I always admire people who grasp difficult issues head on and it was absolutely typical of my CIOB predecessor Professor Charles Egbu, that he should choose mental health as the main theme for his presidential year; bringing to our attention, what we can all do to minimise the causes of mental health problems and deal with the issues when they occur.
When Professor Egbu became CIOB President in June 2019, little could he or any of us have known that 2020 would be dominated by the consequences of COVID-19 and how appropriate his year highlighting mental health issues would be. Most of us found a way of surviving the March – June national lockdown, remaining healthy and keeping our spirits up; spirits substantially restored by looser restrictions during July, August and September, all greatly helped by a good dose of sun and return of live sport to our TV screens.
However, I was deeply concerned when on Tuesday 22 September 2020 our Prime Minister announced a tightening of the restrictions on our social lives, with a clear hint of more robust restrictions to follow and that these restrictions were likely to last six months, throughout the Autumn and Winter to Spring 2021. This announcement knocked my personal spirits, but slowly my mind turned to more positive thoughts. How could I keep up my own motivation during this period, how could I help my family and the 300 people who work for me to do likewise. As leaders, we have the dual responsibility of looking after ourselves, while looking after those that work for us. In my view, these two responsibilities are closely integrated. Most people expect their leaders to be optimistic about the future, as team leaders our body language sets the tone for our businesses working environment. I am sure maintaining this positive working environment will maximise my staff wellbeing and minimise the risk of mental health problems as we navigate through the next six months and beyond. For me there is no better tonic than feeling the positive mood of my team radiate around our offices and sites.
Starting with myself, I have decided to breakdown Boris’s six-month semi-lockdown into more manageable chunks. Initially, viewing October as part of our summer, getting out on my bike as much as I can. Then seven weeks to Christmas, when I will give myself a good holiday, followed by seven weeks post-Christmas and then we are into March and the early signs of Spring. I am going to focus on the positives with a good balance between home working, office working and visiting sites; ideally, always with something to look forward to!
By doing all I can to keep myself healthy and positive, I hope to radiate to all our teams a positive feeling. I am having very open discussions with our Directors about their work/life integration and how they plan to remain positive and healthy. Likewise, they are having open discussions with their teams about their work and wider issues; ensuring a good level of personal contact and variety each day, wherever possible, minimising long periods of staring at the same computer screen. All coupled with regular positive feedback for each week successfully navigated.
More broadly, I have always felt the best way to minimise the risk of mental health problems is to avoid unnecessary work pressures caused by poorly developed designs, unrealistic project programmes and unnecessary arguments over payment and the like. I believe achieving these basics for our staff and supply chain will be more important than ever over the next six months. It was great to have achieved IiP Health and Wellbeing Accreditation one year ago – now for the real test of how much we really value staff and supply chain wellbeing!
We will all have our own individual ways of navigating the next period or semi-lockdown, dark nights and the onset of more widespread ill health. I encourage all of you to take a little time out to develop your own plan for remaining healthy and whatever role you play; please do all you can to put family, friends and work colleagues in a winning place and keep all avoidable mental health issues to a minimum.