- And they progressed and move forward.

- They're okay go, I don't know how to do this. I buggered this up and all of a sudden, that's what psychological safety, vulnerability, authenticity creates--

- They became closer?

- Absolutely and all of a sudden you get innovation.

- Yeah, perfect. One final question, it comes from David. Can you share your experiences consulting with organizations that might talk the talk and again, this is pretty common but may not actually do what they preach. What advice would you give them? And is there hope for improvement? They're doing yeah, look at me beating chest but they're not actually doing anything.

- It's yes. I know exactly what he's talking about. I think it's pretty widespread to be honest, I was slightly disappointed with corporate Australia the start of the COVID, I think they're stepping up now and really talking about it in a much more authentic way. What to answer his question directly. I think there are amazing people inside every organization who are really passionate and care about this, what we need to change is the culture of our organizations. People have not been given permission to be, I think they have to be perfect. I think they had to be tough. I think they have to be ruthless. It's like, yeah sure. But you also need to be authentic and vulnerable and empathetic. So I think it's getting the good people together. And as I said before, it doesn't have to be the CEOs. It could be, the HR, directors, it can be the wellbeing organization. So then what we're seeing now is there's dollars and cents reasons to do this as well. And so we're suddenly discovering and we're lagging behind the U.S. and UK with this, we're discovering that our people are our best asset. So if you look after your people, your organization will flourish.

- Yeah and we as leaders, then we need some flexibility. We can't be, if we have this reputation for the draconian rule with an iron fist, we need to have the empathy. We need to have a softer side. We need to show all of those traits.

- Do you know where that research comes from? Some of that research for traits from the U.S. Marines, not known to be cuddly kissy kind of people. You know what I'm saying?

- But I reckon I'd have to have all those different.

- They found that the most successful units were the ones that the people said that they were the softer traits that follow those leaders at the end of the Earth.

- Yeah. So is it all really? Let's wrap it up with a few tips and key takeaways. We all have six internal buckets that we need to ensure do not run dry, I remember that from earlier, can you remind me what they are?

- Yeah, off the top of my head?

- Yeah, come on, I've got them written here.

- Work, physical, psychological and national spiritual relationship. I think the big one now is relationships. And those they're basically the six global domains of wellbeing. And we need to make sure that we're focusing on, it's just balance. It's some stuff your grandma told you when you were seven about how to live, that's the stuff we've forgotten. It's getting back in touch with the simple stuff. And it's being a good person, it's eating, sleeping and exercising, that's finding joy. Like it's not rocket science.

- Not necessarily starting the day with a cold shower and screaming in that shower.

- That's the best part.

- You've just shown me that shocking all treatment.

- I'm gonna call you tomorrow and see how you're doing.

- No why? I've got goosebumps just thinking about it. All right quickly just to sum up, we're gonna walk away from here but we're not going back to the email straightaway, are we? Give us a couple of things that we need to do as we walk away from today's presentation.

- Yeah, I think if everyone who is watching, including yourself, if they all do the, if they just try this three two five exercise.

- [Chris] Yup.

- It's astonishing. Because we forget, we get so caught up in the speed. The world today is measured in microseconds. If we actually stop and breathe. So I was doing before I came on here, I was staring at the sky. I'm like, oh, I just need to slow myself down. So my anxiety doesn't ever run me. If every single person tried that just once, everyone and I often do it at conferences, you got 600 people doing it. And you're like, wow, that time just slows down and you have more clarity. You have more, I suppose creativity and the world just seems much more manageable place.

- Thanks very much for joining us today.

- Loved it.

- It's fascinating. I don't know about the culture. I'm still stuck on that one. Now thanks to Aaron Williams. Our key messages, a mentally healthy workplace is one that promotes workplace practices that support positive mental health, eliminates and minimizes the psychological health and safety risks through identification and assessment of psychosocial hazards builds the knowledge skills, and capabilities of workers to be resilient and thrive at work is free of stigma and discrimination, supports the recovery of workers returning after a physical or psychological injury. Workers who feel positive about the environment and culture in their workplace are less likely to experience work related stress sustained a psychological injury or leave the workplace and more likely to have better performance and engaging learning and self development. WHSQ has a range of tools and resources that can assist you in identifying and managing work-related mental health hazards including stress, violence, bullying and fatigue, visit workplace, oh worksafe.qld.gov.au to check these out, including a number of existing webinar recordings, which may be of interest as well. And Aaron's presentation will be available online very, very shortly. We'll get that that up as soon as we can. Now, remember if you or someone you know needs support, please reach out a range of support services are on your screen at the moment, including lifeline which is available 24 seven. To wrap things up, thanks very much again to Aaron for joining us today. Thanks for your company. And thanks for tuning in today and supporting mental health week. Remember everybody, work safe, home safe.