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One thing good leaders should be impatient about

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When I was small I wanted to change the world.   I was impatient and I didn’t understand why people seemed to make things more complicated than they needed to be . Truth is – I’m 46 now and I haven’t grown out of it.   I’m not out to make this another mental health blog. I think we get it.   The whole planet gets it. Mental health is the biggest disease we’ve had to face. 350 million people woke up this morning feeling like they had to run up a hill from a standing start.   For every person you’ve walked past in a wheelchair, you’ve passed 12 with the same level of disability from a mental health issue. But you didn’t see them and you certainly didn’t get to thinking about whether you could help them . Consider mental health like a domino at the front of a long line. When it topples it impacts on risk, safety, productivity, leadership, culture, wellbeing, engagement, stress claims, retention and relationships.   I should find this a complex web but I don’t.   It’s s
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Eight life lessons from the luckiest Man in the world...

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I’m supposed to be writing a piece on leadership. But today would be Dad’s birthday and with Father’s Day approaching, I sit here and my fingers have spent the last half an hour typing three words then deleting them. Until I started typing this . In the 10 years since Dad died I’ve learnt so much .   I’ve studied, published, started businesses and ended them. I’ve sat with thousands of leaders, teams, clients and patients; people struggling with grief, and those navigating changes not of their choosing. I’ve become a parent to three daughters, and had inspirational mentors. I’ve had setbacks I thought I would never recover from and somehow did. At times I’ve been proud of myself and perhaps more than occasionally I’ve disappointed myself.   Of all I’ve learned in life, I realised recently that the most important lessons came early.   Dad was a man who couldn’t even stand, yet everyone looked up to . He didn’t finish school –   his university was deciding to never leave a
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Thank you: To the 3000+ Australians who helped lead a global action on mental health

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Today we launched the results of Australia’s Biggest Mental Health Check-in – the largest proactive, subjective and objective mental health campaign ever undertaken . Organisations and communities globally have been reaching out to follow Australia’s lead. And for the difference you’ve made we can’t thank you enough . Mental health is the biggest disease on the planet. There are over 350 million sufferers globally, with an annual cost of $12B to the Australian economy alone. Less than 39% of people with a mental health issue receive professional support, and recent estimates are that less than 7% of sufferers get optimal treatment. Partnering with the visionary team from Medibio , and joined by participating organisations ahead of their time, we set out to change the face of mental health. Whether you were well, the worried well, or finding life a struggle, we wanted to give you a comprehensive digital dashboard of how you are tracking, in the palm of your hand. Results in full
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MEDIA RELEASE Australia scores poor report card on mental health

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Release of results from ‘Australia’s Biggest Mental Health Check-in’ TUESDAY AUGUST 8, 2017  FOR IMMEDIATE USE Conventional approaches to managing mental health are expensive, time-consuming and inaccurate, according to the nation’s largest, proactive mental health check report card, set for release tomorrow (Tuesday, August 8, 2017). ‘Australia’s Biggest Mental Health Check-in’ – an innovative, digital public health initiative designed to measure, educate and drive change in the mental health arena – engaged more than 3,100 Australian participants aged between 18-89, over the course of two, four week-long campaigns. Click here to download the full digital media kit
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We are all Checking in together

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Australia’s Mental Health is in Your Hands I’ve had lots of proud weeks in my life, and this is definitely one of them. We are on the eve of launching Australia’s Biggest Mental Health Check-in 2017 . It provides a private, proactive and personalised dashboard for the mind and the body to see how each of us are tracking. Partnering with Medibio, the world’s first objective measure of stress , we lead a new age of better measurement and positive change in mental health. The Check-in comes as the World Health Organisation announce that depression is now officially the leading cause of ill health on the planet, up 18% over the past decade. Australia’s Biggest Mental Health Check-in was created to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health. It aims to let people know they’re not alone, and to encourage a more proactive approach to mental health. But there’s another reason for checking in that I know better than most, and that is that up to 60% of people don’t even realise when th
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Asking for difficult feedback: What happened when I stopped holding a mirror to others and held one to myself...

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As a Psychologist, a big part of my life involves being honest with people. I give tough feedback a lot.   I work with teams to seek out the thing that no one wants to address and I sit by it with a picnic blanket and a torch light .   I hope that for many people I give them space to accept what are difficult thoughts and know that there is little gained from their avoidance.   Which is why it is not a proud moment for me to reflect lately that I’m not always very honest with myself. I was inspired a few months ago by watching Jia Jiang’s Ted Talk and the wisdom that grew from exposinghimself to 100 days of rejection .   Jiang found that beyond the firewall of shame and fear came a sense of freedom he couldn’t have imagined. Once he stopped trying to avoid rejection he achieved great things. What’s this got to do with being honest with myself? Well I’ve been thinking a lot about feedback – specifically why people find it so hard to give.   I’ve realised with increas
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Over 1000 reasons to celebrate the future of workforce mental health... (And the Ambassadors (pictures throughout) and organisations ahead of their time who helped us figure it out) This week marked the close of Australia’s Biggest Mental Health Check-in – a world first initiative combining an online mental health profile and Medibio’s wearable technology.   The result saw over 1000 Australians sign up in under 4 weeks – all of them receiving an individualised program designed to improve or help future-proof, their mental health.   Ambassadors: Dr Neale Fong, Vin Gleeson and Dr Kate Hadwen The Check-in team and I watched as people all around the country opened their reports at the same time – symbolising that we are all in this together and mental health checks should be no more stigma-inducing than having a physical health check up.   The e-traffic in the next hours was awesome: “No one is ever going to tell you the state of your mental health, it is up to you.
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