Workplace Mental Health with My Steady Mind’s Dr. Seth Hickerson

Today we’re speaking with Dr. Seth Hickerson, the founder of My Steady Mind, a high performance mindset training company that focuses on risk management. He’s a pioneer in understanding how mental health directly impacts workplace safety. With extensive experience in high risk industries, Dr. Seth helps organizations create work environments where employees can think clearly, make better safety decisions, and perform at the highest level. Thanks for being with us today.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:44]
Absolutely. Let’s jump into those questions. So I know we’re talking about psychological safety today, so I wanted to start with the fundamentals. In your experience, how does psychological safety directly impact overall workplace safety performance?

I think as we start to go into these questions, we’ll see how comprehensive psychological safety is and that there’s a lot more to it than I think a lot of us know. And where I come in and our approach with mental training and mental fitness training is understanding how psychological safety affects performance, out on the sites, day-to-day operations and just overall organizational performance.

And so that’s a big thing that we’re going to talk about. And as you mentioned, us being a risk management company, it’s starting to talk about how educating and training people about some of the risks that can affect a person’s psychological safety, not just at the job site, but at home. Things like distraction or frustration.

And some of these underlying things that come into play that we don’t maybe know how to address can affect everybody’s stress levels, burnout, whatever the case may be. And that can trickle out onto the sites. I think it’s just understanding that it’s not just about, the quote unquote wellness of the person, which it is, but it’s also how do we just continue to help them perform at a high level especially in the environments that we work in and that most of your audience probably is a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, changing, ambiguous) environment. So just a lot of stress and moving parts. And we want to help people show up with as steady a mind as possible, and that’s going to keep them safe first and foremost, and also help improve performance.

[00:02:24]
That term that you used, VUCA, where does that come from? 

It’s, from my background as a sports psychology, high performance mindset training guy. This high performance mindset training is designed for people that work in what we call a VUCA environment.

So VUCA means volatile, uncertain, changing, and ambiguous. My background training, military special operations, NASA law enforcement, surgeons, people that work in really high risk, high demand industries. That’s where learning how to train mentally is so important. Because it’s what allows you to learn how to be calm in chaos.

I didn’t come from the construction industry but we’ve been working a lot in that industry. And that’s a very VUCA industry. So that’s why it’s important for people to have these tools.  And then when it comes to overall wellness, psychological safety for the people in those industries, what I’m seeing is not only do they work in a VUCA environment, a lot of them also live in a VUCA environment.

They come home and it’s volatile, uncertain. So that’s what creates this stress and frustration and drinking and a lot of the stuff that people do because they never get a break from unrelenting stress. And so, yeah, that’s why it’s so important to give them the tools and the awareness so that they can show up and perform.

My training, it’s not for people that can’t get off the couch. It’s not for people that don’t have any motivation. This is, again, high performance mindset training so that they can survive and thrive in VUCA environments at home and or work, which is going to improve safety, performance, and all that.

But yeah, VUCA. I didn’t create the VUCA term. I’m military. It probably comes from the military as most acronyms do. But I just know the people I’ve trained and work with, that’s their arena.

[00:04:14]
That makes sense. And I can see how living and working in an environment like that can cause a lot of mental instability, especially if you’re on a team that isn’t prioritizing safety.

And I’m sure when you’re working with these people, you’ve had safety professionals who are telling you that they’re seeing more incidents in their workplace and talking about how that affects them. So from your perspective, what role does mental health typically play in those safety failures on those teams where incidents are growing rather than shrinking. 

That’s a great question. And what I try to do when I go out and I’m doing keynotes and speaking engagements and bringing our training into industries and hopefully what your listeners will take away on this podcast is understanding that first you have to know what mental health is.

And we really don’t know what that is as a society. We know what mental illness is, but we don’t know what mental health is. And there’s a difference between training and treatment awareness and application. So what happens in a lot of these industries that are VUCA, where there is a lot of risk and issues, whether it’s suicide incidents, accidents, mishaps, whatever this is, typically what I see happen is something happens out on the jobsite, guy falls off a ladder, person wrecks their truck, whatever the case may be, and the safety team will run out to try to figure out what happened and they’ll assess the situation and it’ll usually be a result of some kind of mental lapse, or he wasn’t paying attention or she was distracted. And then what they’ll do is they’re quick to just try to implement some kind of treatment protocol or treatment plan for that individual. Or they’ll rewrite SOPs or they get new PPE, and none of that is the solution.

