Podcast Ep 162 | Executive Burnout: How do you know when you need to get some help? (part 1 of 2)

Exec­u­tives are often more dri­ven than the aver­age per­son. We run hard all the time, and it usu­al­ly works. And then, it does­n’t work.

We per­sist and push hard­er than the aver­age per­son, and that’s why we win. But it’s also why we can crash hard­er and some­times even put every­thing at risk. 

This week we talk about exec­u­tive burnout. What it means, what to look out for in both your­self and your team, and when it might be time to go get some help.

EPISODE TRAN­SCRIPT

Kevin (00:00:13) — Hey, wel­come to the Growth Whis­per­ers pod­cast, where every­thing we talk about relates to build­ing endur­ing great com­pa­nies, which also relates a lit­tle bit to build­ing endur­ing great ver­sions of our­selves. Actu­al­ly, that’s prob­a­bly the major ben­e­fit of build­ing a great com­pa­ny, is it forces you to grow and find what you’re actu­al­ly capa­ble of. Um, although you may be nev­er will find the lim­it. Uh, any­way. I’m Kevin Lawrence here in Van­cou­ver, British Colum­bia, Cana­da, and I’m here with my co-host part­ner for the 162^nd time . Mr. Brad Giles down in Perth, Aus a Perth, Aus­tralia. Brad, how are things for you today?

Brad (00:00:52) — Today things are great. Doing well. Uh, sea­sons are chang­ing again, as we’ve said many times. Um, yeah, uh, things are, things are going real­ly well. I’m, I feel blessed and lucky and for­tu­nate. Um, I, in, uh, not only, uh, in the work that I do in the fam­i­ly that I’ve got, but also, you know, being able to have a chat with you every week.

Kevin (00:01:17) — Yeah, it’s great. And I’m also grate­ful the sea­sons are chang­ing cuz we’re chang­ing towards sum­mer, which makes a mas­sive dif­fer­ence for us. Yeah. Cool. So, word or phrase of the day. What’s, what’s your word or phrase of the day?

Brad (00:01:29) — I guess it’s com­fort. Um, some­times we can be in our com­fort zone or our com­fort spot, and that’s a good thing. And oth­er things, it’s a, oth­er times it’s a bad thing. Uh, the sub­ti­tle to my book, made to Thrive was, uh, about get­ting out­side of your com­fort zone. Mm-hmm. . Um, but it’s good to have some com­fort. It’s good to step out of it. What about yours, Kev?

Kevin (00:01:52) — Actu­al­ly, you know, I had some­thing dif­fer­ent. I’m gonna change it. I’m gonna riff off of what you said. It’s mm-hmm. , get com­fort­able being uncom­fort­able. It’s a phrase, a men­tor of mine said to me years ago, I said, to real­ly thrive in life and career, you need to be com­fort­able being uncom­fort­able. Yeah. And that’s what growth is about. It’s your, your abil­i­ty. And it ties back into, uh, what we’re talk­ing about today. Yeah. So, uh, yes. That, that was not, that was very easy to meld togeth­er. It was actu­al­ly rift off yours, so it’s actu­al­ly part of the same. So let’s get into, today we got a lot to cov­er and we want to be as suc­cinct as we can, although still effec­tive. And we’re talk­ing about, you know, exec­u­tive burnout, c e o burnout, human burnout. And how do you know when you need to get help?

Kevin (00:02:36) — This is part one or two. Next week I’ll have anoth­er episode that will record on, uh, the resilience part of it. But this is like iden­ti­fy­ing, you know, hey, you know, you’re in a tricky sit­u­a­tion. You know, we all, all the time we have, you know, we have hard times and usu­al­ly our per­son­al­i­ties, we push through and when a going gets stuff, we get going. Yeah. And we push through and break through the obsta­cle of the wall and come out with the oth­er side. Maybe a lit­tle dust on us, but we’re fine. And then all of a sud­den that same strat­e­gy some­times doesn’t.

Brad (00:03:08) — Yeah.

Kevin (00:03:09) — And, and that’s where, uh, we’re talk­ing about today. Often we push through, it’s what we do, but some­times we get bro­ken into process and, uh, the push­ing does­n’t work. And, you know, it’s kind of like you’re speed­ing on a sec­tion of road on the way home every day. You know some­thing. Of course I would,

Brad (00:03:28) — You know, the, the prob­lem with what you just said. Yeah.

