Unlocking The Mental Health of Leaders with Melissa Doman

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* Melissa’s book

Timestamps:
00:00 – Cold Open & Intro
03:39 – Why Change Isn’t the Enemy (It Just Is)
07:32 – Good Stress vs Bad Stress: The Neuroscience Behind It
10:48 – Resistance = Fear of Uncertainty
14:03 – Rolling with Resistance: Motivational Interviewing for Leaders
17:44 – Leaders Are Humans Too (We Just Forget That)
21:12 – The Change Curve & Why Your Team Feels Behind You
25:38 – Leaders Need Support Too – Not Just Pressure
34:52 – The Hidden Mental Health Bias in Leadership Titles
46:48 – Why “Bring Your Whole Self to Work” Should Include Leaders
58:00 – Mental Well-Being Non-Negotiables: How to Stay Sane While Leading

Melissa Doman (00:02.294)
When there is a difference or lack of alignment for readiness in change, the people who are ready, it’s not natural for us to then be patient to seek to understand why other people are not. We’re too busy trying to get them on side because we’re ready and we don’t want to wait.

Just like Uncle Ben said in Spider-Man, with great power comes great responsibility. I’m not twisted on that. But the fact that when they actually ask for psychological safety and to have a psychological contract honored, and then they’re punished for it because of the role they hold, that’s absurd.

When people don’t feel heard and understood, nothing else as possible. Nothing.

Skot Waldron (00:56.00)
When I’m not hosting Unlocked, I’m speaking at events all over the world. I’m helping leaders and I’m helping teams communicate better. I’m helping them build trust faster and actually enjoy working together. I’ve spoken for companies like The Home Depot. I’ve spoken at national architectural firms. I’ve spoken for pharmaceutical company offsites. I’ve spoken at associations, you name it.

With 99% of attendees of all those events, over 1800 people have reviewed me at this point. 99% of them saying they got some value. That’s pretty awesome. Even the caterers have thanked me. And if they are thanking me and they’ve heard a lot of talks and they’re busy doing their jobs, that’s saying something. If you’re an event planner looking for a speaker who’s really easy to work with, trust me, I want to be the last thing you’re worried about on event day. I’m going to take care of you. And who actually delivers value for your audience that they are going to use on Monday morning when they return to the office, then let’s talk.

(01:54.00)
Do you like it when there are really smart people on this show? I sure do and I have one on the show today. Yeah, Melissa Doman is one of those super smart people that I like to hang out with because I hope that her smartness will rub off on me. And by you listening to this show, you know what, y ‘all, it just might rub off on you a little bit. Yep, that is the truth. Well, maybe it’s a truth. I don’t know if there’s science behind that, but let’s just go with it.

Melissa Doman is an Organizational Psychologist. She’s a former Mental Health Therapist. She’s an Author of Yes, You Can Talk About Mental Health at Work (Here’s Why And How To Do It Really Well) and a new book called Cornered Office: Why We Need To Talk About Leadership Mental Health.

She’s the Founder of The Workplace Mental Health Method™. Melissa works with companies around the globe. She’s worked with Google, the Orlando City Soccer Club, Salesforce, & Estée Lauder. She’s been featured as a subject matter expert at SXSW, CNN, Vogue, NPR, the BBC, CNBC, and she was actually LinkedIn’s 2022 Top 10 Voices on Mental Health. She is one to watch. She’s one to keep up with all the stuff that she says is so real. And she’s very blunt and she’s very bold and to the point, which I really, really appreciate.

She has one goal, and that is to equip companies, employees, & leaders to have constructive conversations about mental health, team dynamics, and communication at work. And my friends, that is what we’re going to do today. So here we go.

(03:39.00)
What’s up, Melissa?

Melissa Doman (03:41.00)
Hi, how you doing?

Skot Waldron (03:43.00)
Oh, I’m so good. I’m so good.

Melissa Doman (03:45.00)
I’m so good. I am so good, too.

Skot Waldron (03:46.00)
Are you?

Melissa Doman (03:47.00)
Yes, today’s a good day. Sun is shining, Colorado. It is Thursday, my favorite day of the week. And we’re going to talk about some fun stuff today.

Skot Waldron (03:56.00)
Why is it your favorite? Why is it your favorite day? I don’t hear about Thursdays very often.

Melissa Doman (04:00.00)
I know.

Skot Waldron (04:01.00)
I mean, people saying, gosh, I wish it was Friday, which is somebody said to me today.

Melissa Doman (04:05.00)
No. I love Thursdays. It feels like the teaser for the weekend.

Skot Waldron (04:11.00)
Oh, it’s the preview?

Melissa Doman (04:13.00)
Yeah, it’s like the teaser for the weekend. And don’t get me wrong, like, I love Fridays and Saturdays, but there’s this, some like, oh, we’re almost there. Thursdays, I don’t know, Thursdays feel good to me in general. And I have never started off a podcast like this or talked to anybody about this.

Skot Waldron (04:29.00)
Okay.

Melissa Doman (04:30.00)
I was like just existing in my own mind that I love Thursdays.

Skot Waldron (04:35.00)
You’re hearing it here first, y ‘all. Yeah. Melissa likes Thursdays.

Melissa Doman (04:41.00)
I do.

Skot Waldron (04:43.00)
Bam. All right, y ‘all. I’m privileged. Thank you. I feel so honored that you would hear that with us in our audience. Speaking of Thursdays, we’re going to talk about kind of this change thing. We’re going to talk about a little bit about this idea of, you know, resistance. We’re going to talk about kind of the neuroscience and psychology behind some of this stuff and why this impacts leaders. Because, honestly, I mean, I just gave a keynote earlier this week on change. And so, this is like, I’m like ripe in it. And people keep talking to me about it afterwards, too, and the thing that comes with this. And my argument for this. And I want to hear what you have to say.

Melissa Doman (05:28.00)
Sure. I always have opinions.

Skot Waldron (05:31.00)
You do? Really? I didn’t know. That’s why I want you on here because I love your opinions. I want you to fight me on stuff because I know you will too.

Melissa Doman (05:40.00)
You’re going to regret saying that.

Skot Waldron (05:42.00)
I know. I know. I’m like, oh, no, what’s going to happen?

