From Storefronts to Safe Havens: Mental Health in Shopping Centres, with Simone Dirckze

Nick McEwan-Hall: [00:00:00] Hi, it’s Nick from the Mental Health Coach Podcast. Joining us today is Simone Direx. Simone is a retail leader known for their empathetic approach and innovative mindset in the retail industry. With expertise in commercial business, marketing, brand management, and more, Simone brings a wealth of knowledge and passion for placemaking and people.

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.