Climbing Together – Youth Engagement and Support in Regional Victoria with Lara May

Nick McEwan-Hall: Hi, and welcome back to another episode of The Mental Health Couch with me. Nick McEwen Hall. In today’s episode, I’m talking with someone I met at a course that I ran in Albury-Wodonga; Lara May. Over the last few years I’ve worked with Lara to ensure that every Year 8 and every Year 10 student across the whole of Alpine Shire have been trained in Teen Mental Health First Aid.

It’s an amazing commitment to young people who live in a region that’s had its fair share of distressing events, and it’s having a huge, amazing impact. In this episode, you’ll hear how Lara got into youth work. What makes young people tick and how a regional setting can be both a protective factor and a barrier to help seeking. Lara is a committed youth worker who has young people’s best interests in mind 24/7. I really enjoyed this chat and I hope that you find it interesting as well. Just a heads up, this episode does touch on themes of mental health, mental illness, and suicide. Take care while listening.

Lara, welcome to the Mental Health Couch podcast!

Lara May: I’m so excited to be here.

Nick McEwan-Hall: We’re excited to have you here as well. I’m excited to, have a chat with you today in a bit of a different context to the way that we normally have worked together, and we’ll talk about that later. it’s so lovely to have you here. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for a little while.

Let’s get started by getting to know you a little bit better. Tell us a little about your background. What’s your story, Lara?

Lara May: Yeah, I grew up in Melbourne, but I was quick to get outta there when I turned 18 and I started in the winters. So I did winters up at Falls Creek, which I can see just over the valley here. and then we would go to Japan and do the winters over there. And I, was a supervisor in a rental and retail shop and I worked with people every day and I absolutely loved that. But when COVID hit, we basically got kicked out of Japan. either stay in Japan for who knows how long or quarantine and get through it. so that’s what we did. We just came home and, had the opportunity to buy a house and I guess that’s when the big girl job. Hunt started to afford a mortgage,

that’s how I led my way into youth work. I was fortunate that I knew someone already in this sector and she touched me on the shoulder and was like, Hey, there’s an entry level position. you don’t need anything and you can study while you are doing

the work. I was like, oh, done.

Let’s do it. And I was successful in getting that role. And from there I then progressed up to being a youth worker And I’ve just been loving it. I love everyone I work with. It’s been such a journey. The last five years has just been mental.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Wow. That’s amazing. It sounds like the COVID thing, was a bit of a lucky strike It kind of happened and forced you to come back home, but then all these things opened up once you were back.

Lara May: Absolutely. And I think, the stars definitely aligned for us. We got so lucky and I think a lot of people were kind of stuck in the

valley as well. So we had this really lovely kind of orphan community where no one had their families around.

We all just had each other. it was really lovely.

I think that was honestly my first sense of that community driven mentality.

growing up in Melbourne we didn’t have that it’s been quite lovely stepping into the community development space and being able to recognize that.

I think it’s really cool.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Amazing. That’s interesting. Yeah. That, that, COVID experience was so unique for everybody, but I can only imagine what additional uniqueness being in the setting that you’re in, brought like a small community in a sort of remote area. Different settings I suppose too. that sense of community building that happened through that experience sounds pretty incredible.

Lara May: Yeah, absolutely. I had a great time being in locked down in Mount Beauty.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Well, it’s a beautiful place to be. Mount Beauty lives up to its name, that’s for sure. the times I’ve been out there working with your crew, it’s, a really beautiful part of the world.

And now that you talk about the COVID experience, it’s like I’m sitting here thinking about, yeah, my experience of Mount Beauty and even just broader Alpine Shire and what that’s been like, but I’m not sure I can quite imagine what it would’ve been like in a COVID setting. It’s kind of interesting.

Yeah, I’m in a beautiful place to do all that stuff we all had to do, Wow. Really interesting. it sounds like that story was part of the pathway for you into the work that you do. You mentioned you got tapped on the shoulder and said, Hey, I think you’d be good for this.

Lara May: does it require any kind of quals or anything you can study yeah,

Nick McEwan-Hall: Tell me a little bit about that. how did that unfold for you?

Lara May: As I mentioned, the stars just aligned for me. I was working at Falls Creek at the time. It was just absolute mayhem. I was grinding and, and yeah, this opportunity, Just fit my personality so well I was like, it’d be silly not to really, it’s a full-time job in a small regional town.

There’s really not a lot of those going.

So, I applied, I was successful and I guess that’s when I started my work within that com dev space.

I’m just so grateful for, the path that it’s taken me on. the role, it was definitely more, you hear youth worker and you think you’re a support worker.

but when I started this role was definitely more youth events and I think a

lot of youth workers in the Victorian area will know that freezer funding, engage funding, all that typical youth funding that we all get. it’s all youth events driven.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Okay.

Lara May: I think it was really important to. Make sure we hit those KPIs, but also recognizing that we can make these events to be something more, meaningful and helpful rather

than just gatherings.

Nick McEwan-Hall: yeah,

Lara May: so yeah, I guess that’s kind of how our relationship started

as you say all that, it really talks to that idea of the role, right? Community development. It’s not just bringing people together, like doing, a bowling afternoon or whatever it’s actually bringing people together for the purpose of developing community and connection and those sorts of things.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah. absolutely. I think events do so much for our community and they’re, especially after COVID and Bush fires

Lara May: and we’ve been through it up here, and. Events alone are magnificent. for me, especially someone that has also struggled with mental health, it’s been important to give this education and support to the young people within our town as well.

I do my very best to try and implement as much love as I can.

Nick McEwan-Hall: I think that comes through with, the work that I’ve done with you as well and the, and the chats who’ve had over the, over the time as well. You know, Passionate. And I think the word passion gets thrown around a little bit, but when I think about how we’ve worked together in the past and the conversations we’ve had, and from a perspective of what are we trying to do?

You know, what are we trying to do? There’s always the work, but then it’s like, what are we trying to achieve? what are we shooting for? And that’s where you are so connected to your community and you can just feel that when we’re working on those sorts of things.

I think you do a fabulous job for your community from my perspective, I know what this stuff takes, In terms of hard work and all of that So, yeah. Interesting. Alright. Cool. So it started as events, but it seems like it’s morphed into other kinds of things over time.

Lara May: Yeah, absolutely. and I think, you know, like my first event, we had a color fund run and that’s, we kind of made that around mental health after the bush fires, what was

important after the bush fires and recognizing that young people were really struggling and they didn’t have that control during that disaster.

So how

can you bring back that control? that’s supporting them in their first, their physical abilities. So their qualifications, they upskilling, but their mental and how they can. Control what’s going on in their mind

and work through that situation, but also recognizing it for their friends as well.

so that’s kind of the color fun run was our very first event,

which like, I was like, oh, like they need this.

and then ironically, I went and did a LGBTQ IA plus mental health first aid course and met my very good friend

Nick McEwan-Hall: yeah, that’s how we met, isn’t it? At the, rainbow Youth Mental Health First Aid program that you run. that was in the Wodonga program, right?

Lara May: Yeah.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Interesting.

Lara May: long after I had started. it really shaped, my work.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Okay.

Lara May: grateful for you.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Oh, that’s lovely to say. and to hear, it’s funny, you know, as you’re talking about that, I think, yeah, like I, we run programs all the time and that’s fine. And we have people in the room and it’s always great but. I never really, until I sit down and talk with people, I never really get context about that.

So when you just said, oh, that was just when I started my role and everything we’ve been talking about so far, that kind of context and then I think about, yeah, you came to that program at that time to learn that thing in the context

makes so much sense.

Lara May: like even just the people that I met in that training with you, just the other participants, the amount of times I’ve bumped into people from that training,

which was what, two years ago

seeing them in the sector as well, it’s just kickstarted so much for so many people and I think you should be really proud of the work that you’ve done to help support other youth workers.

It’s pretty magical.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Oh, that’s really nice. Thank you. that group was a really fun group and I interviewed Olivia Zeki, who also was in that group, for the podcast a little while ago. they said similar things. It’s lovely to hear that. it’s a good reminder for me too, I think like now just sitting here reflecting it’s a good reminder to pause you might have a similar thing, but in the busyness of doing programs, events, and running things we’re here and we’re there.

And it can be easy to lose sight of the impact that’s being had as a result of those things that we do. I’m sure that must be the same for you in your role, like being so busy and doing things and sort of. Time to pause and reflect on, well, what is the actual impact of what we’re doing?

Lara May: Absolutely. I’ve actually recently implemented this thing for myself,

which I wasn’t planning to talk about, my view out my window is of Mount Boong,

Victoria’s highest peak. it’s absolutely majestic, but I’ve just been so prone to seeing it every day. so every time I get a glimpse of Mount Boong, whether it’s driving over the hills or, I’m in my lounge room and I look out my window.

I take a deep breath and I

kind of appreciate what’s around me. And I think taking that, moment has helped me reflect a lot on, not only my own mental health, but what I’ve been doing and how I’ve been impacting this community. it’s pretty cool work that we do. And you don’t realize until, you have these conversations.

I guess you’re right.

Nick McEwan-Hall: For sure. it reminds me a little bit of teachers, teachers will say, oh, teaching is really stressful but I love my job, love the kids. it can be really stressful. later down the track, they’ll bump into someone they taught in year six at the shops.

Lara May: that young person will say, oh, I always remember, this or that thing you told me we don’t often get to see the impact until further down the track. Particularly with young people sometimes I think also as, teenagers, my age demographic that I work with is 12 to 25.

there’s puberty, there’s the age difference between 12 and 25. You’re a

kid and an adult all at once, and it’s, the development within those years isn’t outstanding. And so seeing the way that, that, that has developed. A really amazing group of young people, and I started that work with them two years ago when they were 16, and now they’re

18 and they’re just such different people.

Nick McEwan-Hall: They’re so wise. It’s just magical. it’s really cool to see that growth Yeah. and you’re right, the difference between a 12-year-old and a 25-year-old, it’s just so huge. Like, so much happens in those, what’s that? 12 years, 13 years, whatever it is, and I think we do lose track of that sometimes. We lose track of just how diverse that cohort is. if we just say adolescents, right?

that diversity in that age range, both in terms of their skills and their abilities and their cognitive development, all the things that we know about mental health included, and how we deal with that stuff is so different from one end of that spectrum to the next.

Lara May: Absolutely.

Nick McEwan-Hall: you mentioned before that, you know, your area’s really been through it, so bush fires and you know, all the, all the stuff.

And you mentioned there that, you know, that stuff all had a big impact on mental health, particularly for young people in your area. Tell us a little bit about how that is. I think people listening might not have had those experiences

what is it about that experience in particular, when we think about young people going through that experience, how does that affect their mental health? Tell us a little bit about that.

Lara May: Yeah. there was a research around the bush fires and. What was most damaging for young people. it was that autonomy and

not knowing where they’re gonna be and dad running off to fight the fire and mom packing up stuff and not telling the young people in the house what’s going on.

it’s scary. you need a

little bit of clarity in that stressful moment. I think that’s the start of it. And I think recognizing that, like teenagers especially, they, they’re way more, well, they’re heaps tougher than you think You know, especially when they’re babies and you’re, you’re in a disaster and you just wanna protect them. But I think protecting them is, it’s that, it’s that transparency of

this is where we’re going, this is what we’re doing, and I need you to go and put tennis balls in the gutters. Or

keep occupied.

That’s often forgotten. not having that, control over a situation and all you have is your head,

your head’s just ticking and it’s what’s going on. I think that’s the start of all the mental health struggles that, came through during those bush fires.

Nick McEwan-Hall: mm.

Lara May: have an extremely strong community around here where we’re so connected. Everybody knows everybody. You can’t walk down the street without saying hi to 50 people, which is so lovely. and I think it’s times like that that’s the most important. Just knowing the people around you

where your neighbors are. I think it’s just that understanding of what’s happening in an emergency.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah,

Lara May: I dunno if I answered your,

Nick McEwan-Hall: No, that’s totally fine. now I’m trying to remember what the question was, the question was about these scary experiences like bushfires coming through towns or whole shires,

how does that show up in terms of a mental health effect for young people? that. Story you told about, sometimes parents or other people, not just parents, but people around, young people wanna protect them and the way they express that is, well, you just don’t worry about that.

it’s like, well actually that young brain kind of needs and wants that information. sometimes withholding some of that stuff isn’t gonna be the best thing for that young person. other times it will be. And that can all change as well.

Right. you make a really good point because if people want to feel safe, they need to understand what’s going on around them and how they fit with that. So they can have that sense of control or agency, to know what they’re doing why and what the plan is and

Lara May: yeah, it makes total sense. Yeah, for sure. it’s such a simple thing that it’s been blowing my mind, being in this role and seeing

no expectation for young people

when they come to the table and deliver and do some really cool stuff.

everyone loves it

it’s incredible. But I think we also need to give them some credit. they are stars and they’re doing some really cool work.

it’s time to recognize that.

it’s a tricky one, I guess.

Nick McEwan-Hall: yeah, that’s where my mind was going. It’s a complicated thing, isn’t it? Because we’ve got dynamics here of wanting to. Protect young people, which is nice. It’s a nice thing to express care and concern and protection for young people.

But I suppose the bit where we get stuck a little bit is like, what that looks like and how that can be done effectively and depends entirely on the young person we have in mind. And what their capabilities

Lara May: say it’s different for everybody

and I think everybody’s circumstances and age and their family dynamic comes into play. So it’s definitely not an overarching rule, but

I think we need to give a little bit more credit where credit’s due

sometimes.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Totally. And look, the young people that I’ve worked with in my kind of work and, and I’m thinking about the young people up your way across, across the shire there. They are incredible. Like they are incredible.

Lara May: I’m so jealous of them I wanna be as cool as them.

Nick McEwan-Hall: I was just thinking about that. What was going on for me when I was that? Was I that cool? Was I that clever? I don’t know. maybe it’s that thing of like, when you’re in it, you’re like, give it to me. I can take it. I can do it. I wanna get involved.

But then as an adult, you look back, you’re going, wow, look at all the things I can do now. does that look a bit dull? I don’t know. But I think a lot of people do it. They’re like, oh, I wish I was that excited and clever when I was a young person. It’s like, well, we probably were

Yeah, exactly.

And so a

Lara May: quite lovely. Go for

it.

Nick McEwan-Hall: no, you go,

Lara May: I was just saying like, it’s quite lovely that we, I think that old school mentality of. Kids are supposed to be seen, not heard,

has been thrown out the window. it might just be my little bubble of youth work and me talking to youth workers that all have the same mentality as me, but it’s really nice to see that mentality pushing away from where we are and

giving that opportunity for young people to speak their voice, which is really lovely.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah. You’re so right. And I often wonder where that’s come from, how did that start? because if you think about all the stuff that’s happened over the last couple of years, high school age students, going on strike, you know, climate strike, we’re going on strike.

We’re not gonna school, we’re gonna protest. You know, and it’s like, wow. Like that’s something I could not fathom happening when I was a young person. when I look at that, I think, well, that’s not something that adults have told those young people to do.

That’s something those young people have Grabbed hold of and gone. We think about this in this way. We’re not happy with X, Y, and Z. This is what we’re doing. And I think that’s incredible. ’cause if we’re gonna think about young people being super empowered, we need to leave the power of that story with them.

Because they’re driving it and there’s a lesson there which is, Hey, adults, why don’t you just get behind young people and help them do what they want to do?

Lara May: I think the Internet’s got a lot of bad things going on, but if it’s got one good thing, it’s that young people can find empowerment from people anywhere in the world

and support one another. So I think like that’s the one thing Internet’s got going for it.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah. It’s true. I’ve heard lots of stories where, online has been the space where young people actually find their crowd or their support or their tribe, and if we take that away, then they don’t have that ability sometimes.

And I can, I can imagine how that really, especially the case in a regional area, right? Like where, you know, being in Melbourne, you walk down the street and go, there’s my people. But in a smaller community, you don’t have that opportunity.

So that online space becomes transformational for young people to see what they can be to see what’s possible or to hear other ideas.

Lara May: I think if we even look at that queer space, that LGBTQIA plus community, it’s. Like unfortunately here, you make a post about something rainbow and it gets bashed online and it’s just absolutely awful.

how can you feel safe in your community when you don’t have other people around you that identify the way you do?

And how can

you feel confident in yourself if you’ve never seen anyone else go through that? it’s really beautiful to, have that connection, to even just those smaller communities that aren’t so welcome

in rural areas.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah. It’s So true. You mentioned before about the disaster stuff that’s happened in your area and the impact it’s had on mental health for young folk. How do you think that mental health story is, being told now as a result of what’s happened over the last few years?