Kevin (00:03:31) — What’s that? I thought it was, I thought it was awe­some. I think it was great. No, don’t tell me

Brad (00:03:37) — The, the prob­lem with you, the, with what you just said is it can be per­ceived as being bina­ry. In oth­er words, we push until it’s bro­ken. And what we’re try­ing to encour­age, what we’re try­ing to encour­age here, it’s not bina­ry, it’s a spec­trum. Right. So you could be awe­some or you could be, yes, you could be as bad as you could imag­ine, right. But it’s not, it’s not black and white. It’s, uh, a vary­ing spectrum.

Kevin (00:04:01) — Well said.

Brad (00:04:02) — And what we’re try­ing to say here is that pick it up before it becomes worse of a prob­lem. So I I When do you know that it’s time to get some help? If some­one who’s told you, I think, Kevin, you need to get some help, it’s prob­a­bly too late. Right. And you, you, you’ve done well said, more dam­age than you need to.

Kevin (00:04:21) — It’s true. Because what will hap­pen is as you go down that spec­trum, it’s like the lights so slow­ly turn out and fade on your enthu­si­asm and your ener­gy and your opti­mism. Yep. And the spot­light grows on your anx­i­ety and your wor­ry and your dread. But it’s not like as a light switch, it’s just a grad­ual fade. And if you talk to peo­ple that have done it, that’s why it sneaks up on them and catch­es up on them. Yeah. Because it’s a grad­ual change over time. Usu­al­ly. I mean, it might hap­pen in a peri­od of a week or two, but usu­al­ly it’s over a peri­od of time and it catch­es up. Good point. Very

Brad (00:04:59) — Impor­tant. And you don’t, you don’t know, maybe you just get a lit­tle bit gri­er or maybe you’re a bit short with peo­ple. Maybe, you know, you, you, the band­width to exe­cute projects or deci­sions slows down.

Kevin (00:05:15) — But Yes. Or your cog­ni­tion starts to fade because it’s, you’re so busy and con­sumed deal­ing with what­ev­er is the root of the addi­tion­al stress in your world that you’re like fight­ing that bat­tle. You don’t real­ize, you know, the, the, you know, uh, how, how the dam­age it’s doing to you. Cuz you just need to con­tin­ue bat­tling on Yeah. Because usu­al­ly you’re up against some­thing big. Yeah. And you don’t real­ize the change of your state. The peo­ple around you might, but you might, you may be unaware

Brad (00:05:44) — If we, if we go back a hun­dred years, um, peo­ple went to war and come back trau­ma­tized with a post-trau­mat­ic stress syn­drome. Mm-hmm. , uh, dis­or­der, excuse me. P T S D. Uh, and they just suf­fered in silence. And that was car­ried over through soci­ety and, uh, at mas­sive costs. Uh, and even if we go back only to the six­ties, maybe even the sev­en­ties, the phrase that you said ear­li­er was, look, we’ve just got­ta push through. We’ve got­ta be tough. Yeah. And resilient. We’ve got­ta cope. But we’re so for­tu­nate today that, um, uh, peo­ple, soci­ety broad­ly under­stand, um, that, that, that these are real issues that can, can affect peo­ple and, and, and we’ve got­ta work on them.

Kevin (00:06:35) — Yeah. And the thing is, is that dif­fer­ent issues affect dif­fer­ent peo­ple. Just like peo­ple that went to war No, haven’t been to war, but from the, the stud­ies that I’ve read, there will be peo­ple that are in iden­ti­cal cir­cum­stances. And you know, I think the per­cent­age of peo­ple that get P T S D is, last I read, was like under 5% of sol­diers. Yeah. Some­thing in that range mm-hmm. . But many of those sol­diers expe­ri­enced a lot of self, but based on dif­fer­ent, whether it’s the sit­u­a­tions they’re in or who they are or their back­ground or their upbring­ing, peo­ple end up with dif­fer­ent effects. Yeah. And so some­thing that might cause you incred­i­ble stress and strain, I might just take in stride because we’re all dif­fer­ent. We’re all unique. And that’s the thing with this. And, and even for some peo­ple, some­thing that they expe­ri­enced once might not throw them men­tal­ly, but then anoth­er time it might, again, there’s a lot of variables.

Kevin (00:07:30) — The key is that we’re per­sis­tent by nature, which nor­mal­ly works, but some­times we get into sit­u­a­tions where things com­pound and it gets the best of us. And then men­tal­ly and cog­ni­tive­ly, we fade to the point where we prob­a­bly need to get some help to get back to nor­mal again. No dif­fer­ent than if we sprained our ankle, we’d prob­a­bly get help if we broke our ankle, we would def­i­nite­ly get help if we broke mul­ti­ple bones For sure. We’re in the, in the hos­pi­tal. Yeah. Uh, but the same is true men­tal­ly. It’s just dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances lead to dif­fer­ent out­comes for us. Yeah.

