Here’s how to support stressed employees’ mental health.

By Dena Trujillo

Many people in the U.S. are feeling stressed about their finances and jobs. 

A recent report by Crisis Text Line — a 24/7, nationwide, text-based mental health and crisis support service and a Real Leaders Top Impact Company — found that 2023 was a year of anxiety and stress for texters. Over one in three texters mentioned these topics. The American Psychological Association also reports similar findings for 2023. Even though Americans have mostly returned to their routines, many are recovering from the collective trauma of the past few years. 

While there were many stressful events in 2023, when texters discussed anxiety and stress, they typically focused on issues related to their immediate circumstances: relationships to family and friends and stressors at school and work. Many worried about work, paying bills, or being laid off.

2023 was a year of strikes and layoffs — and another year of paying for medical bills, childcare, mortgages, and other financial pressures. Your employees might be stressed — in general or about their future at the company, their performance, their benefits, or their relationships to coworkers. 

If you are leading a company, you are in a powerful position to mitigate stress for employees. With their centralized policies and communication, workplaces are well-positioned to make an impact for better mental health. Unfortunately, although employers believe they foster a supportive workplace, according to a 2018 CDC study, U.S. workers feel their companies are falling short of providing the right resources to support their mental health. 

Take a moment to evaluate how you are supporting your employees’ mental health. 

The Milken Institute provides guidance for employers to evaluate gaps and set priorities to make mental health for workers accessible and stigma-free. It suggests that employers focus on three priority areas: psychological safety, stigma, and performance and engagement. Providing volunteer opportunities can contribute to better mental health outcomes. In a recent study of Crisis Text Line volunteers, two-thirds of crisis counselors took better care of their mental health as a result of volunteering. 

The expectation for people to simply get over their stress and mental health challenges is not only unrealistic but also detrimental to their well-being. By recognizing the importance of mental health, encouraging open dialogue in the workplace, and promoting the value of seeking help, we can create a more supportive and understanding society. Remember, it’s OK to ask for help, and everyone deserves the support they need to thrive. 

Prioritizing equity and empowerment for entrepreneurs and business owners is a winning formula.

By Dena Trujillo, CEO at Crisis Text Line

As CEO of Crisis Text Line, a 24/7, nationwide, text-based mental health and crisis support service, I regularly uncover interesting insights into our texter’s emotions and experiences. If there’s one key observation I’d like to share with you today, it would be this: 

Right now, many people in the US are feeling stressed about their finances and jobs. 

At Crisis Text Line, we have unique insight into mental health trends across the United States. Each year, we support over a million conversations with texters in need across the country,  more than 3,500 daily. We provide mental health support and crisis intervention 24/7, and so we see mental health trends emerge almost in real time. 

In a new report, we found that 2023 was a year of anxiety and stress for our texters. These were the top issues that they brought to us; over 1 in 3 texters mentioned these topics. The American Psychological Association also reports that Americans are anxious and stressed. Even though people in the U.S. have mostly returned to their routines, many are recovering from the collective trauma of the past few years. 

While there were many stressful events in 2023, when our texters discussed anxiety and stress, they typically focused on issues related to their immediate circumstances: their relationships to their families, friends – and, importantly, stressors in their school and work lives. 

Based on our analysis, many worried about their work, paying the bills, or being laid off last year. 

2023 was a year of strikes and layoffs – and another year of paying for medical bills, child care, mortgages, and other financial pressure. Your employees, too, might be stressed – in general, or about their future at the company, their performance, their benefits, or their relationships to coworkers. 

If you are leading a company, you are in a powerful position to mitigate stress for employees. Workplaces are a place of centralized policies and communication, which makes them well positioned to make an impact for better mental health. Unfortunately, although employers believe they foster a supportive workplace, US workers feel their companies are falling short of providing the right resources to support their mental health. 

Take a moment this Mental Health Awareness Month to evaluate how you are supporting your employees’ mental health. 

The Milken Institute provides guidance for employers to evaluate gaps and set priorities to make mental health for workers accessible and stigma-free. They suggest that employers focus on three priority areas: psychological safety, stigma, and performance and engagement. We have found that providing volunteer opportunities can contribute to better mental health outcomes. In a recent study of Crisis Text Line volunteers, we found that two thirds of our Crisis Counselors take better care of their mental health as a result of volunteering. 

The expectation for people to simply “get over” their stress and mental health challenges is not only unrealistic but also detrimental to their well-being. By recognizing the importance of mental health, encouraging open dialogue in the workplace, and promoting the value of seeking help, we can create a more supportive and understanding society. Remember, it’s okay to ask for help, and everyone deserves the support they need to thrive.