Lara May: what’s the impact been if we think about it now that you’re through those disasters, in that space of recovery how is the mental health story showing up for young people now as a result of that Ooh, that’s a tricky one. I’m not hundred percent sure if I’m honest with you. however, my coworker and I, we’ve recently opened a youth hub

and it’s been a magical place to welcome all the young people in and, have a safe space and just have a lot of support, brochures and condoms and games and

fidget toys Snacks, most importantly, snacks that always gets them

in. in that space, it’s a great spot to be vulnerable and open up.

Not that you have to do it with everyone, but there’s breakout rooms and an opportunity just to pull myself and my coworker aside and vent we can direct in the right direction.

we’re still in our pilot project, so I can’t really put my finger on it. But the younger students that have been trained versus the older students that haven’t been given the tools it’s very evident. it honestly makes me sad because we’ve got these teenagers going through exams in year 12, and it’s really scary and it’s difficult and the workload is so hard and high, there’s way to get through that.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Hmm

Lara May: so I think it’s too early to call it, but it’s definitely something that I’ve recognized that I would love for these students to have the opportunity to do that training.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Hmm.

Lara May: Yeah.

it’s,

Nick McEwan-Hall: The youth hub sounds like a really beautiful space. Like, it just feels like a really nice kind of thing to have, for the community, but also the impact that we were talking about, you know, being delayed.

And we might not see it for a couple of years, but we will see the fruits of that labor later. It sounds like all that stuff’s happening as well, Yeah. Okay. Well, it sounds like the story that is so often the case with mental health stuff, this stuff takes a while, you know, if you think about a traumatic event, we know how that works, it can take a long time.

Lara May: not. instant.

Nick McEwan-Hall: definitely

Lara May: I think we’re so used to that instant gratification that we almost get impatient going back to my taking a deep breath when I see Boong, just kind of being a little bit slower and

doing our best to slow down and see the changes as they happen has been really cool to reflect on.

Nick McEwan-Hall: nice. That’s really nice.

Lara May: Oh my gosh.

Nick McEwan-Hall: you’re allowed to be cheesy, I think. we know the basics of what works for good mental health and wellbeing and things like you are talking about, like taking a moment, being grateful, slowing down, connecting more to what’s going on right now.

These are all the things that we know are good to do, but. Who does them in reality, you know, unless we sit down and actually go, that’s what I’m doing and this is why I’m doing it. if it feels good and it’s useful and it’s constructive, that’s good for us.

And as someone who works in the youth space, role modeling that for young people is pretty important. it goes back to that conversation. I can’t, people what I can’t see. So if I see, you know, if I’m a young person and I see Lara, doing a bit of mindfulness every time she sees the mountain.

Lara May: Yeah.

Nick McEwan-Hall: a nice thing. It’s a protective factor for that young person. So I don’t think it’s cheesy at all. I get how it can feel cheesy for sure, but I don’t think it is. you mentioned for the young people that have done the program we’ve been working on in the last couple of years, you’ve seen a bit of a difference there.

Let’s talk a little bit about that program, ’cause it’s a bit of work that I’m super proud of, but, for a

Lara May: should be awesome.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Thank you. and as should you and your team, right? Like we should all be proud of the work that’s been going on. But take us back a little bit.

we met at the Youth Mental Health First Aid program, the Rainbow Youth Mental Health First Aid program in Wodonga age ago. what was the process from there? Thinking actually this is something we need to do with our high school students.

Lara May: Yeah. So I have, some mental health funding from my organization that was used years ago, The original facilitator just didn’t have the rapport with the students. That is so important when you are

talking about mental health, and it was canned pretty quickly.

It was, it was kind of just shoved aside. It wasn’t as beneficial. It wasn’t giving the results that they wanted, and so they canned it, which is honestly valid. Why would you do it if it wasn’t?

Helping. And so when I came in and did your training I was like, oh my gosh, every human being in the whole entire world needs to hear Nick talk about mental health.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Form an orderly.

Lara May: I came back and I was like, everyone needs this. We need to get this into the schools. that’s when I sat down with my manager and we formulated a plan, of getting every single year eight and year 10 student trained up in mental health first aid.

And then by the time those year eights get to year 10, they’ll get that refresher course

again,

I think year eight is a really great preliminary age where they can, start to hear those buzzwords or,

take in this information,

but maybe not completely use it.

And then by the time they get to year 10, it’s solidified and they can start to use it in their day-to-day life. you can definitely see it in those year 10 students that have been trained up. We are so fortunate that we have that funding. going forward, we’re also gonna work with other community groups and pull some funding from different places.

And we are gonna make this more of a, opportunity for the rest of the community to see what we’re doing with our students. having hundreds of thousands after a couple years of young

people trained up in this has, it’s just a huge project and I think. The rostering with schools is so difficult, and I absolutely praise the teachers that

they’ve even been able to fit

It’s just so important and I’m so grateful that they’ve had the opportunity to do that.

Nick McEwan-Hall: you’re right. The timetable in a school is just so pressured without it adding anything above curriculum, it’s just so pressured and so difficult. So I think you’re right. the schools in your region have been super helpful and cooperative to get it up and going.

it’s not an easy thing to do, and we’re talking about four schools, trying to get this stuff done in a similar timeframe. So it has been tricky. it’s been interesting too, working with that breadth of ages across the region,

The year eights and the year tens, we would expect them to be different, right. They’re different ages, different development, different, Cognitive abilities,

Lara May: And I think

Nick McEwan-Hall: We’d expect that,

Lara May: you’ve seen that firsthand, like working directly with those different year levels. I’m sure that you can recognize

the intake from each year.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Oh, totally different. way different. And we’d want them to be different, you know, like when I think about that, it’s like, yeah, I would, and that’s a bit, rose colored glasses sort of a statement for me. Like, you’d want them to be different. and what I’m thinking about there is to say, well, yeah, I would really like it if year eights didn’t need teen mental health first aid skills so they could support each other with each other’s mental health.

the reality of what we know about young people and mental health is not a pretty picture. that’s the backdrop to which this whole kind of works. Been played out in front of, we have this, this ongoing evolving story about young people in their mental health state.

And then we layer on some regional stuff. We layer on remote, and we just kind of know what’s going on. I’d love it if year eights didn’t need to use it. But, from the first year that we ran the program, there were so many stories that stood out to me about young people asking really clear, pertinent, insightful questions about this stuff.

And they were the year eights. Yeah, they were, the year eights kind of going, I’m dealing with this and is this okay? And, you know, that sort of stuff. and yeah, it is happening for young people. I think, it has been very evident to see the need

for me, it just kind of brings life to the stats. We know the stats, we know them.

Lara May: It’s

Nick McEwan-Hall: all right. Go for it.

Lara May: it blows my mind reading these stats.

it is really devastating. And you’re right, like working with the young people, it really does bring life to that you might have a leader of a student that’s just flying through doing awesome work, but their story behind closed doors or

behind their eyes,

is just nothing that we could ever prepare for.

And it’s really interesting in youth work because they’re always like, oh, what about those youth that are graffitiing, they need the most help or blah,

blah, and everyone needs. Help everyone

needs love and support

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah.

Lara May: it’s just those comments that I’m just like, you don’t even get it. You see this leader, but that leader needs that support just as much as that kid does.

Nick McEwan-Hall: It reminds me of a funny joke, like when I do youth mental Health First Aid, courses, and we talk about, what’s going on for young people during adolescence, I’ll turn to the room and say, so has anyone here been an adolescent before? and the room will go quiet.

it’s like, no. And I’m like, really? And they kind of get the point. And the point is, well, we’ve all been through this. we were all as human beings, all have the same developmental story that was influenced by our context and all that Sure, yes. But all these things did happen. So sometimes it does mystify me a bit when we sit in adulthood and we kind of go, oh, these young people, you know, it’s like we don’t understand them.

It’s like, some of the stuff that’s going on for them. Is the same stuff that we went through. It might look different, but it’s the same thing. So, maybe what I’m thinking is that it should be easier, for us as adults to have that empathy. But I think there is a jump there that can happen sometimes.

Not quite sure what that’s about, but yeah, we’ve all been through it.

Lara May: like for me, someone recently asked me, they’re like, how do you stay up to date with youth issues? what do you do to know what’s going on? I’m like, I ask them why is that not an option?

Just talk to them.

it’s

so funny. It’s like, oh, no one knows what goes on in a teenager’s brain, but they’re willing to talk about it.

You just need to talk to ’em.

Nick McEwan-Hall: true, isn’t it? it’s so obvious, but. For whatever reason we think, oh, I can’t do that. Yeah. And I suppose in your work, That’s your job, that’s what you do. And you’ve got that youth center as well, the, the hub there that kind of facilitate some of that, you know, what would you say to someone who, who was like, oh look, I just don’t dunno how to, I just dunno how to talk to a young person.

that might not be exactly what they’re thinking, but, the vibe. I’m trying to go, what could we tell people to, guide them about how best to talk to young people? Because I think you’re right, the best way to work out what’s going on for someone is to ask them, particularly for young people.

So what are you, I don’t know, like top tips, maybe it’s a bit of a

Lara May: Okay.

Nick McEwan-Hall: what would you say to someone if someone goes, oh, I just dunno how to talk to young people. Like what are you gonna tell ’em?

Lara May: well, the first thing that comes to mind is Actually listening, actively listening,

if you’re gonna ask a question, make sure you hear it and make sure that you do something about it. That’s

probably my number one tip.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah. Yeah. Is there, maybe not an example of that, but like, can we give the listeners something to kind of think through like a scenario where that’s been important? Or even a made up kind of thing? I know what you mean. saying to someone, listen to what they’re saying, to understand what they’re going through and then that follow up bit.

I think some people might sort of go, well, I know how to do active listening, right? I think I do anyway. But that extra bit of like, and then what do I do, that next component, how would you guide someone with that bit?

Lara May: I think it’s. I think what I often do is putting myself in their shoes and look like I mentioned this to you earlier, that the, I honestly think a lot of the reason for my success is that I’m also a young person

myself. So I have that going for me.

recently I’ve had some young people come into the youth hub and they basically, they’re stressed, they’re exams are next week and it’s all happening. It’s go, go go. And there’s a lot of pressure they talk about that pressure.

Nick McEwan-Hall: That’s been really tricky. what about the self-care piece? What are you doing to take a step away from that? is that what’s most important right now? I think just reminding them that your life is number one. Your exams are for three weeks, Yeah, what a reminder, right? And

Lara May: as sensitive as I can,

Just being there for yourself.

Nick McEwan-Hall: It is that classic thing from that young person’s perspective where the other person’s perspective happens to be a young person in the middle of three weeks of exams, right? for a young person, it often feels like their whole life has been oriented around getting these three weeks done.

So when we come in and we say. Oh, look, you know, like it’s just three weeks and, you know, in the scheme of your life, it’s not gonna be a big deal. They’re like, in the scheme of my life, it’s been a huge deal. So, yeah, it’s that empathy bit, isn’t it? It’s like really trying to understand where the person’s coming from and as best we can try and predict what that might be like given their context.

Right? So if we say to a young person, I think logically we should be able to sit here and go, yeah, okay. Everything I know about a young person’s life, like, and how, achievement oriented, we are about, you know, you gotta do well at school and study and the future we can logically put that stuff together.

So we should be able to empathize and go, yeah, well, if I come in and say, actually look, it’s just three weeks to your life. It’s not, you know, not the biggest deal. We should be able to predict that that’s not gonna go down well, but somehow we can’t or we don’t, So that advice is really good, I think in terms of trying to really seat ourselves.

In that person’s shoes. You know, looking through their eyeballs, thinking through their brain, and trying to predict it. And if we don’t know, we just ask them what’s life like at the moment? You know, like, how’s school

Lara May: a lot of the time they have other shit going on too. Sorry, I don’t know if I can swear

Nick McEwan-Hall:

Lara May: there’s usually a parent that’s pushing them really, really hard

Nick McEwan-Hall: The world.

Lara May: There’s other things going on

and I think we need to remember that as well. they’re stressed about this, but that’s where their main focus

encouraging a moment to take a step back and think about how you can help yourself, whether that’s going for a walk with them in the sunshine for two minutes because you have to get something from your car

encouraging that movement it’s a bit sneaky, but it’s something.

Nick McEwan-Hall: it’s ninja moves, right? I like to think about the things that we think of being sneaky as like, actually this is just really savvy, clever support. Like that’s what it’s about, right? Like that’s actually what we’re trying to do. Yeah. Those little tips are great. Lara. they’re really refreshing for us to think about in terms of, how do we engage with young people in particular.

But you know, as I think about it, a lot of this stuff is so universal. It’s just like how do I support someone else? How do I talk to someone else? There’s not necessarily a bigger barrier because the person’s a young person. You know

Lara May: they’re not. aliens. It’s fine.

Nick McEwan-Hall: It’s true. Yeah. It’s really true. Yeah. And so you were saying before that, you’ve noticed that. The young folk that have gone through the Teen Mental Health First Aid program, kind of, responding differently to things or that, you know, you can notice it. Is it, is it just in terms of how they’re kind of handling some of this challenge that they face?

Or like what’s the, what’s the kind of pattern to that? what are you noticing in general terms? Like, we don’t, we don’t wanna talk about specific people and we, you know, in planning for the podcast we talked about we need to protect privacy But I’m curious how does that show up? what’s different?

Lara May: That’s a really good question, Nick.

Nick McEwan-Hall: might be hard to put your finger on, but you’ve noticed it, right?

Lara May: I have noticed it and I think what I’ve noticed the most is not the mental health support for themselves, but the way they treat their friends and what they have,

Nick McEwan-Hall: Got it.

Lara May: what they recognize in their friends and what they can do to. Help support that friend. I think that’s maybe what I’m seeing most is that connection with one another and not just being in silos and dealing with that shit on your own. Like it’s a community. We all need love and support and I think using those tools and those features, I actually saw someone carrying your book around in their bag the other

Nick McEwan-Hall: really?

Lara May: yes, love that.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Oh, that’s,

Lara May: that’s a big book.

it’s really sweet, just like them being able to use the tools in their everyday life, it’s not like textbook, it’s, oh, no, I can just have a conversation. And it doesn’t mean that you need to follow a set of rules or anything.

that’s probably what I’ve seen the most of.

Nick McEwan-Hall: And that’s so nice to hear because the focus of that program is to teach young people how to help their friends when their friends are going through things. And the kind of rub off of that is better self-regulation or better self-management and mental health stuff hopefully too. we see that with the adults that we work with.

when you go through the course, you have a better picture of how mental health works, so it makes sense that that’s gonna show up for ourselves too. But the teen program’s all about when your friend’s going through whatever, this is what you should do and this is how you should do it.

So to hear you say, yeah, I’m seeing that. It’s like, well, great. it’s awesome.

Lara May: my favorite part about the Youth Hub is that you’ve got all these different ages, but they’re all supporting each other and it’s, it’s really, it’s a really cool thing to watch like these, these older students integrating with younger students, but. might be the younger annoying brother, but they’re not in that moment they’re a friend

it’s really beautiful. It’s something I never expected from that space. So we are very fortunate and we’ve got some, as I said, some really cool kids around here

Nick McEwan-Hall: that are just so wise. That’s nice. Yeah, that’s really interesting. It’s good to see that impact happening in that way, and that it lines up with the intended outcome, when we were planning this that’s what we want. We want young people to know what to do in these situations help each other and know when to get someone else involved

they’ve got the tools and skills to kind of manage themselves and, and their friends. Or not manage them, but support them, you know, like help them out in ways that are good and meaningful. What do you think? Oh, yeah, yeah. Casual. Not super, stressful It’s just how do we talk about this stuff?

How do we talk about mental health? Is it okay to do that? yeah, it is. It’s great to do that. So often people have everything they need to do the thing we want ’em to do. The bit they’re missing is the, the tool or the model, or the way, or the rules I often think about it like 10 pin bowling.

when you first start you want those bumpers up. I know the game is to get the ball to the other end, but I need the bumpers up to help me get a better result.

Lara May: That’s a great analogy, Nick.

Nick McEwan-Hall: you like that one.

Lara May: You nailed that.

Nick McEwan-Hall: thanks. I know, I don’t wanna risk overdoing the analogy, but like, there’s people who won’t go bowling unless there’s bumpers because they’re like, I don’t think I’m gonna do very well.

I’m not gonna try, I am not gonna go. So when you give people that option to have the bumpers, it’s like, oh yeah, I’ll go and, I’ll do it. I’ll hurl that ball down the alley and we’ll go for it. But if there were no bumps, I’d never start. So,

Lara May: Absolutely.

Nick McEwan-Hall: and I guess the analogy here is for young people, they see what’s going on.

They see someone else or themselves going through whatever, and they’re Like should I or can I, or what do I do? Or is it okay if I talk to someone? So we come along, we give them the rules and the structure, and we say, this is how you do it.

