Published on December 19th, 2019 | by Christopher Porteus

Maintain Sanity While Growing Your Startup

Consider what constitutes a healthy person. The first thing that comes to mind tends to be physical health. However, even healthiest-bodied individuals can suffer from mental health issues.

In light of recent activities to promote mental health, we wanted to talk about how business leaders can prioritize the wellbeing of themselves and their employees.

A workplace is a stressful place, especially for business managers. The stress can lead to anxiety, depression and OCD. Let’s take a look at what you can do to maintain your sanity and help your staff to the same.

Maintaining Your Sanity

As a business leader, you might run yourself to the ground quite often in the hopes of making your business succeed. The first thing to do is focus on yourself, so you’d be more able to lead and help others.

There are four core values to follow in regards to this:

Put your family first
Practice work-life balance
Be generous
Provide quality services

Ways to implement these strategies are straightforward. Offer flexible schedules as much as possible, as well as remote work and unlimited leaves. Make sure that your health insurance covers mental health services and alternative care like using Bluebird Botanicals CBD.

Model this approach from the top down. You must say that you need a break, both for yourself and your staff. Lead by example and look for opportunities to encourage others to take advantage of these policies, too.

Doing something as simple as being transparent about the times you take to prioritize your mental health will both help you promote it in yourself and your company.

Helping Employees

Besides taking care of themselves, many managers need support in dealing with the mental health of their employees. They are in the dark about the ways to respond if a staff member shows signs of challenges.

Here are several useful yet straightforward strategies for navigating that conversation.

Open Up a Conversation

Choose a distraction-free environment and start a conversation with mindful questions. A phrase as simple as ‘I am worried about you’ or ‘how are you doing today’can mean a lot to a struggling employee.

Listen

Don’t interrupt if a person opens up to you. Give them time to finish before you ask for clarification.

Share Similar Experiences

Show people that you understand by sharing a similar situation that you’ve gone through – it makes people feel validated. Be careful that you don’t shift the focus to your struggles, though.

Take Them Seriously

The number one thing to avoid is responding with minimizing statements. Saying ‘I’m sure it’s nothing’ devalues how a person feels.

Make Yourself Available

People can feel massive relief after sharing something, but one conversation doesn’t solve the struggle. So, if an employee opened up, let them know that they can do so again whenever they need to.

Use Mental Health Days

A new trend that is being implemented is the use of a mental health day. These are designed to allow people to have a day to relax and destress. Whereas days off are scheduled, these can occur at any time. It’s better to lose someone from a day than risking them leaving due to burnout.

Sanity and Technology

Technology has made its way into business so much that it’s now a challenge to maintain the balance. However, you can, as a leader, introduce guidelines to prevent technology from overwhelming you.

Remember that technology isn’t a panacea. The best results come from the right combination of people, technology, timing, and strategies.

Define and demand quality. It may seem that with so many apps available, the results will achieve themselves. They won’t. Before any project or activity, define the goals and criteria upfront.
Seek transparency. Learn the ins and outs of every piece of technology you introduce, and it will become much easier to control.
Demand simplicity. Too many convoluted pieces of technology can lead to a waste of resources.
Educate your staff. You need to invest time in educating everyone in your team about the new technologies you’re implementing.

The Bottom Line

Once you prioritize physical health, you need to manage everything else. Meet regularly with your employees to see how they’re faring, and if you notice somebody struggling, redelegate.

It applies to yourself, too – if you find yourself snowed under the workload, you need to delegate.

Remember that taking time off is an investment, not a waste of time and money. When it comes to policies for handling mental health issues, you need to take this approach seriously.

Everybody will thank you in the end, and your business will see a growth in productivity, too.

About the Author

Christopher Porteus Chris Porteous is a veteran in the tech space, founding Framestr and writing about his experiences scaling startups. When he's not working, he's writing about the latest tech products and providing insights on how to utilize technology to improve your life.