Leader as rescuer

I worked with an organisation recently where a team member, "Kevin', who had increasing anxiety issues asked for help from his leader. The leader immediately offered to support him, and the first task he did was to remove some of the workload from Kevin, to ease his burden.

He gave that extra work to "Jerry" to manage until Kevin could take it back on. Jerry happily agreed to help Kevin and his leader. The problem was that Jerry is Kevin's main competition for promotion and his rival in the team. Kevin's anxiety rose through the roof as a result, as he now saw himself exposed to redundancy or sacking when Jerry does a great job with his work.

The leader, by what he saw was his act of generosity and support for Kevin, actually caused his unravelling. There was no inclusion, or empowering Kevin in his recovery strategy. The leader acted from a place of caring, but so clumsily that he made the issue exponentially worse. There is no doubting the leader's level of caring, but his capability in this case was lacking, unbeknownst to him.

Rescuers mean well, and as leaders, they often feel like they should 'have the answers' when approached with an issue. This is one time when they aren’t expected to have the answers, and collaboration, empowering and including the team member is both necessary and correct.

This Capability Map is a very useful tool for determining where the skill sets of your leaders are in handling mental health in their teams. Please feel free to use the map and see where your people lie. Ideally, you want them all in the top right quadrant.

I can help with doing just that. Let's have a chat if you have any queries or want to find out how to upskill your people to be able to talk about mental health in a meaningful way.