GETTING HELP
This blog is about giving you as a leader additional skills, including skills to deal with your own behaviour and that of other individuals with whom you interact in an organisational context – sometimes impacting on personal relationships as well. There will be times, however, when certain situations may be too difficult for you to deal with by yourself. These situations can be either ‘internal’ to you or can involve other people. Sometimes you may come to a view that you cannot go any further, that you are devoid of ideas or energy or you are feeling uncertain or confused as to what, if anything, you can do to overcome the forces you perceive as being opposed to you. In such situations, the obvious answer is to ask for help. This pre-supposes that you recognise the need for help. Often this can be difficult, because as we get more and more involved in, or overtaken by, a set of circumstances, our ability to think clearly and rationally and to reach out to others, without worrying about feeling stupid or inadequate in their eyes, can themselves be powerful forces to overcome. So let us start by suggesting some signs to look out for which indicate the time has come for you to enlist the help of others.
“Warning bells”
You know it’s time to talk to someone when you are experiencing physical symptoms – such as not sleeping, not eating, eating too much, putting on too much weight, losing too much weight, developing unusual conditions like skin rashes or suddenly experiencing the onset of asthma, headaches and the like. You also need to have a look at what is happening beyond your physical condition. Do you have recurrent ideas or thoughts that keep bothering you and which you don’t have a solution for? Do you keep revisiting a problem that you haven’t solved and you keep on revisiting it, and you are stuck in a cycle of revisiting it? Watch out for when you start to feel you want to withdraw and you don’t want to talk to anyone; when you feel like you want to avoid even thinking about work or talking about work and you start to drink too much or perhaps start to party too much; when you find that on Sunday night it is difficult to fall asleep; when you find that Friday is your best day, especially Friday afternoon.
When all this is put together and you notice a pattern or there is a cluster of problems, it is telling you something. It is then that you do need to speak to someone. Usually, all these signs at their early stage are apparent within you and in your own thoughts if you are alert to them. You may also be fortunate that you are made directly aware of a problem situation by the comments of others such as a friend or your boss or a work colleague who draws your attention to some aberrant behaviour, either one‑off, or a pattern that is now being noticed by others. They may see some of the signs that I have just talked about, which perhaps you are not seeing or which you may be denying, such as excessive alcohol intake or tiredness or weight gain. The sign could be something as innocent and inoffensive as a number of staff members or people around you asking: “Are you alright, “Are you sure you are alright?” You will invariably answer: “Of course, I’m fine, nothing is the matter”.
A big danger we face is that we immediately put others’ comments to one side, forget them and continue doing what we have been doing. We need to train ourselves to listen carefully so that when people make what appear to be general comments or expressions of concern, we recognise that this is indeed a very significant ‘warning bell’ and potentially a great service that is being done for us by the other person. In these situations, rather than ignoring the comments, we need to explore with the other person what they mean. Ask for details of the behaviour; e.g. since when has it been happening? With whom? What seems to provoke the behaviour? In other words, if someone says to you: “Are you ok, what’s the matter?” and you respond: “Nothing, I’m fine”, you need to think about what that person has said and ask: “What do you mean?” The person might just respond: “You just seem a bit off colour or something”. Remember, people who see you everyday usually notice any sudden change and, because they themselves do not realise what is going on, from an intuitive point of view they simply ask: “Is everything alright?”
It is vitally important to respond to such questioning by friends and colleagues and to recognise the need to examine what is going on within yourself.
To whom do you turn for help?
So you have got to the stage, either through your own intuition or insights or through the assistance or intervention of someone else or a combination of both, of recognising that you have a difficulty. After a period of attempting to work out the difficulty, you now realise that some further assistance is necessary to solve it.
There are, in these situations, a number of people to whom you can turn, including your spouse or partner, a work colleague, your boss, a mentor, your doctor, an organisational or external counsellor or even a psychiatrist.
How can you judge who is the appropriate person to talk to? Let us consider each of these possible ‘helpers’ and the sorts of issues they may be helpful with and some issues in which they are unlikely to be so helpful, in which case you need to consider someone else.