Think about the last time you bought something expensive to make yourself feel better after a disappointment or when you treated yourself to a fancy and expensive dinner after some accomplishment.

Emotions have a strong influence on purchasing decisions. More often than we realize, we make these decisions based on emotions rather than rational calculations and facts. It is well documented that financial decisions are also influenced by emotions.

In low-mood periods, people are more pessimistic about a firm’s prospects, which is associated with decreases in stock market prices.

Because of the growing popularity of assets with a strong focus on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals — companies with corporate policies that encourage them to act responsibly — we wanted to look at what role emotions can play in determining people’s preference for sustainable investments.

Why Investors Choose Sustainable Investments

There are several reasons why people may want to invest in sustainable assets. Some may be “social signaling” — they like to talk about how their investments are socially responsible.

Another reason can be found in how someone was raised. An individual’s propensity to invest in socially responsible assets is influenced by having parents owning similar assets or growing up in a family that values environmental sustainability.

The “warm glow effect,” which is a good feeling experienced through the act of giving, also explains why investors choose ESG assets. Investors experience positive emotions when choosing sustainable investments, irrespective of the investments’ impact.

But does an investor’s mood influence their preference for sustainable investments? There are several reasons why emotions might affect where people put their money.

The Role of Mood in Our Investment Decisions

There are two competing theories when it comes to examining the role of mood and sustainable investment.

The first is based on the idea that sustainable assets are generally less risky. In this sense, assets considered completely or mostly sustainable have been shown to outperform less sustainable assets in crises, as investors see them as more trustworthy and having fewer structural, legal, and reputational risks.

This theory is also based on the idea that a lower mood leads to more risk-averse behavior. That is, when someone is sad, depressed, or angry, they tend to become more cautious when making investment decisions and choose investments with lower risk.

A second and competing theory is based on the idea that a positive mood promotes prosocial behaviors and greater altruism. Investors with lower mood tend to focus on themselves and less about others. As such, they have less preference for sustainable investments.

Happier investors, on the other hand, may be more altruistic and favor sustainable investments because it benefits others (for example, community, workmates, and the environment). Our research has tested these theories, documenting evidence consistent with investors’ greater risk aversion.

More specifically, we found that a worse mood is associated with greater investment in sustainable assets. This is arguably due to a greater risk aversion pushing investors to favor sustainable investments that they perceive as less risky.

How to Identify Sustainable Funds and Test Investors’ Mood

To identify sustainable versus non-sustainable funds, we used the Morningstar Sustainability rating. This rating is intended to help investors better understand and manage total ESG risk in their investments. A higher sustainability rating is associated with a lower ESG risk.

To capture the change in the average mood of households for a given month, we used a metric called “onset and recovery” (OR). This metric measures the change in the monthly percentage of seasonally depressed individuals who are actively experiencing symptoms.

Higher OR indicates an increase in symptomatic depression cases and, therefore, lower mood on average. For the Northern Hemisphere, OR is high during autumn (September), low during spring (March), and moderate during summer and winter. Southern Hemisphere countries experience the same pattern in reverse.

We contrasted OR levels in relation to investment in sustainable equity mutual funds in 25 countries over the 2018–2021 period. In general, mutual funds with high sustainability ratings tended to attract more capital, suggesting that investors value sustainable investments.

More importantly, however, we found that when there was an increase in the percentage of seasonally depressed individuals, capital inflows into high-sustainability funds increased relative to low-sustainability alternatives (an extra 0.070% per month or 0.84% per year).

For an average mutual fund with a size of $100 million, this additional capital inflow equates to $840,000 per year. This negative association is consistent with a risk-aversion interpretation, supporting the conclusion that lower mood leads to more sustainable investments as investors perceive them as being less risky.

Our study comes with a caveat. Given the features of our data, we cannot test if the investors’ mood improves after investing in sustainable funds. This would not only confirm that sustainable investments are a safer option, but also that investing in them will boost people’s mood.

So, is sadness good for the environment and society?

Our research explores a potential channel that could explain people’s preference for sustainable investments. Our findings suggest that when it comes to investing in sustainable equity mutual funds, investor risk aversion triggered by negative moods was a more likely cause of increased investing than the potential happiness connected to their pro-social behavior.

This does not imply that sadness is good for the environment or society; it rather confirms that investors consider sustainable investments a safer option.