Brad (00:08:04) — So why is this a prob­lem and why is it more of a prob­lem with the audi­ence of the growth whis­per­ers? Mm-hmm. The peo­ple who are lis­ten­ing into this, because don’t take this as a com­pli­ment, uh, our good audi­ence, but, uh, exec­u­tives are prob­a­bly more moti­vat­ed than the aver­age per­son. Right. Aver­age per­son has a lev­el of moti­va­tion that works well. They can have an aver­age job, an aver­age fam­i­ly, an aver­age car, an aver­age house, all of that. But if, if you’re lis­ten­ing to this pod­cast, it’s prob it prob­a­bly means that you’re in a demo­graph­ic, which means that you’re more moti­vat­ed, you’re more like­ly to push and dri­ve and try to achieve more than the aver­age per­son. And that’s the propen­si­ty to burn out.

Kevin (00:08:53) — Right. Because we put our­selves in sit­u­a­tions of perk, poten­tial pain and per­il more often, that’s it because we kind of go off the beat­en track or, or climb a high­er moun­tain or break a new trail with the peo­ple that we, you know, we work with. And, and so we’re more like­ly to get our­selves into chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tions. And that’s a real­i­ty. So we got kind of a few key things that we’ll cov­er off, but you know, num­ber one is that that per­sis­tence that we’re talk­ing about was we nor­mal­ly, we push hard and that’s why we win in the until some­times it gets the best of us. Yeah. And, and the main thing that hap­pens is that I have seen dozens and dozens of high per­form­ing exec­u­tives and CEOs that have been sur­prised by men­tal health issues. And even to the 0.1, um, that I’ve worked with for a long time.

Kevin (00:09:39) — Great, awe­some leader and be very gener­ic, just to keep it gener­ic, but they had a pan­ic attack once on an air­plane and they were absolute­ly con­scious­ly con­tem­plat­ing get­ting up, open­ing a door and jump­ing out of the plane because being in that lit­tle met­al met­al tube, their brain was explod­ing. And they had an to the point where a smart, edu­cat­ed, expe­ri­enced exa, they did not have, you know, a lit­tle start­up. They had been build, build, build­ing an endur­ing great com­pa­ny. Yeah. But they got to that point with, you know, with, with just a pan­ic attack, which was a result as of a lot of oth­er stress­es in their world. So all kinds of stuff hap­pens all the time and, but peo­ple get sur­prised as it creeps up on ​‘em and builds upon ​‘em.

Brad (00:10:32) — They’re not expect­ing it. Uh, it, we are, uh, peo­ple who are moti­vat­ed are more like­ly to crash. We, we, we, we, yes, we know that. But there’s a sec­ond part to this. And the sec­ond point that we’re mak­ing today, right? Is that every per­son, not just the peo­ple who are putting them­selves into this, uh, this sit­u­a­tion where they’re more like­ly to burn out. Every per­son is one or two men­tal, par­don me, one or two major life events away from a men­tal health crisis.

Kevin (00:11:05) — Yes. This

Brad (00:11:05) — Is nor­mal. And so we’ve got the first part, which is peo­ple who are dri­ven are, just to use your race car anal­o­gy, they’re just redlin­ing more often. Right. They’re tao we’re

Kevin (00:11:15) — At risk­ing more often. Yes. Yes.

Brad (00:11:19) — And then we say ignoring

Kevin (00:11:20) — All of us. Yeah. But all but all of us basi­cal­ly. And a mat­ter of it’s like, you know, you could go and put us in a ring with a pro­fes­sion­al box­er, you might take one punch to the head. Yeah. Unlike­ly you’re gonna take two. Yeah, for sure. You’re not tak­ing three then you’re on the ground see­ing stars, like, and maybe knocked out like many peo­ple that have men­tal health cri­sis have Yeah. And it’s not based on your fam­i­ly. There could be a genet­i­cal thing where you could be a lit­tle bit more sen­si­tive to cer­tain things, but gen­er­al­ly, every­one, the strongest peo­ple from the best fam­i­lies, from the best sit­u­a­tions with the best resources still get knocked out by men­tal health crises. And that’s nor­mal. That’s part of the game. And you know, I had a c e O that I worked with awe­some. C e o and, and like most of the paper­work, but very expe­ri­enced, but they were in the mid­dle of a big trans­ac­tion for their busi­ness. You know, they had, um, a frozen shoul­der so they could­n’t sleep prop­er­ly and they had a new baby that’s three strikes.