It’s absolutely fine. You know, do it the right way and getting it all involved. And we tell ’em all those things and that’s the bumpers, right? And it just helps ’em to get a better

Lara May: that goes back to my piece of that. Transparency and that explanation of it’s okay, this is what’s gonna be happening in this situation. Just

like it would in a bush fire as it would in a mental health crisis is, you know, it’s all got the same breakdown. Right?

Nick McEwan-Hall: I think you’re right. That’s amazing to hear that’s the impact you’re seeing on the ground. it’s nice. we do all the surveys and the survey data tells us Yeah, they, you know, they enjoyed it. They found it useful, but it’s another thing entirely to see it showing up in that community setting, in that applied community development model.

Right. It’s like that’s the development we are shooting for, Yeah. Wow. That’s really cool. Thanks for sharing that. Okay. Well, we’ve covered so much ground. I’m kind of curious to hear, like, if you could just do one thing for your region, let’s say your LGA, let’s share the love outside of Mount Beauty, but like for your whole kind of area, that would really help young people.

What would it be? And it might be too hard, just gimme one thing, but like, what’s your wishlist? You know, the magic wand, if I could do this, I think this would make a huge impact for young people. What’s that look like from your perspective, Lara?

Lara May: for us, we don’t have a psychologist anywhere in our valley.

the most local one has recently left. we don’t have that support. we have people that are just needing it. And especially for those young people that did go through schooling during COVID, they’re not doing telehealth.

No,

an option.

So it’s, that is something that I would wave my wand and have more psychs locally.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah,

Lara May: Obviously at an affordable price because

yeah, is expensive.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Well, we did say the magic wand, right? So the magic wands out. We’re

Lara May: that everywhere.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah. without belittling it, I think it makes a lot of sense because if your folks in your region are needing professional supports, and COVID has done the dirty on the whole Zoom thing, like everyone’s just zoomed out.

Lara May: I think a lot of people external would say Telehealth. That’s the answer. But it’s kind of, it kind of is, but it’s really not. And I think that’s the biggest difference. You know, you always compare metro and regional, but what about regional and rural? And recognizing that these regional cities, though it’s limited, they do have those supports around them. You can walk down the main street and you can see Headspace,

but we are an hour away

and we don’t have any transport and we don’t have these options.

So that’s so important for me to have more support agencies around here.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Makes

Lara May: It’s a dream.

Nick McEwan-Hall: and maybe for the listener, we should place, where you’re based. Alpine Shire is three hours drive from, Melbourne. That’s the way I drive anyway,

then, from where you are to, Wangaratta or Abe Wodonga is probably, you know,

Lara May: So I’m

where you are in the. hour after wedding,

so it’s tricky, especially for our young people. Yeah.

We don’t have regular transport into Aubrey Wodonga, but you can catch a taxi over to Bright to then jump on a V line bus to get to Wang, to then catch a train to Melbourne.

it’s part of my advocacy plan at the moment to, advocate for better transport around here.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah.

Lara May: we’re getting there.

Nick McEwan-Hall: it’s amazing. It makes so much sense. Yeah. I, and I think people don’t necessarily understand that distance challenge that that happens in, and you don’t have to go too far outta Melbourne to hit it. Right? Like, we really don’t. So when you’ve got towns like, Mount Beauty and Myrtleford, maybe less so.

Myrtleford is a bit larger. We’ve got bright bright’s, fairly large, but limited as well, and seasonal. you’ve got all these sorts of challenges that exist and people, you know, walk down the street in Brighton, you go, oh, there’s two doctors surgeries. Like, this must be fine. but yeah, not really,

Lara May: you gotta wait a week to get in.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah. and if you’re a young person who doesn’t drive, you’re reliant on somebody else all of the layers make so much sense. I think it’s interesting for people to hear that, you know, stories, examples of that because it allows people to empathize

if we’re talking to a young person in a regional setting, let’s bring all of that to whatever we’re talking about, to say, yeah, well maybe the solution is easy, quote unquote, in a metro area, but. So like, maybe even impossible in a different setting, if we are not offering the right kind of thinking and advice to that young person, it’s just not gonna work.

if someone is potentially looking, let’s even just go away from the mental health aspect. And if someone needs to get to Melbourne, knowing how to do that from here is an

Lara May: insider hack. Like, it’s not easy to find that

information.

So, just sharing that knowledge and sharing that information is so important around here.

No, it makes so much sense. So we’ve covered so much ground in our chat. It’s been amazing and so nice in so many ways. I guess as we think about wrapping up, I wanna throw the microphone over to you the point of the podcast is to amplify good work that’s happening or amplify messages from people doing good work.

Nick McEwan-Hall: And I’m curious, is there something that you wanna get out there for the listener to listen to? this is that part in the podcast where you can talk about what you want from the world, either for your community or for your young people or whatever it is.

Is there something that comes to mind?

Lara May: I think, there’s so many.

Nick McEwan-Hall: List them out.

Lara May: I think we need to give young people the credit they deserve and open that space for them to talk and be heard and listened.

That’s probably my number one, which

seems like a simple one, but it’s not.

Nick McEwan-Hall: No, no, it’s not.

Lara May: Only other one would be more money for the youth sector.

the sustainability of the work that we do around here, it’s not sustainable

there’s no funding and unless, the work is recognized more than it is, it’s unfortunate. there’s just consistently rotating youth workers. how can any young people have that stability of knowing who to turn to?

Nick McEwan-Hall: Hmm.

so Yeah. it makes total sense. Nice. I think those things will go a long way to Achieving some of the outcomes we’ve talked about today and that we’re aspiring for. That makes a lot of sense.

Lara May: Thank you so much for having me. I could talk to you. For days, so…

Nick McEwan-Hall: Well, it’s been a real pleasure. It’s been a really, amazing conversation. Thank you so much. I think the people that listen to it will learn so much about that regional context and young people and their mental health

the listener will get a lot out of listening to what you got to say, Lara.

Lara May: thank you and what an awesome platform. Please keep it up and let me know how I can get in on it too.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah, we’ve got a few little things bubbling away in the background, you guys who’ve done my programs are always in the inner circle on that stuff, so you’ll be the first to hear about it. Thanks Lara, for joining us today. It’s been a real pleasure.

And, let’s stay in touch of course and look after yourself.

Lara May: Thanks.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Say hello to Mount Bogong

Lara May: absolutely.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Take care, Lara.

Lara May: Bye.

Um, and you know, I think what what’s interesting is I, I started out as a management consultant and my career has come full circle. Um, so, so what I, what I tend to focus on in my work is, um, helping leaders become better coaches. Uh, for example, also how to, how to establish trust and psychological safety in their team.

So I’m, you know, I’m sure we’ll, we’ll get into the detail of that as we go. Um, I’m based in Melbourne. Um, I live in the inner southeast with my partner, got three independent, uh, adult, I, I dunno what the word is, but I’ve kind of children, um, and, and recently, uh, uh, a grandson as well. So yeah, that’s, that’s a little bit about

Nick McEwan-Hall: Amazing. Amazing. Yeah. Recently a grandad. That’s That’s exciting. That’s cool.

Mike Williamson: It is cool. It’s, it’s a bit kind of confronting as well. Kind of know. The last time I looked at my watch, I was still in my, my forties nick, you know, so, uh, it’s come, it’s just come around. It, it’s a wonderful thing though. It really is.

Nick McEwan-Hall: So nice, so nice. I, um, thought we might just jump straight into it and I know we’ve sort of had our notes backwards and forwards and one of the things that really stood out to me was you had a big list of things that, um, have that you said were the biggest kind of impacts in your life, and there were different dimensions professionally, personally, you know, you mentioned your partner there as well in your intro as

well.

Take us through, you know, what are some of those memorable things for you? What are those impactful things that have happened for you?

Mike Williamson: Yeah. I, I love this question. I think it is quite a hard one in some ways, but, um, when I think about. Influence or impact on me professionally, there is one huge standout, and that’s someone I worked with, um, a, a a couple of decades ago who was a, an amazing leader of an organization. He, he was a mentor to me.

Um, and, you know, I suppose what, what he, he opened the windows to me around leadership and, and how you can, you can really drive excellence and results in a, in a team, but you can, you can do that and still maintain great relationships. And in fact, you know, the two, the two got together. So he was a, a real mentor.

Um, I think, yeah, you know, I’m still in touch with him actually. And, and that, I think, I think that’s where the seed for me was sign of, you know, if you want to call it a fascination with leadership. Um,

so yeah, professionally, that, that is an absolute standout. Mm-hmm.

Nick McEwan-Hall: yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Like I, I talked to so many people you know about how they. Came to do what they do, and a lot of people, myself included, can kind of look backwards and look at a situation or a person and go, that person, you know,

in that situation, in that context, really had a big impact on me.

I think everyone’s got at least one of those stories along the way, at least to one, I reckon. Yeah.

Mike Williamson: Absolutely. And, you know, I think that’s, that, that kind of drives my work when I think about when you’re in the workplace, if you have a leader who is that influential in a very positive way that that has so many, you know, knock on benefits to, to people that they lead. Um, so yeah, that was, that was, you know, that was a, maybe a, a junction in my life meeting, meeting that person and being mentored by them.

Um,

Nick McEwan-Hall: Amazing.

Mike Williamson: I, I think the other thing to mention here though is that sometimes you, you in the workplace as well still, we, we come across people who perhaps are the opposite to that. And, they’re not, they’re not very pleasant and they lead a toxic environment and they teach us an awful lot as well. They teach us how not to do it.

Right. Um, and there’s some dangers in that, which we might, we might get to. Um

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah, yeah. It’s true though, isn’t it? Like the, it is the two sides of the same coin, right? It’s like, well, this is what I like and what’s been impactful on me in, I guess what we could say is a positive way. And then, yeah, here are the impacts that have, that have, that I’ve had on me

in a negative kind of way.

Like things I didn’t like, things I didn’t enjoy, or that might’ve

been hurtful, or whatever it might be. Yeah.

Mike Williamson: And that makes me think of something that I, I, I remember probably 10, 15 years ago doing some, uh, professional development and personal development, um, with a, with a coach who said, you know, when you’re a leader, you, you will leave an emotional wake, whatever, whether you like it or not. Yeah. It’s, it’s really, it really kind of, um, resonated with me.

And so you need to get intentional about what impact you have. Um,

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah.

Mike Williamson: so that’s, that’s really interesting. I think that that whole era about impact and intentionality, um, you know,

and, and the, the other side of things, you know, personally, I think. I, I, my parents, I came, I, I grew up in a very loving environment.

Um, I don’t, I don’t think my parents had any intentionality at all. I don’t think it, in those days, many people had the knowledge about it. Right? But, you know, the, the most important thing was there was care, um, and challenge actually, you know, um,

the idea that I think that my dad saying, you know, hard work brings you luck, which I think is true, but you kind of have to fight that work ethic thing sometimes as well to get the balance right.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah. And as you’re saying that, like it makes me think about. You know, I’ve got this very visual picture in my head of like a big cruise ship, like cruising through the open ocean with that or wake that in like behind it. And so impactful. And that’s happening, like you said, regardless of what we’re intending, that kind of wake is happening and that intention versus impact questions really interesting too.

And it’s something I talk a lot about in mental health first aid training because people will say, well, I I had good intentions. Yeah, I, I wanted to help, but maybe the way I didn’t, maybe the way I did it really had a impact that wasn’t quite what I wanted. So this kind of intention and impact, this separate things that kind of work together.

And I, I kind of feel like you want both of them in your sites to kind of really do things well. And they should align a little bit if you can make that. But it’s such a visual way to think about that, that emotional wake. Yeah, it’s really

Mike Williamson: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, really happy to, uh, whether we do that now or a bit later on in the pod, you know, talk about, um, some of those, I, I call them, you know, foundational principles to leadership that will make that, that weight a positive one.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah, well let’s talk about it. ’cause your work is in that leadership space. You

know, your work is in that sort of

leadership coaching and development kind of space. So yeah, why don’t we talk about it? It’ll give people a good insight into the work that you do and Yeah. How you do it, which I think is really interesting for people too.

So,

yeah, tell me, tell me more. What’s on your mind when you, when we think about this whole piece?

Mike Williamson: So I, I think, uh, a number of years ago, Google did their research, uh, about what makes the perfect team. I, I don’t believe there is any such team. Um, there’s been a couple of sports teams like the US 1992 Dream Team, the basketball team. They were, seemed to be the perfect team, but I think in the workplace, you know, um, there isn’t any, any such thing.

But Google did their research, they call it Project Aristotle. Um, and it was, it was about the same time that Amy Edmondson, who’s a, a world or Harvard business professor, um, and now work in psychological safety. What, what Google did is they, they investigated hundreds of their teams. Thousands of employees.

And, and the result really surprised them. They thought it was gonna be about the demographics of the team and, and the technical capability in the teams. And what they found was the common denominator in the high performing teams was there was psychological safety in the teams. So people,

people felt safe.

Uh, it’s not, it’s not, I mean, defining what psychological safety is not is a good thing to do. And it’s not, you can do whatever you like. It’s not, we don’t have accountability. Um, what it’s about is people feeling safe to raise issues or concerns or to provide feedback up without any fear of repercussions.

And.

That was really surprising for Google. So I do a fair bit of work around that within teams, um, whether it’s, uh, one-on-one leadership coaching or, um, you know, co-design workshops with a particular team. So yeah, there, there’s, there’s so much in that, but I think, you know, there’s more and more evidence that that is a absolute truth.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah. And it makes so much sense. Doesn’t it really? Like when we think about it, it makes so much sense,

that kind of idea that when people are being vulnerable, when, you know,

giving feedback or making a comment that. Maybe they don’t know how it’s gonna be taken. Right. Or there’s a fear that it might be taken the wrong way or there’s a repercussion or some kind.

But to the way I think about, it’s like when people are vulnerable, we want them to not only be able to be vulnerable, but if they want to, I wanna reward them for that. You know? I want them to feel a positive by being vulnerable with me. Right? So it’s sort of like that. It’s the whole thing. It’s the whole piece just wrapped up in a nice little, like nice little thing.

I guess where I sometimes get struggles with this stuff is that there’s an element of subjectivity to it. You know? So how do I know when somebody is feeling safe? You know, that kind of thing. But I think there’s some universal truths to how we can set this up, which I’m sure you’ve, you’ve worked on in your work.

Yeah.

Mike Williamson: Yeah, I like that phrase, Nick, universal truth. Um, and I, I think, you know, one of the things you can do, and Amy Edmondson, you know, uh, makes her work freely available is you can, you can go and measure the level of psychological safety in your team or your organization. Now, just by doing that and asking people’s input, input is, is gonna improve that area.

And so you could, you can measure it and, and then you can work out what. Perhaps you as a team or an organization need to do to make it better. Um, and it’s gotta be, it’s gotta come from, uh, the leadership level, the top level to, uh, make that decision. Um, but I think, you know, if you’ve, if you’ve got that, if you’ve got the psych safety, if you’ve got the trust of your people, it, it doesn’t mean that you don’t confront poor performance or inappropriate behavior, but it, it does tie in with the whole area of, of how to get and how to give feedback.

And I always say, uh, if, if you’re gonna do anything as a leader, uh, in the feedback space, make sure the first bit is, is to ask for it. And, and, um, I suppose the other principle in, in all of that is never, never, ever shoot the messenger. If you get, if you get bad news. Just say thank you. Whether that bad news is about results or whether it’s about you.

Just just say thanks. Um, so yeah, it, it is a, it’s a really, I, I think the whole, the whole area is very interesting and, you know, more and more neuroscience evidence is coming, coming through around this.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah, it’s, it’s a fascinating sort of space, isn’t it? I think people, people might understand what it is from their own perspective, you know, like their own kind of experience of feeling safe, like psychologically safe, and, and it can be hard to kind of put that into words, I think, to kind of document it or to articulate it sometimes.

So I think there’s a decent amount of

storytelling that kind of has to happen here as well. Like people need

to say, this is what makes me feel safe. This is what makes me not feel safe at all.

And everything on in between, right? Between all those kind of, um,

yeah, between those two ends of that spectrum.

Mike Williamson: Yeah. And I think that that has to start with a leader. Um, I often use that there’s, I’ve got a framework of, of six questions that a leader can ask to promote psychological safety. And one of those might be something like, what, what’s one thing I do that gets in the way of you being successful?

And it’s really showing openness to that feedback. Um, so that, that’s,

for me, that’s one of the key areas. I mean, I also help leaders become better at being a coach. Um, not to say that coaching is always the, the best, you know, sometimes you’ve gotta be more forceful as a leader, but if, if you’re gonna have a default.

