Mental Health – An Imperative Leadership Conversation
Every May, Mental Health Awareness Month arrives with incredibly important messages, helpful encouragement and initiatives. And while this really matters, I sometimes wonder how much really changes once May passes. By June, many people will have returned to the same rhythms, habits and expectations that were quietly eroding them and others in the first place.
This year, perhaps we need to ask a fundamentally different question:
Instead of; “how do we support those who are struggling?”
How about; “Why are so many people are struggling in the first place?”
Across organisations and society at large, the cost of this struggle is immense;
• 63% of UK employees are showing at least one sign of burnout
• Poor mental health is estimated to cost UK employers £51 billion annually
• 52% of all work related ill health cases are mental health conditions
(Sources – Deloitte Mental Health and Employers 2024, HSE Work-related health statistics 2024)
Not easy reading I know, but perhaps no statistic captures the scale of this struggle more starkly than antidepressant prescribing rates which in 2024/25 equated to roughly 1 in 6 adults in England receiving a prescription (NHS Business Services Authority).
This should give all of us cause to pause. Not because medication is the wrong choice for those who need it, but because trajectories like this is data we need to take notice of.
When so many people are showing the signs and symptoms of poor mental health, the problem is not individual resilience.
These statistics aren’t outliers, they are patterns, and patterns point to systems, not individuals.
When a warning light appears on your dashboard you don’t assume there is something wrong with the light. You understand that the system is signalling that something needs attention.
Mental health challenges are exactly the same, they are critical human data, signals that something, somewhere may be operating beyond sustainable human limits.
“Listen when the body whispers, so it doesn’t need to shout”
What this means for leaders
Leaders are often high achievers, and research strongly suggests that high achievers are actually more prone to mental ill health because their drive for ‘more’ tends to result in them ignoring the signals that might otherwise alert them to pause, reflect and nourish the vital biological, social and emotional resources that mental well being requires; rest, nutrition, exercise, light, social connection, purpose.
Leaders also tend to carry a heavy cognitive, emotional and operational load within organisations. They often sit at the intersection of organisational expectation and human reality, expected to deliver performance, absorb pressure, lead change, regulate team emotion and role model wellbeing role while perhaps running on empty themselves.
The result?
A growing cohort of leaders who possess all the right technical skills, knowledge and expertise but whose cognitive, emotional and operational capacity is depleted.
And when capacity depletes, so too does the quality of leadership and the health of teams, organisations and ultimately society.
This is why mental health is no longer a well-being conversation, it has become a leadership, performance and societal imperative.
Three questions for leaders right now
1. Self – where are you genuinely at?
• Not the version presented in the Monday morning meeting, the honest version.
• What signals is your own system sending you right now?
• Which warning lights are asking for attention, and are you addressing the underlying causes or simply finding ways to temporarily override them?
2. Team – what signals are your team sending?
• Disengagement, output, silos, presenteeism, turnover, sickness, attrition.
• These are not HR problems, they are leadership information.
• Often, they are early indicators of diminished capacity
3. Organisation – what conditions are being created?
• Culture is how the leaders behave under pressure and the behaviours that are allowed to prevail when the stakes are high
• What is being rewarded in your organisation right now?
• What is being normalised?
• And what might people be learning that they must sacrifice in order to succeed?
A Different Leadership Conversation
Perhaps this is the imperative hidden within the current mental health conversation.
Not simply to help people cope with increasing pressure but to rethink the conditions that allow people and organisations to perform sustainably in the first place.
At Full Potential Group this is increasingly where our work is focused; helping leaders and organisations build the cognitive, emotional, relational and operational capacity required without sacrificing mental wellbeing along the way.
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