How to improve mental wellness?
How to create a culture that allows expressing ideas? The simple answer is to focus on improving employee mental wellness. When people feel mentally fit and well, they work well.
In work situations, we constantly need to solve new challenges. For this, we need to observe situations, ask questions, try new solutions, and also be allowed to admit mistakes without punishment.
Mistakes aren't failures. Failure isn't correcting a mistake you made. A mistake is doing something new without having full knowledge of how to do it.
Making mistakes is part of learning and development from the day we were born.
Ultimate success in a modern organization undoubtedly requires a continuous influx of insights, creativity, and purposeful thinking.
For successful innovation, people have to feel free to express their minds, put themselves out there even if their initial idea isn't tested in practice at all. To facilitate innovation and sustainable development, an organization can’t do without a culture of mental wellness.
Mental wellness is the foundation of psychological safety
Psychological safety isn’t about being nice. It’s about graciously giving candid feedback, openly admitting mistakes, and learning from each other.
Psychological safety is also about understanding one's own internal processes and humbly admitting that others have remarkably similar inner domains. So, individual mental wellness is here the cornerstone of daring to tell the truth, act and speak up.
Research has proven that well-performing teams also have high levels of psychological safety. Feeling mentally well can support employee engagement, creativity, and even innovation.
If colleagues are supportive and know well how to deal with their own inner emotional and mental processes first, it always feels okay to say that you don’t understand and ask questions. It also allows people to try something new or give honest feedback without judgment.
People with fit minds are respectful towards each other. They don't rush to blame others first, and when needed, can be open enough to admit to a mistake. When your mind is well, you are capable to deal with any setback. Particularly, when you know that others are there to help and support you instead of taking you down.
Lack of mental wellness = no psychological safety
In contrast, when there is no psychological safety and people have troubled minds, employees will often choose not to speak up. They simply don't dare to propose bold suggestions or put forward their untested ideas, simply because they don't feel well and safe enough to do so.
The fear of being ridiculed and feeling ill for suggestions, later on, prevents open discussion and innovation. An angry manager or team leader who fails to deal with their own inner processes first easily creates toxic work relations and kills initiative.
Workplaces shouldn't be old-time boarding schools run by fear and tyranny. Workplaces and people should be caring.
Employees in a team without good mental wellness will probably hold back, hoard information, or suppress their authentic thoughts. They also try to inevitably put on a "happy face", regardless of what they undergo in their mind.
Avoiding some critical topics becomes standard that drives further toxicity, and then in turn leads to personal and work-related crises later on. Failure to deal with some of the crucial issues in time again causes problems to pile up. Among other things, such workplaces will inevitably see stress levels skyrocket and burnout become a norm, and cases of depression and anxiety pile up. Naturally, unless people leave first.
And in case you want your people to stay and work well, it is best to focus on preventative mental health and wellness training.
Make mental wellness a personal standard and a psychological safety organizational standard
Mental wellness is something that can be trained and learned. Workplaces just need to start compensating for the fact that none of us have had mental wellness lessons in schools and universities. How do we expect people to have a fit mind if they don't have the intrapersonal skills or mental wellness training to obtain such a healthy mind?
On the other hand, when workplaces focus on training the minds of their staff, people feel well, become more engaged and more productive. The best solution for taking action is the mental wellness online courses that we offer.
When leaders (including everyone between top executives, front-line managers) and employees accurately know their inner domain and start to lead it with awareness, work becomes easier in the sense that people can focus on what is truly needed for getting excellent work results.
When individual mental wellness is missing, people are inevitably forced to deal with their mental health issues first. You don't think purposefully when you feel a bit ill, you don't focus when your negative thoughts go round and round your personal pains and emotional traumas.
On the other hand, when your mind is well, you become engaged and productive. A fit mind gets things done well and in time.
So, join your team today and become one of those who enjoy the tenfold return on your investment.
Mental wellness training supports vital work culture
Mental wellness should be our natural state of being. Working without excess stress is what makes us productive. The positive stress that temporarily can support good work results is a myth that has been born due to people lacking intrapersonal skills and a real understanding of how their mind functions.
Psychological safety exists within individual teams and is also heavily influenced by the wider organizational culture.
While psychological safety may, in some cases, arise naturally in a team, a mental wellness attitude should be actively cultivated by enabling people to train their minds by learning practical intrapersonal skills.
Conclusion
Until people have only a vague idea of how their own inner domain functions, striving for psychological safety remains difficult.
Learning and applying interpersonal skills enables colleagues within the same team and the same workplace to harmonize their understanding of what it demands to lead yourself and how to communicate with others.
Effective team relationships can be supported by helping people to learn to know their minds, and then all human relations with others become easier.
Mental wellness training enables employers to create a safe space for informal dialogue and focus on solving different challenges. Intrapersonal skills are the cornerstone of understanding your mind and the minds of others. When people know themselves better, they can achieve better work results. It really is that simple.
Let's end with an example: How easy would it be to focus on creativity if you knew the process of focusing and accessing creativity?
We remind you that you can start removing procrastination now by asking for a mental fitness training offer.
This blog post is composed by Kaur Lass. Updated 19.12.2023