Your spouse or partner
Your spouse or partner is the person you are probably closest to and whom you can be most honest with. It is most important that you are able to discuss freely and honestly what and how you are feeling and what you sense about the things going on around you. On the other hand, you could simply ask an ‘innocent’ question of your spouse or partner: “How do you think I have been in the last couple of weeks?” Your spouse or partner will probably say: “Oh, no different”. Explore this further and find out what that response really means. Find out how you have really been to them, because even they have probably just accepted your behaviour. With some constructive questioning such as this, your spouse or partner can give you some insights into what is going on. It could be that you then realise that this behaviour or attitude is also occurring in the workplace, and you can then take the appropriate steps to correct it. On the other hand, you may not get all the information you require and need to go further. Perhaps talking to a friend is the next step.
Talking to a friend
This friendshould be someone you can trust and be honest with and someone who, in turn, can be very blunt with you. Do not presuppose that even your closest friends will be such people, because even very close friends can have great difficulty in confronting a friend with the truth, let alone what they might perceive to be the hurtful truth. This is a major drawback of relying on friends for advice. However, through a similar discussion as with your spouse or partner as outlined above, you may get further insights. If you still do not get a true inkling of what is going on, you may need to discuss the matter with a work colleague / friend to obtain some feed back about your behaviour or how you have appeared in the recent past. But remember, you often need to dig deep and continue to ask questions to get greater detail and clarity about your behaviour – remember to listen actively to what is being said.
See ‘the boss’
If you are still feeling unclear or feel that you haven’t resolved matters, and only you will know how you are feeling, perhaps the next step is to talk to your boss about your behaviour and actions. It could be that your boss has noticed something and has also held back in discussing it with you. Try to engage your boss as suggested previously. You may not get a result there, either.
Talk with your mentor
The next step is to speak to your mentor (at work or elsewhere), if you have one. Many don’t, but you definitely should – they are indispensable. If you already have an established mentor, this is another potentially helpful person to use as a sounding board to find out more about what is going on. It is possible that your mentor may pick something up, simply because you probably do not see them as often as the other people mentioned. To find out more about mentors please see www.wiseheadsmentors.com.au .
See a doctor
If you are still uncertain or feel you are not coping, and particularly if you are also starting to show some of the physical symptoms discussed earlier, it may also be necessary to see your GP to discuss your symptoms. Again be cautious, however, as some doctors will simply attempt to treat the symptoms, e.g. by prescribing sleeping pills for sleeplessness, without really getting to the bottom of the causes of the sleeplessness in the first place. (This is not to suggest that you may not need some temporary help in dealing with lack of sleep). One other possible extreme is that you develop a skin rash which you don’t normally get and you see a dermatologist who prescribes an appropriate cream, which seems to help, but then the rash comes back after a week or two. It is extremely important in such situations to find out quickly what is really the cause.
Consult a counsellor
Another person who will be useful as a sounding board will be a counsellor, say, an organisational counsellor if they exist in your organisation and if you feel that you can trust them. Alternatively, your organisation may have arrangements, typically called employee assistance programs, with an external counsellor whom you may be able to access. You should expect after one or two sessions with such a counsellor, to be able to at least get a sense of what is truly going on with you: whether it is physical, psychological, emotional or a combination. The counsellor may also suggest that you need more specialised clinical help. They may suggest that you speak to an appropriate specialist doctor or even a psychiatrist. It could be, for example, that you need to see a particular psychiatrist who works closely with people with severe mental illness such as depression or even something as extreme as schizophrenia. On the other hand, if there is an ongoing issue regarding some underlying problem you have had for a long time that has now come to the surface, it could be that you may be referred to an appropriate psychotherapist, who may be a psychologist or a psychiatrist.
Did you say “psychiatrist”?
The mere mention of a psychiatrist can often turn many people off as they think: “There is nothing the matter with me, I am not mentally disturbed, I don’t belong in an asylum”. In other words, all the old stereotypes are dragged up. You should not see these people in such a light since the realities are that the majority of those who seek help or assistance from psychologists and psychiatrists are in fact quite “normal” in the sense that they are going through everyday stresses of life, or are wanting to resolve past issues. Indeed, one famous psychiatrist is said to have expressed the view that the only people who can benefit from seeing a psychiatrist are ‘well’ people. There is some truth in this and if you are fortunate enough to decide that you need this kind of help, you are, I suggest, significantly advanced along the path to recovery by simply admitting that fact and seeking the help. It is, of course, most important that you seek out the appropriate help, and that you are comfortable with that person.