Melissa Doman (05:44.00)
My husband’s going to hear it and be like, you kind of ask for it, man.

Skot Waldron (05:48.00)
Oh, dude. Wrong thing. Wrong thing to say.

Change. Isn’t good or bad. Change just is.

Melissa Doman (05:56.00)
Correct. Yes 100%.

Skot Waldron (05:58.00)
Oh, okay. I just made it through. I made it through.

Melissa Doman (06:01.00)
It just is. It’s unavoidable. It’s also like stress, for example. Stress is, even though the social commentary around it is very negative, stress, which we get when we go through change. Stress is actually neutral is when we encounter a stimulus that requires adjustment or response.

There is good stress. There’s bad stress for almost everybody. There’s a lot of bad stress, especially now. And before I got my grad degree in psychology, my undergrad was in sociology and communications. So, I tend to look at how we behave in the systems in which we exist, kind of like organisms within an ecosystem. And I look at how it changes the conversations, the behaviors, the reactions, the emotions, the cocktail of neurotransmitters and hormones coursing through our bodies.

So, I feel like I’m always just observing what’s going on around me. And I haven’t seen anything yet that shocked me. So, I don’t know what that says about me.

Skot Waldron (07:02.00)
Give me an example of good stress versus bad stress and why I can be out there and I can be like, oh, this is actually, I’m feeling good about this type of stress right now. I mean, is it when I’m about to play a soccer match and I’m getting that like a little bit of anxiety and feeling a little bit of that pressure.

Melissa Doman (07:20.00)
That is a good example. For example, I became a homeowner a few years ago. And whenever we’re spending money on this damn house, I’m like we’re adding value we’re adding value. It looks prettier we’re adding value, we’re living in an asset. We’re adding value and so it is good stress.

Launching a second book next year in February, that’s good stress.

Bad stress kind of feels like the world around us is descending into the seventh circle of hell.

Skot Waldron (07:57.00)
Wait, how many circles of hell are there?

Melissa Doman (08:00.00)
Oh, gosh, I, that would be going back to like Dante’s Inferno. I think six, maybe seven?

Skot Waldron (08:10.00)
OK. That’s it.

Melissa Doman (08:13.00)
That’s like a flashback to English class in high school.

Skot Waldron (08:16.00)
Whole separate podcast. Okay, sorry to derail you. I was just curious.

Melissa Doman (08:19.00)
You’re fine. You’re fine.

Skot Waldron (08:21.00)
But, I mean, okay, so talk about stress, and that’s an interesting concept. And I feel like a lot of leaders, when they’re going into this whole idea of change, that they’re anticipating resistance. They’re anticipating all the things, all the people they’re going to have to drag along, all the people they’re going to have to convince, all the things that, you know, I mean, I don’t know if that’s good stress or bad stress, but it’s this idea that they’re calling it resistance.

Now, the interesting thing is you have said that what we call resistance is usually just an emotional response to uncertainty. What’s really going on there?

Melissa Doman (09:05.00)
Oh, God. This would need to be like a 4-hour podcast, but we’re going to keep it short.

So, when I was a practicing therapist back in the day, you know, I left clinical 12 years ago, I was trained on a model called Motivational Interviewing. And I love that model because, yes, it’s originally a counseling technique for people who had struggled with substance abuse and things like that. But it has since proven to be efficacious for how people approach change; they may not be ready for in general. And it’s been adapted to other areas of counseling, coaching. It’s made its way into leadership development, no surprise.

So, when it comes to Motivational Interviewing, it does make the assumption that people are generally resistant to change because change can feel uncertain. It can feel ambiguous. It can feel uncomfortable. And generally speaking, human beings like patterns. It doesn’t matter how much of a hashtag rebel you are. I feel that way. I love variety. But generally speaking, we interpret change as a threat stimulus because we don’t necessarily know what’s going to happen, how we’re going to react to it.

So, there is a principle in Motivational Interviewing called Roll with Resistance, literally, where instead of fighting against it, you’re trying to source where it’s coming from, why somebody’s feeling resistant, what are they concerned about, what are they ready for, not ready for. And the thing is that we leaders are right to be concerned that they’ll have to pull people through change because human beings are nothing, if not predictable, not trying to like crap on our species or anything, but it’s true. And so, anticipating that change and having to get people through it really is part of the gig. I mean, there are models designed in ways that people don’t even think about to deal with this.

Let me give you an example. Behavioral economics, Nudge models, the EAST model; making things Easy, Attractive, Social, and Timely. There are all these models that anticipate that human beings will be uncomfortable with change and resist it. And here are the ways that you can hopefully remove some of those obstacles and kind of grease the wheels a little bit. So, we as animals who can talk, lest we forget, we are generally patterned. Our brains are pretty lazy despite the fact of the incredible things they’re capable of. And ultimately, we are running on cave people hardware with modern day software updates. So, people forget that when we’re encountering change and uncertainty. And most of us have not developed discomfort tolerance because why? It’s not something we enjoy doing. We do it because we have to. So, I really look at us as resistant organisms to a shifting ecosystem. And it’s just the messiness of being human.

Skot Waldron (12:18.00)
We are so messy.

Melissa Doman (12:19.00)
We are. We are imperfect creatures. We’re a mixed bag. That’s okay. You know, that’s okay. It is that way. It should be accepted that way. And I don’t think that it’s about, you know, necessarily teaching people to enjoy change, to never fight against it. You know, that’s not the goal. It’s to accept its occurrence and upskill with how to deal with it better.

So, in addition to talking about mental health at work, similar to you, you know, I talk about change all the time and intentional communication and team dynamics and navigating uncertainty because all of those topics interplay and it touch each other even though they are unique. But I feel like for as much as I’m teaching people how to talk about mental health at work, I’m teaching them how to cope with realities they don’t want to accept. But you either focus on accepting it and how to cope with that or continue to fight against its existence and have a terrible use of your energy.

Skot Waldron (13:26.00)
This is interesting. I’m talking to leaders and a lot of them don’t want to cope with those things

Melissa Doman (13:36.00)
I get that it sucks.

Skot Waldron (13:39.00)
It does and I actually had this conversation just today that he was wanting to do more of this thing to avoid doing this thing. And he’s like, I don’t know, maybe I’m doing this thing to procrastinate this other thing, you know. Isn’t that what we do? And I said, you know, I said, that that’s just human, man.