Being a good coach is, is a great one. And you, you, you know, you, you know that you, you are, you’ve worked in that space as well. Um, so I, when I work with an organization, I, I find, you know, that there, there’s less, um, efficacy. If, if I come in and go, we’re gonna, we’re gonna do, we’re gonna cover these things.

I, I, I tend to go in and listen to what is happening in the organization or the team, and then we’ll, we’ll co-design, um, around, around certain frameworks.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Nice.

Yeah.

it’s it’s interesting. I, I feel like, and it taps into something you, you, you and I talked about in our kind of pre podcast kind of discussions.

It it’s about those kind of connecting leaders, as you put that, as you put it, like connecting

leaders, middle, middle managers, people might kind of know these people as, and I find that a lot of the time people in those roles, because they have that pressure from above and that pressure from below, it can be a really difficult place to be vulnerable, right?

To be kind of vulnerable with people. ’cause you’ve got all these different kind of stakeholders and. And at the same time, we have such big expectations for this group of people in our businesses and in our workplaces. Talk me through, I know you’re passionate about this kind of wording around this stuff, so talk me through, you know, middle managers, connecting leaders, that whole piece.

Because I think if we understand a bit more about the differences in how we think about those folks, then we’re gonna do a better job at supporting them from a psychological safety point of view.

Mike Williamson: Yeah, absolutely. Um, okay, well you’ve, you’ve hit on the topic here, Nick. You know that you’re gonna get me started on this, I think,

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yep. Go for it. Yeah, yeah. So look, calling, calling these people middle managers is just the tip of the iceberg for me. I mean, we talk about aspiring leaders. We talk about senior leaders, executive leaders, and then we go, you are middle managers, right?

Mike Williamson: You’re not even leaders, you’re managers. And so,

um, I, I love the term connecting leaders for this group. ’cause they connect the senior with the frontline, they connect strategy with operations and they are leaders. I mean, you know, you don’t have to have a leader in your title to be a leader of course.

But, um,

the thing that really, um, I dunno whether disturb is too strong a phrase, right? But I know that in the corporate world, I know people in the corporate world who experience this in a not-for-profit in the local government area, maybe not quite so much, but we, we, we say to someone, you are really good at your role.

I love what you do technically, and I’m gonna, we’re gonna promote you to lead the team, but we’re not going to give you any, any training or support. It’s extraordinary that we do that, that we expect someone, because for me, what it does, and as I say, I can get a little bit, uh, strident on this one. Um, but I do feel very passionate about it because if you let someone go into a team leadership role and they haven’t got the support or training, have done none of the foundational principles, it will affect their mental health.

They’ll be really stressed if they haven’t been given any, any, um, guidance. Um, now I’m not saying it happens all the time, but it does still happen now. You know, we’re talking about emotional wake. How does that affect the people that they’re leading when they haven’t had any training? So,

so.

Nick McEwan-Hall: question.

Mike Williamson: You know, um, yeah, I mean, I, I’ll, I will pause there because, you know, I can go on and on about this one, but it, it, it is a, it is a really important, you know, we think about future leaders as well, um, and the future of organizations.

We’ve gotta, we’ve gotta, um,

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah. It, it’s, it is interesting. I mean, I, that’s very much my story as

Mike Williamson: You know, I was, I was gardening early in my career, how, you know, we,

Nick McEwan-Hall: Oh, have I got you still there? Are you connected? Might have lost you. Oh no. There you go.

Mike Williamson: Hey, we’re back, back in the room. Yeah. When I was gardening yesterday, I was thinking about this. You know, we, we, you have to garden regularly. You have to clean, you have to prune, you have to water. And in the same way, we need to, we need to nurture people. Uh, that’s not to say we

Nick McEwan-Hall: it’s so

Mike Williamson: what they want.

Mm-hmm.

Nick McEwan-Hall: It’s so true. I, I’m thinking about one of my first real jobs, you know, when I first moved to Melbourne and decided I wanted to work in adult education and it was a not-for-profit. And, you know, the leader there left, the coordinator left, and they literally kind of walked, looked around and went and said, who’s good at their job? And they said, oh, Nick, you are good at what you do. This is literally the conversation we had. They said, Nick, you’re really good at what you do. Why don’t you be the coordinator? And I was like, great. Like as a young

kind of 22-year-old, I was like. Fantastic. I’m gonna be a coordinator. Like that’s amazing.

And

that emotional wake, you know, that idea that you’ve kind of planted in my, in my head now, when I look back at some of the challenges I had leading that team, it was the, it was the emotional wake I was leaving behind. I felt great. I thought I was doing a fantastic job. My leader at the time was kind of going, yep, you’re doing all the things we need you to do.

Like it’s going really well, we trust you. All of that sort of stuff. So from the top I’m getting, it’s all good, you know, messages and from the bottom I was getting, there was lots of challenges there. There were lots of issues

and. I, a lot of it has to have been to do with my skillset at the time. And that ability also, not just the skillset in terms of practical, like can I do the work, but also the emotional skillset there as well to kind of go, you know what, like I don’t, I don’t think I’ve got the right tools, or I think I’m stuffing this up, or whatever it

1. I just di it wasn’t that I wasn’t psychologically safe, it was that I didn’t have the tools to even know that that was what was going on, you know? And there was no leadership training. It was literally accidental leadership. I remember doing a conference presentation about accidental leadership in the sector that I worked in for a long time,

and it was that story and it’s so common

and, and you know, that question you, you posed before about it’s gotta be bad for our mental health. I think there was definitely parts of that job that really challenged me in terms of like, make me feel stressed, but because I wasn’t so aware, I didn’t have the impact. Right? So.

It’s this kind of awareness. The more we know, the more we can do that kind of piece. It’s really interesting. But that wake idea, I can, I can, I have things coming to my memory now about conversations I had that I can still remember. That was definitely because of the emotional wake that I was leaving behind

as a leader, as a manager in that place.

Mike Williamson: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, what you’ve made me think about there is the fact that, or the idea that, um, it is gotta be driven from top level of leadership. But you know, what, what are we trying to do? Are we just, after getting things done, are we just after getting the results. Surely we wanna help people grow and develop, and I think that’s what the best leaders do.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Mm.

Mike Williamson: and, and you, you need to be given guidance on how to do that. Um, you know, I,

I’ve, you know, I talk about this all the time, that, you know, how, how you define leadership, the words you use around that are really important. And I, I, I, I have simplified it over the years into, you know, great leadership is about getting results through other people, but helping those people develop along the way.

And you’ve gotta do both.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, if we’re gonna develop, if we’re gonna achieve results through other people, we need to make sure that those other people have got the skills so they can get the result.

Mike Williamson: absolutely. Absolutely.

Nick McEwan-Hall: It makes so much sense. You must have seen so many examples of this where it hasn’t been working the way that we kind of are talking about it. Um, what do you think the barriers are for people that are in that situation? They’re stuck as leaders or managers or, you know, coordinators or whatever kind of words we’re putting on it. What do you think the barriers are for people who are in that situation who might

want to change it or don’t know that they need to change it? Like from your perspective working with them, what do you reckon the kind of key barriers, or maybe not barriers, but what are the things that you’d focus on with that person to help them see through it?

Mike Williamson: Yeah, it’s a great question, Nick. I, I love the question. I think for me, uh, it is about kind of individual awareness, self-awareness, and it’s also about the social awareness within the organization. Um, and for someone to change and grow and develop, sometimes you’ve gotta, it’s about. Stopping. It’s about what you stop doing.

Um,

so when, when we talk about coaching, we, uh, the leader as a coach, sometimes what the leader has to do is you’ve gotta stop giving advice. You’ve gotta stop telling.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Hmm.

Mike Williamson: You need to ask questions. The best leaders ask great questions. They don’t have all the answers, and they recognize that. Um, so again, I can, I can, I can rattle on for a while on this one, but I think, I think self-awareness, and I think if you can give people tools for, to become a reflective leader and give them some tools.

I mean, so for example, I, I, I do, you know, we, we talked before about kind of self care and, you know, I think sometimes doing some journaling and some reflection, I, I, I recommend that all leaders do it, at least, you know, maybe once a fortnight. Ideally once a week, you know what’s gone well. What hasn’t gone well, why not?

Um, so building that kind of self-awareness muscle is really, really important. Um, so yeah, that there are barriers, some, you know, um, and you’ve gotta have to, to, to grow as a connecting leader, you’ve gotta have someone who’s your manager, who’s willing to invest in you and who has belief in you. Um, so it’s about, again, it’s about relationship and it’s, it’s about that kind of really important personal connection to,

Nick McEwan-Hall: Hmm. And having that external person, I think like as a, in your role as a coach, to have someone

sitting completely thorough, thoroughly outside the situation, kind of objectively offering insights and observations and in that style of a coach sort of asking some questions about that and letting people come to that position as they are able to, you know, I think yeah, with that external support, and we see this the same with when we’re talking about mental health and supporting

people with their mental health. Often they need an external person because for whatever they’re going through, they cannot do it themselves. You right. It’s, it’s, it’s an inability and it’s not a. It’s not a competency based inability, it’s a, they don’t have the capacity, they’re unable to, it’s not a question of can they count, they should, they shouldn’t.

They, it’s just like, they can’t, you know, it’s

like, it’s like saying, well, that chair, I could, you know, the chair I’m looking at, I can wish for, you know, to the end of the day that it turns into a table, but it can’t. So it’s

sort of like, well, if I sit there and I keep going, oh, as soon as that chair turns into a table, everything be fine.

Mike Williamson: Yeah.

Nick McEwan-Hall: You

Mike Williamson: Yeah.

Nick McEwan-Hall: really doing the right thing. Yeah.

Mike Williamson: Yeah. And I think maybe what, what, what that suggests to me while you’re talking there is, you know, about helping people with their mindset. And when I’m doing one-on-one coaching, whether that’s at a senior level or, or you know, more, you know, in the connecting leader space or sometimes even with aspiring leaders, it’s really, it’s quite often that people are at a crossroads and they, they want to move up a level or they want, they want to go and do something differently.

And, um, that, that sometimes just, all it is, is someone in your corner to go, you can do this because you know, our own self talk and you know, and in mental health, I know you sure talk about this, this kind of areas is so important. Um, that’s not to say just by believing you can do it. But, but it’s, um, it’s a really important first step.

And the other, the other thing I find in one-on-one coaching, particularly at the senior level, is quite often, uh, you know, I’ll be working with someone that comes to coaching because there’s, there’s a real pressure. And, and it might just be, you know, I, I was doing some work with a, um, leader a couple of months, but who, he just wanted to leave the office before seven, three days a week.

And so that, that was, that was the struggle. And, and that’s definitely, um, you know, that’s around that, that’s definitely got a mental health aspect to it as well. Um, and then, and then sometimes it’s, well quite often in the coaching one-on-one space, it’s about interpersonal challenges at work. Um, so that requires.

You know, self-reflection, a bit of work, and once leaders can come to that realization that it’s perhaps about what they do and the effect and impact they’re having, that’s when you can get, you know, those light bulb moments and if you like a, a bit of a step change.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah, it’s such a, such an interesting space to work with people in because I feel like. Part of what we’re asking as a coach for that person to do is to be that vulnerable piece to say, well, I don’t know, or, I’m not sure, or

maybe I don’t have the skills. And so, you know, if they’re not feeling that kind of safety in that conversation, then it can really hard for them, for us as coaches, if we’re working in that coach forward kinda way, that it can be really tricky to do that.

But again, I guess it goes back to the, the basics doesn’t, it’s about, well, we spend time creating those relationships and we spend time deepening the

rapport and the connection so that we can kind of do those things. It’s a bit of a safety net for those challenging conversations.

Mike Williamson: Most definitely, uh, couldn’t agree more, Nick. And I think that that one about yeah, you have that connection, the trust, the psych safety, uh, because, you know, the best leaders will, I think confronts not the right word, but they will challenge, and if they see someone who,

Nick McEwan-Hall: Hmm. who is not pulling their weight or they, they, they think they’ve got even greater potential, then, you know, it’s kind of holding the mirror up actually quite often.

Mike Williamson: And whether, whether you’re a,

a leadership coach or whether you are their, their, their manager in the workplace, I think it’s really important to, to do that when you need to. So that underpinning piece around Yeah, trust is, and, and connection is so important.

Nick McEwan-Hall: I think the Hold the mirror up. Kind of analogy is a really nice one because one of the things that I kind of focus on when I’m working with people to support their people, you know, from a mental health perspective, is talking about reality or just kind of objective reality. Like what’s happening, you know, without the judgment.

So it’s just like, well, here’s the

facts. Here are the, here are the factual things of what’s going on, and really working hard to strip away any of the judgment about this is good or this is bad, or this should be more of this, or less of this. And the mirror just reflects what’s there, right? It just kind of reflects what’s there without the judgment.

It’s like, well, if you see something in that mirror that you don’t like, it’s not the mirror. It’s the fact that

there’s something there that we don’t like, or maybe something we love that we wanna do more of, right? So

this reality piece of being objective can be so hard when you are in it, like you’re in, in the storm.

It can be so difficult. So again, to have that outside kind of assistance with, that’s really nice.

Mike Williamson: Yeah, absolutely agree. Yeah.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah. Interesting. Um, there must be so many

other kind of, um, other ways that mental health kind of intercepts in, in your, in your kind of work. How do you see mental health kind of popping up as themes when you’re working with, with individuals or organizations? Like how does it kind of show up most of all, I guess, in the work that you do?

Mike Williamson: Oh yeah. Um, I, I think in a, a lot of my work, not, not all of it, Nick, but a lot of it is in the for purpose sector and

Nick McEwan-Hall: Hmm.

Mike Williamson: quite often I often think some of the leaders you, you, you meet and, and come across and work within the sector. My word what, what amazing things they would do if they had the funding.

Okay.

Nick McEwan-Hall: yeah. Yeah. you know, if they had the same funding as some of the corporates, wow. What, what a, what a what change? We could see. Um, but they’re often in, you know, um, underfunded environments. And so there, there’s a degree of stress around that. I think, um, you know, I was working, uh, with an organization that, that, that does works in the overseas development space and overseas aid and, um,

Hmm. you know, Trump’s policies have impacted on them.

Mike Williamson: So this is kind of out of control sense for them, um, about the external environment. Uh, so, so that, that kind of stress part of it is, uh, you know, that’s, that’s quite prevalent I think. Um, let go to the other, the other kind of, uh, side of the coin. When you, when you see. Leaders get it, and they, they’re self-aware and they get the piece about psych safety and relationships and connection.

You can, you can almost smell it in the room, right? When you’re with a group, you can, you can see it, you can it, you know, taste it. Um, you can smell it, it, it’s really, really evident. And that’s,

Nick McEwan-Hall: Um.

Mike Williamson: that’s just a great thing to see because what you’re getting is it’s kind of wonderful, uh, combination of great results, great connection amongst the team.

Um, real challenge as well from the leadership. And then you’ve got, uh, uh, divided by, if you want the equation, wellbeing, you know, they, they’re getting, they’re getting all of that. And that’s down to the way. That the leaders are, are leading the group. So in terms of positive mental health, I, I love seeing that.

I love seeing that. And it is, it’s achievable, right? It’s about intentionality.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah, definitely. I think with some of the principles we’ve been talking about, fundamental to that achievability, right? Like to kind of go, well, if we just kind of bake these things in as skills and practices and ways of working, then the payoff is that hopefully the positive kind of aspect of that mental health of that team or the kind of wellbeing of that team. Yeah. It comes to, comes to play and it is such a nice place to be when you’re there, right? Like as you say, when you’re

walking to a room and or you meet someone and you can just kind of feel it like it’s a really nice thing. Yeah. Like the texture of it almost. It’s like, Ooh, yeah, this feels good.

Mike Williamson: Textures there. I love that. Yeah. I love that. And, and I think, you know, um. If you’re talking about for pro for-profit organizations, this is fantastic for the bottom line, you know, because if you haven’t got those

foundational principles, people will leave. Your retention is, is, is going south, people aren’t engaged.

So yeah, it makes a lot of business sense as well. No doubt about it.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Reminds. Yeah. Oh, you’re absolutely right. I mean, it reminds me, or it kind of brings up into my mind that, that question of values as well, like our

personal values, organizational values, and where there’s alignment there, then, you know, there’s less friction kind of thing. And I, I find for our folks that I work with in not-for-profits, there’s often a very strong values alignment between what they like and what they want to do and how they wanna walk through the world and the kind of work that they do.

It’s, it’s quite often that I’ll meet someone in a not-for-profit and I’ll say, how long have you been working here? And they go, oh, you know, 15 years, like a

long time. Because there is that kind of values alignment as well. And I think if, if there is that values alignment, then that’s a positive thing in that step of the wellbeing, but it’s so fragile. Because not-for-profits kind of also have these realistic challenges like funding and resources and all things. So it’s a really difficult space for people to be in in a long term without feeling some of that pressure or

that stress or that kind of impact on wellbeing, I think. But it’s such a protective factor at the same time.

