Episode 33: Why we need more emotional support at work - you can’t out-resilience a toxic workplace, with Michelle Bihary

Leadership Amplified by Dr Karen Morley

I’ve had a few recent conversations with amazing leaders. You know the ones – you may well be one - who routinely go above and beyond, who trade-off weekend time to get the job done, who are just darn good people with a strong work ethic who don’t want to let the side down. But who are on (if not over) the precipice of burnout. They’re having to self-manage their emotions without adequate support from their organisations. Demands are off the scale, support is lip-service as best: relying on such people to be resilient enough to put up with this with no end in sight is crazy. So in conversation, when Michelle Bihary said ‘you can’t out-resilience a toxic workplace’ it was YES, you can’t!! We’ve got to stop expecting that people can. Michelle’s work is focused on providing professional supervision and support in the healthcare industry, where the need for it is so great. She’s highly attuned to the bandwidth/energy/vitality required of health care professionals to do their work. Prior to COVID, she says that burnout was already a huge issue in the sector. Mental health was chronically underfunded - it was like giving a surgeon half the amount of time to do the surgery – mental health workers had half the time they needed to treat people. During COVID, that workforce became one that held the anxiety for so many in the community, plus of course they had their own concerns. Michelle reflects that it will take a long time for people to feel they have the space to restore and replenish as the demand for support and care has increased so much. She says that organisations need to provide ongoing support and permission to help people to maintain their wellbeing, they need to be taking responsibility and thinking more strategically about the environment that the workforce is operating in all day long. It’s not just getting the job done that matters, it’s how the job gets done.