It’s understanding the reason that most of these incidents and accidents are happening out there in these VUCA industries is because the people are just distracted. Frustrated, and that’s not the industry’s fault. That’s just the world we live in. The average attention span of adults in this country is eight seconds.

So that’s where I come in and I try to help people say, look, if you’re really trying to get at the root causes of these issues, you have to look under the hard hat. And then you have to give people training tools, tips, techniques, tactics that they can implement at home or at work to mitigate those things.

The incidents and the accidents are just happening. They’re getting worse because people are becoming more distracted. They don’t know how to pause when pissed. That’s a big issue. Everybody’s frustrated. At NASA, I’ve been working with them for a few years and they’re a very high performing organization, obviously, but their whole mantra and mission-focus is: Don’t let small things turn into big things. And that’s where this mental fitness training comes in. That’s what we’re trying to mitigate in these industries.

[00:06:56]
Yeah. I can see how that kind of foundation of mental health can be so incredibly important.

And listeners will remember last month in the August episode, we talked about how things like PPE should be the last line of defense. You have to start with those foundational things. So, when you’re coming in and training these teams, what are some of the most effective ways that you’ve seen companies integrate these mental health considerations into their existing safety programs or maybe a revamped safety program?

Yeah, what we’re seeing, and I can just speak from experience for the companies that have been working with us and is, first and foremost: I tell them if you’re trying to really improve psychological safety or mitigate risk, or all these things that companies are saying they want to do when it comes to this mental training, whether it’s the treatment stuff that you’re putting out there, whether it’s psychological safety training or therapy or counselors, that’s all good stuff you want to have within your organization.

But the piece that they’re mostly missing is the proactive training side. And so the forward-thinking organizations are saying, okay, yeah, we need to provide training proactively to just help people be present, resilient, confident. But then the most important thing, and this is what I tell them, if you want to actually make the changes and improve the culture and reduce liability and all the stuff we talk about, the training has to be a part of the organization.

It can’t feel like a one-off.

And if you think you’re just going to bring somebody in to do a one hour speaking engagement, and that’s going to change the psychological safety, it’s never going to happen. It has to be operationalized, is the term that we used.

So you have to find ways, and that’s what we help companies do, and that’s what my company My Steady Mind is built for, is we have an ecosystem of products and training that can be integrated into an organizatio in a strategic way so that it’s a part of it. And so I think that’s the big thing is you have to just understand that if we really want to solve these problems and change the culture, we have to slow down for a minute.

Because what I see out there is a lot of people just grasping for straws. They’re just grabbing things, doing it, and it’s just more tiring. They’re spending a lot of money on things that aren’t going to work. They’re just trying to check boxes. And that’s just highly ineffective.

[00:09:08]
We’ve talked a lot on this podcast about how, if you’re on a team that isn’t prioritizing these kinds of things, it’s really tough to affect change if you don’t have buy-in from the leaders. And having that thought that you have to start at the leadership, you have to start at the foundation so that you can actually affect change. So for safety leaders who want to create that psychologically safe work environment, what are some key elements that you’d suggest that they focus on first? 

You said it right there. It’s start at the top. Start with the decision-makers. Especially when it just comes to the stuff we teach. Because they need it. They’re tired, they’re worn out, they’re stressed, and they’re trying to manage their personal life, and so come in and help them first and foremost experience it, see it, taste it, touch it, feel it.

They’ll learn what high performance mental training looks like, feels like. And then that creates that culture of, look we’re doing it. It works for us. We’re going to get buy-in. And then you get some internal champions and things like that. And then you can start to push it down and throughout the organization, getting the right training to the right people.

And that’s a big part, that you can’t just put everybody through one training. Your leadership needs a certain type of training, and then your foreman in suits. they need a different type, you have your apprentices, your new employees, your whatever they may be.