I’ve been a driver. A winner. A warrior, lover, and a builder. Setting and achieving meaningful goals was my passion — not only in business, but in my personal development, my family, relationships with my spouse, partners, siblings, parents, and friends.

I viewed myself in the way others viewed me. In other words, I was more attached to “CEO,” my beauty queen wife, successful children (songwriter/singer daughters and an NFL son), and several other labels that society covets. Yet, this wasn’t really me. I thought I was all these things, but it wasn’t true.

About five years ago, a sequence of events hit me, and I felt as if my life as I knew it exploded. The rock that I saw myself as, crumbled. During these past five years, I got divorced (after 29 years), and it took four years to finalize. My dad, the man I held in such high regard and loved deeply, died. My oldest daughter married, and all three of my adult children became more independent, creating new lives for themselves. My eyesight became increasingly blurry; I was diagnosed with boxer’s eye and had my first surgery. I broke up with the partners in my business and sold a company that had taken more than 20 years to build. The YPO forum I had founded with two others asked me to move on, as I was over 50 years old. I began dating again after 30 years. I got engaged to be married and, months later, broke it off. I was no longer in the same circles as my few friends, and I constantly heard harmful untruths that my ex-wife had fabricated and shared. I spent 13 hours in jail one Easter after being falsely accused of something I never did. I was handcuffed and booked.

Then, one year after closing the sale of my company, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I moved out of state for two months, where I was given 28 treatments. To top it off, I contracted COVID-19 from my daughter last Thanksgiving and was quarantined for two weeks. In the following months, the company that bought my company fired me from a six-year consulting agreement when I didn’t accept their buyout number at 4:30 pm on New Year’s Eve, two days before my daughter gave birth to my first grandchild.

Yet, despite all this I feel blessed and grateful. I’m busy creating a new life and learning to lean into my fears and explore the uncovered passions of my younger self. I recently co-wrote and recorded my first song in Nashville with my daughter. Yes, I helped write the lyrics and sang, even though I’ve never been a singer. I’m finally figuring out who the hell I really am. I recently wrote a book that’s now for sale on Amazon and secured 370 acres of land in a prime location for a new residential development. Yet, I am not my project. I am not my book. I am uniquely me.

I don’t claim to have a crystal ball to see what’s next, and I’m still figuring out and building my legacy. I’ve heard people say that we are human beings, not human doings. I’m learning to lighten up on myself and create fun wherever I am. I’m aware of my emotions and vulnerable in sharing how I feel. I’m gaining quiet courage and confidence, different from what I’ve ever felt before. Despite feeling unworthy in my past, I’ve come to realize that I’m enough and worthy of anything or anyone that shows up in my life.

I’m excited about the new life and legacy I am building. My 3.0 is all about giving back, giving to myself, learning, and connecting with others. I will travel the world and engage in an adventure with those close to me. In addition to preserving and building friendships, I’m also excited to find the woman who will be the perfect life companion for me. I love myself more than I’ve known, which inspires me to want to help lift others up. I’ve always been good at getting up again, even when I didn’t want to. And today, I am grateful to be taking steps forward. Crap happens in life — to all of us — and it’s likely to happen again. We have a choice though: to believe that it’s happening “to us” or to get curious about why it is happening “for us.” We get to decide. Success for me is not about what we accomplish or have. Success is all about how we recover.

Are you a business owner or company leader who seems to struggle with excessive stress, negative thoughts, depression, or anxiety? You’re not alone.

According to a study by UC Berkeley, 72% of entrepreneurs struggle with their mental health. This is obviously a problem, but what can you do to have optimal mental health?  

One of the most overlooked ways for business leaders to keep up with their mental health is to be proactive. You see on social media and the news every day different things you can do to help when you are feeling anxious or depressed, but not as much about how to keep you from getting there in the first place. That’s what I am most interested in. You need to be proactive with your mental health, just like you are proactive with your business. You don’t wait until your business is in a sharp decline to do something about it. You prepare your business, in the beginning, to hopefully keep from getting to that point. It would help if you did the same thing with your mental health, and here’s how.

Start your morning the right way. I’ve talked to many business people, and a vast majority of them say that the first thing they do is check their email. By doing this, you are taking your mind from the most peaceful state of sleep and immediately overloading it with stimuli to your brain. This can cause anxiety, and that’s not how you want to start your day. Your brain wasn’t designed to handle that many stimuli, especially in your first waking moments.

Start practicing giving time to be with yourself to start the day. This could be doing a 5-10 minute meditation, journaling, writing down things you are grateful for, speaking self-affirmations, or even something as simple as taking a short walk around the neighborhood. You’ll find that you will have more mental energy and less anxiety throughout the day. This process prepares your brain to take on all the challenges you will receive in your business for the day.  

