MindFit

How to Create a Kickass Workforce to Achieve Long-term Business Excellence

Kristopher G. Harold, Alexis Ee-Khem Aw, John K. Williams

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780730356981
• eBook ISBN: 9780730357025
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Workplace stress and burnout is a multi-billion-dollar problem affecting organisations.

The impacts of workplace stress and burnout include low productivity and profitability, rampant presenteeism and absenteeism, alarming workplace safety performance and workers compensation claims, poor quality assurance, high negative staff turnover and even, sometimes, work-related suicide. How do you solve such complex problems when the root cause is often nebulous or emotionally-charged?

Workplace mental fitness is the answer.

MindFit introduces Link: Flow: Grow, a breakthrough organisational design and development toolkit that puts workplace mental fitness first. This practical, field-tested solution empowers your workforce to:

? skyrocket productivity and increase revenue

? improve workplace safety and reduce workers compensation figures

? reduce negative staff turnover and restore employee engagement

? transform organisational culture and address other chronic business challenges.

MindFit introduces a transformative business management paradigm backed by mental fitness stretches, relatable stories, practical insights and handy checklists to empower your Company, your Team and your Self. It's idealism made practical, complex made cheeky and education made entertaining. Don't leave work without it!

PART I
Setting the Scene

In part I, we start by explaining why you cannot influence mental health without first taking care of workplace mental fitness, and how this is the answer to burnout management.

Then in chapter 3 you get a bird’s-eye view of the Link:Flow:Grow system that outlines how to take care of workplace mental fitness as managers. (This means you are not expected to manage mental health, which is outside your area of expertise, and are instead taught what you can and should do as a manager to create a high-performing work environment with a strong foundation of workplace mental fitness.)

We go deeper into the Link aspect of our system. After satisfying the left-brainers with a mathematical equation for creating organisational brilliance, in chapter 5 we sink our teeth into the Intelligent Org Chart (IOC) and its 10 Bands of interrelated management functions. Here we explain why you need to get your ducks in a row in bands 1 to 9 as pillars for Band 10, where you establish an EveryBest workforce strong in workplace mental fitness (congratulations!).

As you achieve the goals of each band, you can give yourself a pat on the back for achieving excellence in that business area. If there are some who still cannot perform well, despite workplace support, these people may have deeper personal issues best handled by mental health professionals.

In the Link:Flow:Grow system, it is important to clarify the roles of the four types of leaders (which often get mixed up in real life). We do that in chapter 7, then discuss in chapter 8 what it takes to be a high-impact leader competent in HIL climbs.

We’ll chat more in chapters 9 to 11 about the kind of leader you need to be (and should not be) to Link, Flow and Grow a winning culture and high-performing workforce. We like this bit a lot: to many of our clients it is a wake-up call and catalyst for tremendous growth as leaders.

And if you survive how uncomfortable those chapters make you feel, you are rewarded with utopia in chapter 12: EveryBest in action. This is what we are all aiming for — it’s the ‘Grow’ part of our paradigm. Yes, it is possible to achieve this, and it is sustainable.

Chapter 1
Workplace mental fitness

Mental fitness is the essence that underpins the greatest achievements. You see it in a spectacular sporting feat or an artistic masterpiece. You hear it in the calm and kind response to a torrent of verbal abuse. You feel it when you’re swept away by an epic piece of music. You recognise it in that truck driver who waves you to merge in peak-hour traffic with a smile. These are examples of individual mental fitness.

For the purpose of creating high-performing teams without burnout, we focus on collective workplace mental fitness, which is made up of the mental fitness of individuals in the organisation.

A person with high mental fitness is aware and assertive, resilient and respectful, considerate and collaborative. A person with low mental fitness can be accusatory or argumentative, distrustful or untrusting, competitive or careless.

An organisation made up of people with high individual mental fitness creates great workplace mental fitness that underpins a high-performance organisational culture without burnout.

You want to establish great workplace mental fitness as it is the bedrock, the lifeblood, the springboard and every other amazing metaphor propelling your organisation’s stratospheric success.

Mental fitness and mental health

Mental fitness and mental health are two different concepts.

‘Mental health’ tends to be associated with negative traits such as depression, anxiety and paranoia, and has a stigma attached to it. It refers to the wellness of the individual’s mind, in the realm of psychology.

‘Mental fitness’ is associated with positive mind states such as resilience, cheerfulness and adaptability, and has no attached stigma. Our interest is in workplace mental fitness — the wellness of the organisation’s mindset or culture — in the realm of sociology.

When told they need to implement a mental health program at work, managers often can’t relate to it as part of their job. They can’t link it directly to company deliverables and regard it as a ‘nice-to-have’. Even if they recognise the value of it, they don’t have the skills of a mental health professional to really take care of their people’s mental health.

A mental fitness program, on the other hand, is a management tool for taking care of the workforce. It is a ‘must-have’. It’s a manager’s job to, well, manage their people to bring out their best. This gives the workforce the best chance to fulfil the goals of the organisation.

In our consulting work, we have demonstrated time and time again that it is the confusion of mental health with mental fitness that prevents organisations from getting the results they want. They don’t get their desired results because they have not built up workplace mental fitness.

Here’s an analogy. If you are physically fit, go to the gym regularly and play sports, it doesn’t mean you can’t have health issues. But research says you are giving yourself the best shot at staying physically healthy.

Same thing with mental fitness. If you are mentally fit and regularly practise mindfulness, it doesn’t mean you don’t or won’t have a mental health issue such as depression. However, keeping mentally fit gives you the best possible chances of having fabulous mental health.

Workplace culture

If managers look after an organisation’s culture, they create a workplace where individuals are empowered to look after themselves. Workplace culture can have a great impact on the mental health of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Foreword
• About the authors
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction
• PART I Setting the Scene
• PART II Making It Real
• Conclusion
• Index
• EULA