And so you have to look at your organization like a pyramid, and then strategically get the right stuff out there. And a big part of what we do at My Steady Mind, which is very important, and this is a missing piece that I’ve seen when we start talking about things like mental health or psychological safety or suicide awareness, or any of these subjects and things that most people don’t associate that with fun. And so at My Steady Mind, our training is fun. It’s cool, it’s performance based. It doesn’t look or feel like you’re diagnosing or treating people.

And so this is a big part of what leaders have to understand. Because that’s what I’m seeing a lot of is they’re shoving training just down people’s throats. People don’t want to do, or it, they’re tired of hearing it or it’s the same thing. And so you have to put stuff in front of them that looks fun, that’s engaging. And the thing that we say at My Steady Mind is you have to hide the medicine in the cheese.

And we did some focus groups and things like that with people in these industries to talk to them about, how do we get this type of training out and up and downstream within the organization?

And that’s what a lot of them said. These were foreman, superintendent level people. And they said, if it looks and feels like another safety initiative, we’re not going to do it. We get it. We know how to do our job. If you keep shoving safety stuff down our throat, we’re probably going to do the opposite of what you’re telling us, right?

Same with mental health. And so that’s where you have to think strategically. It’s how you package it, how you brand it, how you get it to them. Meet them where they’re at, out on the job sites, use technology QR codes. And so I think that’s just an important part is we have to rethink what safety means, what risk management means, how we approach it, and then come about it in a more strategic way. Make it something that people want to do.

And that’s all sports psychology, which is what my background is, and when I’m training professional athletes or Olympians and all, we’re just trying to teach people how to have awareness and control over their emotions. That’s all it is. And it’s just teaching you how to regulate your emotions when you feel scared, tired, worried, or whatever the case may be.

And from an athletic perspective, that’s what lets you win when you shouldn’t, it’s the game within the game. This is the psychological edge that the best athletes use, and it’s the secret skill.

And this type of mental training has never been available for commercial use. And so that’s why I help people and organizations because they think they’re doing things that are mental training, and it’s just not.

And that’s hiding the medicine in the cheese. What it does within an organization when you provide this approach, is it lets people ask for help without asking for help. Because the types of people that work in VUCA environments, there’s a lot of rough, tough, macho that’s still out there. And those people are not the best at asking for help.

[00:13:32]
Absolutely. I think you teed up my next question perfectly. Because we talked about the safety leaders and now we’re talking about those people who would need to ask for help. So, let’s talk about how companies can better support employees who are facing those mental health challenges. Maybe they don’t have that foundation from their safety leaders, so what do they do when they face those challenges and are trying to maintain these safety standards? 

I think the first thing is acknowledging that you’re wanting to help, and that you know that there’s an issue, a problem, whatever the case may be, and that you’re providing some resources. Because there are a lot of companies I come into and they have really good resources. But people within the organization don’t know they have them. They don’t know how to access them. They don’t know which ones are for them.

I call it your wellness portfolio. I do consultations and things for companies and I’ll say, I don’t care if you got a hundred people or a hundred thousand people, let me see what I call your wellness portfolio. What do you have? And who’s supposed to use it, who is using it, who’s not?

And there’s a lot of them that are doing a really good job of it, but letting your folks know, because the big thing right now is show your people that you care, right? And then have something that they can access. And now if you have, safety teams and you’ve got people in there to help implement. That’s great.

[00:14:43]
Yeah. I think you hit the nail on the head that making sure that employees feel like the management cares about their safety. How they feel during the day is going to make a huge difference. And I think that’s the crux of psychological safety and where everyone should start is just giving your employees an environment where they feel okay to say, Hey, this isn’t working. We need to do something different. And not being met with pushback there, but instead, how can we help?

So, jumping from that into this next question. When you work with organizations who may not have an awareness, how do you help them recognize those warning signs that there are mental health issues affecting their workplace safety? 

So there’s national data out there and stuff that will tell you what’s happening in any industry, automobile industry, construction and whatever the case may be.

But at My Steady Mind, we have assessments that we can use to come in and help organizations or teams within organizations assess what most people would call the soft skills of an organization. And so with any industry and organization out there, there’s the hard skills. That’s your sales, accounting, finance, management, stuff like that.