The morning isn’t the only time you can be proactive with your mental health. It would help if you took scheduled breaks/time to play during the day. According to The Hustle’s survey, 63% of business owners either feel burnt out or have in the past. In the business world, you are constantly told that you must work hard and work more to succeed. This advice is contradictory. While you feel you may be on the right track busting out 16 hours every day, this will more than likely lead to a burnout that will have you feeling depressed and on your butt doing nothing for a week or more.

All that extra time you put towards your business gets consumed by the time you spend trying to get yourself back together from the depression and burnout. Taking play breaks for yourself doesn’t mean you have to take the day off or even several hours away from your business. You can do something as simple as taking a 20-minute Netflix break to relax and focus on something other than work. Taking breaks is hard for many business owners, but once you see the results, you’ll notice you will be doing better for your business by taking time for yourself in the middle of the day.

Finally, improving your sleep is one of the best ways to keep your mental health on track. We’ve all seen the hyper-successful boast about how they wake up at crazy hours in the morning and finish their day late at night, leaving a few hours of sleep. This is not good for your mental health. According to the Sleep Foundation, sleep significantly impacts your mental health. If your sleep is off, so is your mental health. I learned some quick tips to improve your sleep from the book Sleep Smarter by Shawn Stevenson. Stop using screens 90 minutes before bed.

The blue light from your cell phone, TV, computer, etc., harms your sleep quality. Create a caffeine curfew where you stop drinking caffeine after a specific time of the day. Shawn suggests making it no later than 2 pm as caffeine has an 8-hour half-life. Go to bed and wake up within 30 minutes of the same time each day and night. This will help build a healthy sleep pattern for yourself. Lastly, black out your bedroom as much as possible. You’d be surprised how the smallest amount of light can impact your sleep quality.

You are an example for our future leaders. Lead by example by showing them that taking care and being proactive with your mental health is the secret to a successful business and a happy life. The movement to increase mental health awareness starts with you.

Each year I give a presentation about burnout and well-being to our recently hired physicians and scientists at Mayo Clinic.

During the talk, I ask the participants to raise their hand if they have ever experienced burnout. Five years ago, a few hands would go up. Today, in 2022, nearly everyone in the room raises their hand. Did the rate of burnout for these professionals increase significantly over the past five years? Perhaps, especially recently with the pandemic. Alternatively, we may simply be better at recognizing burnout. We have become more familiar with the language that defines burnout and the metrics that quantify it—so now we can name what we perceive.

And if we as leaders aim to decrease burnout, having a framework to identify and figure out how to approach burnout and well-being is essential. While conducting a recent seminar with leaders of healthcare organizations throughout Asia and the Middle East, I likewise asked the participants, “How many of you have experienced burnout?” Every one of the people, at tables assembled by organization and country, raised their hand—except for the individuals at one table. I thought to myself, “Finally, an organization has figured out how to eliminate burnout.” So I asked those at the table to share their experience.

Each leader at the table looked sullenly at the others. Eventually one of them grabbed the microphone and stood up to speak. “Each of us in our country has experienced difficult childhoods with much adversity. We learned at a young age that the way to succeed was to put our head down and work as hard and as many hours as we could. And we expect this of each other. Certainly, we face adversity. There are times when we feel sad and helpless, but we need to push through these moments.” He looked down and switched the microphone to the opposite hand. “Many of my colleagues who have retired from work reflect negatively upon their lives. They realized that the moments of sadness and helplessness they experienced turned into a career of misery. They tell me that they sense that they had never experienced joy. They regret the life they have lived.” He then looked directly at me. “But we do not label our experience as burnout.”

Burnout is a syndrome of overwhelming emotional exhaustion, feelings of cynicism, and a sense of ineffectiveness. Emotional exhaustion occurs when we are worn out, fatigued, depleted, and without emotional energy. It creates a cognitive weariness that affects our ability to perform our work. A candle requires sufficient oxygen, protection from the wind, and a spark to keep its wax burning; lacking those conditions, it would lose its capacity to make light and heat.

Similarly, our vigor is extinguished when we are emotionally exhausted. Cynicism refers to the negative attitudes that develop when we encounter our work. When we are cynical, we become irritable and lose our idealism. We begin to see colleagues and clients as obstacles in our way. When I think of cynicism, I am reminded of the cartoon character Glum from The Adventures of Gulliver.  When Glum and his friends faced a difficult challenge, Glum would proclaim, “We’ll never make it!” Glum’s friends would counter, “Be positive, Glum.” And then after a few moments Glum would admonish, “I’m positive we’ll never make it!”

