Managing mental health requires authenticity (pt 2)

[This is the continuation of my reflection I wrote last Sunday. I’m happy to share my most recent opinion article published via Managing for Society: https://www.manilatimes.net/2022/11/15/business/top-business/managing-mental-health-requires-authenticity/1866296]

The legitimacy of advocating for mental health and holistic well-being relies heavily on all stakeholders committing to authenticity. How can organizations and its members do so?

Fr. Bernard Lonergan, as explained by Fr. David Coghlan, defined authenticity as a combination of being (referring to “transcendental precepts”) and doing (specifically the “general empirical method”). The transcendental precepts and activities can be summarized as: being attentive to experiences, being intelligent in understanding, being reasonable in judging and being responsible in acting. These should be practiced at least across individual (first-person) and organizational (second-person) levels.

Transferring this line of thinking to managing and organizing for mental health, I propose the following framework:

1. Pay attention to mental health experiences and measures. Since mental health is not easily observable, we must spend time and attention in surfacing evidence and indicators. We can borrow tools from psychologists in terms of measuring mental health and other dimensions of well-being. Self-report surveys can help provide quantitative representations of well-being levels while dialogues and debriefings can help provide qualitative evidence of well-being experiences. For example, in our academic internship program, interns periodically answer surveys and join debriefing sessions to help make sense of their work experiences and struggles.

2. Be intelligent and sensitive in understanding. Quantitative and qualitative measurements do not necessarily provide the reasons and context why well-being levels are suffering or flourishing. It is critical to apply both critical and creative thinking in understanding how mental health levels fluctuate. To do so, organizations must be open to trends and latest research while providing platforms for stakeholders to voice their concerns. For example, our internship debriefing sessions have allowed us to understand how the online work context deprives our interns a sense of autonomy and fulfillment because work arrangements can seem purely mechanical and transactional.

3. Be reasonable and tolerant in evaluating. It is tempting to compare without reasonably looking at the various contexts that surround each stakeholder. We must avoid snap judgements without assessing the full circumstance of a person. For example, there are instances in our internship program when a student’s subpar mental health is more a function of a company’s lack of mentorship — treating the intern as just an extra resource. On the other hand, there are situations when the subpar mental health is due to an intern’s own mismanagement of projects, leading to rework and anxiety. In these instances, whether accountability falls on the intern, faculty adviser or company super mentor, we provide opportunities for feedback for all stakeholders. This leads to pointed recommendations and action plans.

4. Be responsible in decisions and actions. Discovering the state and drivers of poor mental health compels the responsible manager to act and follow through. Failure to act risks delegitimizing mental health initiatives as lip service. Continuous monitoring and interventions are a must to cultivate an organizational culture that is authentically pro-flourishing. For example, failure of our internship administration team to act on well-being reports can make it seem that student sentiments are not recognized. On a more positive note, our commitment to post-internship debriefing sessions provide spaces for student voices to be heard and opportunities to improve our internship program.

As we can take away from this framework, imbibing these transcendental precepts and performing the general empirical method leads to reinforcing cycles that promote holistic well-being. Furthermore, if we are to truly legitimize and advocate for mental health, we must commit to authenticity.

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Luke 19:1-10. “Today salvation has come to this house…”

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 319: NOVEMBER 15, 2022]

Managing mental health requires authenticity (part 1)

It is admirable that our society has begun advocating for mental health and holistic well-being within organizations more strongly. However, the challenge with managing and organizing for mental health is that it is highly experiential and subjective compared with managing physical health.

It is easier to observe indicators of poor physical health through injuries and measurable symptoms. On the other hand, detecting poor mental health and holistic well-being is not as straightforward. It is easy for managers to doubt an employee’s otherwise legitimate claim of suffering from mental health issues; or it could be the other way around when an employee hides behind poor mental health as a catch-all excuse for poor performance.

The legitimacy of advocating for mental health and holistic well-being relies heavily on all stakeholders committing to authenticity. How can organizations and its members do so?

I will share the remainder of my insights on Tuesday once this reflection is published as an opinion column under Managing for Society by the Manila Times.

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Luke 21:5-19. And what sign will there be when all these things are about to happen?

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 317: NOVEMBER 13, 2022]

Are we able to surrender our ego at a moment’s notice?

There are times when I feel uncomfortable with the prayer “we should surrender our selves to God”. Surrendering feels disempowering. It’s as if it means to stop growing or to stop attempting. Furthermore, on the surface, it feels contrary to the principle of pursuing integral human development and even the parable of the talents.

But maybe Ryan Holiday is on to something when the stoics and Buddhists advocated for us to dissolve our ego. As one book’s title reads: the ego is the enemy.

And maybe that’s what it means to surrender – to surrender our selfish ego. And even if we cannot prove that a literal resurrection is applicable to us, there are moments when suppressing our ego for a greater good is like a parallel to the story of death and resurrection.

The challenge now with social media is that we are called to “build our personal brands”; having memorable and entertaining personas is the name of the digital revolution.

But maybe this is a recontextualized challenge of spirituality: can we abandon our ego at a moment’s notice if it means we can grow more spiritually? Are we willing to articulate our insights without needing to claim authorship? Are we willing to craft an obra maestra for its own sake, without needing to sign it?

These things seem so impractical to do the way our current society and culture are structured and values things. But maybe we can draw inspiration from the masters who went before us; those who lived lives of flow, focusing on the craft in its purest form, and willing to do it again and again, because their craft, their art, their work – they transcend the ego and can dent the universe.

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Luke 17:26-37. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses it will save it.

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 315: NOVEMBER 11, 2022]

Our (mis)guided beliefs can create powerful things

First, I want to do a shoutout to Sig, who did this amazing shadow play on the “dark room”:

It is part of my bucket list as a teacher to some day use the content of Sig and my artist friends as part of my learning sessions. Tonight, my doctoral class applied critical realism in trying to explain how the “dark room” came to be (critical realist morphogenesis), how it maintains its existence (morphostasis), and its potential outcomes using multiple theoretical lenses (e.g., deterrence theory, punishment theory, narrative theory, etc.)

One insight (of many!) that stood out from our discussions is how our beliefs, appropriate or misguided, can affect the power of things we’re supposed to believe in. In Sig’s shadow play, the (mis)guided beliefs and fear of the students allowed a seemingly normal janitor’s room into a “dark room” filled with monsters and crocodiles.

Individual beliefs can be a means to endorse or promote norms in such a way that what was individual before gradually becomes collective. Our beliefs can feed into reinforcing cycles that can empower things or entities. In that sense, our belief is very powerful.

Therefore, it is our responsibility to remain critical and creative so that we can see where our beliefs can take us and how our beliefs frame our reality. Just as the merchants in the gospel saw the church as a marketplace rather than a divine place of worship, we can be susceptible to misguided interpretations of the things we experience and perceive.

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John 2:13-22. ‘He made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen, and spilled the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables, and to those who sold doves he said, “Take these out of here, and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”’

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 313: NOVEMBER 9, 2022]

Faith is not something to have, but something to hone

If the analogy is that our faith is like the mustard seed, then it is better to think about faith as an ongoing process rather than something that either one has or not.

Faith is not necessarily a demand for blind obedience, but rather, it is an invitation for mutual humility and harmony. It is a virtuous cycle where a parent and child loves each other, a mentor and student raise each other, and leader and follower serve each other.

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Luke 17:1-6. If you have faith the size of a mustard seed…

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 311: NOVEMBER 7, 2022]