But with My Steady Mind we have an assessment that measures the six skills of mental fitness: resilience, presence, focus, confidence, gratitude, and emotional intelligence. So let’s say for example, you’ve got an organization that’s had a lot of issues or accidents. We can come in and have everybody within the organization take the assessment. Each individual gets their own assessment. Then we do a summary of findings for your organization, de-identified, right? So we just say, Hey, a hundred people took this. Here’s the summary of findings, and we can show an organization that 76% of your people scored below average on focus or presence.

And that’s a major indicator. If your people aren’t focused or present and you’ve got people running heavy machinery and equipment, that’s a big problem. And so it’s helping people identify and measure the things that we know are causing a lot of the incidents and accidents so that you can better pinpoint the type of training you need to implement for that.

[00:16:58]
That makes a lot of sense. And I think being able to see that assessment, it not only gives the employees a space to feel like the company’s collecting feedback and that they have a space to say these things, but also gives that company a better picture of what they’re actually dealing with.

So let’s say you’ve had a company take this assessment. How should safety professionals be approaching conversations with employees where they figured out that mental health is impacting that person’s safety performance? 

This is a great question, and this is a big thing that what we’re helping people understand too, is back to hiding the medicine in the cheese.

So, what has never really existed, especially in VUCA industries, there’s never been a shared language that allows people to talk about stress and emotions in a way that doesn’t feel like we’re talking about stress and emotions.

Because this is what I see: You can put people through all the mental health, first aid and psychological training, which is great training but people, even your safety directors and your safety pros, are just never going to be super comfortable talking about it or asking somebody about it. So what our approach is, you have to create a shared language that makes it fun and sticky. And so we use terms like, BAMO, which means breathe and move on. That’s a breath technique.

And so it’s a four second inhalation, four second exhalation. And so if somebody’s stressed out on the job site and you see them melting down, if you were to walk up to them and just be like, Hey, come on man, take a breath. They’re going to flip you off and tell you to go take a breath. That’s not going to land.

But if we can walk up and be like, come on man. BAMO. BAMO is fun and it’s sticky. And so I think that’s a big part of what you have to help people understand, is you have to come up with a language that doesn’t make it feel like we’re out there diagnosing and treating people.

BAMO, breathe and move on. That’s our war cry at My Steady Mind, it’s a four second inhalation. Four second exhalation. And then the more important thing is, move on. It’s a call to action, right? So breathe. Something makes you mad, pisses you off, gets you upset, BAMO, take that breath and then move on. And it’s amazing how effective it is.

And that’s an example of a technique. We need to give people techniques, tactics, biohacks and tools that they can use in real time, in the moment when things are getting stressful out there.

[00:19:26]
I think that’s great because I feel like a lot of people approach these things with a more of a, how do we get someone not to react? But I don’t think that’s it, because you are always going to have feelings. There’s always going to be things that throw off your day. It’s not about not reacting, it’s about taking your reaction, managing it, and moving forward. 

A hundred percent. And it’s routines. Routines get results. We try to solve a lot of these problems, like you said, with a reactive approach. So something goes down, we react, we scramble, we go out there and we try to solve it. And this is the whole purpose of when you’re looking at mental health. An organization needs to have mental health treatment training.

So you need to have the 988 number. You need to have all these tools that if somebody’s in crisis mode. Call 988, get on the phone. You need to do something to really help. But if we want to mitigate that down the road six months from now, or six years from now, we have to have proactive training that’s in place.

That’s what we’re trying to say is, you’re going to need things in the immediate crisis moment right now because there is no proactive training going on. But if we can now commit to providing some kind of structured, proactive training and put it in place and run it for six months, 12 months, two years, three years, you’re going to need less of the reactive stuff.

[00:20:47]
Absolutely. And I love that you’ve found this niche that’s so important for these safety professionals and that you guys are providing this service that isn’t really out there.

So looking at the bigger picture, what does a truly psychologically safe or a steady mind workplace look like from a safety professional’s perspective?

I think it looks calm, it looks more efficient. It doesn’t look as disorganized or disheveled. You can feel it. If I’m a safety pro, this is part of what we’re talking about. How do we integrate some of these techniques into our toolbox talks, or something that they do in the morning, that just sets everybody up. You just have everybody take a BAMO breath before we start the day, right? Just that one little breath. That’s it. Doesn’t have to be elaborate, but just, Hey, before everybody jumps on the job site, let’s all take one breath. Now, get after it.