Brad (00:12:28) — Yeah.

Kevin (00:12:28) — The baby’s a pos­i­tive. Sell­ing your busi­ness is a pos­i­tive, but that adds a whole bunch more stress in the envi­ron­ment and a whole bunch more things going on. All of which in, in this per­cep­tion of this case, affect­ed their sleep.

Brad (00:12:43) — Yeah.

Kevin (00:12:44) — And they got to the point where their cog­ni­tion was dra­mat­i­cal­ly decreased, dra­mat­i­cal­ly. Like wicked smart, c e o not as, just did­n’t have the same cog­ni­tion because with­out sleep, less sleep, more stress, you’re, you’re gonna pay the price. Yeah. And, and, and you know, again, they end­ed up doing real­ly, real­ly well in the end. And they, you know, the trans­ac­tion worked and the busi­ness, you know, con­tin­ued to do well. But the, the key is, is that it just, it in the midst of a bunch of great things, they still got dropped on their butt.

Brad (00:13:22) — And this is seri­ous stuff, right? I mean, we, we say the, the title of the episode is about a burnout, but the, but unless we address this, unless we know when to get help, it can be a big prob­lem. There was a c e O that I, I knew, uh, uh, many years ago, and he unfor­tu­nate­ly, um, lost his busi­ness. It was a, it was a tragedy. It was in the G ffc, uh, and it was a tough time for many, many peo­ple. Um, but his busi­ness just, y you know, uh, War­ren Buf­fet says when the tide goes out, we know who’s not wear­ing pants. Yeah. Well it was a bit like that with­out going too deep into the sit­u­a­tion, , it was a bit like that. Right. So, so it, it, the busi­ness did­n’t sur­vive the G ffc and it was real­ly tough. And then he broke up with his wife maybe a year lat­er, which was real­ly tough. Yeah. And then a year after that he com­mit­ted sui­cide. Um, geez. So it’s, I mean, you know, it’s a ter­ri­ble tragedy. Um, but these things are, uh, you know, they can have mas­sive ongo­ing impacts, uh, not only obvi­ous­ly for the indi­vid­ual, but for his sur­round­ing fam­i­ly as well. Yes. Um, so we

Kevin (00:14:50) — Real­ly, that’s why, and that’s why I’m so pas­sion­ate about this topic.

Brad (00:14:53) — I know you are, because

Kevin (00:14:54) — In those states, peo­ple don’t make good choic­es because they’re so cog­ni­tive­ly impaired. They, they see the end­ing their life some­times as a solu­tion, which we know on the out­side’s not the case. Yeah. That’s as good as they can do in that moment.

Brad (00:15:10) — And that real­ly takes us onto our third point, right. Our brains become a lia­bil­i­ty Yes. When we get into that state. So for that par­tic­u­lar per­son, he is, you, you know, like any­body who’s in a state of depres­sion or what, what­ev­er it it may be, um, you are, you’ve got­ta, uh, cog­ni­tive­ly appre­ci­ate that your brain becomes a lia­bil­i­ty. The anal­o­gy that you put here, Kev, is that it’s like you’ve got a bro­ken leg and you’re strand­ed in the for­est. Yeah. You, it’s not gonna help the, uh, your brain in that sit­u­a­tion will not help you get out of the for­est, uh, metaphor.

Kevin (00:15:48) — Yeah. And, and when that hap­pens, when your brain breaks, you can call it a men­tal break­down. We call it the red zone on a men­tal health con­tin­u­um. Or you’re just burnt out, what­ev­er you wan­na call it. You’re just not work­ing with all your func­tions and you don’t feel good. And you are start­ing to have more unhealthy thoughts. And, you know, peo­ple will say, it feels like the walls are clos­ing in. Oth­er peo­ple say it feels like there’s a vice on your head tight­en­ing up and putting more and more pres­sure on your brain. Like your head­’s gonna explode. You know, I had a one c e o that called me that I knew social­ly now, um, when we, by the time we released this episode, uh, my inter­view with him could be live on my web­site where he’s telling his full sto­ry. He’s just approv­ing the final inter­view in text.

Kevin (00:16:33) — Now he’s been very brave to share the real­i­ty of his sto­ry cuz he real­ly wants to help peo­ple. But he was in the process of going through a major chal­lenge in basi­cal­ly being, you know, forced to sell his busi­ness. Cuz you know, of some rea­sons that I’m not, it’s not my sto­ry to, to tell. Sure. Um, and you know, and he would called me and say­ing, Hey, I need help. We’d met social­ly. And, and he calls me to ask for some help with his busi­ness. And he was, you know, start­ing to tell me about it. And I’m, as I’m talk­ing to him, I’m like, , this, this guy’s got­ta be in rough shape. And he’s talk sounds all good and all nor­mal. I’m like, Hey, how are you doing? And he is like, whoa, you know, blah, blah, blah. And, and he kin­da almost def first sidestep.