Melissa Doman (14:08.00)
Avoidance is naturally human.

Skot Waldron (14:11.00)
Is that what we do?

Melissa Doman (14:12.00)
That is a coping strategy, not a great one, but a coping strategy, nonetheless.

Skot Waldron (14:17.00)
So, what are the things are leaders doing?

Melissa Doman (14:19.00)
To deal with change and uncertainty?

Skot Waldron (14:22.00)
Yeah, they’re dealing with the change, the uncertainty, maybe the stress of having the negative stress of having to, you know, go through this change process and experience the resistance of their people. And they’ve got all this coming down on them. What are they doing instead?

Melissa Doman (14:38.00)
God, I think the question is, what are they not doing? There is such a wide gamut. So, we’ll start at the positive end. You know, there’s a lot of leaders that I’m working with, whether it’s in, you know, workshops, one-on-one leadership coaching or, you know, events for businesses. And some of those leaders, when they see these things are happening, they are way ahead and the change curve and they’re like, I can’t fight this. The best thing I can do is equip myself with the skills so I don’t break apart and my team breaks apart and we have all these ricochet effects that we don’t want to have. So, you have some leaders who lean in hard and they’re like, okay, what do I need to do? How do I need to survive? How do I need to help my people? This is the way forward. There is no other way. Would love if more folks were like that, but also at the same time, we can’t fault people who aren’t because people have different experiences going through change regardless of having the leadership title.

Now, we have to remember that if I can let my teeny tiny nihilist come out for a moment, when we think about leaders having to deal with this, let’s remember they are the same species as the people they lead. They have the same experiences, the same concerns, the same resistance to change in uncertainty, but because of the, oh gosh, this is going to sound awful, but we as humans have made up careers, we’ve made up services, we’ve made up goods, we have made up job titles, we have made up this concept called work. But when we look at leaders who have a different job title and a different sociological assignment of power and what they do with it, our expectation of how they go through change is markedly different. It’s a much higher standard if they are put in a position to lead other people.

But we are often not thinking about how do they feel about going through that change and we will equip them with certain, quote, hard skills to go through it, but not necessarily how to cope with going through that process. And I tend to focus on that a lot. So, there are other leaders where they are very resistant to change, and they’ll do kind of what they have to. And we know that when people do things out of obligation, it doesn’t always go very well. The results are not always great. So, there’s a negative impact on them and the people that they lead.

There are some other leaders that honestly, they go full ostrich, head in the sand. And then we have some other folks that as are going through it, they’re just pissed and they’re angry. And so, they may be going through this change, but not without, you know, bystanders getting taken down in the process.

So, there is a full range of behaviors that I’ve been seeing from leaders as they go through these changes, but I’m always trying to humanize the people behind the titles because there is a vastly different expectation on people who have leadership titles with how they cope with this and very small levels of forgiveness and understanding for the steep learning curve that they can have.

Skot Waldron (17:53.00)
And I think leaders need to also understand, well, and you probably do this too, understand the empathizing with the people on the other side in the sense of like when you mentioned the change curve, are you talking like the shock, denial, depression, frustration, change curve?

Melissa Doman (18:11.00)
No, no, no, no. I’m talking about the change curve from Motivational Interviewing. So that’s Pre-contemplation, Contemplation, Preparation, Action and Maintenance.

Skot Waldron (18:24.00)
Say those again. What are those again.

Melissa Doman (18:25.00)
So, Pre-contemplation.

Skot Waldron (18:28.00)
Okay and explain each one for me.

Melissa Doman (18:31.00)
So, Pre-contemplation is basically, “I don’t have a problem” things, you know, status quo as they are, are fine. Thanks for stopping by.

Contemplation is, “okay, I think there’s an issue, but I’m not totally sold on it. So, sell me on it.”

Preparation is “okay, I’m on board. I understand things need to change, but I don’t know how. So can you please show me the way?”

Action is when they’re actually doing it, but they still may kind of have the training wheels on.

And the maintenance is when they’re continuing to change, training wheels come off and relapse is if they refer back.

So that’s the curve that I’m referring to. But also, there are some people, depending on the change that’s happening, they’ll actually simultaneously go through the stages of grief, like, you know, Anger, Bargaining, Denial, Depression, Acceptance. So, you sometimes see things happening concurrently depending on what’s going on. But when I look at the at the change curve, I look at it through the lens of Motivational Interviewing. And there is a workshop that I teach leaders about using Motivational Interviewing as a leadership style for their teams because there’s this kind of really, we’ll say, ineffective push and pull on resistance, but actually using MI and Rolling with Resistance and learning how to ask the right questions to team members, to suss out where they are in those stages of change can be way more effective and less of a lift leadership style.

So, I am obsessed with MI. It works like witchcraft. It’s so effective.

Skot Waldron (20:15.00)
That is so cool.

Melissa Doman (20:17.00)
Yeah, I got a crash course training on it when I was an employee assistance program counselor. And it was very, very, very helpful. And at the same time, our EAP company was also running the compulsive gambling hotlines for 13 different states. So, in addition to doing traditional counseling with employees, I was doing counseling for compulsive gamblers. Oh, wow.

Skot Waldron (20:46.00)
Is there a parallel there?

Melissa Doman (20:48.00)
In what sense?

Skot Waldron (20:50.00)
I don’t know. Like, you’re advising both these people and these different, they seem like, what do those have to do with each other? I want to know.

Melissa Doman (20:59.00)
Well, they don’t. They don’t. I mean, it’s the company provided.

Skot Waldron (21:03.00)
They don’t. But, I mean, like, did you pick up on any similar?

Melissa Doman (21:08.00)
Oh, yeah. So, even though the company provided two different sets of services for two different populations, even though that modality was originally intended for people struggling with substance abuse and in that case compulsive gamblers the substance is gambling, there’s no OD point. So, that’s what makes it a very difficult addiction to treat. But when it comes to the change process it doesn’t matter if you are struggling with substance abuse addiction or you have an addiction to a behavior of some other kind or you have self-destructive behaviors or whatever it is. The MI modality is what we used across the board. And so, by asking the right questions, you know, whoever would call in, I could very quickly tell where they were in the process of problem recognition and willingness and readiness to change.