And so you know that there’s an awareness out there of the people, which would make me, as a safety pro, feel more comfortable that they do have some tools that they can use to manage their own stress in the moment.

And then also that they’re comfortable, if they see something, to say something. Talking to each other. Ideally you want them to be able to handle and resolve as much stuff as they can together. But then also feeling comfortable, like you said if they need to reach out to me as the safety pro, that they feel comfortable doing that.

And then I, as the safety pro, need to make sure that no matter what it is they say or do, I have to listen, show some empathy. And this is why it’s so important for the safety pros to have these tools themselves. because they know that they’re going to get pissed off or mad or whatever.

It really comes down to emotional intelligence. Everything’s emotions. It all comes down to our emotions out there. And when things get stressful and sideways, if we don’t know how to manage our emotions in that moment, or be calm in chaos, as we call it, then stuff’s going to go sideways.

So there’s four steps to emotional intelligence. That’s not just a word we say, it’s this tactical, practical training. So the first step of emotional intelligence is self-awareness. So just knowing, I’m aware of how I’m feeling right now in the moment. Is this person making me mad or they making me worried? Self-awareness.

Step two is self-regulation. So that’s where the BAMO breath comes in. How do I regulate that feeling of being angry or frustrated so I don’t react and say that thing that will cause a ripple effect.

And then step three is situational awareness. So now I start getting better at reading other people’s energy and emotion. If I’m walking out on that job site, can I pick up on the energy, on how people feel.

And then step four, situational regulation. What techniques do I use to regulate other people’s emotions when they don’t know how? Which is going to be most other people, especially if there’s stressful things happening. How do I help them regulate their emotions when they don’t know how to? How do I get them to do what I need them to do?

And so it’s when you take all this stuff that we talked about and you frame it as more tactical, practical tools, it makes it easier to say, okay, yeah now I understand how I do it. As opposed to just talking about, Hey, go out there and be emotionally intelligent. You know that doesn’t change anything.

[00:23:59]
And I’m sure a lot of people coming from a place where they don’t have this kind of training or haven’t experienced maybe therapy in a traditional sense. They may have a level of, oh no, I’m emotionally intelligent. But if you really haven’t tapped into those things and tried to reflect or name those emotions when they come up. It’s hard to tackle 

A hundred percent. It’s like you said, there’s a lot of people that are emotionally intelligent and there’s a difference in what, coming back to the sports psychology and the training, there’s a difference between, being an emotionally intelligent person and then what I call tactical emotional intelligence.

It’s knowing how and when to deploy certain things in certain situations. To make sure that the team is performing at a certain level. And so it’s a skill that just requires some awareness and some training. And the more people that can learn about it, practice it, and ultimately, like you said, the whole thing, if we’re doing this, it’s going to make the work environment safer and it’s going to help people not just on the job sites, but also at home. Because that’s another VUCA environment. People just really need tools. Quit telling me about it and give me a technique.

And that’s the cool thing, it just works. As soon as you give people something that works and they feel it, they want more of it, but the whole thing is you have to position that thing that you’re giving them as a kind of a tool that’s going to help them be the best XYZ, not, we’re giving you this because you’re broken and screwed up.

And then they’re not as reluctant to try it. And that’s what we’re trying to do is just give it a shot and mitigate the stigma and all that stuff. So, it’s how do you package it. How do you present it? It has to be fun, it has to be sexy, it has to be cool, it has to be practical, it has to be modern, it has to be all that stuff.

[00:26:01]
Well, I think you’ve done a great job not only setting a foundational understanding for safety leaders or even leadership of a company, where they can start to help build these things, but also if you’re a listener who is on the front lines, you’re someone who is working in these VUCA environments head on, I think you’ve also got a couple pieces that you can take and start using in your workplace and maybe start disseminating in your team.

So thank you so much for all of this insight. I think it’s been absolutely invaluable. I know our listeners are really going to appreciate this aspect and this inspiration on this topic. 

Yeah, my pleasure. I hope your listeners got something out of it. I hope everybody will try BAMO, practice the BAMO breath. If you take anything from this conversation: breathe and move on. Take that breath and see how it works.

[00:26:47]
Absolutely. Thanks for being willing to speak with us. 

My pleasure. Anytime.