Kevin (00:17:18) — And I said, are you hav­ing any, you know, thoughts of hurt­ing your­self or sui­cide? He’s like, uh, yeah. I’m like, alright then. And I reas­sured, I’m like, Hey, that’s under, you know, it’s under­stand­able based on where you’re in, but those are telling you that your brain is not your friend right now if you’re hav­ing those thoughts. Mm-hmm. . And, um, unfor­tu­nate­ly he was sur­round­ed by help. He was in a peer group of CEOs and had a, a com­mu­ni­ty. And I don’t want to be, you know, it’s okay. He, but, but he was the type of per­son who would stand up and always put his best face for­ward and all that stuff. And so nobody had asked him how he was doing. And, and, and, and long sto­ry short, God, I’m going to see a coun­selor reg­u­lar­ly and get­ting pro­fes­sion­al help. Right. I’m a guide. I am not the answer on these things. They need experts in those sit­u­a­tions. And he did a whole bunch of things to get him­self back on the right track. And, you know, he’s, he’s climb­ing and doing, he’s doing very, very well now, but it almost cost him his life. And, and there was no need for that. Yeah. But it was such an emo­tion­al entan­gled mess.

Brad (00:18:35) — Yeah.

Kevin (00:18:36) — And obvi­ous­ly we’re all proud and when things go side­ways and it’s messy, it, we care, it gets to us and then we start to have a bro­ken brain has very dan­ger­ous thoughts and that’s why you need oth­er peo­ple to help you out. So in that case, it was, the option is get to a coun­selor or a psy­chol­o­gist. That’s job one. That’s it.

Brad (00:18:59) — Yeah. I, I I like what you said that your brain is not your friend right now. And, and that’s what we’re say­ing, right. Our brains become a lia­bil­i­ty, but there are some quick and dirty things we’re gonna talk next about the men­tal health con­tin­u­um, but Yep. One of the things that we can do, uh, is exer­cise. Now that might seem like, oh, you’re not gonna get onto that. Where are gonna get, are you? But if we’re in a meet­ing, let’s say with a, a team mem­ber and it’s quite clear that some­thing is, they’re just in a stressed sit­u­a­tion. Yep. What I’ve effec­tive­ly done before has said, let’s go for a walk­ing meet­ing. So we’re got a one hour meet­ing and we’ll, we’ll go for a walk up and around and every­where else, and we’ll talk,

Kevin (00:19:46) — Every­thing gets better.

Brad (00:19:48) — It is amaz­ing what a bit of blood flow can do to the brain. Now this is not nec­es­sar­i­ly gonna solve the per­son that you just men­tioned, Bob

Kevin (00:19:57) — Is, it’s very log­i­cal, Brad. It’s very log­i­cal. Research backs it up like crazy. But guess what hap­pens to a brain in a red zone? Does­n’t wan­na work. It wants noth­ing to freak­ing do with exercise.

Brad (00:20:09) — No, no, no. But what I’m say­ing is that if you, if you are work­ing with some­one Yes. On the team, uh, uh, and, and sure your brain might not want to, but just

Kevin (00:20:19) — Oh, for sure. You’re, what you’re say­ing is awe­some. I’m just say­ing. But when the peo­ple are in the red zone

Brad (00:20:23) — Yeah. You don’t wan­na do

Kevin (00:20:24) — It. The brain wants, they, their brain wants them to do the oppo­site of that. Yeah. Which why it becomes even worse. It’s one of the best anti­dotes to it. Yeah. Yes.

Brad (00:20:33) — It’s a quick and dirty. So let’s move on then. Yeah.

Kevin (00:20:38) — So the idea of the men­tal health con­tin­u­um is just to under­stand it so you know what hap­pens to your brain when you get messed up.

Brad (00:20:46) — So let’s explain what the men­tal health con­tin­u­um is. This is our fourth point. So it’s a spec­trum from green, yel­low, orange, red, and under each of, uh, there, there are four lists, a green list, a yel­low list, et cetera. Under each of these lists, there are, I guess, attrib­ut­es that very quick­ly help some­one to assess where they or a a a col­league would be sit­ting, for exam­ple, under healthy, um, you would have nor­mal fluc­tu­a­tions in mood, uh, which is green. Where­as under red, which is ill, you would have exces­sive anx­i­ety, pan­ic attacks, depressed mood, et cetera. So there are all, there are these real­ly quick­ly things mm-hmm. That these things that you can do to assess the sit­u­a­tion. I strong­ly encour­age any­one who’s lis­ten­ing to Google the men­tal health con­tin­u­um mod­el as sev­er­al you can look at there. Um, it’s a great tool. So we’ve explained that kit.

