Programmes

On 11 October, WorkWell Leaders held its historic 10th CEO Dialogue, fittingly on the day after World Mental Health Day. To commemorate this significant milestone, WWL sought to bring a new experience to members based on many requests to deepen mental health literacy at the executive level. In response, WWL teamed up with the good people at Intellect to present the first of-its-kind Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) designed for CEOs, specifically focused on leadership and strategy planning.

Today’s session was generously hosted by Felix Loh CEO of Gardens by the Bay, meaning over 30 CEOs and leaders were treated to a beautiful venue in the heart of the Gardens. With greenery and luscious beauty on all sides, the Gardens provided a beautiful backdrop for participants to come together and learn from one another.

Felix framed the context of the session with an analogy from his experience at Gardens by the Bay: If a flower is not thriving, to fix the issue, one must remedy the environment, not just the flower. Intellect’s Oliver Suendermann took the floor to bring leaders through a high-level walkthrough of MHFA. Participants were coached on how to observe and recognise various mental health conditions. They were also taken through a construct that gives people confidence to engage in conversations about wellbeing that are safe, supportive and effective.

In small groups, participants shared and learned from each other, discussing how these perspectives would be applied within their organisations using the WWL 4C values: Courage, Compassion, Clarity and Commitment.

As heads of organisations, leaders are not only influential first-aiders, they are also tone-setters for organisational culture. Of the leaders attending, almost half shared that they have had personal experience with counselling/therapy, yet only 13% have felt comfortable revealing this to their teams. They agreed that talking about their own wellbeing more openly would make it safer for colleagues to speak about and seek help for their own mental health challenges.

Other themes from the discussion included managing multi-generational workforce, building trust among employees beyond HR, and how to synthesise top-down initiatives with bottom-up programmes. Attendees also uncovered some salient insights on how to render MHFA as a CEO: (1) simplify policies and values to avoid adding to cognitive load (2) identify and mitigate work stressors through job redesign, and (3) take on a culture of “being” instead of “doing” i.e. focusing on culture and ecosystem as opposed to a flurry of individual interventions.

WorkWell Leaders thanks Felix and the team at Gardens by the Bay, as well as Oliver and Cassandra for their excellent facilitation.