A colleague is clinically burned out when they have high levels of emotional exhaustion in addition to cynicism or a sense of ineffectiveness. All of us have moments in which we experience each of these feelings. But it is the combination of relentless exhaustion over time and at least one of the other two dimensions that separates burnout from simple exhaustion.

You likely have a good idea of what promotes burnout. Imagine:

• Your inbox is full of “high priority” messages, a work schedule change bumps a long-planned family gathering, and you’re denied an essential resource because you submitted the wrong form.

• Your boss overlooks your input on a decision within your area of expertise, your colleague barks at you each time you follow his instructions to contact him, and you were just given another important project with poorly defined deliverables on an unrealistically tight deadline.

• The mission and values of your organization seem to exist

only on the screen savers of your workstation—the workstation which, as it happens, suddenly restarts whenever you open the HR portal to complete a required questionnaire about burnout.

• You haven’t had a vacation, you haven’t been eating well, and you don’t have time to sleep. And, in the back of your mind— what wakes you up at 3 a.m. each day—is a perseverative thought about a mistake you made last month. You feel as if you are treading water in a pool with no ladder and a poolside edge that lurks six feet above the water’s surface.

And it doesn’t appear these struggles will ever end. Each of us has the grit to work through process inefficiencies, and excessive workloads, and work and home conflicts, and dysfunction within our organizations. We are resilient and can bounce back after struggles or failure. We may even consider exhaustion to be a badge of honor—proof of our dedication to work—as we speak with pride of the sacrifices we make in service of our pursuits. We face moments of frustration and we persevere. But when these moments repeat, and are unrelenting, and we have no time for recovery over longer periods of time, we are at risk of developing burnout.

When we’re trying to understand an emotion, thought, or experience, there’s a big difference between learning about it from a reference source such as a website (including Wikipedia), a textbook or even a dictionary, or by talking to someone else who has been there.

The reference source gives us an explanation that’s merely descriptive; hearing from somebody who’s been there gives us helpful insights.  But if we don’t have someone to talk to, or if we do but want to add another layer to their input, there’s a whole other source out there that rarely gets the attention it should: well-researched expert quotes, which can help us identify a path forward  –  similar to having a conversation with an expert or a wise and perceptive friend.  

In particular, short descriptive quotes from individuals with considerable personal experience in the emotion we’re trying to understand can be helpful not only in our personal lives, but also, our professional lives where we need to think and process input quickly. This approach can be compared to the essence of helpful and informative reporting – and it may even be described somewhat as basic investigative journalism. Yet ‘quotes from experts’ can add considerable immediate color and depth to our understanding.

Let’s look at ‘Depression’ for example, and assume that we know relatively little about it.  Suppose we have a colleague or boss who has confided that they’re suffering from depression.  Initially, without much understanding of what, exactly, “depression” entails, we might browse the internet and stumble upon this explanation on Psychiatry.com: “Depression (major depressive disorder) is a common and serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act.” Or we might consult a standard dictionary definition of Depression and find something along the lines of : ‘A state of enduring sadness, gloom, or pessimism.’ (or similar).

We might consider a Thesaurus and look at antonyms and synonyms, and then move quickly to available search engines to deepen our understanding. We can quickly be overwhelmed (‘like drinking out of a firehose!’) by the hundreds of available websites, books, and viewpoints, and hope to trim down the available data to manageable levels. And almost certainly we ask ourselves where best to turn for the most reliable authors, therapists, and professionals. 

Let’s assume that after a few more hours’ review we decide to pare down our sources on Depression to something more manageable – say a handful of ‘widely-recognized experts.’ Do we then buy each of their five different 275-page books in order to reliably self-educate? And what if we come to realize that the emotion we really needed to understand better is something closer to ‘Anxiety? Isn’t there a better way to get better-oriented regarding emotions without taking so much time?

I learned from experience that short, memorable expert quotes are exceptionally practical tools.  My early teenage daughter had suffered a serious injury that triggered an emotional crisis. When she asked me if I knew what “depression” meant, my journey to understanding it fully began by looking the word up in the dictionary.  

Ultimately, it was through quotes and insights that I came to fully grasp not just how depression is defined, but how depression feels. This led me to investigate 180 other emotions, and to curate 2,500 of the greatest short quotes and insights of all time, from 1,000 leading thinkers across nearly 3,000 years of world history. The result was my new book, Emotional Shorthand: 2500 Greatest Self-Help Quotes and Life Insights.