Kevin (00:21:47) — Yeah. And it’s devel­oped by the men­tal health asso­ci­a­tions of the world. And I’ll flash it on the screen for those of you that are watch­ing the pod­cast here right now. And as I talk about it for a minute, and, and, and the main thing here is it just shows how your cog­ni­tion, your ener­gy, your, um, social activ­i­ty, your sub­stance abuse changes as you go. Because basi­cal­ly, uh, as your cog­ni­tion starts to get wor or your men­tal health starts to get worse, you’re like­ly to seek more things to make you feel bet­ter. So if you just take, um, uh, addic­tive behav­iors, which are real­ly cop­ing mech­a­nisms, it would goes from what­ev­er your nor­mal range is, whether it’s, you know, shop­ping or alco­hol or what­ev­er your, what­ev­er your vice is, every­one’s got some­thing. It starts to just, as you progress across the con­tin­u­um, it gets to the point where it just, it owns you.

Kevin (00:22:42) — And that’s where deep, deep, you know, addic­tions get into. When peo­ple get into trou­ble with drugs and alco­hol and, and cred­it card debt or what­ev­er is that there’s, you know, they’re try­ing to coun­ter­act the stress and it just becomes worse and worse and worse. So Diaz, you can iden­ti­fy how you’re mov­ing and the root of it is no dif­fer­ent than if it was to be mea­sur­ing the sever­i­ty of a foot injury. Green is a nor­mal foot, yel­low is a sprained ankle, orange is a bro­ken ankle, and red is bro­ken ankle requir­ing major re re re uh, surgery and a met­al plate. Mm-hmm. . And, and if you’re green, you’re fine. If you’re yel­low, you got­ta take a lit­tle care of your foot. If it’s sprained, if you break it, you got­ta go to a doc­tor. And if it’s a hor­ri­ble break and you need seri­ous mul­ti­ple surg­eries, of course you’re gonna go to a doctor.

Kevin (00:23:30) — Same with the brain at orange, we should be get­ting help. And that’s the root of it. And you know, a a quick exam­ple is dur­ing Covid, you know, I end­ed up in the red zone and I did­n’t know I’m there. I teach this stuff, it’s in my book. Yeah. And a long sto­ry short through as I’m going to a spa on a windy road in my sports car, and I had a hard­core inci­dent of road rage, lit­er­al­ly charg­ing at the car in front of me like a bull would charge some­one and then slam­ming on my brakes before I hit the bumper and doing it repet­i­tive­ly, try­ing to give them the sug­ges­tion that they move out of the way so I could enjoy the windy road. And I know that’s absolute­ly absurd behav­ior. I almost got in a fight with a restau­rant man­ag­er too, because he would­n’t let me talk to my daugh­ter at a table in a restau­rant. She was 15, she could­n’t decide din­ner, she’s cry­ing. And I was­n’t allowed to go to her table because of Covid rules. Any­ways, I’m not, and and I’m not a fighter.

Brad (00:24:27) — Yeah.

Kevin (00:24:28) — I am a race car dri­ver and I’m a lit­tle aggres­sive. That’s true. But I know those were hor­ri­ble behav­iors, but I did­n’t real­ize till I was in the mid­dle of those and I had a chance to reflect, whoa, I’m actu­al­ly in the red zone. I did because it was after Covid, me and my team were work­ing crazy long hours. Even you and I were col­lab­o­rat­ing on things like mur­al to fig­ure out how to run strap plan­ning ses­sions remote­ly and blah. Yeah. It was nuts. It was crazy. And, and then I had to kind of get myself, get some help and get on the right track. And even myself as a some­one who’s well informed on this, I still end­ed up there with all the right mech­a­nisms because of the cir­cum­stance and my behav­ior was atro­cious, which I peeled back. And that’s the thing is it hap­pens to any of us and it can, um, pop up out­ta nowhere.

Brad (00:25:15) — So the men­tal health con­tin­u­um, again, we encour­age peo­ple to Google that for, if you can self-assess, then great. If you need to help, uh, assess oth­er peo­ple, then that’s great as well. Um, um, the key is that often friends and fam­i­ly, our fifth point are not enough. They can be sup­port­ive, but you can’t absolutely

Kevin (00:25:40) — Just change, change a word.

