Be Kind To The Mind!, By Clare Ashamallah

“We have all come on different ships, but we’re all in the same boat now” Martin Luther King JR.

In this modern world, we get to spend at least half of our awake time at work, we see more of our colleagues than families and friends. That’s exactly why our sense of value, belonging and how supported we feel at work to a great extent impact our quality of life!

An incident has recently left Cairo in shock, when Nour Ashour, a young man jumped from the third floor, out of his company’s window, and died instantly following continuous abuse and disputes between him and his direct manager along with work stress that he couldn’t handle. Nour decided to put an end to a life he didn’t want to live any more, to the lack of empathy and authoritative treatment by his own manager, threatening him to lose his job, applying cuts to his salary, and giving him warnings on truly embarrassing things such as his repetitive restroom visits!! Seriously!! 

For a human being to reach that point, this means that his soul has been crushed under the weight of his daily pressures, it means he has been broken beyond repair. May be if he was seen or heard or supported things would have taken a different route.

But who is responsible for such a tragic incident? No one would dare throw such a massive responsibility solely on the shoulders of the employer, what surely matters, however, is the amount of empathy this person experienced in the workplace both by leaders and co-workers. Has anyone cared to listen to what he has been going through? Was he offered a sound advice or a caring gesture? Each of us hold a full story behind the face we bring to work, some stories are more painful than others, and it isn’t the employer’s responsibility to sort out those personal challenges but rather support us in every possible way while we navigate through them. Make your people feel like they are not facing those beasts in their lives alone; be it sickness, loss, or financial crisis. There might not be any materialistic help employers and leaders can offer, but there sure is a whole lot of morale support.

This heartbreaking story seems farfetched to many of us. However, it’s an eye opener to how far can one go reacting to pressure. It serves as a confirmation that the hype on mental wellness is by far not overrated and it deserves every bit of attention it gets, particularly after the past trying couple of years, where we have all experienced how blurry the lines between our work and personal lives have become! Since COVID-19 hit our world, life has stretched us, testing our resilience, malleability and more importantly ability to self-sustain our energy and motivation amidst all the uncertainties we are going through, which takes me to some of my key learnings both as a leader and an employee. 

As a leader, I have learnt to never underestimate the responsibility that comes along with leadership. sounds cliché, right? But one can never realize that enough! The impact a leader would have over his people’s lives, is the biggest of all responsibilities yet also an honor and a privilege. Think of it this way: the experience a leader gives to those he leads day in, and day out matters greatly to the energy level they reflect in their personal lives; is he leaving them strangling under heavy burdens? or inspired and appreciated to keep going and achieve more?

That by far doesn’t mean that we as leaders should settle for low performance individuals but rather guide our tribes, see them through their challenges, coach them, genuinely check on them, get to truly know them so we can spotlight their strengths and bring the best out of them. We are there to serve them not to manage them and only then, they would go the extra mile happily and their performance shall be multiplied out of their own will to do better! 

 While our role as leaders is key, there is also a responsibility on the employee to be aware, take charge of his own state of mind. As an employee, I have learnt that no matter how stressful work gets, I need to take matters in my own hands, grow my NO muscle and protect my personal boundaries. If I don’t do that myself, no one would do it for me! Companies can run as many wellbeing campaigns as they fancy, but if employees don’t safeguard their own wellness, they would never strike the balance. If we don’t resort to real prioritization, the kind of prioritization that requires sacrifice, we would always be overloaded and drowning under piles of growing to do lists that eat up our days and leave us probably still feeling unaccomplished.

It is giant incidents like the story of Nour, which makes one revisit both how he leads and how he accepts to be led as well. Now is the time for each of us in his/her own capacity to claim their own mental wellness, take ownership of who we are and how we want to spend our lives and while doing that empower those around us to do the same and not allowing anything or anyone to dim our light. It’s in our hands to be kind to the mind!

P.S. These views expressed are my own.