Let’s return to our previous descriptive standard dictionary definition:

Depression: “A state of enduring sadness, gloom, or pessimism” and compare it for sake of both insight and helpfulness to a few short quotes from world-recognized leaders and ‘emotional veterans’ who can help us get generally oriented on the topic of Depression:

J.K. Rowling (Pictured above — former depression sufferer; now the world’s top novelist):

“Depression is that absence of being able to envision that you will ever be cheerful again…It is the most unpleasant thing I have ever experienced.”

Rollo May (Author and one of America’s leading psychologists in the 1960’s):

“Depression is the inability to construct a future.”

Halley Cornell (Journalist; depression sufferer; Content Strategist for WebMD):

“Depression lies to you. It tells you that you have always felt this way and you always will, but you haven’t and you won’t.”

Albert Ellis, PhD (Known among the top 5 psychologists of the twentieth century):                                                                                                                                                 

“You largely constructed your depression. It wasn’t given to you. Therefore you can deconstruct it.”      

Depression provides just one example of the benefit of seeking expert insights in addition totechnical descriptions as means of arriving at a better understanding of almost any day-to-day emotion. These deeper gains accrue to both ourselves and to those of people around us, including family and colleagues. Well-researched expert quotes can especially help focus large amounts of data. While qualified professional opinions and advice should always be relied upon in final healthcare decisions, expert quotes can be especially helpful to getting oriented in complex landscapes.  By accessing a dozen or more diverse expert quotes, we can quickly expand our perspective, personal clarity, and emotional literacy. Their power to trigger “Aha!” moments can contribute to solving modern problems – both at work and beyond – and can help change lives.

You don’t have to search very far to discover examples of narcissism. Whether it’s yet another person in the Great Resignation refusing to return to the office and work for an arrogant supervisor, the guy sitting next to you on the plane complaining to the flight attendant because his seat won’t recline, or even the Slap Heard Around the World — heard around the world because it so closely mirrored the hubris we’ve been witnessing on the global stage.

More recently, a larger physical and economic power sauntering into the sovereign territory of a smaller one unannounced and attempting to strike it down—narcissism seems to be everywhere. 

While the behavior of a few at the top can make it seem that we exist in a society characterized by conceit and entitlement, we also live in a society characterized by kindness, service, and generosity. Disproving the erroneous belief that we are predominately self-interested, we live in a society in which we feel better when we give to others—which activates the same reward center in the prefrontal cortex as achieving self-directed goals—than when we attain more for ourselves.

Good vibes notwithstanding, once again attesting that bad is stronger than good—meaning that we recall negative events much more rapidly and vividly than positive ones—sore thumbs stick out more than healthy fingers. Unfortunately, leaders who misbehave and diminish others become much more etched into our minds than those who are humble, self-effacing, and compassionate.

Its vividness piques our curiosity and makes us wonder where hubris comes from and how it takes us over, especially as we rise in status in our companies and organizations. 

Narcissism and the Leadership Trajectory

I teach companies and organizations a leadership principle called “Nothing Blinds Like Success.” As social psychologist Michael Hogg has uncovered, leaders are elected or selected because they have internalized the group’s values, characteristics, and features. 

Over time, however, something unfortunate happens: they shift from being prototypical and representing what the group most cares about to being expelled—socially at first and, eventually for most, physically—from the same group they used to represent so well.

Consider Robert Mugabe. After winning the revolution against the white Ian Smith regime in Rhodesia, the ZANU-Patriotic Front rebel leader became the prime minister of the newly independent republic of Zimbabwe in 1980. 

Did Mugabe apply the caring and compassion for everyday Zimbabweans that caused his countrymen and women to follow him as a revolutionary in the country’s governance?

Not at all. Instead, he became a ruthless dictator who stewarded his country into becoming rated by the UN as one of the least habitable on the planet and a paragon of human rights violations for almost four decades until he was placed under house arrest in 2017.

It Starts on the Way Up

How do leaders go from regular folks to first to worst? It begins with their ascent. As they rise to power, their followers focus on everything they say and do. Why? Their livelihoods depend on it.

With all this attention on them, leaders believe they are larger than life. They start to believe their own press, to breathe their own exhaust. They start having thoughts such as, “I am extraordinary. That’s why I’ve risen to this role. That’s why so many are focused on my every move.” 