Brad (00:25:42) — Yes.

Kevin (00:25:43) — Always. Not often.

Brad (00:25:46) — Friends and fam­i­ly are always not enough. Okay. We can­not get through this stuff.

Kevin (00:25:53) — They can give you the best hugs on the plan­et. Yep. And when things are good, they’re the best peo­ple to cel­e­brate with.

Bard (00:26:01) — Uh, and and there’s a cou­ple of rea­sons. They’re often too close to the sit­u­a­tion. They’re not men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als. Um, and they might not know or they might Yeah. It’s, they, they’re too close to the sit­u­a­tion while I was mak­ing that point again.

Kevin (00:26:20) — Yeah. Well it’s like you would let, if you broke your ankle, you’re not gonna let your uncle who’s a welder or your uncle who’s a neu­ro­sci­en­tist in a LE lab­o­ra­to­ry oper­ate on your ankle and fix it. No. Like we know. Or your oth­er cousin who’s a plumber and just got their tick­et, but they’re real keen and they’re good with a knife and they’re a hunter. So they know how to cu cut the elk. Me real. Well you’re not gonna let ​‘em do it. So why we let ​‘em work with our brain? So one of the CEOs I worked with that is, you know, was sui­ci­dal and unfor­tu­nate­ly there’s many that have a num­ber that’ve had to have that con­ver­sa­tion with. But he said, the prob­lem my friends and fam­i­ly is they had all the same thoughts that I did.

Brad (00:27:06) — Yeah.

Kevin (00:27:07) — And it made it worse. Oh

Brad (00:27:10) — Dear. You,

Kevin (00:27:11) — They have the best inten­tions. Yeah. But like the cousin with the sharp knife who knows how to cut because he is hunt­ing and cuts up the meat, he’s not gonna all know how to fix and do surgery on the ankle.

Brad (00:27:24) — And you know, the oth­er thing, if we go back to what we said ear­li­er, every­one is one or two major life events away from a men­tal health episode. Maybe that major life event is affect­ing the fam­i­ly and friends as as well. Yes.

Kevin (00:27:39) — . Yes. Yeah. They could, they could, they could be off their game. Your cousin, who’s the good hunter who knows how to use a knife, he could be in the red zone too. Yeah. And he could be delu­sion­al think­ing he could be, I’m ex I’m mak­ing up weird cir­cum­stances, but you’re right. They could be effec­tive. The main thing is they’re won­der­ful sup­port, but in these things they are not skilled. We are not skilled. I do, I wrote a book that that touch­es on this and I know that the num­ber one answer, psy­chol­o­gist, psych coun­selor, psy­chol­o­gist, coun­selor, men­tal health hot­line, hot­line sto­ry or emergency.

Brad (00:28:16) — So that leads us to the next point of alg. Tell us about Kev.

Kevin (00:28:21) — Yeah. Aller­gy is from the, again, men­tal health asso­ci­a­tions of the world built the men­tal health con­tin­u­um. Um, and I know I’m famil­iar with the one in, in Cana­da and oth­ers that use it, but they have a mod­el of what you do. If there’s con­cern, it’s called algae. Uh, it’s assess for risk of sui­cide or harm. If there is risk, get ​‘em to help imme­di­ate­ly. I e get ​‘em to their doc­tor or emer­gency or call a men­tal health hot­line right now, like in the moment, two, lis­ten non-judg­men­tal­ly, they need some­one to hear them and not tell them about the starv­ing kids in Africa and how they should be hap­py because they have a roof over their head. Um, give reas­sur­ance and infor­ma­tion. The reas­sur­ance is, hey, this is nor­mal. Every­one deals with it. There’s this thing called the men­tal health con­tin­u­um and you prob­a­bly just got knocked to the right towards the red zone. Encour­age appro­pri­ate pro­fes­sion­al help, doc­tor, psy­chol­o­gist, coun­selor, emer­gency or a men­tal health hot­line. Uh, and then encour­age self-help, which is, you know, a resilience. What can you do? Get sleep, get out for a walk, get with your friends. But if, again, if they’re sui­ci­dal, they got­ta get with a pro­fes­sion­al. That’s num­ber one. Yeah.

Brad (00:29:36) — Okay. That’s good. And so

Kevin (00:29:37) — Just, it’s basi­cal­ly a check­list of what to do. It’s a guide­line for lay peo­ple like us up to know what to do.