So, it was like, it was the Kool-Aid we drank and it was really, really, really effective. And it’s just, I will never forget going through that training and learning the different questions to ask to suss out which stage they were in. And I just kept seeing it work over and over and over again. And switching back and forth between those calls between, you know, talking to an employee at an organization versus talking to someone on a compulsive gambling hotline. In the beginning, it was hard to switch between the two, but then it became like riding a bike overtime.

Skot Waldron (22:47.00)
Okay. So, this is interesting because, you know, I will try to, I will definitely go to, well, I tend to go to the side of the curve of like stages of emotional like state. Like where are they? And this is one big point I make in my talk is that a lot of you leaders, you have been experiencing, you’ve been thinking about this change, you’ve been working on this change, you have been going through the change process yourself and talking yourself into it and like working and you are like way past like shock, denial, depression, frustration, you know, you’re almost at the integration stage of like, hey, I’m ready to like roll this thing out and bust it. And then I have all these people. And now they’re all frustrated. And now they’re all whining about this change. And now they’re all this way. And I said, “You’re way over here. And they’re way over here” as far as how they’re feeling about this stuff and they feel bulldoze and they just feel like you’re just trying to drag them along in this thing and that can be traumatizing and that’s my argument for why I think people don’t like change is because they’ve been traumatized by how it’s happened in the past. So, I don’t mean to use the word trauma so lightly, but I mean frankly people are like it.

Melissa Doman (24:07.00)
I understand. Well and often I will see this within organizations where certain departments are on board with something. Other departments are not, not even necessarily just between leader and team. But when there is a difference or lack of alignment for readiness in change, the people who are ready, it’s not natural for us to then be patient to seek to understand why other people are not, we’re too busy trying to get them on side because we’re ready and we don’t want to wait. And depending on what’s going on, people may not have the luxury of waiting.

So, a lot of organizations as they go through change, they usually mockup the process because they’re not necessarily thinking about the behaviors, the emotions, the neuroscience that goes behind that, but doing more of that work up front, even though it is front-loaded, it does take more time, it is busier. It ultimately gives out dividends in the long run because if you’re taking that stuff into account early, then you can have these conversations, you can suss out with people, where they are in the process, why they may be resistant, are there obstacles that can be addressed? Are they just refusing to take accountability?

You know, whatever the reason is. And oftentimes with a lot of competing pressures on leader’s shoulders, even if they do want to figure it out, they may be getting pressed from above or other places where they don’t have the time or the luxury or in other cases. They may just be so fixated on what the goal is in moving forward. They may underestimate the importance of checking in with other people about how they feel going along in the change process. So, it’s so many variables to consider.

Skot Waldron (25:59.00)
Yeah, right.

So, for these leaders that are going through this process, I mean, this is just one element of the things they’re doing when they’re managing change and trying to move people through it well. I mean, frankly, that’s what they’re going to be doing a lot of time is talked about change and how are we going to motivate people through this even if it’s like micro changes and our work process or our flows or bigger change, organizational changes and all types of things it can be pretty stressful and it can be you know, it can be taxing on these individuals, these leaders that are you know taking this on. That’s why I’m excited for your book to like hone in on this idea because, I mean, I’m hearing it, right? From my clients, I mean, they will be talking to me and just having the hardest time. And they’re just like, is this the right thing for me? Like, is this worth it?

Melissa Doman (26:58.00)
Oh, yeah. 100%. Listen, I remember when my husband and I were living in London. We were there 2017 to 2020. And I actually wrote about this in the book where I had a group of leaders and I was teaching them how to talk about mental health at work to their teams. And I just like, jumped right in, you know, teaching them, this was in 2018, so seven years ago. And I was teaching them like, here’s how you do this and this, and this is why this is important yada yada yada. And one of the people says this information is great but you haven’t even asked how we feel about doing this. Are we scared like are we confident in ourselves. And I was like oh my God, they’re just people too. I was part of the problem and so I admitted it in the book because it’s so easy, based on job titles, to completely forget that they’re built of the same stuff.

Skot Waldron (28:11.00)
They’re scared too, right?

Melissa Doman (28:12.00)
Yes. Oh, my God. And listen, I have completely read the freaking room that I wrote a book about leadership mental health at a time when a lot of leaders are doing a lot of bad stuff. And I mean a lot of bad stuff, like unconscionable things. However, that doesn’t mean that leadership mental health is still not important in general. Just because some bad leaders are doing some bad things doesn’t mean that all leaders should be completely neglected in terms of the emotional support, they require to do what we ask of them. What we ask of them is increasing, and our patience for not doing it well is decreasing, especially in the time of cancel culture, call-out culture. I mean, when things are being done again that are just so unconscionable to make people hate leaders even more.

So, when I wrote the book, I was like, I think we really need to take a step back and remember what it is that’s on their shoulders. Not like any other time before in history, by the way. What’s being asked of them and how they’re also expected to be the poster children for making other people feel safe to talk about mental health at work. And absolutely they should, they absolutely should do that. I’m not saying they shouldn’t. But what else, what about them also talking about their struggle so they also get what they need so they can serve other people? This is not a novel idea, but apparently it is. Because I haven’t seen any other book on the market that talks about it. So, I was like, well, I guess I got to break this and then I have to rebuild it.

And so the name of the book is, and I do love a good pun, Cornered Office: Why We Need To Talk About Leadership Mental Health, which basically takes us through a brief history of the sociological assignment of power and what it means to have a leadership title and what that means for emotional expression of struggle in a professional context and basically how that’s been sustained and what that has done to leaders mental health over time and basically then giving a blueprint of how organizations can better support leadership mental health, how leaders can support themselves. And I will tell you, in comparison to my first book, it is a very spicy meatball. It is a very spicy meatball.

Skot Waldron (30:50.00)
Is it because you use the F word like commas in there, or is it?

Melissa Doman (30:55.00)
No, no. You want to know why I don’t. Let me tell you why.

So, I as a second time author and I’ve learned from other people that if you put fully spelled expletives into something that sells on like Amazon for example it’ll get flagged for inappropriate content, unless you’re Mark Manson, who wrote The Subtle Art of Not Giving (a bleep), which sold like hotcakes. And I love that book.

