Who is Steph, What does she do, and why is she here?
If you’ve not connected with me in the last 3-4 years, honestly in the last 6 months even, you really don’t know who I am anymore. The amount of growth in my life both professionally and personally is astounding. So as a recap for those of you who have never met me… 12 years ago I was deeply depressed. I always had been, since childhood, but had never sought help for it, because frankly… I thought it was normal. My book can tell you all about my moment of revelation and my history in more detail, but in short form, 11 years ago I wanted to take my own life, I didn’t, and instead sought treatment so that my children could have a model of what a healthy mental state was.
Around 10 years ago, I changed my career slightly and took on leadership roles. It was during that time as a new leader that I found that leadership onboarding and development rarely included what we’ve called soft skills or emotional intelligence. I also soon found that few people in leadership roles understood what to do with an employee who had depression or anxiety. I believe that much of this response almost needs to come from lived experience.
Pre-pandemic, the statistics around depression in the U.S. was that 20-25% of adults would experience a major depressive episode in their lifetime. To summarize, if you’re an adult you have a 1 in 4 to 1 in 5 chance of having to struggle with a depressive episode at least once in your life. Some of you reading might be saying “sure, who doesn’t?!” To some people that 20-25% is alarming (it was to me initially too.) I sometimes get the response from leaders though that goes a little like this, “I can’t control what happens, people might have issues come up, we all do… but I am not going to change because 75% of people won’t have that issue, and your personal issues need to stay at home. This is a business, and I’m not a therapist.”
What I see is that in the business world we’ve replaced human compassion and empathy with CYOA policies and understandably so. There were 635 class action lawsuits settled in 2022 against companies. Those are class actions, and don’t include individual lawsuits, lawsuits still out there, or settlements that were lost. Face it, our companies spend BILLIONS of dollars each year on lawyers, and any lawyers working for organizations are going to do what they need to to protect the company and win any current or future cases. (You don’t get to keep your job in a legal department if you’re losing cases.)
So, to sum it up, the barriers for people with mental health issues in the workforce are high… I could take some time here to drill down into all of the systemic reasons why this issue exists but, I think the point is clear. Leadership seems to have no incentive to learn about mental health and how they can provide a better work environment which meets the individual needs of their employees.
Despite this, leaders DO want to know. The fact is that leaders are human, and most humans want to help other humans… This is our natural community driven state. Leaders WANT to see their teams succeed and THAT they are incentivized to do. Unfortunately, most leaders simply don’t know how.
As a trainer and speaker, I’ve done training for Fortune 50 companies, leaders, and employees alike. Companies all over are asking for help… asking for a better understanding of leadership, mental health, communication, and how to do better for the individuals they work with rather than the collective.
Even before I stepped into this field, I saw a need. Working with leaders who would ask me to sit in on difficult conversations because they didn’t want to create more harm for their team members or needed to have guidance on delivering messaging to a team that was struggling with motivation, inspiration, or attitude. This was the reason I decided to write my story.
I truly believe that if you haven’t lived it, it’s very hard to understand it. So, I put my lived experience (both as someone who battled depression, and as a leader) down on paper. Through that book I had hoped to help leaders better understand how to better be there for their employees (and to provide hope for their employees too.) I did this while I was going through Cognitive behavioral therapy and getting my degrees, and while I was implementing a new onboarding, training, and development program for the leadership teams in my division.
That wasn’t my role, but knowing my training department was understaffed, I stepped in. In this role though, I also saw the same thing happening in our clients’ businesses. Fortune 500 companies that were doing similar things with similar results when it came to training, and to mental health accommodations. Businesses all around me were losing money, losing productivity, and struggling to connect with their employees in a way that would create loyalty and inspiration. The programs I attended in college agreed with me and saw the same challenges that I did. It didn’t take long to recognize that there was a need for this in the companies that I worked with as well as others. Consider that one of the first places that gets cut is training and development, which is a department that can deliver an outrageous ROI and this baffled me – how can you train and keep quality people if you don’t invest in their development.
When I heard the statistics around depression post pandemic, my heart sank. If they weren’t daunting before they certainly are now. I’ll link a Forbes article from this month below. The rates are up – 29% of Americans have been diagnosed with depression according to a study by Gallup. According to Kaiser it’s higher, 32.3%. Huge statistic, right? Couple that with the 11 years it takes from the start of symptoms to diagnosis and the fact that we spend an average of 34 hours a week at work, and you can see why my passion blends leadership development and mental health. LEADERS HAVE AN IMPACT… and they play an incredibly important role in getting this crisis under control.
So what do I do? Frankly, whatever you need me to.
· Need someone to talk to? I can listen and share my lived experiences.
· Need someone to come in and assess your leadership team to uncover where they need help? Okay, we can do a gap analysis.
· Need someone to come in and deliver live training on leadership development and mental health? I got you.
· Need a customized solution? I can do that too.
· Need a low-cost option to meet budgets but still give your employees what they need? Cool – The Perspective Shifters platform delivers that with an impactful value.
And why do I do this? To decrease depression rates. To help people find a way to thrive at work and at home. I’ve put a number on it too. 2 million people in 2 years. I’ve delivered training for leaders in the past 6 months, and so far, we’ve impacted at least 2000 people. It’s a far cry from 2 million, which is why I’m partnering with other experts to deliver an impact beyond just my own training but teaching other leaders how to deliver this information and have a greater impact for their teams. If a leader with 10 team members and 10 colleagues can teach others the same thing, I teach them… that’s an impact of 20 people through 1 person. That impact is replicated through other experts too.
Wanna help us meet 2 million in 2 years?
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