Mike Williamson: Yeah, definitely, definitely. So I think, uh, you know, my understanding is that, um, the, whether they’re laws or regulations, Nick in Victoria, by the end of the calendar year, will come in line with other states and territories around psychosocial hazards in the workplace, treating

those hazards the same as any physical hazards.

And it’s about time. Um, but that’s, that’s gonna be something organizations really need to have a look at. And I don’t, I don’t think it’s. It’s not necessarily hard to do, it just requires, you know, um, leadership, uh, commitment to, to make that, to make that

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah.

Mike Williamson: which kind of makes me think about what, what do you do about people who aren’t leading the right way and who are creating toxic environments?

And it’s really important that the most senior people in the organization don’t accept that. Um, and that’s gonna become increasingly important.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah. I agree. I think it’s, it’s interesting this kind of legislative landscape that’s changing because

in a lot of ways, I think, you know, as, as companies and things, we always had that obligation to make sure this was a safe workplace and now it’s gonna be super codified and kind of go there it is.

Right. So I keep on saying to people, hopefully like we’re investing our time and money and effort and energy into this from a prevention perspective, um, rather than coming at it after something happened. And I think unfortunately, probably. For some organizations, it’s gonna be a little bit of like, something’s gonna have to happen, unfortunately, before we see that effort, before we see the, the input of resources into kind of developing that, that sort of muscle, which I think is really unfortunate.

But that’s, that’s kind of how it is. But the smart organizations have had some of this stuff in place for a long time because they’ve seen the value of it. But the smart organizations are ahead of that, of that curve that’s coming, which is to say,

well, it’s gonna be legislated at some point, you know, and underneath all of that, we can talk about legislation, we can talk about companies, we can talk about blah, blah, blah. But underneath that are the human beings in those organizations. And some of ’em are struggling, some of ’em are suffering, including some of our leaders who are, who are, you know, what we would perceive as being really challenging, really toxic, you know, it’s like, well, what’s going on for them?

That, that’s kind of making them that way.

Right? That’s one of the first things that goes through my head not to. Okay. The behaviors or anything like that, but just kind of go, well, yeah, you’re in a context, you’re a leader in a context. What’s happening for you that’s making you behave in these ways?

Mike Williamson: Yeah. And you know, I think, um, that that’s why, you know, the, these, uh, the connecting leaders that they’re, they’re the senior leaders of the future. So we’ve, you know, we, we we’re kind of, it’s really important to give them the skills they need, um, for, for the longer term. Yeah.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah. It’s, it’s funny, I, um, I was talking to someone last week and they said, oh, they asked me, they said, oh, you know what, what are the, what are the challenges with getting people to do mental health first aid training as one sort of way to address some of this stuff? And I gave the, the analogy, I won’t quite get it right today, I don’t think, but I said, I sort of said to ’em, it’s kind of like saying to someone. Who, you know, let’s say your operator, you operate a saw mill, you know, and you’ve got massive saws and things, and you say, well, you know, yeah, that’s a really dangerous saw there. But we don’t really train people. ’cause saws are sharp and some people will probably lose their limbs. Yeah. You know?

Okay. And people should, people should know that SOS are sharp and people should know that they shouldn’t put their fingers on it.

And

you know, they should know all these things. It’s like, well there’s lots of assumptions there. But if we think about that from a mental health perspective, what we know about that stuff is people do not know that, that things are challenging. People do not know how things work. They do not know how mental illness works.

They do not know how our mental health works. So this psych safety piece I see as a bit of a, like it’s a structural thing, which I think will allow people to kind of go, I don’t know that, you

know, I don’t know that I need to know that. I’d like to know. That’s like an enabling force, I think for some people.

But I think it’s gonna be really hard for others.

Mike Williamson: Yeah, absolutely. I agree. Yeah, and I think, you know, that there’s few, few good things that came out of the, the Global Pandemic, but I think awareness about mental health and, um, the importance of connection and relationship were, were a couple of them. But, you know, when we’re talking about mental health, one of the things I wanted to mention was kind of non workplace, um, stuff around mental health.

I, I, um, think we spoke about this before briefly, but I, I think men’s mental health is, uh, all mental health is important, right? But I think men’s

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Williamson: is particularly, um, it has been problematic in this country. If you look at the. The male suicide rate. It’s, it’s unbelievable, isn’t it? Um, so I, you know, I, I attend a, uh, a men’s book club, monthly book club.

It’s called Tough Guy Book Club. Um, so that, that’s very tongue in cheek and ironic, uh, name, but it, it’s an amazing thing and how it’s evolved. It started in Fitzroy probably, I think 10, 12 years ago. Just a couple of people who started it and it’s now there are chapters of the book Club of Tough Guy Book Club right across the country.

There are hundreds. Um, it’s over in nz,

it’s in the us it’s in the uk. It’s quite phenomenal. And, you know, um, yeah, men who who read books were tough, you know, kind of, it, it’s, it’s very, very funny like that. But, you know, the, the mission of of, of the organization, ’cause it is a. Registered charity, um, get some mental health funding is to help men to read more, um, and talk more and connect more.

And that’s just a brilliant thing because a lot of that connection happens beyond the monthly book club and the book. The books we read, the books we read are, are really bring up. Um, some, you know, they’re carefully chosen. Um, some aren’t very popular, but, uh, you know, they bring up some really important topics.

Um, so amazing what the organization’s done. There’s two, there’s two great rules as well for book club. Uh, one is that you

Nick McEwan-Hall: her I was gonna ask you what the rules are.

Mike Williamson: yeah. Two rules. Um, one is you, you don’t talk about work, which, which kind of is, which is great. You don’t, what do you do for a living? You don’t, you don’t have that conversation. And I’ve been, I’ve been attending this, this for three years and there’s people that I’ve no idea what they do. For work. Um, and the other rule is, is um, no dickhead and, and that, and that’s a really good rule too.

Yeah. So that’s, that’s happening in communities, you know, all over Australia. And that’s, that’s only a good thing.

Nick McEwan-Hall: and it’s such an interesting model because it’s so simple. It’s like get people, get, keep people together around a common activity. Put some basic structure around it and let the rest happen. And I think you can so easily replicate those things in workplaces, you know, so easily. And it may not be a book club, but, but something else in, its in its place.

You know, let’s do, you know, people cringe about the, the lunch, you know, the team lunch and stuff, but actually kind of having places and spaces in, I’m thinking in terms of time in the week, right? Space in my week to

actually just talk to people about stuff, you know, is really nice. And it’s like, this morning I’m, I’m here at our shared office space and I was here last week and the guy out there was at the front desk, he was talking about his footy tipping and footage tipping is not, I have no idea about footy tipping, right?

I’ve got

no idea. But we had this conversation about it. Then I saw him again this morning, he was making my coffee and I said, oh, how’s your footy chip going? And he’s like, oh, it’s going really well. Like it’s going good. Like, and it’s just. To be really honest, like footy tipping is not really my jam at all.

I’m not particularly interested in football, but in terms of having a talk about something that’s a bit different, that’s not about work. It’s not about who we are as people. It’s just about this other random thing allows me to feel like I walked away with a smile off my face going, oh, we really connected about that.

You know? And it’s not, it’s not like

we’ve, our lives have changed right now, but it’s like, well, I got that little hit of, that was nice, you know? That was a nice connection. It was a nice thing to be able to do, and I felt like I, I’ve enabled that for them as well. Right. So yeah, just these simple things I think can be so important.

I don’t think we need to overcomplicate some of this stuff.

Mike Williamson: I, I agree, Nick. And one of the things you just reminded me of is, you know, I think during and just after the pandemic and there was, you know, initiatives all over the place around wellbeing and

there there was quite a lot of, um, uh, I don’t know, it wasn’t boredom. It was like, oh, not, we’re not doing games again.

Are we on the Zoom meeting? And I think that the smart teams and organizations learned that there is absolutely no. One size fits all for this. People will, you know, different, different things help with wellbeing with different people. And so giving people, agency in an organization to set up a group or do different things and, you know, find their own, as long as the organization can facilitate that, that that’s the important thing.

But, um, yeah, those organizations that don’t, you know, recognize the importance of wellbeing will, they’ll get left behind, I think.

Nick McEwan-Hall: I

think. I think so. And I mean, we know what the market’s like, right? People will leave, people will leave the organization because organizations are doing it well, you know, they’re doing it well. And it reminds me of the whole how I working at home or the office kind of thing. People will just go and get a job at an organization that fits them better.

So I, I guess our job is to actually create organizations that fit people better, like that, allow people to kind of feel welcome and to feel a hundred percent there. Like, I think that’s the job.

Mike Williamson: Yeah, I think welcome and, and the other, the other word I I often talk about with things is you’ve gotta make your people feel valued. You know, people are doing great work. If people don’t feel valued or recognized.

I,

think it affects mental health. I think it affects motivation, um, and, and performance.

You know, um,

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah. catch people doing the right thing. Alright. And, and congratulate them. Yeah.

Yeah. It’s a nice thing, isn’t it? It’s nice to say, Hey, that was really great. That was really lovely. And I think we need that balance. As leaders, we need that balance. If we’re just, it’s so easy just to focus on, Hey, this needs improving, and, you know, oh, that hasn’t been quite right, or maybe we could do this and, and we can sit there going, oh, I’m being encouraging.

I’m, you know, showing people how to improve and things. But actually the genuine, Hey, that looks really great. Hey, that I love that. Yeah. Ooh, that wasn’t what I, what I was expecting, but it’s much better.

You know, like those sorts of things just out of the blue, they have to be genuine and you want to kind of look back at your week and go, yeah, I’ve, I’ve,

even if it’s been a massive storm of a week, there’s been stuff in there that I’ve actually can point back to, to say. Yep. I gave some good feedback and it was genuine. It was delighting, it was all those things. I think if we get that balance right, that goes so much to that sort of triple bottom line of, of, um, psych safety,

but also in terms of like helping people feel connected. Right? How nice is it to delight and surprise people?

It’s beautiful.

Mike Williamson: I think, I think one of the things as well that I, uh, a, a kind of a, a quick tip for leaders who wanna recognize people for their work and give that positive feedback is, um, if you’re gonna, for example, if you’re saying, uh, the meeting you ran the other day, that was great. That that’s not enough.

Tell them why it was great. Connect what they did with what the organization’s trying to do, or tell them what the impact was. Um, because just saying, uh, that was great meaning, and then off you go down the corridor, not enough. So we, we need to get specific on that. Um, but coming back to the thing about, you know, valued and, and recognized that, you know, if, if, if we’ve been in a team where we felt like that, we know how that feels.

It is not, it’s not a warm bath. Right. It, it’s really motivating when you feel valued.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah, absolutely. Like people will show up and they’ll do more and they’ll be more, and they’ll be more innovative and yeah, they’ll just,

I think they’ll just go that step further and it’s not, and again, I think some people can think, listen to this conversation and think that we’re being, what’s the word?

Um, like, it’s like we’re trying to, like, we’re conniving. It’s not that it’s actually just saying. Hey, people come to work. Like the pe, the person you’ve got in your team has applied to work with you like they

want to be there.

You know that if we go right back to that, they’ve said, that looks like a team I’d like to be part of. They’ve interviewed you, you’ve interviewed them. They’re here now. Let them do

all of the things that they’re capable of doing.

Let them do it. You know, it’s sort of like, why do we bring people in and then kind of squish down on their kind of freedom to just do all the things that we think they’re awesome at doing, and that’s why we hired them.

It just doesn’t make sense to me. But

Mike Williamson: Well, I think there’s a I know how easy it is to slip isn’t there, a famous quote, I think it’s Steve Jobs, who said, we, we don’t hire people and tell them what to do. We hire smart people ’cause they’re gonna tell us what to do. You know, or something along those lines. Um, so yeah, really important. One of the things I recommend, um, leaders do is when, when you, when you’ve recruited someone, you brought someone onto payroll, um, you know, don’t, don’t wait until the six month probationary to tell them how they’re going.

After a couple of months. Ask them how we are going for you. I call them, I call them entry interviews, right? Yeah. How are we going for you? What’s, what’s good? What’s maybe not so good? And it just, you know, people. People are kind of quite taken aback by it when you start doing it. ’cause it doesn’t happen everywhere.

Right. But, um, yeah, it does, certainly

it’s a bit of a, a, an injection of motivation and and engagement.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah. It’s such a reminder, isn’t it? About that, that importance of that psych safety. ’cause I think if people don’t experience psychological safety in those environments, when we say to them, so how are we going,

you know, if we’re not creating those environments in which people can tell you, then we’re gonna get the top line.

Yeah. It’s great. Yeah. And we can sit there across the table as the leader going, I know that’s not what you

mean, you know, but, but you know, we can’t really force them to say

1. We have to create the environment in which they’re, they feel like they can just tell you. Right. Like, yeah. I feel like if someone’s going to their performance review and they’re not sure how it’s gonna go, that’s a

problem.

You know, they should kind of know roughly how it’s gonna go, whether that’s good or bad. Right. But, you know, if they, if they don’t know, then maybe they haven’t had the feedback. Maybe they, maybe they just haven’t

Mike Williamson: definitely Nick.

Nick McEwan-Hall: throughout that time.

Mike Williamson: Yeah. And you know, that feedback get, getting, getting a culture of feedback where it’s, it’s okay to, um, you know, give feedback to your manager. It’s also, uh, uh, uh, you know, feedback is something you do in the every day. Um, I mean, there’s, there’s whole, whole workshops that can be done on, on feedback and how to, how to do that effectively.

Um, I’m, I’m involved in a webinar in a week or so with some not-for-profit leaders in the volunteer space actually. Um, so they, they, they help manage volunteers at their organizations and it’s gonna be about, you know, how do you elicit feedback and then how do you give feedback, uh, effectively and. If you, you or I, or anybody listening, if you’ve ever had feedback that was done badly, ah, you know, if we want to talk about the emotional wake, you know, you

Nick McEwan-Hall: I was just thinking about the like Yeah,

Mike Williamson: you just wanna run away when it’s done badly.

Um, I’ve got a couple of memories, which are now funny actually, but at the time they certainly, they, they didn’t, they didn’t amuse me. But, um, yeah. Really important capability as a leader to do that, to get feedback and to, to give it well, um, yeah.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Interesting. Yeah, it’s, so the conversation, today’s been so interesting because. We’ve covered some such different ground. Right? We’re talking about the psycho safety piece, that connection, be it the leadership aspect, and it all kind of comes back to me, that emotional wake idea that we started off with just kind of picturing Yeah.

That sort of tr and I, in my head it’s triangular, it’s, it expands, it’s like, yep, the boat’s this wide, but that wake is huge and,

and it lasts rages. And if we look behind a giant cruise ship, it’s kilometers long and we can be over there kind of going, oh, look where we’re going. That looks beautiful. Like we’re going over here.

But if someone stuck back looking the other way kind of going, yeah. But at that point, that was really rough for

Mike Williamson: Yeah. Or,

or getting slapped in the face by a big wave. Absolutely. Um, so just, yeah. I’m glad that’s resonated. I think one of the things I’m doing at the moment is, is, um. Uh, what we call it, you can call it a newsletter or a series of articles about leadership. It’s called How You Lead On, on Substack. And so I think, um, haven’t talked to explicitly about the emotional weight piece for a while, but I, I think that that articles gonna come and it’s gonna have a, a, a photo of a big cruise ship with a big wake behind it.

Or maybe it’s the, the, the, um, the, the, the ferry over to Tasmania. But yeah, I think it’s a, it’s a highly resonant kind of image, isn’t it?

Nick McEwan-Hall: it’s

Mike Williamson: you know, I think it’s relevant in our, yeah. Sorry. You go. I was thinking, you know, in, in our, we’re talking about leadership and we’re talking about work, I think you know, this, this is applicable in all areas of our lives, isn’t it?

And we have. We have an impact wherever we go. Um, we can, we can try and be intentional about that. Um, sometimes it’s really hard. Yeah. It’s, uh, to kind of respond rather than the react, but we, yeah, we leave, we leave that, that impact wherever we go.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah, it’s such a, it’s such a, I impressive. And what I mean, what I mean by that is like, it’s made an impression on me, this idea of that that wake that we leave behind and we’re just doing what we’re doing, um, and everyone’s doing, everyone’s gotta wake that, that they’re leaving behind ’em too. It’s not just the leader.

I mean, it’s everyone in that example, right? So if you had a harbor full of boats, they’re all leaving a wait behind.

Um, and so it’s, it’s complicated, right? But it’s such a visual kind of way for us to just think through about how we’re showing up, how we’re impacting people, and how. Other people’s wake impacts us as well.