Finding the ‘right’ professional help
Here are a few tips on how to select an appropriate professional to help you. You need to be aware of the accreditations or registrations (or both) that these professionals have in your own state or country. It is most important that you seek out only accredited and certified professionals. In Australia, the professional must be a member of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, The Royal Australian & New Zealand College of Psychiatrists or the Australian Psychological Society and hold registration in the State in which you are seeing them. It is quite helpful if you can obtain a referral by ‘word-of-mouth’ from other people who have seen the particular professional you are considering.
Be reassured, you will know whether you have found the right person once you see them. When you walk into the office of the professional you have selected, and after a short period of time you feel uncomfortable with them, follow your intuition and change to someone else straight away. Do not feel embarrassed about simply stating to the professional that you don’t feel comfortable or you don’t feel that sufficient empathy exists and you therefore wish to see someone else.
You need to be aware that some professionals work better with short-term issues and some work better with long-term issues. It is important to get an understanding of which is which, both in terms of the professional’s area of expertise and the nature of your own issues. This can be arrived at through an assessment process on both your parts as to what the issues are and developing some idea of how long it may take to resolve them, together with an understanding by you of the sort of work the professional does, whether they do short-term or long-term work. Once you have assessed that your issue is short term and the person you are involved with does a lot of short-term work, you have probably found the appropriate person, provided, of course, that you also feel comfortable with them.
Let me reassure you that the vast majority of issues do tend to fall into the short-term category. Most issues can be worked through over about five or six sessions, a session typically being about 50 minutes to an hour, once a week; in other words, a period of five to six weeks. However, other issues, particularly those which fall into the ‘mental illness’ category, such as severe depression may require a longer time, anything up to two years. While two years sounds a long time in these more unusual or less frequently encountered situations, it is a relatively short time compared with your whole life experience. The important thing to remember, even in these severe cases, is that you can be helped and that the problem can be overcome, so you need to be optimistic and to persevere. But, I do not wish to over-emphasise the frequency of these types of more difficult situations. I repeat again that most situations that you will encounter, or be involved in yourself, will be far more readily treated in far shorter periods of time.
Benefits of using a counsellor / Employee Assistance Program
I would like to conclude this post by advocating the increased use of counsellors in an organisational context, whether they be in-house or externally provided through a so-called Employee Assistance Program. What can such a counsellor do to help an organisation? Firstly, I have mentioned earlier that individual staff members and their performance at work can be severely impacted by a range of factors, not all directly related to work. These might include marital stresses or breakdowns, problems with children, substance abuse, etc. These can have a significant adverse effect on productivity, and overcoming these productivity losses can often be achieved for little monetary outlay and will certainly lead to greater and more immediate benefits than often far more expensive productivity tools such as technology improvements. Having a professional counsellor to whom individuals can turn or be referred to by others in the organisation, such as managers or the human resources department or a colleague, can be a real ‘plus’ for both the individual and the organisation.
The reality, unfortunately, is that if such a facility is not readily available or accessible, the person with the difficulty will not even think about seeking help, let alone obtain it. What often happens is that the person in need ends up in more of a crisis situation, which results in more disastrous effects for the individual and possibly even for the organisation. An example may be that greater conflict is caused with further negative impacts on work performance or the individual may become quite ill and be off work for a period of time, again at quite a cost to both parties.
Another benefit is in reduced workers’ compensation costs, an important consideration for cost-conscious organisations.
Another role which can be successfully carried out by such a counsellor, preferably an in-house organisational counsellor, is an organisational analysis function. This function has to do with the counsellor assisting managers at all levels (including work groups, individuals, teams and others) with coaching in motivational, teamwork, conflict mangement and other strategies. What this means is that staff and/or managers can work with the counsellor on these various strategies knowing that they are receiving help from a professional, that they can be honest and open about their own inadequacies, that everything is confidential and will not get back to anyone else in the organisation, and that if they get stuck, there is always someone there to help them through, in a confidential way. The counsellor can help them develop a trust and faith in their own abilities, and this trust and faith and greater self-confidence leads to more trust and faith in the workplace generally, since the rest of the staff will feel the trust this person has in themselves. A particular benefit of an in- house counsellor is that, over time, the counsellor comes to know many of the individuals, the work environment, the relationships, the culture, the ‘shadows’ and other broader issues in the organisation, and therefore has a much better appreciation of the context in which a particular individual may present with a difficulty or problem.
So, if you can identify with the warning signs I have mentioned, do not delay in getting dome help and getting the issue fixed.
