Leader-Shhhhh-ip: The price silent leaders pay
By: Paul Ben-Israel
Tags: Mental Illness, Silence, CEO, Depression, Company Culture

Grayscale photo of woman right hand on glass by Kristina Tripkovic on Unsplash

It is common for employees to dream of one day reaching the coveted C-Suite but holding these offices can be extremely isolating. Behind the glitz and glamour of impassioned presentations and steadfast leadership is human. Yet, regardless of the power and prestige associated with senior leadership positions, many executives do not have the luxury of openly admitting to having mental illnesses.

Irrespective of the growing prevalence and awareness of mental illnesses, publicly admitting one’s mental health status can have damaging professional ramifications. There are fears that shareholders, colleagues and employees may doubt the executive’s mental competency and believe that mental illness equates to mental impairment. Regrettably, mental impairment is one of the many myths that reinforce stigmatization and discrimination in the workplace.

Executives generally have the intellectual fortitude, authority and resourcefulness to hide their mental challenges. To the outside world, they appear in control and strong and will continue the masquerade as long as necessary. The unfortunate truth is that many executives sacrifice personal health in the pursuit of protecting their professional brand and in doing so suffer in silence.

Mental illness and the dangers to executives

While executives try and hide their illnesses more than others, they are twice as likely to experience a depressive episode or periods of severe anxiety. Women in powerful positions are more likely to experience depressive symptoms than men.

While there is a need to focus on mental illnesses across the board, there is a specific need to address workplace depressive and anxiety disorders and burnout due to their high occurrence rates. Damage to executives’ personal health does not simply stop at depression, anxiety, mental fatigue and burnout. People with depression are more at risk to cancer, cardiac conditions and premature death.

Sadly, premature death is not only caused by comorbid health conditions, but there is also an alarming increase in executive suicide. While there is currently limited empirical research into the relationship between burnout and suicide, discussions as to their relationship are increasing.

Burnout has historically been used as a generic term for describing fatigued and overworked people. However, the pervasiveness and dangers of burnout have led the World Health Organization to recognize it as a mental health concern now included in the WHO diagnosis guidelines.

How real is the relationship between depression, anxiety and burnout to death? Real enough for the Japanese to have a word for it, Karoshi, which is literally translated as “overwork death”.

Why executives fail to take action

The biggest lies we tell ourselves are, “I’ll get to it later,” or “That won’t happen to me.” In truth, very few of us ever get back to something later. The demands of family, work, education, shareholders and friends distract us and soon our good intentions, of taking better care of our health, disappear.

One of the key drivers in postponing self-care is the “That won’t happen to me” attitude, which in behavioral psychology is known as optimism bias. In short, optimism bias is the practice of overestimating the probability of positive outcomes and underestimate negative probabilities.

Depression and anxiety do not discriminate; Christian or Jewish, Rich or Poor, White or Black, none of these matter — depression and anxiety are truly equal-opportunity diseases. Because they don’t discriminate, no one is protected from the symptoms. Feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness, anhedonia, lack of concentration, functional impairment and suicide are all possibilities of undiagnosed and untreated depression.

With the stakes being so high, silence in the workplace is no longer an option.

Executives such as Chuck Robbins, Cisco’s chief executive, are starting to break the silence. He emailed the company’s 75,000 employees on making mental health an organizational priority. In doing so Robbins opened the door allowing people to reach out and start speaking about their challenges with mental illness, the response he got was overwhelming.

Corporate culture is a two-way street

The largest impediment to addressing mental health in the workplace is corporate culture. Executive leaders have an obligation to create emotionally-safe workspaces for their employees as well as themselves.

Corporate culture is undeniably a complex organizational dynamics and creating cultural shifts is no simple task, yet this should not dissuade taking immediate action. Authentic change begins with senior and executive leaders having fearless conversations in which they lay the foundations for candid and safe discussions.

Change must start from the top with workplace mental illness being put on the C-Suite’s radar. This means that leaders need to take an honest look at the silence mentality of workplace culture, the behaviors performance management systems are promoting and how management paradigms are supporting stigmatization and discrimination.

This is not an easy thing to ask of executives. It means that leadership at all levels must stand up and discuss their challenges with mental illness to foster a climate of compassion and acceptance. In an interview with the Times magazine, Lloyds Bank chief executive, Antonio Horta-Osorio, openly discussed the emotional distress he experienced while trying to restore the bank’s fortunes.

“It almost broke me,” he said.

For such interventions change must also come from the bottom. Research shows that employees want leadership to engage in conversations about mental health. It is therefore incumbent on employees to also create an environment of emotional safety for their leaders.

Employees need to send a clear message that it is safe for executives to fight against mental illness stigmas by leading by example. Executives’ concerns about perceptions, regarding their ability to function with a mental illness, are very real. It is going to take many leaders, at all levels, to be the catalysts for change, by stepping up in having these crucial conversations.

What does it take to step up?

Like cancer, cardiovascular disease or diabetes, mental illnesses are real medical diseases with one of the key differences being they are usually invisible.

Despite the information and growing awareness around depression and anxiety these and many other mental illnesses still carry societal stigmas. However, with nearly 300 mental disorders listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), the probability that you have at least one mental disorder is exceptionally high. Believe it or not severe insomnia, claustrophobia, ADHD and even compulsively playing internet games, are all mental disorders.

Yet, fear, shame and guilt are usually constant companions for those challenged with certain mental illnesses such as, depression, bipolar, bulimia nervosa or schizophrenia — the price for these emotions is silence.

To challenge long-held paradigms and create radical change, someone needs to take the first step. Whether top-down or bottom-up, someone is going to have to face the fear, shame and guilt demons and step into the light.

It is a terrifying thought to become openly vulnerable. Yet, vulnerability is not a sign of weakness, it is the definitive act of courage and in the context of creating emotionally-safe workspaces, one of the greatest signs of true leadership.