I think it’s such a, a nice kind of summary for everything we’ve talked about today. I feel like, I feel like you need to go on a cruise, Mike. I feel like you need to book a cruise and, you know, just go and do that. Write that, write that article on a cruise, you

know, like, go

Mike Williamson: do you know what, I’ve, I’ve never gotten the ferry across to Tasmania. I’ve, I’ve always wanted to do it. Um, and I, and I will at some point, but I think I certainly, I feel like I need a holiday. I, I need some warm weather, Nick, so that I’m, I’m maybe doing something in November or, uh, might leave it till the new year, but certainly, um, yeah, a cruise.

I’ve never thought about doing a cruise, I’ve gotta say. Um, but I, I don’t mind a, a ferry trip.

Nick McEwan-Hall: I feel like the, the photo on your article should be a photo you’ve taken

Mike Williamson: Ah, I like that. I really like that. Yeah. Okay. You got me thinking now about.

Nick McEwan-Hall: I’m, I’m a big fan of holidays and booking travel, so you’ll always get that from me, but I think, um, it’s a lovely way to just think it through and to, again, like, like we’re talking about, yeah, you’ve said I’m, I’m, I’m yearning for some hot weather. It’s back to that wellness, it’s back to that kinda wellbeing piece, listening to what you need and how you work and what works best for you.

It’s a nice way for us to kind of think about our whole conversation today. I’ve really enjoyed it. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. Um, thank you for that image in my head. You know, when I think I, I’m pretty sure that in the next week or so I’ll be telling that story. You know, I’ll say, I’ve talked to Mike and he told me about this idea about this weight that we leave behind because it’s so relevant to the work I do and, and the work that you do as well.

But yeah, it’s a nice way for us to think about everything we’ve talked about. I

Mike Williamson: Yeah. That’s great, Nick. And look, it’s been, uh, my real pleasure to be on. I’ve, I’d love the conversation and I think, you know, um. Whoever’s listening wherever this gets to, you know, that, um, the intersect between how we run teams and organizations and mental health is so important in so many ways. So yeah, it’s been, it’s been really lovely to be involved.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Well, thank you for coming on. It’s been an absolute pleasure. We’ll put links and everything to into the show notes and things so people can find you as well. But

thanks again, Mike, for being here today. It’s been a real pleasure. Yeah,

Mike Williamson: No worries. Thanks Nick.

Nick McEwan-Hall: cool. Thanks,

Mike Williamson: Alright, now do, do

Nick McEwan-Hall: That was awesome.

Mike Williamson: that’s really good. I loved it. I loved it. Um, and, and as we’re

Nick McEwan-Hall: And we did cover most of the stuff,

like we did in different ways. We did.

Mike Williamson: Mm-hmm. I’m, I’m thinking that you, if, if, if you publish a podcast, you kind of almost need a place to put a picture of the. The cruise liner. Um, but it, it, it is a really resonant thing, isn’t it?

It’s kind of, we have no choice. We will leave that anyway, we won’t bang on about anymore. Um, thank you. Do I need to leave my browser open or something to ensure this all uploads.

Nick McEwan-Hall: I, you, you might, you might need to, I think it’ll tell, tell us when we, when we finish you

might need to, yeah. I think it kind of uploads as we go, but it might take a little minute or so, but

yeah, we,

Mike Williamson: says 99% uploaded at the moment.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Oh, well maybe it’s just gotta do a little

 Yeah.

Same on my end. So not quite sure how it works, but see, when we end it, it should tell us what,

Mike Williamson: Yeah.

So when, when I leave, it will say whatever I need to do or not do.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Should do.

Mike Williamson: Okay. Well, let me, let me know when you’ve, when you’re up with it and when it’s gonna go out and links and stuff Yeah, I. Um, always good to put that up on LinkedIn or.

Welcome to the podcast, Simone.

Simone Direckze: Thank you, Nick. Thanks for having me.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Oh, you’re so welcome. Let’s jump straight into it. Can you tell us a little bit about your story? Like tell us a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are.

Simone Direckze: I am a retail professional, I guess you’d say. I’ve worked in retail properties, namely shopping centers.

Pretty much my whole working career, I’m about 20 something years in now. I used to be a retailer. So my background is actually marketing. That’s what I studied at uni. After I went to uni, I actually worked at a council in parking and traffic, funnily enough. Imagine marketing, parking and traffic. That was not fun, as you can imagine.

Sounds like a challenge. Yes. So I went [00:01:00] into my other passion, which is retail, and I became a retailer. Foolishly enough, I thought that that would give me flexibility. Back then I just had my first child and I was looking for something that I could manage myself and come and go as I please. I was very wrong about all of that.

And I ended up working far more hours than what I ever did in private industry. So I started off as a retailer, the GFC hit, I lost some of my stores, it was really tough times back then. And for my luck, I was able to get a position on the other side of the fence in shopping centers in marketing. So that’s.

Uh, essentially how I started my career in shopping centers. Amazing.

Nick McEwan-Hall: I, my brain wants to know what you were selling. What were you retailing?

Simone Direckze: Jewelry actually. Huh? Okay. I used to sell, uh, I don’t know if anyone remembers Klein’s, the franchise back in the day. Yeah. So I had a couple of franchises and then we moved into our own sort of semi precious jewelry.

Klein’s went under, it went bankrupt in about 2006, I want to say. [00:02:00] Uh, so we started our own thing from there on and it just snowboard from there. But as I said, the GFC hit and like now, similar to now, times are really tough. And we were seeing a lot of cost of living rises and that kind of thing. And people just stopped shopping in that same way.

So I had to morph and move my stores on and come back into working life. Which was nice. Don’t get me wrong. It was nice to get some holiday pay and sick pay back. Cause when you work in your own business, any business person will tell you. There is no time for any of that.

Nick McEwan-Hall: No. We have this picture, don’t we, thrust at us, like, have

Simone Direckze: your own business

Nick McEwan-Hall: and

Simone Direckze: control your life.

It is the hardest thing, I’m telling you, it is the hardest thing anyone will ever do is A, have the courage to start their own business, and B, have the nows and the tenacity to last the test of time. It’s really tough. I have so much respect for entrepreneurs and people that have the courage to start their own businesses.

It’s not easy at all.

Nick McEwan-Hall: And it must, that, that, that experience that you’ve had and the feeling you have about that experience, that [00:03:00] empathy and pride in people giving that a go must show up and be so usefully for you in your work now.

Simone Direckze: Yes. In fact, I am the leader that I am today because I went through.

What I went through with my own business. You know, I see things from a different perspective. It’s always interesting trying to balance the landlord’s agendas with the retailer’s agendas and so on. So I really see how much blood, sweat, tears go into business in general. And hopefully, and it’s been a cathartic process for me because I share that trauma.

I know what someone’s going through on any given day. I get it. You’ve been there. Yeah. I’ve been there. Exactly. So it’s good. I’ve had a good opportunity to help. Other people, hopefully, that are in the situation I was, through my own failings and learnings.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah. Yeah. Ooh, as you said, my own failings and learnings.

I wanted to say, yeah, learning is just learning. We

Simone Direckze: fail fast, we learn quickly. That’s my mantra now. Yeah, yeah. Fail

Nick McEwan-Hall: is part of it, isn’t it? Yeah. I like the kindness [00:04:00] that you threw in there as well. The failing and the learning that happens at the same time. It’s just part of the. Deal. It is part of the deal.

It’s tough, but it’s part of the process. It’s that symbiotic

Simone Direckze: relationship. I don’t think you can have one without the other. And sometimes people go into business thinking they’re going to conquer the world and do everything and they’re going to make a million bucks overnight and it’s all going to be hunky dory.

Life, the environment, the macro environment, life happens and sometimes it’s not your fault. And that’s what I try and tell people where I sometimes, I have had people just. Breaking apart in front of me, tears and financial distress, and then you overlay mental health on top of that. Oh, yeah. It’s a whole different ballgame.

Sometimes it’s not your fault and sometimes things just don’t work. Yeah. You got to pick your socks up and move on and doesn’t mean you can’t try something else.

Nick McEwan-Hall: A hundred percent. A mentor of mine likes to say. You didn’t fail, the thing failed. Correct. I think [00:05:00]

Simone Direckze: compartmentalizing that is ideal. Yeah. Yeah.

And

Nick McEwan-Hall: then she also says, and you learnt all the things, you learnt all of the stuff. So it wasn’t a waste, it was an investment and it didn’t end the way that you wanted it to. And we label that as failure. Yes. But actually look at all the things that happen in general. That can be really helpful sometimes.

Other times she’s told me that and I’m like, I don’t want to hear that. It’s really hard to hear, but yeah. Okay. So interesting. So shopping centers. I, when I was thinking about who should I talk to on the podcast, who has interesting work that they do. Hey, your name was on the list because we have done a bit of work together in the past and through that work, I’ve really gotten a new appreciation for shopping centers, that retail environment that I think we all have an experience of.

We all use those spaces. We’re all there. And In preparing for the podcast, you said to me, I won’t get this quite right, but you described the shopping center now as like the Greek Agora, where people come [00:06:00] to meet and gather and do all that sort of stuff. Talk to me more about that. That captivated my thinking.

Simone Direckze: An old boss of mine created or mentioned that analogy and it really hit home for me because shopping centers are the modern Greek Agora. It’s the place everyone gathers to share ideas, to share services, to swap consumer goods, all sorts of things. It’s the number one hub or meeting place for people.

Think about where else you would go in your life more than you would a public space like a shopping center. There’s probably not many. Yet, we still facilitate just as many people, millions of people, like an airport with half the restrictions, of course, all the rest of it. It’s a really interesting place.

We, there are so many, I can’t tell you how many elderly come for air conditioning, for heat, for a cup of tea and a smile. We get so many homeless people. We get moms and dads running around with their [00:07:00] kids, just the everyday stuff. We have people coming in and out of our doors and you wouldn’t have a clue what, how mental health shows up for them in their lives, right?

Nick McEwan-Hall: Absolutely.

Simone Direckze: ASD, ADHD, OCD, whatever trauma they have, you would know, but yet here we are in a marketplace and have to interact with each other with no crystal ball of what, who you might be meeting on any given day.

Nick McEwan-Hall: It’s

Simone Direckze: a melting pot.

Nick McEwan-Hall: It’s such a visual way to think about what’s happening at a shopping center, beyond just people buying things.

I mean, that is what’s happening, but there’s all that other social stuff that’s going on. And when you were talking there about people seeking cool or warmth or shelter and those sorts of things, that makes so much sense. But I don’t think. Certainly, before I had the experience I did, like working with your team, I didn’t think about those [00:08:00] things, and I’m quite privileged to not have to think about those things, right?

To go, I don’t need to go to a shopping center to be cool. I’m very privileged to be in that position, but because of that privilege, I don’t think about it and actually it’s all happening there all the time and yeah, I honestly have not walked into a shopping center and looked at it the same way since I worked with your crew.

Oh, that’s

interesting.

Nick McEwan-Hall: It’s really cool. You mentioned there as well, like busy like an airport. Do you have an idea of how many people would come through a shopping center?

Simone Direckze: Currently, I work in centers that have about 8 million that come through our centers. Every

Nick McEwan-Hall: year?

Simone Direckze: Yeah, every year. That’s a lot of people every day.

That is

Nick McEwan-Hall: a lot of people every day. Yes,

Simone Direckze: but I have worked in shopping centers that have 15, 20 million that come through. I worked at the biggest shopping center in the Southern Hemisphere, Chadston, and you and I have swapped stories, right? We sure have. Of all the things that can go on there as well. It’s a public space like no other.

And at the end of the day, I don’t think people realize [00:09:00] Actually, how much it facilitates your day to day life, most people just think, Oh, I’ll just nip down to the shops and grab something from the supermarket or whatever it is. Um, but there are other people there for other things, like you said, shelter to be serviced in whatever way we get people escaping domestic violence.

So many things that you don’t realize, actually, I think before I worked in centers, I just thought center management. Which is people that sat in an office and kind of just walked past and gave you a, a smile and a wave every now and again, but you just don’t realize how much is going on. It’s really not like that.

It’s definitely not like that.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah. Yeah. I know that now. Yeah. I

Simone Direckze: know you do.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah.

Simone Direckze: Yeah. Honestly, I couldn’t work in the environment without a big team to be able to facilitate all the ins and outs of a big building like that.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah. I think especially with those sorts of Um, centers, like the big centers, like you’re talking about, there is such a, I don’t think about them and go, Oh, they’re, [00:10:00] they’re sometimes closed.

I couldn’t go there. It’s just like, I can go, I can go. If you think about Chadston, for

example.

Nick McEwan-Hall: It’s open pretty much all day, 24 hours, some of it’s not, but when I’m awake, I could go. That’s how I think about it. I don’t even have a thinking about, am I allowed to go? Could I go? It is such a public space, but it’s definitely not a public space.

Yeah. So, the dynamics of a shopping center are really interesting. Yeah.

Simone Direckze: And the ownership. I think the stakeholders, yeah. Like you said, you just think you can just get in your car and go. Whenever you need to go, it’s there to facilitate whatever you need it to do. It’s interesting.

Nick McEwan-Hall: It’s really interesting.

I’m fascinated by it. One of the things that stood out for me in the work that we did was learning about all the different sort of stakeholders you have at a large center like the ones that you work in.

Yep.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Can you talk us through what that stakeholder structure and map is like? Who are the stakeholders that have just got to all be working [00:11:00] together to have it just be there, let alone do all the things that we’ve been talking about?

So yeah, can you talk us through what’s that structure?

Simone Direckze: So essentially, a landlord owns a shopping center or landlords, a group of people, maybe a trust or whatnot, owns a shopping center. They may or may not manage it themselves. Usually they give it to a management company that are in the know that come in and learn and know how to operate a shopping center.

They then hire the team or the sort of the skeleton of staff for the center and that You will have a center manager, you’ll have an operations team, a marketing team, an admin team or finance team, customer service or customer experience team. Then that team has to look after the retailer, who you don’t see, who are in the background and they just put their retail shops in

Nick McEwan-Hall: and

Simone Direckze: then those shops have their own staff, the retail team on the ground or the frontline retail team.

Then we have [00:12:00] maintenance, then we have cleaning, security, really big parts of our team who are really front facing and they’re all the time. Yeah. And yeah, and then you deal with councils, police, so many different other stakeholders in the area because, because you’re effectively most shopping centers, the larger ones are in a town center.

Yeah. Therefore you facilitate. Bus bays, you might have a train station in and out of your center, all sorts of different ecosystems that have to collide and work with one another and speak different languages. Oh yeah. I always tell my kids, learn a different language because the synapses of the brain work in a different way when you learn language and when you go into a work role.

You have to look, you have to know how to speak operations, or you have to know how to speak council speak. You have to morph your language so other people understand essentially what you’re trying to get across to.

Nick McEwan-Hall: It’s incredible. The list of stakeholders is just incredible in a shopping [00:13:00] centre. It’s, it’s.

Yeah, speak. Yeah. And I think it’s funny, like a lot of those stakeholders you mentioned, you, like, I think most people would go, yeah, yeah, like they’re there. Right. But. If you really looked, but it looks so effortless a lot of the time, like it looks so smooth. To the naked eye. Correct. Exactly. Right. Yeah.

That is not the eye I have anymore about shopping centers, but yeah, like it’s that sort of, yeah, that, that’s a skill to bring all that together and to make that work in that way. So

Simone Direckze: interestingly, the caveat to that is that is the simplest form of how I can describe it.

Yeah.

Simone Direckze: But in this modern time, you add in other issues.

Like this is a mental health podcast, so let’s bring it back to mental health for a minute. And you and I made each other over a serious issue I had over mental health and how it presents in shopping centers. So then you overlay that with say issues with youth or elderly or domestic [00:14:00] violence or however else trauma presents.

And then your stakeholders change to. The CAT team at the hospital, carers, people that are facilitating residential homes for people that are homeless. And there’s a whole nother ballgame that we’re finding now in the last few years that me, my team has had to learn because we’re in this public space and we are faced with this challenge that’s growing on a day to day basis.

So yes, the, the stakeholdership extends far and beyond.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah. It, it. It’s interesting, isn’t it? The question that’s going through my head is, how much of this did you expect when you made that jump from being the retailer, because I’m thinking about you in your store, in your jewelry store, in that shopping center, from that perspective, and as that business owner, the business manager, that [00:15:00] kind of thing, being in that environment, but I’m curious about how different.

was the view from that position to what it is in the position you’re in now. Because you’re both in the same scenario, you’re both in the same center, you’re both dealing with the sort of similar same things, you might have similar different wants out of that center maybe, but. It’s a flip. It is a flip, yeah.

