37. Mental Health & Employee Support - How can business leaders best support their staff?

Stephane Grenier of Mental Health Innovation a former soldier who served in Rwanda during the genocide in 1994 and coined the term “moral injury”. Now, he is the Founder and Lead Innovator of Mental Health Innovations, a company that trains business leaders to support their staff members in a unique way. His experience as a soldier vets him as one who truly understands what it is like to be exposed to trauma, though he argues, he was not traumatized. He does not agree that there should be so many rules and legislation around mental health issues such as PTSD, which is a presumption that does not serve the business industry well.
Stephane also says that we have developed too many policies that disempower managers to appropriately interact with their employees where the “clinical narrative has invaded the workspace”. He believes mental health is too complicated and could be simplified in a way to empower leaders to address their staff in supportive, non-clinical ways and that it is less relevant in the workplace.
According to Stephane, the narrative needs to be de-medicalized and leaders need to learn skills. In his training program, they role play and engage in interactive scenarios to get them to practice how they would formulate how they would support their employees under difficult circumstances. He argues that they can change management behaviors who may be heavily focused on productivity, though need to improve their relationship building with staff who would respond more positively.
Don’t wait until someone is sick; build the relationship now, and it will pay out. His program rehumanizes people and the peer support model he uses compliments everything else that is in place such as the EAP, benefit program, etc. He says that there is evidence that peer support will help integrate people into society and back into the workplace better, so it imperative for us to train leaders for the future of humanity,
Buy Stephane’s Book: After the War https://www.amazon.ca/After-War-Surviving-Changing-Culture/dp/0889775338
Website: https://mhic-cism.com/stephane-grenier/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mental-health-innovations-consulting/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/s_grenier
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkLF78tiP4Xk7hTQY4_WC7A

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