So, any expletives in there have asterisk for some of the words, for some of the letters, because I was like, I’m not getting flagged by Amazon. So no, I did not get to use the F word as a comma with reckless abandon. Like I wished I could because cursing is definitely part of the brand.

Skot Waldron (31:44.00)
Oh, yes.

Melissa Doman (31:45.00)
But there is definitely some strong language in there. I think I even wrote in the introduction. I was like, by the way, there are studies shown that people who curse are very intelligent. And it helps with managing pain and all these other things. And, you know, here’s the controlled word association test and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But sadly, no. I alluded to spicy language, but did not fully spell it out.

Skot Waldron (32:13.00)
Okay. Well, we can channel your realness into whatever you’re saying in there. This is good in the sense of two that I want to ask you. I want to ask you your opinion about this. Because we’re talking about the mental health of leadership today. And we’re talking about, you talk about it in the entire workforce of how do we address mental health. Yes, it’s safe to talk about it at work. And yes, we should be talking about it at work more. And how to do that because it can be a touchy subject. And then some people weaponize it and then other people.

So, there’s all types of things going on here. But I want to know from you, do you feel that there is more of an uptick of mental health issues in leadership today. Are there more today than there were 100 years ago?

Melissa Doman (33:05.00)
Ooh, interesting question.

Skot Waldron (33:07.00)
And are you, and if it’s yes, is it just because it’s diagnosed more?

Melissa Doman (33:15.00)
Ooh, love this question. Okay. So, because of my ADHD, an actual ADHD, not TikTok, ADHD. I was diagnosed as a child.

Skot Waldron (33:27.00)
Is TikTok not a real doctor?

Melissa Doman (33:30.00)
I would say no.

Skot Waldron (33:32.00)
Okay. Just checking.

Melissa Doman (33:33.00)
Yeah, because I’m not going to go on a tangent. But I may need you to repeat some of those questions since there were multiples of there.

Skot Waldron (33:42.00)
Is it different than 100 years ago?

Melissa Doman (33:45.00)
You know, here’s what I’ll say. Mental illness, for example. Because, you know, having a lot of stress which can negatively impact mental health doesn’t necessarily go to a clinical place, even though it can sometimes appear that way. The thing is that mental illness has been around since the dawn of civilization. So, is it happening more? I don’t think we can necessarily know that because to your point, it is being recognized more as being diagnosed more. Now, keep in mind back in the day, in different civilizations, people who were outside of the “behavioral norm” were referred to in different ways with different socially acceptable terms.

So, I think there is a case of two things. It’s being diagnosed more.

Three things. There is also technically sometimes an over-medicalization of variations in behavior. And the third thing is that there are arguably more stressors and access to more information about the stressors and the lack of breaks from those stressors. So, I think it’s being recognized more and we have more things that are negatively impacting us and higher expectations to deal with them. So, I think it’s a Column A and Column B situation. I do think that there are more things to drive us nuts these days and we have more wording and nomenclature and conversations around it but having behavioral variations and mental illness has been around since the beginning.

But again, you know, let’s say, for example, we have access to 24/7 information. That doesn’t go without consequence. Just because we can have access, doesn’t mean we should. And our brains are not meant to take in that much information, but we do it anyway. So, I look around and I’m like, oh, we are screwed. We’re so screwed.

And I was just doing a talk in Austria a few weeks ago about why mental health matters in HR because no one takes care of HR, nobody, despite the fact they are also humans. So, I was giving some data. And I saw a stat that even made me freak out. And I kind of called it a few years prior. And I was like; I am so pissed that I was right because I wanted to be wrong. Where the old adage is, oh, 1 in 5 people will develop a mental health condition in their lifetime. This study I saw, it was either from the World Economic Forum or from the World Health Organization. I don’t remember. It’s now saying 1 in 2 people will develop a mental health condition or issue in their lifetime. I was like, God damn it. I didn’t want to be right because during the pandemic, I was like, y’all, the data is going in a bad direction. 1 in 5 is not accurate. I’m telling you it’s not accurate. And then the data caught up and I was like, told you so.

So, leaders are no exception. They are in that same group of humans and get this. And this will be in the book. And when I found it, I was like this, I cannot believe this. There is something called the leadership well-being prototypes. Would you like to know what those are?

Skot Waldron (37:23.00)
Oh, my gosh. Please. I don’t need. Yeah, that whole title thing sounds very formal. But yeah, go ahead.

Melissa Doman (37:30.00)
So, when I found the study, I was like, oh, my God.

So, the study has, it’s like the leadership well-being prototypes and the leadership mental illness prototypes [Leaders’ Well-Being and Mental Illness Prototypes]. I might be misquoting the exact phrase where these researchers studied that when someone has a leadership title, just based on the title, the people they lead automatically assume and have a bias that as a leader, because of the position you hold, the money you make, the power you have, that you “naturally” enjoy better mental health and experience less mental illness. I’m just going to let that sit there for a minute.

Skot Waldron (38:15.00)
People at the top are the most healthy and the least likely to get a mental illness.

Melissa Doman (38:21.00)
These are the biases that people hold, yes.

Skot Waldron (38:25.00)
That explains some comments I’ve been hearing lately from employees.

Melissa Doman (38:30.00)
It’s just when you think about the absurdity of that, but this is what the sociological assignment of power does to people. They make these assumptions that, yes you, okay, so let’s look at the facts. You will have access, again, provided where in the world you are as a leader, because just because you’re a leader that doesn’t take into account, demographics, location, the industry, the company, your financial situation. You theoretically, you will get access to certain resources. You will be able to afford to use them. You may have a certain, we would hope, different level of emotional intelligence, self-awareness, motivation to action problems. That doesn’t mean anything. These are still just people, but they happen to be in leadership roles. And because of just the virtue of their position, people automatically assume they, “enjoy” better mental health and less mental illness as if these made-up job titles will be the predictor of these outcomes.

Skot Waldron (39:43.00)
And yet we find these leaders and these leaders are the ones who are also probably not talking about it as much.

Melissa Doman (39:52.00)
No.

Skot Waldron (39:53.00)
Because they assume these responsibilities and they assume this title and they assume that I have to show that I’m the strong one.

Melissa Doman (40:00.00)
Because history has told them to.