Like you described it as like a jump to the other side of it. Yeah,

Simone Direckze: it’s frying pan into the fire kind of stuff, you know. As a retailer, all I want is my, for my business to make enough money so I can pay my bills, pay the rent, have some money to take home and I would have been happy on this side of the fence.

There are so many more elements that have to be ticked because everybody in that ecosystem has a different agenda. The landlords have a different agenda. Retailers expect to put their stores in and make money and have a different agenda. The staff that are coming to work in those stores just want a job so they can go and pay their bills and do the same [00:16:00] thing.

Exactly. So. Money is definitely a theme that runs through all of it. Not in a million years. Could I have told you sitting in my store and going, Oh yeah, let me just jump over this side of the fence and do some marketing PR stuff, blah, blah, blah. That I was going to learn and see as much as I, I, yeah. I have in my career since, because yeah.

It’s a whole nother overarching kind of position, and as stakeholder managers, there is a duty of care mm-hmm. For people that come through shopping centers, we have to provide that duty of care. Yeah. And make sure everyone’s in a safe environment to come in. That’s the bit that’s, um, challenging a lot of the times as well.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah, I, I, I can appreciate that and I, I think it’s. From my experience of working with you and your team, the responsibility that you feel about that stuff is probably. Ways a little bit heavier maybe for you because you really do want to look after those people. You do want to look after the stakeholders who [00:17:00] are coming through that center and care for them and make sure they’re okay and make sure they’re getting what they need from being in that center.

As challenging as that can be from time to time.

Simone Direckze: Yes, very much. I don’t think anyone works in public service in this way. Without under, or without wanting to be in the service of others,

I

Simone Direckze: think that’s the main thing to keep in mind. Most people come to work and they do their jobs and can go home.

Shopping centers are always on. We’re always open. We’re, we’re open most of the day. And it is an always on type of role, but most people that work in shopping centers, you’ll find work in the service or in the care of others and understand that brief and happy to be doing that because that’s their value system or whatnot.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah. Interesting. The coworking space that we’re in now, Hub Australia, they talk a lot about, it’s a shared office space. So it looks like an office. It is an office. We have a kitchen, we have rooms, we have meeting rooms and things. But Hub talk about being hospitality led, [00:18:00] they’re like, this is a hospitality led business and it’s about making people feel welcome, giving them a hospitality experience of you’re here in our space and we want you to be here in our space, enjoy the space.

They talk about a hospitality led experience and you feel it, like I, when I walk in, I’m like, yep. Very much. Yeah. It’s like a

Simone Direckze: hotel. It’s beautiful. Yeah.

Nick McEwan-Hall: And it’s an interesting way to think about an office space. Yeah, sure. You know, like it’s both things, but I think it comes down to who’s here, right? Yeah.

If the crew managing this space were not the crew who they are, taking that approach to public space or being a hospitality led. It could just feel like an office. Yeah, absolutely. And I guess the shopping center’s the same. It’s the experience that you

Simone Direckze: want. Yeah. You, you want people to go home having a good experience and people are at the forefront of that experience.

Ultimately, even here, you can provide the space and do whatever you like to it and it can be all nice and shiny. But ultimately, if [00:19:00] you don’t get the help that you need when you’re there or someone doesn’t help you facilitate whatever the reason you’re there, whatever you’re doing. Then it’s just a building, right?

There’s no life. Yeah. So it’s really interesting. But yeah, it just like it is here, shopping centers exist for people because people need people. We’re tribal by nature as humans, right? A hundred

Nick McEwan-Hall: percent. Yes.

Simone Direckze: Even if you’re an introvert and you go to a shopping center and want to be left alone, then you’re still in around a safe space with people.

Nick McEwan-Hall: It makes so much sense. It makes so much sense. As you’re talking, I’m thinking about. I really like the fact that people are all so, like, we feel like they’re like, so we don’t feel the same everywhere. If you look at a lot of different retail environments, I’ve been in shopping centers and how different they can feel, but when you look at them, they’re the same.

Basically, they’re the same, a big building with shops inside, with common areas. That’s the very bare skeleton of it, but there’s so much that [00:20:00] goes into and on top of that structure to either make it feel like a place I want to be and I gravitate to and that I feel safe and connected to or a place I just want to get in and get out.

Yeah. It’s all about

Simone Direckze: placemaking, Nick. Yeah. Like, that has been a buzzword now for many years, but it truly is about placemaking and brands. Brands look at how they present to the market and what their values are and how they want to be perceived. All with how they build the place that they invite you to then come and visit, right?

If you go to Mecca, for example, and you walk through their store or Sephora, it won’t be the same experience as if you were to go to Apple. Yeah. There are different, there are definite differences there. Yeah. Yeah. They. And I think that looking at the spectrum of people they’re servicing and creating space from that is really the ultimate goal for everybody.

You need to know thyself and need to know your brand, right? Yeah, it

Nick McEwan-Hall: makes so much sense. And then

Simone Direckze: you build accordingly. So you build for those brand [00:21:00] values. It’s really interesting. Great. It is. It gives us all different experiences. It’s not homogenous. Yeah. We can have different experiences. You go to a place at Chadston, there’s half a million stores at Chadston, probably about 560 from my last count, you know, 560 different experiences if you really wanted.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Oh, okay. I thought my mind was blown before our conversation, but now that just the depth of it and the complexity and. Yeah, I’d like this idea of placemaking that you’re creating environments that people want to come to. And of course that makes sense in a shopping center, right? We need people to come, the shops need people to come there.

So that makes sense. And I’m also thinking about sort of what that also means in terms of some of the work that we’ve done together about how people do show up in that space. Because everyone comes through that door. Seeking things, and we mentioned before, people seek heat, people seek cool, they seek connection, they seek safety, maybe, you know, all those things.

Yeah. [00:22:00] Some of our work has focused around that mental health kind of piece. Again, this was another part of my kind of learning about shopping centers. I’ve got, if people come to my mental health first aid course, they’ll hear the story about my experience at Chadston supporting someone with a panic attack, but it’s, and that was a good story.

It was a nice story. It was a positive one and it was a good outcome. But also through working with you and your team, I’ve heard other stories that didn’t have the, they had good outcomes. They had good outcomes. Most people were really well supported, but. Um, it wasn’t as funny, it wasn’t as light, it wasn’t as, as maybe low stakes as, and I, I use that language, I’m very conscious that I’m describing someone’s experience as low stakes.

It was pretty high stakes experience for that person I supported, but it ended well. The person was okay and all that sort of stuff. But some of the stuff that we’ve focused on with your team has been really challenging. It has been challenging. Like super challenging. Yes. And I think this would be really interesting to hear a little bit about, like how does mental health.

Yes. Show up [00:23:00] at work. I get, I show up at work, but I guess in that really specific context of. Yes. The public using your space. Yes,

Simone Direckze: so, you said it before. So when people come to shopping centers, they’re presenting for a variety of things, not always just to do their shopping and go. They’re coming for the heat, they’re coming for all of the safety is a huge factor.

You just don’t know Who’s walking in the door at any given time and what trauma they have been through in their lives. And then you compound that by maybe a mental health diagnosis of depression or ASD or OCD or whatever else. And then you’ve got a kind of little melting pot starting to happen. Then they might encounter something that negates their mood for the day or whatnot.

And then you have a bit more fuel in that fire and suddenly you’re in an environment where you’ve got all these people presenting with different things, maybe someone just not having a good day

and

Simone Direckze: it becomes a whole nother ballgame. [00:24:00] At the moment our biggest issue, and this is topical because we’ve been speaking about it in the news and all sorts of things, is how many youth are presenting with mental health issues.

And, and simply coming in for safety and. To get out of the cold at the moment because it’s winter here in Melbourne, they’re homeless, they’re estranged from parents. We’re having a real epidemic of youth issues in this country at the moment that I think isn’t addressed half as well as it could be because we don’t have the policy and now we don’t have enough staff to be able to deal with all these things.

Hospitals are really at their wits end. Police are stretched, absolutely stretched. And so what happens, we exist for everybody, so if they need to go anywhere to get out of the cold, to stay safe, they come in to us. And what we have then happen is they start to congregate in areas like parents rooms that are not always used, but [00:25:00] they’re for mums and dads that have to breastfeed or change nappies or whatnot.

And then we start to get to a position where. You know, the two elements are colliding, and that’s when you often see fireworks in center with various people. And customer service, we look at our, our security workforce, security don’t have any powers. They’re just like customer service. They’re not there to pin people to the ground and they’re not playing police.

Police are there for police reasons. So I think the general public, there is a disconnect from them understanding exactly what their roles are and what they’re there to do. Versus what they do or what they see them doing. And consequently they get, they get a bad rap for things that are not in their power.

So I think there’s a lot of frustration. You add to that then the macro environment that we’re in where cost of living is huge. Really hard from a, if you were, if you, [00:26:00] your center is in a low socioeconomic area that could then be even more tricky. So, yeah, you see all of these issues and they all collide and mix and morph and whatnot.

Uh, and the shopping centers always open, right? There we are. That’s right.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Oh yeah. We’re back to that.

Simone Direckze: Yeah. And often I, like in the past, we’ve hired people that have helped. We’ve had a mental health connector walk through the center. Cause as I said to you in our center, we had lots of elderly and we could see, especially after COVID.

They were there all the time they hadn’t, they, they lacked that community or that tribe to belong to. And many centers now having little activation spaces for people like that, that can, men shared or you can have a like a little chess board game situation. We have ladies that come and knit all sorts of things, mall walkers that get out of the cold and come in just to walk the center in, in a safer environment.

So, yeah, shopping centers do exist [00:27:00] for a lot of people for different reasons.

Nick McEwan-Hall: I’m thinking about if I was walking through the world and I had some vulnerability around my mental health state, maybe experiencing mental illness and wanting to find a place that was safe or a place where I could feel some certainty or maybe some control or something like that, that a shopping center.

Would make sense to me as I can go and I’ll be around people and hopefully then because I’m around people will notice and they’ll step in and they’ll or maybe it’s easier for me to put my hand up or to say I’m over here or Something like that. I can see How it would work I think and the stories that we’ve talked about before just say yes, that’s how that’s what happens I was really surprised Um, when we were working together about the, the depth to which your [00:28:00] team went to, to provide the best support that you could from your position, right, because it has boundaries.

Your role has boundaries. Yes. It’s your center and you control it. But. There’s boundaries there about what you can and can’t do in a lot of different ways, but I was really impressed with the depth to which your team went to, to support this particular person that we were focused on. And we were talking about a young person who was coming to the center and there were lots of behaviors that were problematic and because of a mental health diagnosis, we think, that was the thinking there, but just the level that you went to, to try and make sure.

That center and everyone there was supporting that person as best as you could. That really impressed me and it really stood out for me. It’s not something that I would have thought that a shopping center would have done, but now I know about it. I think, of course they do. They have to, but.

Simone Direckze: They have to.

Yeah, spot on. Some of the folks was amazing. Because, you know, when they [00:29:00] present, they’ve often fallen through a crack in the system. Yeah. So this particular person you’re referring to was well and truly down a rabbit hole and we could not get her out and she presented so many times, I can’t tell you how many suicidal people we’ve had, how many suicides we’ve had, all of those things.

And we didn’t want this person to be victim of that. We had to do what we could to make sure she was getting the help. That, uh, was available to her, but we took you through that whole scenario and were on the phone for hours to the CAT team at the hospital, answering questions we couldn’t, facilitating things back and forth with, from this young person.

It gets really tricky because half these things, we probably don’t want to know all of the details either, but yet here we are, like the meat in the sandwich. If like in this instance, this person’s fallen through the cracks, they don’t have a phone, they don’t have all the items that they need. They don’t have.

Food or clothing, and they [00:30:00] don’t want to go back into the hospital system. So where does that leave them? It’s really tricky. And of course you saw some of my staff have been in danger from that as well. And what we’re trying to do. Is stop this person from lashing out or being frustrated and graffiting them all.

I mean, that particular month we must have had about 30, 000 worth of damage from this one person alone in our center. So it’s a double edged sword. We’re trying to make sure everybody else has a good experience and not have to visibly see graffiti or whatever it presents. But at the same time, we want this young person to get help, to get the help that they need so they can be a functioning adult.

It’s tricky. Trauma is tricky.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah. A hundred percent. What’s going through our mind is that the fact that you say, everybody here, we’re trying to manage all this stuff. We don’t want people seeing the damage. We don’t want people experiencing the damage, but also we want to make sure this young person is supported.

Yes. I think it’s the bit that sets your team apart in my mind a little [00:31:00] bit because, so I can imagine retailers are not happy, landlords are not happy, police are frustrated. The cat team have been 600 times, like everyone’s frustrated, but still. You’ve got it in your head, in that thinking, and we want to look after this person.

There’s someone in the center as well. You want to look after them too. Like, you have their well being in the thinking as well, and I think that’s to be commended. I think that’s to be commended, because so many people would probably not think about that. They’d be like, okay, we’ve crossed this line. This just needs to stop.

Yeah.

Nick McEwan-Hall: But as you’ve said, it’s a shopping center. Yeah. They can come back tomorrow. Correct. So, you have to put them in your thinking, but I just think so many people, you know,

Simone Direckze: Yeah, I hope that they, I hope that they would, Nick, because at the end of the day, we are all human at the end of the day, right? So we need to make sure that as humans, we’re good to one another and are doing the best that we can from the kindest possible standpoint we can take.

Don’t get me wrong, utterly frustrating. [00:32:00] We were at our wits end when we called you. Um, for support and the whole team then has to internalize this trauma and it’s never a dull day. They’ve got to go home, front up again the next day. So it’s presenting, like I said, it’s a double edged sword, but what do you do?

We have a duty of care at the end of the day and we all must remember that we’re all in the service of each other as humans firstly.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Such a powerful way to think about it, Simone. I think it’s spot on. I think it’s a really good way to navigate complexity.

Simone Direckze: Yeah. Compassion, I think that empathy, we don’t know what this person has been through and how their lives have ended up in this way.

But if we can do something small or kind or just facilitate them, facilitate them, help them in some way through another facility, whatever it is, then we must try, I think.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah, I think that’s right. And from knowing you and your team, that just seems to be like what you would do. That’s just, yeah, that’s how we work.

I guess not [00:33:00] everybody works that way, so it’s pretty special, I think, is what I’m feeling. It’s pretty amazing, and if you’re working with your team, we sat there for a couple of hours over a couple of sessions, didn’t we, thinking about what can we do, like, how can we do it, and what can we do, and just the mere fact that you pull your team together and go, okay, so, let’s get some external eyes on it, let’s really think it through.

That shows the commitment too, right?

Simone Direckze: Well, I have a pretty great team as well, so that helps. And, and, and great bosses that understand that these are the complexities we’re navigating today. So a great landlord that actually helped us get you back to, to teach us how best we can manage these situations.

There’s a few factors there that. Yeah. In our best interests, which I’m really grateful for.

Nick McEwan-Hall: I think from thinking back to that work that we did, there was a comment that was made in one of those sessions that I think really. Gave some hope to the situation and really stuck with me. And it [00:34:00] was, and I won’t get this exactly right, but, and I can’t remember who said it, but they said, look, ideally, what we should be shooting for is to create an environment where this young person, for example, they’re having the experiences that they’re having.

At the moment, in that context, and they’re not pleasant for anyone, including them.

Yep.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Right? So, the kind of intention that the team were thinking through, and I don’t know if they adopted it, but this is how I’m thinking about it, and they were saying, wouldn’t it be nice if we can handle this situation in such a way that when that young person who’s local, and who’s likely to stay local, and likely use this shopping center for the rest of their life, probably, in 10 years time.

Can walk back through the doors, walk past that pot plant or that ATM and go, stuff went down here.

Yep.

Nick McEwan-Hall: And it wasn’t pleasant for me at the time, but gee, they really did everything they could. Yes. As opposed to walking back [00:35:00] in 10 years time and going, that was awful.

Yes.

Nick McEwan-Hall: And even feeling comfortable to come back 10 years time.

So, having that intention of like, can we handle this now? in such a way that it allows someone in the future when they’ve got the supports and hopefully they’ve got those supports and they’ve done what they need to do or they’ve got the treatment that they need to be the way they want to be is able to come back and remember the full picture

that

Nick McEwan-Hall: yeah, it was hard, it was tough, but the response I got was empathetic and it was caring and it was people centered.

I think that was a really lovely way to think about How do we deal with the day to day frustrating stuff that is just frustrating, that is really hard, which is not nice. How do we deal with that? And I think that’s, that was a really I don’t know, a really elegant kind of way to think about that situation and that’s really stuck with me.

Simone Direckze: That’s really the outcome you want, right, is later on, as we all grow up, we’re, we can all, we will all rat bag kids, I’m sure at some point or another.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Oh [00:36:00] yeah, absolutely. And

Simone Direckze: we have the ability in hindsight to see that this is a much bigger picture. Yes. My hope is exactly that. And I know exactly the person that said that.