Brad (00:29:44) — Yeah. Yeah. Algae, A L G E E, the action plan is, um, what you can, uh, search the inter­net for mm-hmm. , uh, to, to, to get that point again. So we’ve got two points of action for lis­ten­ers. The men­tal health con­tin­u­um, num­ber one and num­ber two L G A L g e e, the action plan. Right. And obvi­ous­ly so root

Kevin (00:30:08) — Of it is, is that, is is get­ting help.

Brad (00:30:11) — Yeah.

Kevin (00:30:11) — And we do it nat­u­ral­ly with phys­i­cal ail­ments. We should do it with men­tal, I’ve worked with many dif­fer­ent coun­selors along the way and I have good friends like you, Brad, and oth­er peo­ple that I reach out to when things get hard in my world. Like I have a net­work of peo­ple I can reach out to for dif­fer­ent things. But a coun­selor, like the coun­selor that I, that I work with, I haven’t talked to her prob­a­bly maybe three, four months. Yeah. And, but I, I, I will book a ses­sion again soon and keep that rela­tion­ship because it’s kind of like my insur­ance pol­i­cy of when I need help and there’s always things I could use help with. But when it gets real­ly crazy, those are the peo­ple that keep you alive in some cas­es or short­en the recov­ery peri­od or min­i­mize the pain or, or help don’t min­i­mize help to reduce the pain. They’re, they are crit­i­cal. And a lot of peo­ple have stig­mas of what talk­ing to coun­selors. But we don’t know about doc­tors. So we’re okay with get­ting some­one to work on our body, but we’re not with for our mind. It’s okay. And I used to have that sto­ry so I, I can under­stand where it comes from. I just think it’s a shame.

Brad (00:31:15) — So if you are lis­ten­ing to this before we close, if you are lis­ten­ing to this, the title is how do you know when you need to get some help? If you are unsure, if you’ve got no one to turn to, I would strong­ly encour­age you to con­tact, um, the men­tal health help line in your coun­try. I know that cer­tain­ly Aus­trali­a’s got one called Beyond Blue. Um, and uh, uh, uh, I know that Amer­i­ca and Cana­da and all the first world coun­tries cer­tain­ly have them. So if you don’t know what to do next and you’ve lis­tened to this, def­i­nite­ly I want you to uh, get onto uh, men­tal health hot­line. That’s what they’re there for.

Kevin (00:31:56) — Yep. It’ll pop up every­where in the world they have them. And your oth­er options is go to emer­gency, the emer­gency room of your local hos­pi­tal or go to the doc­tor or a med­ical clin­ic, but get to a med­ical relat­ed expert who can help you. Uh, also many times com­pa­nies have employ­ee ben­e­fits pro­grams. Your EAPs are called employ­ee assis­tance pro­grams that have coun­sel­ing or men­tal health avail­able as well. Cuz it, it’s, you know, it’s not usu­al­ly free because hot­lines are free. The med­ical sys­tem is free. Yeah.

Brad (00:32:30) — Because as you said, Kev, your brain is not your friend if you are in that state of mind. Exact­ly. Now hav­ing said that, next week we’re gonna do part two of two, which is build­ing your resilience, exec­u­tive burnout, build­ing your resilience. So that’s what we’re gonna throw out next week. So hope you’ve enjoyed the episode. Quick review. Uh, exec­u­tives are more often more dri­ven than the aver­age per­son. We push hard­er and that’s why we win. But that’s also why we crush. Okay. Every­body, um, is gen­er­al­ly as a state­ment, one or two life events away from a men­tal health cri­sis. Every­one our bro, uh, next point. Our brains get bro­ken and become lia­bil­i­ties like bro­ken legs strand­ed in the for­est. Num­ber four. Um, we need to know that what is the tool that we should use when there’s a chance that help is required. And that’s the men­tal health continuum.

Brad (00:33:27) — And then the next 0.5 is that friends and FLA fam­i­ly are always not enough. They can be sup­port­ive. Uh, we spoke about algae, A L G E E and then get a doc­tor or psy­chol­o­gist in the same way you would if you had a bro­ken leg. So thanks for lis­ten­ing. This has been the Growth Whis­per­ers. Uh, my name is Brad Giles here in Perth, Aus­tralia. And uh, my co-host Kevin Lawrence is in Van­cou­ver, Cana­da. Uh, you can find Kevin at lawrence​and​co​.com. He’s got a fan­tas­tic newslet­ter that he puts out every week. And for myself, you can find me at evo​lu​tion​part​ners​.com​.au and of course our newslet­ter as well. You can find us on YouTube if you so desire by search­ing the growth whis­per­ers as well. Hope you’ve enjoyed the episode today and look for­ward to episode two or part two next week. Have a great week.