Skot Waldron (40:01.00)
You’re right we’ve been convinced that if he’s scared that means that we should all be scared about something or what’s going on there do you have any thoughts about that one.

Melissa Doman (40:18.00)
I will narrow it down. But history has repetitively told leaders to be stoic, strong, steady, stable. These are all S’s and that wasn’t even planned. That is what that history has taught them to do. And current modern day has also taught them to do, despite the fact that there’s a lot of movement in the mental health awareness space about leaders, you know, role modeling and opening up for people, helping them become more comfortable. But at the end of the freaking day, people will not hesitate. They will not hesitate to call a leader’s credibility into question if they think they’re struggling. They won’t hesitate to hang them out to dry.

Skot Waldron (41:07.00)
What’s that about?

Melissa Doman (41:09.00)
It’s history. When we put people in positions of power, there are lots of feelings that people have about that. They don’t feel they should care for leaders because of the virtue of their position, the power, the money, the everything. And that we shouldn’t have to check on them. And they should be this way because we’re handing over control and power to them. So, they have to be better. They have to do this. They have to do that.

Yes, just like Uncle Ben said in Spider-Man, with great power comes great responsibility. I’m not twisted on that. But the fact that when they actually ask for psychological safety and to have a psychological contract honored and then they’re punished for it because of the role they hold, that’s absurd. It’s absurd because if we want them to do better, to lead better, to serve people better, they need better support. To me, this is totally freaking logical. It’s totally logical. So, they have every reason to be afraid because history has taught them to be the current world of work continues to teach them to be that way.

I’ve had leaders literally hyperventilating to me in tears in our leadership coaching sessions about the one thing that’s going to get posted online, how their life is going to be ruined, how they’re going to be canceled because people confuse Cancel culture with Call-out culture, not the same. And I get it. They have every reason to be freaked out. So, it’s they are supposed to tout this bring your whole self-to-work thing and they themselves are not allowed to participate.

Skot Waldron (43:06.00)
That’s a big one right there.

Melissa Doman (43:09.00)
It’s so hypocritical. And again, yeah, I see this plain as day. And so, I was speaking to this person about the core premise of the book. And I, again, I call it out lots of examples of specific leaders who did bad things very publicly. I was like, FYI, not making an excuse for them just in case you think that’s what’s going on. And I spoke to this person about the core premise of the book and it triggered the daylights out of them. They got visibly upset, started talking about every leader who’s ever let them down in their career, ending with their thesis. and I quote, “I don’t care how leaders are doing.” And I was like, thank you for proving my point. Are you okay? Do you need a hug?

Skot Waldron (43:55.00)
Probably.

Melissa Doman (43:57.00)
Because I get it. You know that person was screwed repetitively in their career. It doesn’t make my premise any less true. That if we want leaders to do better, we need to support them better. What is so novel about this?

Skot Waldron (44:11.00)
But here’s the thing. It comes great responsibility. They have a lot of things to worry about. They’re responsible for an entire organization. Sometimes they have responsibilities to the board. They have responsibilities to their people. They’re responsibilities for all types of things. They get compensated well. So, they want to show up, you know, the good ones, make sure that they’re justifying their pay and justifying to everybody else that they are there for a reason.

So, there’s a lot of pressure there. Should we just accept as leadership that this stress is just a part of our life? This may be unhealthy stress is just part of our job now. It’s just part of our lives. And we just need to endure it for a while we’re in this position.

Melissa Doman (45:00.00)
So, I think that there’s two answers I want to give you. I think there is absolutely the acceptance that with a leadership role comes a different level of stress that other people not in leadership roles will never endure. That’s part of the gig. There are even studies now where Gen Zers don’t want leadership roles because they see what the generations who came before them are going through and they’re like, “I’m good.”

So, there are people who step out of leadership roles for the sake of their mental health because it’s not worth the cost. So, I think there is an acceptance that if you’re going to have a leadership role, you have to accept the unique specific stresses that are going to come with that. However, taking that lying down? No. Absolutely not. If you’re going to step into that and go through that, there is also the acceptance that you have to manage your mental health, have community within leadership to talk about that strain, and make sure that you get the support that you need to perform the job. And to me, those things need to go concurrently, and there should not be correlations made where they shouldn’t exist between talking about struggle and not being capable. Because don’t we want leaders to be self-aware enough to say, “oh, I’m struggling. I probably need help with this. Let me use this resource to improve.” That is the sign of an emotionally intelligent leader as opposed to somebody who keeps quiet to their own detriment and explodes and messes up the job.

I feel like I’m screaming in the middle of a crowded room, and no one hears me. I know I’m being logical. But because of, again, the history around the sociological assignment of power and how we have set up power structures, I seem to be very alone in my principles. And again, what I’m asking people to consider goes against our nature. It goes against how we’re built, how we’re programmed. I’m very aware of that, but it doesn’t make it less true based on current circumstance.

Skot Waldron (47:21.00)
And this, you know, goes to the whole saying of why it’s so lonely at the top. They say it’s so lonely at the top. It shouldn’t be, but we’ve created this culture and this mindset about, now there’s some things about it that, you know, if you are the CEO, then there’s other people are not the CEO and they don’t have, you know, the things you do. It will be lonelyish at that time. But I mean, feeling completely alone and abandoned and like I have no support and all those things, we should not be feeling that.

Melissa Doman (47:56.00)
Well, that’s why I think leadership community is really important. Now, obviously, I think that humanizing yourself to the rest of the business, so they can’t expect you to act like a superhero and not give you the damn costume, which I think is BS, because like if you’re expected to act that way, you should get the costume. You can’t expect people not in the position to get it. You just can’t. And that’s why having community within leadership around this is so critical because who else can better understand than other leaders.

Now, again, we don’t want to create further separation between like us and them because that’s already a problem, especially what was it? The 2025 Edelman Global Trust Index [2025 Edelman Trust Barometer], I’m butchering the name, where it basically said trust, you know, in systems and leaders is at an all-time low. Shocker.

But in addition to humanizing yourself to the people you lead, that is why it is so critical to talk to other leaders who get it because it can ease that burden a little bit when you’re like, this is effing hard. And they’re like, yeah, it really is. You know, we are social creatures. We need each other. And so, talking to other people who get it can be a huge help for stress in leadership. Huge help.