As a consequence of this type of thinking, they stop paying attention to the people they lead. Social psychological research has found that leaders eat more than their share of the cookies, allow more crumbs to fall from their mouths, and eat with their mouths open more than their subordinates.

Why? The higher an individual climbs the ladder of success, the less they attune to and empathize with others.

Power and Our Brightest Stars

As with Mugabe and most of our leaders who are comfortably embedded in their roles at the top of their fields and become disconnected from the rank-and-file (Pope Francis, the first pope to refuse to live in the Papal Palace in over a century, is a notable exception), many leaders enact a code of living that most of us cannot even fathom. 

Never have we been so far from understanding how those highest on the hill live. The CEO no longer earns eighty times—as they did in the 1980s—but now over six hundred times what the janitor takes home to their children made.

Many leaders allow their lives to become guided by delusion. Encircled by sycophantic followers rather than upright colleagues willing to share with them the real information of what’s happening in their organization that they desperately need to listen to in order to sustain their success, they live in a filter bubble almost entirely conceived by their imagination. When you live at the top of the pyramid, you’re only surrounded by air.

Understanding how narcissism can emerge within us as we grow in our careers is critical. This unfortunate byproduct of increasing our status over time can produce disastrous results for ourselves and the people with whom we work and live.                              

“What?!” you may be thinking after reading this title. “I value my drive for more, it’s what gives me a sense of competence and value in life.”

Fair enough. Yet hold your judgment for a moment. At least until you read this next story.

The authors Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller attended a party hosted by a billionaire hedge fund manager on Long Island.

Vonnegut pulled Heller aside and shared with him that their host made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his bestselling novel, Catch-22, in its entire history.

Heller looked back at Vonnegut and replied, “Yes, but I have something he will never have.”

“What’s that?” Vonnegut asked quizzically.

“Enough.”  

What Are You After?

Let’s consider our drive for more vis-à-vis the new technologies we allow into our lives. After the car was invented, people sought any excuse to go for a drive. It was all the rage to go to drive-in theaters.

After a while, people decided they really didn’t need to sit in their cars while watching a movie. As the novelty of driving a car subsided, drive-in theaters faded into obscurity.

A few decades later, in the late 1950s, another new technology, the television, was so captivating that it was moved from the living room into the dining room so families could watch their favorite shows during dinner. This practice was soon deemed uncouth and TVs were moved back to the living room.

The New Technology Adoption Pendulum

Perhaps we are currently experiencing a similar pendulum swing of a new technology. The iPhone will experience its fifteen-year anniversary this year. Perhaps soon—mirroring the TV’s parabolic trajectory—looking at a smartphone during dinner will also be considered poor manners and the practice will subside.

It already has in many homes, including ours—but only after precipitating more than a few marital and family arguments (with children as young as one and a half weighing in).

As with the automobile and television, we are undergoing a similar acculturation with a new technology, and our current obsession is also likely to diminish (although, unlike most drive-in theaters, not disappear).

My concern is for our current generation caught in the crosshairs of the current technological revolution whose experience of real life is fading while we sort out this new acculturation process.

What Happened?

Given the astronomical increase in loneliness among people in just about every culture—along with anxiety, depression and other mental health issues compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic—it is safe to say that figuring out how to keep our phones in check has become a global issue.

It certainly is in the UK, for instance. Subsequent to two studies that found that nine million British citizens are often or always lonely and that British children spend less time outside than prison inmates, former Prime Minister Theresa May appointed a Minister for Loneliness in 2018.

As with not just the television and automobile, but also the telephone, telegraph, typewriter, bicycle and every other once-novel invention that has changed the way we live, in the end it is we who decide how to adapt new technology to our way of life.

The Internet—due to the sea change it has ushered in to how we live (or is it a tidal wave?)—may take a bit longer, but we will adapt. As MIT professor Sherry Turkle wisely cautions, “Technology challenges us to assert our human values, which means that, first of all, we have to figure out what they are … We’re going to slowly, slowly find our balance, but … it’s going to take time.”

Fancy More Candy?

One thing is certain: we’re up against a lot. The Internet is amazing— let’s face it. It offers some incredibly exciting options. This is why we’re on it so much!

If we’re going to reclaim our lives, we must first understand what’s so appealing about our laptops, tablets and smartphones. Once we have a better understanding of this gravitational pull, we can envision some goals to guide our use of these enthralling new tools in our lives.

Thirty years ago, we never would have imagined we could see a video on just about anything we want, be in contact with people from all over the globe, think of a book we want to read or a song we want to hear and then—within seconds—read or listen to it.