That is the outcome we want. You don’t realize, but we are all mentors in that public space as well. Right?

Yeah.

Simone Direckze: Yeah. We’re talking about young people at the moment because it’s topical and we’ve got youth issues everywhere, but you don’t realize at any given time how much of that mentor role you’re playing when you’re in.

The space of a younger person.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Oh, yeah. They’re so, it’s such a hard time of life. Like, it’s such a hard time of life. They’re literally trying to work out how the world works. And they’re looking, they’re soaking everything up and going, I remember that, I remember that, you know, so let’s give them some good stuff to remember.

Stuff that they can remember as, as good as it can be, you know, it’s not always about positive all the time, but just going, yeah, I was met with respect and [00:37:00] empathy and care and sometimes that’s tough, like sometimes it’s hard and it’s not pleasant, but actually we learn that best practice thing. And

Simone Direckze: when you know better, you do better.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah.

Simone Direckze: When you don’t know, you don’t know, but when you know better, you need to do better.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah. I love that. I really like that. And I think, again, going back to your sort of culture there at the center, it was like, Oh, I feel like we could know more to do more and be better again. It’s like we can, there’s still a bit of gap here.

Let’s explore that fully. Let’s do as much as we can. Whereas I think a lot of people might’ve just gone.

Simone Direckze: Not my problem.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah, it’s hard. Like, we’ll just call the police every time or whatever it is, and sure, like, that’s a strategy, but I just, yeah, I think the real people focus of your team at the center, that’s when it shines, right?

When it’s challenged and difficult and you’ve got people in front of you, just, oh my goodness. How do we handle that? It was, yeah, like I said, it was fascinating. I just find it really amazing. [00:38:00] How do you, as a leader, how do you support your team when they’re dealing with this stuff? And I know you deal with it a lot yourself, and you’ve been there, and you’ve been into the bathrooms, and you’ve sorted things out, like, I know.

Your team are going through that, so I’m interested, like, in, in, from a leadership perspective, what’s your approach here in terms of supporting your team with this stuff?

Simone Direckze: So I, I guess the, the first caveat to that is that I’m really lucky and privileged to work in an organization that values mental health, so we do have our own employee assistant programs and that kind of thing, that are all confidential, that any staff member and their families could call and have professional support with.

But from a day to day basis, I think it’s about building resilience in your team. First and foremost, staying connected. I know in the team that I’m at the moment, we’re a very old machine now. We’ve worked together for some years, so we’re all connected. We understand each other’s skill sets, strengths, weaknesses, that kind of thing, and we [00:39:00] respect it.

And I know as a leader in my head who I need on the ground at any given time in any, in a particular situation. And trust me, Nick, like I have worked in a center where a plane has landed in my building.

Nick McEwan-Hall: I forgot about this story. You know, it’s

Simone Direckze: not, it spreads far and wide, not just. Youth issues of the day or whatnot.

So horses for courses and there are different skill sets for different emergencies that may or may not occur. But I think for me, and you were, you taught this to us, which I really appreciate and we’ve used since is that understanding where everyone is on that spectrum on a daily basis, if you can, is always a great tool.

Are you, are you at a one feeling good? Everything’s hunky dory or you’re at a 10 where you need a day off and you need to get some mental health space back. So understanding that is good. We’re an older team, so we know when someone walks in the door in a particular pace or is not their normal [00:40:00] self. As a leader, I know to probe a bit more and just say, Hey, should we go for a coffee or a walk or whatnot?

But I think as leaders, we just need to trust our guts more. That head, heart, gut piece is. Long being dismissed, but it really is. We’re energetic beings at the end of the day, tapping into somebody else’s energy and getting that gut feel will quickly tell you. If you need to spend more time with that particular member of staff, or if that member of staff needs to have a rest with, go home or whatnot.

So I think being in tune to that is really important. We don’t give it enough credit.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Mm. The old gut feeling. The old

Simone Direckze: gut feeling is still honestly, and the number one thing in my eyes is head’s great and head will come in and give you all the observations and pragmatic. Um, solutions are all balls of energy walking around.

So sometimes you might not verbally get the cues that you need to hear that somebody is [00:41:00] not right today, but you’ve got to tell you something’s not right.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Something you said in there reminds me of something I’m constantly saying when I’m doing mental health first aid training, which is if you’re not sure about what’s going on with the person or if they’re okay or they’re not okay or they’re just tired or what is it.

One thing I know for sure is the minute you ask them how they’re going and they start telling you, you’ll find out. Like you’ll find out. So Yeah. The, the gut feeling is the sign, I think sometimes it’s the gut feeling and it’s a sign for everything. It’s like gut feeling. You seem really happy today. Or gut feeling can be like, something’s off, like it’s off, but we can walk around.

Not sure, but the simple, I’m using air quotes is to ask them, engage, talk and as soon as they start talking, you’ll know. Yeah. And you gave us

Simone Direckze: permission to do that. I think you reinforced that for us. To say, it’s okay, just ask a question and, you know, open space enough for them to take [00:42:00] it and say yes or no or whatnot.

And at that point, I think when we had you in there, we’d forgotten just the simple, it’s like that, are you okay day piece, are you okay, just to, however you’d say it, just check in. Yeah. Yeah. The check in piece is so important.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah. It is really important. I think it’s so powerful.

Simone Direckze: Very.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Get a bit of a pulse of what’s going on in your team or in your.

Family, or community group, or social group, or shopping center. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I wanted to, I have to include this either, but as we’re talking, I’m curious about all the stuff that happened at Bondi Westfield. Yes. Yes. And whether we can talk about. I hadn’t thought about it until just now, but I’m thinking about, yeah, how that might have

Simone Direckze: impacted.

Impacted? Yeah. Yeah. Look, that, that sort of scenario is something we train for all the time. I don’t know if you recall some years ago now, we had a spate of sort of shootings in [00:43:00] shopping centers in America and that led to a big training piece we do at shopping centers. Once a year. Okay. And, and it’s called Active Shoot.

And we, we talk about the drills that we do, reinforce what would happen in a situation as dangerous as that. Yeah. Actually, I don’t think it was America. I think it was like Af South Africa or Kenya. It was a big shopping centerpiece. Okay. Anyway, I digress. But. Yeah, yeah. You get the idea, following Bondi, we really had to, we’re so lucky here not to have guns and that kind of thing at our disposal, like other countries at our disposal.

Following Bondi, we went back into training mode and just made sure that everybody yapped on about COVID for so long and all of those rules. And that’s, I want to say it’s long gone. It’s not, but it’s gone enough. But we had to re, we had to pivot and really go, Oh gosh, let’s look back at what we do in a scenario like this.

So for us, we went back to training, we got everybody back in the center, all the retailers and so on back in training mode. And we looked at the pros and [00:44:00] cons, what we could have done better, what the role of emergency services are in that situation. And we just rehashed the training because you just never know what may happen similar to Bonneau.

No one wants to be in a situation like that. But we all want to be trained enough that we know not to panny. Yeah. And where it is that we need to go in a scenario like that.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Yeah. I can imagine that seeing all of that stuff happen in the news, that the center would have been really different. It was. In the days.

It was a

Simone Direckze: completely different vibe, Nick. Yeah. As you can imagine. Because that hits home.

Yeah.

Simone Direckze: Shopping centers, like we said earlier, is a consistent place you expect to go and nothing’s gonna happen. You can pick up your meat and veg and come home. Yeah.

Yeah.

Simone Direckze: But something like this happens, it shakes it up a bit, doesn’t it?

And you think, Oh my God. Absolutely. Where is it safe? Absolutely.

Yeah,

Simone Direckze: it really, that whole Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and the safety module really gets questioned a bit. So yeah, the vibe was very low, flat for everyone. There were [00:45:00] retail, a frontline staff usually, and they’ve got to front up and serve every member of the public and net, they never know what they, what their day to day is going to be.

So yeah, it was a big deal to get over that hurdle. Where someone’s out now, and I would say things are back to normal well and surely, but that week was a tough week. Cause we, you feel for the people at that centre as well and what they’re having to go through. Yeah. People that passed. It’s a, it’s a whole thing.

Nick McEwan-Hall: It’s horrible. It’s horrible. I think as well, like, a lot of my clients, one of my other clients has a son who lives with schizophrenia and it’s really well managed, it’s been, they’ve been on a long journey and they’ve got all the supports that they need and it’s really well managed and all of that sort of stuff and You wouldn’t know that he lives with that condition, right?

It’s that sort of invisible disability kind of thing, right? And they were saying just how hard it was for their family in the days afterwards because they’d be kind of working,

yep,

Nick McEwan-Hall: they’d be lining [00:46:00] up for a coffee and then someone in front of them would say, Oh, did you hear about that psycho, whatever it is, right?

That language and, and even a friend of mine who’s a GP was like, yep, the, the, the week after all of my patients with, with significant mental health stuff in this space coming in for a checkup. They needed assistance and it’s because of the stigma.

Simone Direckze: Yeah. Very much. There is such a stigma around mental health in this way because you’re right.

It doesn’t present as a disability that you can see. It’s not. Visceral. Visual. Yeah. Yet, though, that language around it can be so hurtful because there are so many people on the mental health spectrum. I remember in my early days in shopping center, my son has autism, was diagnosed on the autism spectrum disorder.

He’s high functioning autism. And when I, when he was a baby, it was very hard to take him to a shopping center. Mm-hmm. He would have his e hands over his ears all the time. Yeah. Okay. And we would last 45 minutes, but before we had to go and he was just over, it was just [00:47:00] mentally overstimulating for him.

Yeah. One day I was literally sitting at my desk and looking at stats in, in this particular center that I worked at. And realize that there was a really high skew to mental health presentations in this area. And literally in a few hours, I came up with this concept of a quiet room where people could go, parents could take their kids, other adults on the spectrum could go and have some quiet time without being in the space of noise and you don’t realize actually how noisy.

And how overstimulating a center can be, right, with all its lights and everything. And I was so lucky that the center I worked in at the time, Vicinity, uh, was Northland actually, jumped on board and we delivered this project in next to no time with next to no money. And everybody jumped on board and it was the first of its kind anywhere, which was not sure it’s great, but great for the people that needed to use it.

Many centers have since [00:48:00] replicated that. And we see lots of sensory Santa sessions and Easter bunny sessions. So opened up a whole nother, from a shopping center perspective, it’s opened up a whole nother realm of possibilities where we’re servicing people that are on spectrum in some way or however it presents.

Um, it, it just helps for all those neurodivergent folk and there’s a lot, there’s a lot. We could all be on that spectrum. Well, I was just

Nick McEwan-Hall: thinking sometimes I just want to go into a quiet space myself and it’s just, I might just have a lot on my mind or I might be really overwhelmed or I just need a little minute.

I guess I’m fortunate I could go and sit myself and have a coffee and get that. I could do that. Yes. For a lot of people, that’s still stimulating. Yes. So having that quiet space is really important.

Simone Direckze: Yeah. Oh wow, amazing. So I’ve been seeing lots of people in there and you were talking about your friend earlier with her example of a schizophrenic son.

I think a lot of us that have been exposed to mental health probably present ourselves in a different way [00:49:00] from a work environment because we see how it permeates our day to day. Yeah. And, and I think that has been for the. For the better of the places we’ve worked in, cause we’ve been able to connect the dots there for a few other people.

If I can help another, I’m an old mom now. My kids are like 20 and 18 and 12, but if I can help a young mom that needs to do her shopping or with a child on the spectrum and can only make it in half an hour, yet has a room that they can go and just chill, the iPad goes on or whatever their, their relaxation bit is.

Then, hey, it’s a win for everyone, right?

Nick McEwan-Hall: It really is. And as you’re talking that story through, I’m thinking about, you know, I think I do a lot of work in workplaces and your center is a workplace as well, in many different ways. It’s a workplace for you, your team, the retailers and so on. I think if we go back to some of the basics of what we know about investing money in mental health supports and how it repays [00:50:00] us in workplace terms.

The sensory room that we’re talking about, or the low sensory room that we’re talking about. Um, delivers results for your center and the center stakeholders because it allows people to be there from a placemaking perspective. Correct. Yeah.

Simone Direckze: Dwell time in shopping centers is ultimately what we all want.

We want people to stay longer and buy that extra coffee or stay in, have dinner or whatever it is. Right. So it should be a win. However, don’t forget that shopping centers exist. We are property at the end of the day and we do, our main focus is, is to be able to rent space. Right. Yeah, and suddenly when you put in these sorts of functions, you’re taking up space that could often be rented.

So there’s a bit of a juxtaposition there. As a tension, I guess. And yeah. It is, it does take a landlord that really understands the larger realm of humanity and what ultimate outcomes they want over time. A small landlord might, might be all in for just rent and that’s it, but [00:51:00] a larger landlord might look at the advantages of having spaces like that and being able to attract more parts of the community in that way.

So. It’s a bit of horses for courses and different strategies, but

Nick McEwan-Hall: I guess it evolves over time too, right? It

Simone Direckze: does. Yeah. Yep.

Nick McEwan-Hall: I’m, I’m thinking about the, in your meeting room there, you’ve got that beautiful timeline wrapped around the wall about how the centres evolved. Yeah, I really do. I remember looking at it and going, I don’t, I haven’t, your centre’s not a centre that I’ve, I’d used before.

So you know about it, right? I’m, I was looking at it, I was like, yeah, you can literally see the evolution in terms of the building itself for the. But it talks about the functions that it plays in that community as well. And I think the stuff that we’re talking about now is part of that too, that evolution of space and the placemaking.

I guess if a shopping center is the Agora. It needs to evolve for the people who are going to use it.

Simone Direckze: Son, and that is, that is the number one thing we should exist to do is service our community. That’s what we are there for. We are [00:52:00] the town center. We are the meeting place. People come to see consistent faces behind those desks.

It’s all about servicing everybody that comes. So yes, it should live for the community. It should embody the community’s value.

Nick McEwan-Hall: Such a unique way to think about a shopping center. For me anyway, I think for people listening, they’ll be like. Yeah, it makes so much sense, but. Really eloquently put together.

We’re coming to the end, but I wanted to throw the conversation over to you. Is there something you’d like to tell the world? Is there a message you’d like to give people? Is there, the floor is yours. Is there something, and it can be A big message and inspiration, it can be just directed to one person in particular or whatever you like.

The floor is yours. What would you like the world to hear?

Simone Direckze: Oh, that’s a, that’s a big little question there, Nick. I guess if I was to leave you with anything, I would love your listeners to know to be patient and kind and [00:53:00] empathetic when they come into places like this. They’re shared spaces, right?

Everyone’s doing the best that they can. You just don’t know what someone else is going through and how they fronted up to work today. People are busy. We’re all into convenience. I know for me, I’m working all the time. So I’m like bang when I’m in the center, if I haven’t already gotten what I need, often I’ll get home and my son or daughters will say, Oh, I forgot to tell you, can you bring this?

But can we go now? I’m like, ah, I’m then trudging through the center, frustrated, blah, blah. But I’m always trying to remind myself that people are doing the best that they can. Be kind and patient. They’re frontline workers. They’ve got to deal with a lot of things. And be an advocate. Do the right thing. So many times I see people not sticking up for other people or when they’re faced with this challenge of intervening in a situation or not saying anything.

As a community, as humans, we have all backed away from being advocates for justice in a way. [00:54:00] And that is the reoccurring theme I keep seeing and I wish. It’s a litigious society and no one wants to say anything or do anything in fear of whatever it is. But especially when we deal, dealing with youth and we’ve talked a lot about the youth issues here.

We’re adults and we are mentors to these young kids. So if you can intervene and it’s safe to do, you don’t realize how powerful some of your words can be to a younger person as well. So that would be, that would be the message I guess I would just remind everyone of.

Nick McEwan-Hall: It’s a really nice message. It’s a really nice message.

So, Simone, it’s been a pleasure chatting and thank you for taking us behind the scenes of a shopping centre from so many different perspectives. I think people listening will be leaving this kind of recording with a different view about what’s going on in the centres that they’re in all the time. Such a good way and that message at the, at the end there is just a really nice way to allow people to do something with that awareness now.

Oh, [00:55:00] I hope so Nick.

Simone Direckze: And I, and I hope, you know, your organization and people, your coaches do so many amazing things for people like us that don’t have the language and the skills to deal with what we’re dealing with at the moment. I hope people see the benefit of having mental health coach. Come visit and give you all the skills that everybody needs.

I feel in this day and age, it’s just in life. Yeah.

Nick McEwan-Hall: It’s a people’s skill. Simone, thank you so much. Thank you. It’s been a pleasure. Pleasure’s mine. Thank you. You’re welcome.