Skot Waldron (49:16.00)
Exactly.

Melissa Doman (49:17.00)
Yeah.

Skot Waldron (49:18.00)
Let’s go through a little lightning round. You ready?

Melissa Doman (49:23.00)
Yes. Let’s do it.

Skot Waldron (49:24.00)
You got excited. I saw your phone. Okay. All right.

One word that best describes how you feel about uncertainty.

Melissa Doman (49:36.00)
Ooh. I don’t know if this is going to make sense. Fluttery.

Skot Waldron (49:44.00)
Fluttery? Oh, gosh. It’s really lightning, but I got to understand what that means.

Melissa Doman (49:50.00)
Like, when there’s uncertainty, I often get like butterflies in my stomach. They’re not necessarily good or bad, but I kind of get this like fluttery feeling in my body where, and because anxiety is my love language, I feel like all of like my brain starts firing and my body starts firing and just thinking about different things that could happen or good or bad or whatever. So, for me, uncertainty depending on the topic is very fluttery because I get very activated.

Skot Waldron (50:28.00)
Okay. I dig that. I dig that. All right.

A behavior leaders misinterpret during change. A behavior.

Melissa Doman (50:39.00)
Ooh. From misinterpret from others. Self-advocacy.

Skot Waldron (50:48.00)
Okay. Explain that one.

Melissa Doman (50:51.00)
Uh, they will take healthy self-advocacy as, depending on the situation, either as stubbornness, obstinance or self-promotion because of the stress that’s going on around them. And if the person’s delivery sucks.

Skot Waldron (51:14.00)
And I can see that too. I mean, in a realm of change, I often talk about how the person delivering the message has a realm of self-preservation, walls of self-preservation around them. And the people experiencing the message are going to have walls of self-preservation around them. And we’re all in this mode. When you’re in self-preservation mode, it’s all about you.

Melissa Doman (51:40.00)
Winning survival, yeah.

Skot Waldron (51:42.00)
That’s what it is. And there’s a lot of that that happens. So that’s self-advocacy. And an unhealthy way can, I guess, be something, but healthy self-advocacy, you know.

Melissa Doman (51:57.00)
Well, that also gets into how people’s self-advocacy is interpreted based on age, gender, cultural background, country of origin, culture of origin, that gets into a whole kettle of fish.

Skot Waldron (52:13.00)
That’s deep. One meeting habit you’d eliminate to reduce anxiety.

Melissa Doman (52:21.00)
Eliminate. Ooh.

Skot Waldron (52:24.00)
Let’s get rid of a meeting habit out there that creates anxiety.

Melissa Doman (52:29.00)
Asking people to meet with no context?

Skot Waldron (52:33.00)
Like one-on-one?

Melissa Doman (52:35.00)
Like, hey, do you have time to meet in 10 minutes without explaining why?

Skot Waldron (52:40.00)
Yes, I’ve heard that.

Melissa Doman (52:42.00)
Screw that. I’m self-employed and I don’t even like that. When I get those requests from clients, like, oh, can you meet tomorrow? And I go, you want to tell me why? Like, I’m sure it’s fine, but like, you want to meet with me? I need to know why.

Skot Waldron (53:01.00)
And instead, they should be, how should a leader ask?

Melissa Doman (53:05.00)
“Hey, do you have time to meet tomorrow? I want to do some updates to this project. I think there’s a better way we can do it.”

Skot Waldron (53:13.00)
That’s it. I love it. That’s it. Just explain a little bit.

Melissa Doman (53:17.00)
It’s not that hard.

Skot Waldron (53:18.00)
No, it’s not.

Melissa Doman (53:19.00)
Just give your statement of intention.

Skot Waldron (53:20.00)
I know. I agree.

Okay. A phrase that helps de-escalate tension. If there’s tension between me and you or in a team or in a room, is there any kind of phrase or I don’t know, question statement?

Melissa Doman (53:40.00)
I’ll try to do this without jargon. “I really do hear and understand why you’re upset.”

People want to be heard, even if they’re wrong.

Skot Waldron (53:55.00)
What’s that due?

Melissa Doman (53:57.00)
Well, I think that when people are…

So, there’s a model I really like called the SCARF Model from David Rock. Do you know that one?

Skot Waldron (54:09.00)
Nope.

Melissa Doman (54:10.00)
So, it’s how people prioritize different things in the workplace: status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness. When any of those things are threatened, people tend to act out. Now, in addition to not getting needs met, when people don’t feel heard and understood, nothing else is possible. Nothing. Because people want to not only feel heard and understood they want to feel great.

So, in my experience when people are going blah blah blah before we even get to sussing out the content to see what needs to happen next, they need to know they’ve been heard, they need to know that their feeling is valid. You can’t go anywhere else from that. So, if people are popping off and they go, “I’m hearing you’re upset. I understand you’re upset.” It doesn’t mean I’m agreeing with it, but it means I’m taking on board that you are upset. I am acknowledging and recognizing. I’m hearing what you’re saying. That has to happen before anything else can come.

Skot Waldron (55:20.00)
The healthiest leaders. This is last one. Okay. You’re going to fill in the blank.

The healthiest leaders experiencing extreme levels of mental unhealth or mental distress or whatever it is do what consistently. Should do what consistently.

Melissa Doman (55:43.00)
Mental health self-management.

Skot Waldron (55:46.00)
That’s a whole bucket that’s a whole like that’s like your whole, the whole thing. What does that mean?

Melissa Doman (55:55.00)
Well, we’ll narrow it down. We’ll narrow it down.

Must practice Mental Wellbeing Non-negotiables.

Skot Waldron (56:03.00)
Like?

Melissa Doman (56:05.00)
So, a Mental Wellbeing Non-negotiables is a phrase I trademarked a few years back, where managing mental health is as important as sleeping, eating, bathing, and breathing, in my opinion. So when we’re stressed and things are happening or you’re struggling with a mental health condition, you know, sometimes the first thing that goes off the to-do list is taking care of your mental health because there’s too many other things that are happening. So, people tend to get deterred by doing things to manage mental health based on a lot of the crap that the wellness industry touts that’s not actually helpful or personalizable and it doesn’t have, you know, individualization of mind.

