All humans have problems from time to time

One of the hardest parts about a leadership role is the fact your team are PEOPLE with PROBLEMS and that’s hard to ignore.

You might be aware that one of your team members is privately suffering. You might hope you can just ignore it. Or maybe you desperately want to help, or feel like you should help, but either way you don’t know how.

First things first: You’re (probably) not a therapist. It’s absolutely not your job to fix people’s personal problems and if you go wading in with no expertise, you could do more harm than good.

Software is built by teams, and teams are made of people

But also, software is built by people. People need to communicate and cooperate with one another, and they do that better when they trust one another and don’t treat each other as machines. We all have bad times, and a little consideration and understanding can go a long way.

So, what if you become aware that one of your team members is struggling? What do you do? Can you just ignore it?

There are no magical spells. You can’t make everything suddenly better. And there is no one-size-fits-all solution. But there is one simple thing you can always do, and that’s to allow THEM to choose what kind of support they would like.

Offer three simple choices

You can offer three simple choices:

1. Do you want to talk about it?

2. Do you want to be distracted?

3. Do you want some space?

There’s a very ​sweet little video here​ that describes the three options.

Notice that none of them is “Give them advice.” Try never to offer advice to a suffering person without checking first whether that’s what they want. And remember you don’t have to give advice at all. Maybe you don’t know what advice to give. That’s fine! You’re (probably) not a therapist! You don’t have to know the answers. It’s enough to let someone know that it’s ok for them to be upset and to need space. Sometimes that’s all anyone needs.

This works really well for friends and family, as well as colleagues. A little acknowledgement goes a long way.

Mental health awareness month and a male mental health event in Manchester

It’s mental health awareness month, and I’m very pleased and proud to announce that I’m sponsoring the ​Male Mental Health event​ - an evening of honesty, connection and support - being hosted by Manchester Tech Festival next Thursday (22nd May) at DiSH in Manchester (UK).

Catering will be provided by the wonderful ​HM Pasties​, who provide employment for ex offenders, so I’m especially pleased that my sponsorship can be used to fund this.

As the mother of two sons and wife of the wonderful ​Ally Fogg​, who does so much great work with the ​Men and Boys’ Coalition​, I’m particularly interested in supporting this event. I’ve also long been a supporter of all the wonderful work ​Amy Newton​ and her team do at ​Manchester Tech Festival​, and this is just another example of that.

I’ll be there next Thursday, 5:30pm in central Manchester… hope to see ​some of you there too​!