We would have been incredulous were we told that one day we would throw away our encyclopedias and have all the same information they once contained—at our fingertips 24-7, more easily accessible, at no apparent cost whatsoever.

The Internet is so amazing, in fact, that we have each become like a kid who has taken up permanent residence in a candy store. We just can’t get enough.

Open the Door

My fear, again, is that a whole generation of people will miss out on real life because they can never quench their voracious hunger to consume from the digital trough.

For many, this hunger has grown ravenously during the Covid-19 pandemic as we tap, hover and click voraciously to learn the latest trajectory of an intractable virus. Like the hedge fund manager Heller refers to (if Heller was right about him, that is), we just can’t get enough.

Take time out from your busy life to reconsider what “enough” means to you. Then determine how you can revitalize your relationships with the people around you.

It is not hard at all to feel overwhelmed these days. With everything going on, it’s kind of tough not to be overloaded by the sheer volume of everything going on in the world. And our collective mental health is suffering. 

For instance, we have the on-again / off-again covid pandemic (or is it endemic), we have politicians tearing us apart in the name of unity, and we have a never-ending sense that the new normal won’t ever go back to the old normal.

With all this lack of stability, it’s no wonder that most folk feel a heavy weight on their shoulders as the burden of the unknown weighs heavily on most of us. Especially at work.

The good news is that in a world full of change, the one thing we can routinely depend on is creativity to help us get through. Creativity is all about making lemonade out of lemons, so that next time life throws a curveball our way, we’ll will be equipped with some tools to cope — and maybe even hit a homerun. Here are some my three favorite strategies:

1. Just stop 

The ‘just stop’ tool is one of the most fantastic creativity tools in your arsenal. It allows you to take things as they come and hit the stop button whenever things become too much. This step is deeply rooted in some of antiquity’s greatest thinkers like Marcus Aurelius, who viewed worry and anxiety as constructs of the modern mind – devoid of actual usefulness.  

The stoics believed that any worry was a symptom of what may happen in the future. But it was also may very well not happen too. So, if we can ‘just stop’ and focus on what is in front of us, we immediately abolish all worry as worry occurs in the future – maybe. But also maybe not. And if we can use the ‘just stop’ tool, we realize that our worry and anxiety are things that are often not fully realized items – they may or may not occur – and the things you are most worried about may be figments of your imagination. So ‘just stop .’And take issues as they come, and  for what they are. Not what they could be.

2. Band of Time

Everything in life exists in a particular band of time that is never to return and never to be repeated. Philosophers such as John Locke and David Hume talked about this phenomenon often – and it’s a genuine part of the human condition. Suppose we can understand that whatever hardship we are currently enduring – from disappointment to lack of stability to anxiety to pain and desperation are only symptoms that occur in the here and now – transient in their staying power. Sure, chronic disease may be a burden, or a lack of cash flow may be a setback in your business, but these things will somehow end one day.

The only thing we can really control is how we view these things and how we choose to move forward, or not. Do we frame ourselves as a victim – and signal to others that we deserve sympathy? Or do we move forward knowing that we may have been dealt a tough hand? Of course, the strongest among us will bear their burden and do their best with what they have. I’m sure you know someone who has a less-than-ideal situation, and at that point, we have two choices. Either we let the challenge get us down, or we acknowledge the ‘band of time’ and get on with life. The choice is yours.

3. Get Another Job

We are often taught in school and in our culture that what we do is part and parcel of who we are. So, we put all our eggs in one basket – work. We look at our work as being everything to us, all the time. We want our work to be challenging. We want our work to be fulfilling. We want our work to be meaningful. And while work can occasionally be all those things – they are often not. So we get disappointed when work doesn’t offer us whole and complete happiness – and it turns out that we are looking in the wrong place.

Work can never be everything to us all the time – just like a marriage is not everything you always need. It just doesn’t exist. So instead, look outside of work for meaning. Is it a hobby that you love? Is it reading? Is it your children or family that give you meaning? Looking to your day-to-day job for fulfillment is wrong. It will never work and often makes us miserable and more prone to burnout. So instead, look outside of work for meaning and fulfillment – it’s here you’ll find what you are looking for. Not at your day job, career or business.

So it turns out that, indeed, that you can do a few things to help combat the constant overwhelming condition we find ourselves in and boost our mental health with creativity. 

The three techniques and tools listed above will help you deal with the unknown, the unpredictable, and the unexpected. 

And when we can deal with change and the unknown in a better, more productive way, we are then better able to contribute to the general benefit of our work to improve true meaning and happiness.