A year on and we are still not living the lives we all want to live.  Who would have thought that we would still be in this situation a whole year ago.

So many people have gone through such terrible times, losing people they love, losing their job, businesses failing, failed relationships, abusive relationships, the list is endless.

Being resilient is crucial to maintaining good mental health. While it’s ‘okay to not be okay’ we don’t want to feel sad forever so we need to be able to ‘bounce back’ and try and rebuild our life and emotions which in turn, can enable us to grow and strengthen us for the future.

You may of heard of the term ‘Mental Toughness’ which is a frequently used to refer to any set of positive attributes that help a person cope with difficult situations. 

Studies have shown that there is a strong link between Mental Toughness and Performance, Agility, Wellbeing and Aspirations.  All of these have major applications in Individual coaching and development, leadership development and team working.

So, what challenges are leaders facing today?  We need to consider the performance and wellbeing of those in leadership roles.  The performance and wellbeing of those leaders you are providing leadership to and when some form of normality resumes in the world and employees return to work, we need to consider what sort of state they will be in.

At Futureproof we can help you to look after your leaders and employee’s well-being.  We offer several short virtual courses that can support you through this. Some of the short courses we offer are:

• Mental Toughness
• Mental Health for Key Stakeholders
• Mental Health Awareness (for Employees)
• Mental Health Awareness (For Managers)
• Developing Personal Resilience
• Leading Team Resilience
• Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

Please take a look at our courses so we can help you provide the much needed support for your employees and leaders.

Personal Development & Employees Well-being

Why should we care about ourselves?  We are so used to rushing and racing around and trying to please everyone else, sometimes we can forget to actually look after ourselves. 

So, why is self-care so important?

Caring about our own health and mental health is of paramount importance as it produces positive feelings and boosts our confidence and self-esteem.  If we don’t care for ourselves, then it can unfortunately lead to lots of problems such as anxiety, depression, insomnia and even heart disease.

When you feel overworked, the stress and exhaustion that this makes you feel can make you less productive, become disorganised and emotionally drained…we all know how that feels.  Professional self-care habits are so important to ensure that you stay motivated and healthy.  So, what could we do to help ourselves.  Make sure you take a lunch break every day, get some fresh air or phone your friend or a family member to chat to, meditate or practise deep breathing for a few minutes, eat healthily and always avoid emotional eating! Maybe keep a diary of how you feel, try not to overthink things and most definitely learn to say NO!

A little stress does no harm but when we allow things to get on top of us, such as work, home life, responsibilities etc, step back and take a look at how you are actually treating yourself – all the little things can help us to stay in a better physical and mental state – this is your responsibility!

Life is precious, so make every second count!  Life is for living, not for just existing! 

Our Employee Well-being Programmes will help you and your employees to understand and work on these skills to become a healthy, happy individual. Maybe think about booking some of our very popular Employee Wellbeing sessions for your employees as we come out of lockdown and back into normal working …

Dates to remember…

5th April 2021  –  National Self Care Day

15th – 21^st November 2021– National Self Care Week

Who do you know who you consider to be a great Team Leader? You? Your manager, your CEO, a famous person?

A good Team Leader knows how to empower a team to achieve group and individual goals.  They should be flexible and adaptive and know when to manage and when to lead.

Honesty and integrity are important characteristics of a good leader and in a lot of leaders that we may know, these can be the characteristics that are greatly lacking. How many managers / leaders do you know who have failed to keep their promises or have blamed others to cover up for their own mistakes, or even taken the praise for something one of the team members did!  Leaders such as these, will very quickly lose their employees.

A successful Team Leader can achieve great outcomes by having empathy and compassion.  Compassion can be defined as the motivation to help others with their physical, emotional or mental problems while empathy is the ability to recognise the emotions of others.  Do you spot how someone in your team is feeling?

Another important skill in leadership is coaching, this will give you the ability to hold you and your team accountable.  Using coaching methods such as GROW works well to give a team or an individual ownership of goals, look at the way forward and to see how committed the person you are coaching is.

Are you a confident decision maker?  Are you self-confident, do you speak and listen well, if these are not traits you were born with, everybody can learn.  By listening, you can grow self-esteem in your team which in turn builds greater resilience in your team members.

Good leaders will know how to nurture excellence and will see the best in people and see what they are capable of achieving. 

You can never stop learning how to be a better leader.

Our Managing and Leading Teams Open Programme will help you to work on these skills to become a great leader.  We have programmes scheduled in the New Year – please get in touch 01623 409 824 or info@futureproof-training.co.uk.

We have found as a training company that Mental Health is the hot topic currently and that organisations are finding it essential to train some of their employees up to be Mental Health First Aiders, to enable them to support people with poor mental health and know how to deal and react to a number of situations.

Could you identify when someone may be experiencing mental health problems?  Do you have great listening skills and the ability to reassure and respond to someone in a crisis. Maybe now is the time in everyone’s life that we should try and be aware of how people are feeling because people are living very lonely, frightening lives at the present time.

There are many factors that can influence our thinking, positive mental health and psychological wellbeing, these can include our work, our family, our friends, our environment, loneliness, money worries etc.

How many people actually ask for help, the pandemic has seen an increase in people asking for help. The Health and Safety Executive in 2019 detailed that 12.8 million working days are lost due to work related stress, anxiety, depression .

Companies are starting to make more of an effort to look after the wellbeing of their employees by offering flexible working and creating better work-life balances.  Many companies recently found that their organisations managed to function properly with the majority of their employees working from home.

The Mental Health First Aid programme raises awareness of the stigma around mental ill health and teaches that early intervention by recognising signs and being able to support people and react in the correct way enables recovering.

If you would like to book any of your employees onto the Mental Health First Aider Programme starting on 1^st February or if you would like to run this in house for your organisation, please get in touch, 01623 409 824 or info@futureproof-training.co.uk.

Mental Health First Aider Programme (Now available virtually)

Here we are again, another lockdown due to Covid 19, will anything ever be the same again!. It never crosses your mind that something like this Pandemic would ever happen within our lifetime and have the effect it has had on people’s wellbeing and mental health.

Mental health has many different faces and of course there are many common causes of mental ill health as well as the impact of the Pandemic. Some of the typical signs of stress at work which we can keep an eye on are the increased number of errors and missed deadlines, working long hours, increased sickness absence, loss of confidence, negative ways of working and many other signs.

How can we help our employees / colleagues and spot the signs that someone is perhaps feeling totally overwhelmed and struggling to cope with this current way of life. We can try to ensure that honest and open communication is practised, make sure that people have a manageable workload, be flexible with their working hours and encourage them to have regular down time.

How would we talk to someone about mental health during lockdown?  We should choose a suitable medium for communication, phone might be best but always ask as someone might prefer to use video conferencing.  We should always try to be empathetic and not come across as sympathetic.  Be conscious of what your body language is saying if you are on video conferencing and always remember that this conversation is not about you or your experiences or advice, it’s about listening to someone and being supportive. Language matters!

Life at the minute is scary for us all, we need to look after our own mental health and be supportive to the colleagues who are struggling.   Just a positive friendly chat may be all that is needed to lift someone’s spirit if they are living alone, reach out to people as you would be expect someone to reach out to you if they spotted the signs.

Here at Futureproof Training, we have found that one of our most popular subjects that clients are increasingly asking to be delivered is ‘ Mental Health Awareness’.  Please get in touch with us is you think your organisation will benefit from this kind of virtual training.

Stay safe and stay positive, this feeling will not last forever!

Mental Health in the Workplace – support available.