So, I tell people, if you’re struggling with mental health, you have a mental health condition, you’re stressed in leadership, whatever it is, you have to find that one thing that you do consistently for your mental health, barring death, dismemberment, hell, high water, or illness, and I am not playing. And you have to do it at an actually achievable cadence. You’re not letting yourself down for another thing that you can’t do. And it’s got to be something you actually enjoy doing, not that you feel like you should do and doesn’t bring harm to yourself or other people. So, if that means that you like coloring books with your kids on Sundays, fine. You want to go walking the dog 20 minutes a day, four days a week, fine. You want to buy a unicorn costume off Amazon and dance in your living room to Metallica, fine. I don’t care what it is. But if you are stressed, your mental health is suffering, you got to have one thing you do to take care of your mental health that doesn’t feel like a chore. I don’t see how we can survive otherwise.

Skot Waldron (57:51.00)
Thank you. Amen, sister. That’s amazing. Thank you for saying that.

Melissa Doman (57:56.00)
I don’t have a mic to drop.

Skot Waldron (57:57.00)
I know. When I’m talking to people about, you know, the way they manage their time and the way they look at time and the way they look at what they do, priorities and all kinds of things, it always comes down to I wish I had more focus time, just time to like put my headphones on and close the door and just work on my thing. Or I wish I had more recharge time. Like, I wish I did this more, had more of this. And oftentimes I’ll just say you schedule both, right? You put it on your calendar, and it is a non-negotiable.

Melissa Doman (58:35.00)
Everybody has five minutes a day. I don’t care who you are. That is where I’m setting the line. Five minutes a day. If you’re not doing that, you’re being your own time bandit, and I have nothing else to say to that.

Skot Waldron (58:52.00)
And I mean, I don’t know, people don’t argue with me, but I say you had the same amount of time as Albert Einstein and as Abraham Lincoln.

Melissa Doman (59:02.00)
which by the way, Lincoln struggled with crippling clinical depression.

Skot Waldron (59:08.00)
And he probably didn’t have a lot of help.

Melissa Doman (59:10.00)
He had no help.

Skot Waldron (59:11.00)
Dealing with that.

Melissa Doman (59:12.00)
He had no help. And that, you know, he only, only his, like, close friends and family and people knew about it. Because, you know, he’s busy saving the union.

Skot Waldron (59:24.00)
Oh, just nothing?

Melissa Doman (59:25.00)
Yeah, you know, no big deal. He had crippling depression. Yeah. Very severe.

Skot Waldron (59:33.00)
I think that there’s a lot of, you know, a lot that can go along with that message and your book. So talk about, so your book, it’s coming out in February, if you’re listening to this after February 2026, it’s already there. So, you can go get it, but you can pre-order it now.

Melissa Doman (59:52.00)
It is available for pre-order online.

Skot Waldron (59:55.00)
So, through Amazon, through what?

Melissa Doman (59:57.00)
All of the above. So, it’s available on all major retailers for pre-order comes out February 24th, 2026, Cornered Office: Why We Need To Talk About Leadership Mental Health. And I’m really, really excited for it to come out. You know, I wrote a little bit about that topic in my first book. Yes, you can talk about mental health at work. Here’s why and how to do it really well. I know, a very vague title. You’ve no idea what you’re going to get with it. But I’m really, really trying to focus on supporting the mental health of leaders right now, even more than I have previously in my career, because they are breaking.

So, I’m, you know, doing keynotes, fireside interviews, workshops at summits, conferences inside of companies, because, again, this is not making a pass for bad leadership behavior. This is teaching them and the organizations they lead what they need to survive. And I just want to be really brass attacks about that.

Skot Waldron (1:01:05.00)
Thank you for serving them and serving all of us because we benefit from healthy leadership. Yeah?

Melissa Doman (1:01:14.00)
Yes, we do. That is the goal is to, you know, supporting, supported leaders equals a supported organization. Tada.

Skot Waldron (1:01:24.00)
Tadda. Well, done. Well, you’re kind of an expert on this. So, thank you for bringing your expertise. I appreciate it. Really cool. And good luck with the book launch. I mean, you’ve done this before. So, it’s like, whatever, right?

Melissa Doman (1:01:38.00)
No. It’s still exciting. It’s still stressful. But, you know, if I can help anybody who hears this episode and they want me to come in and, you know, crack some heads and talk about mental health and emotions and neuroscience at work, best way to contact me is www.melissadoman.com. I’m also addable on LinkedIn. And I would love to come help for anybody who needs it.

Skot Waldron (1:02:05.00)
Rockstar. Thank you. I appreciate you going extra long today. We did a long show today, but it was good. It was like a marathon. It was like so good.

Melissa Doman (1:02:14.00)
I really enjoyed it. I appreciate you having me.

Skot Waldron (1:02:22.00)
The show was quite interesting, how it started out going from the idea of change and how people respond to change and how do we as leaders communicate that and what are we going through emotionally and feeling all the things and then it kind of evolved into honing in on that leader, honing in on the health the mental health of that leader, why do they feel the way they feel, where they feel the things they feel and explaining those things. And it’s so important.

We always, often, we talk about the mental health of our employees, of our staff, our people. How do we make sure that mental health is something that we are being aware of more and more today and talking about it in a way that’s constructive and actionable and in a way that helps people feel like there’s something being done here?

But how often are we talking about the CEO’s mental health. I don’t know. We don’t talk about that very openly because it’s really the CEO’s problem, right? Wrong. It is everybody’s problem because if the CEO is not healthy, that’s not going to be a very fun place to work, right? And I think you have probably all experienced that in some way, shape, or form. We don’t like that. So, let’s keep our leaders healthy. Let’s invest in them. Let’s see what we can do to make sure they don’t feel that they are alone at the top. It doesn’t have to totally be that way.

So, everybody, thanks for listening. Melissa, thanks for spreading your smartness. Appreciate it.

(1:04:00.00)
If you want to find out more information about me or check out the show notes where there’s going to be more information and links to the things referenced in this episode, visit skotwaldron.com. And lastly, I’m asking for a little bit of love, just a little bit. So please take a moment, follow, rate the show. The algorithm is like that; it helps me get the word out. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. And until next time, stay Unlocked.