(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Major support for Carolina Business Review provided by Colonial Life, providing benefits to employees to help them protect their family, their finances and their futures.

High Point University, the premier life skills university focused on preparing students for the world as it is going to be.

And, Sonoco, a global manufacturer of consumer and industrial packaging products and provider of packaging services with more than 300 operations in 35 countries.

- During the height of this Coronavirus pandemic, almost exactly a year ago, we convened a panel of experts around mental health, among other things.

How were we faring at the time?

We are re-convening that panel now to ask some of the same questions.

What big lessons have we learned?

Are we better off for it?

I'm Chris William, and welcome to this special Carolina Business Review.

We will start in just a moment and we hope you stay with us.

- [Announcer] Gratefully acknowledging support by Martin Marietta, a leading provider of natural resource based building materials providing the foundation upon which our communities improve and grow.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.

Visit us at southcarolinablues.com.

The Duke Endowment, a private foundation enriching communities in the Carolinas through higher education, healthcare, rural churches, and children services.

On this edition of Carolina Business Review Jennifer Weber, Chief Human Resources Officer of ADM. Dr. Cynthia Ackrill, Stress Mastery Strategist, Myque Harris, Integrative Psychotherapist and Dr. Steve Shoemaker of Grace Baptist Church.

(upbeat music) - Interestingly enough, a year ago when much of the public health crisis began it was about public health, physical public health.

What it's ending up to be, at least at this point, is more about mental health.

And let me give you one quick, or two quick statistics.

According to the CDC 41% of adults reported at least one adverse mental health condition because of COVID, 26% experiencing symptoms of anxiety, and 24% experienced symptoms of depression.

So, has the public health crisis become a public mental health crisis?

Only in retrospect will we know that, but we have, to use one of our panelists, Jennifer Weber's term, we're gettin' back together and we're getting' the band back together and we wanna talk about this.

Where are we now from several different perspectives?

The question is, are we collectively better for the public health crisis that we just experienced?

Jennifer Weber, I'll start with you since we just quoted you.

Do you think we're better?

- So, I start with, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you a yes on that, but I think time will tell as we progress.

But, when I say that I wanna caveat it with a sensitivity to our viewers who have suffered personal loss as a result of this global pandemic, because the personal way in which that I've seen, I mean, I look at our colleagues across ADM, I look at members of my extended family and I'll tell you, the devastation and the loss and it's been palpable, it's been real, it's been devastating to so many.

So but then, if we turn our focus to moving forward and continuing to work on getting our, working our way out of this, and there's a lot more to go there, I would say I'd like to believe that this is going to continue to strengthen us in ways that we might even not be imagining today, because I think that this has taught us something about resilience.

And you know, this was such a socially isolating time.

I mean, I understand the depression, the anxiety.

It was a socially isolating time when people were going through things where they needed the comfort of others around them.

And and and, you know, what I, I think it has, it has prompted a dialog about mental health and well being, the connection between mental health and well being, and the physical that is a really important dialog to have.

And I would couple that with, and I'm speakin' now as a mother more than a, more than a head of HR for a moment.

I have three young adult children.

And you know, their generation already is far more open to talking about mental health, which I, which I think is beautiful.

I think it's beautiful.

And and, but but, it's also an impatient generation.

You know, they feel like they can you know, fix things on their phone and find immediate access to information.

And and, I think that I'm seeing that this is instilling a higher degree of patience in my kids and values and a reinforcement of values and family values.

So, I'd like to see coming out of this, a resurgence of empathy, values, values, values, values, however you define your your your, what drives you and motivates you and you value like at the core of your heart and soul.

And and and and empathy, empathy.

I mean, and and self empathy, because there's a really tight tie between self self empathy and resilience.

So, I'd like to believe for all of these reasons that it's gonna strengthen us.

It's gonna strengthen our families.

It's gonna strengthen our communities.

And it's gonna strengthen our companies.

- There's a lotta.

Myque Harris, Myque Harris, are we better off?

Are we better now than we were?

- Not, you know, I think there are some things I absolutely agree with Jennifer, right.

I think that it made me think of you know, Eckhart Tolle.

He says in one of his books, we have to kind of go back before we go forward.

That's kinda the nature of, of progress.

We have to sometimes go back a little bit to really really go forward, because we need those lessons, we need to learn, we need to be able to have some setbacks to really grow.

So, I think that this is a setback that we had that will actually help us grow.

Like Jennifer said, there are so many things that we can learn from.

So I absolutely believe that.

But I also think that it varies between communities, because you have some communities, communities of color, other marginalized communities, even communities within business, some smaller businesses, that have really suffered in some ways.

And so, the impact on them is greater.

So when we're thinking about kind of just employees and employment, well being, what's happening in certain communities, the impact is great and and some of it is a little bit more permanent in a sense.

So, I think overall, collectively are we better?

Did we have to kinda take a step back to go forward?

Yes, absolutely.

But, there is a reality that this, this pandemic affected communities in different ways and we're gonna have to really be creative and that's gonna take the compassion, the empathy, that Jennifer was referring to, to really start to reach out to each other to make sure that we can go forward in a positive way together.

- Dr. Ackrill.

- I wholeheartedly agree.

I think it's up to us now to really capture the lessons.

We had an anxiety and depression problem before COVID and we had a problem with people feeling out of alignment between their values and what they were doing in life and the connections they had.

I've been talking well being and resilience for decades and I'm actually grateful that the conversation has become safer among people who have potential to do something about this.

It's gonna take a lot of conversations because COVID shone its light on everything that was not particularly working.

And we could jump forward and try and get right back to busy, but I think we have this beautiful opportunity to capture what wasn't working, focus on what our values are, as Jennifer said.

More people realize this stuff matters and it actually matters to your physical, mental and spiritual well being to be aligned with your values.

It gives you resilience.

- So, Dr. Shoemaker, as Cindy just said, the spiritual part of that, do more people, is there a closer connection now between faith, connecting with the creator, and mental health and where we find ourselves post pandemic?

- Let me begin by responding to the question about better.

You know, are we better is according to who we is.

You know, I think it's been noted a moment ago, it's better for some than for others.

The other thing I would say is that we're not better yet, but we will be better.

And by that I mean we've been through a collective trauma and the PSD that the community is suffering has been noticeable in terms of, I mean, we've been living for a year in hyper vigilance which zaps body, mind and spirit.

Resilience is down because of the PTSD kind of phenomenon.

There's an Indian novelist who said that we need to look at the pandemic as portal.

She says, historically pandemics have helped society rearrange itself in better ways.

And so, I'm hopeful that we will use the pandemic as a portal to being a better community, better people.

- Jennifer, I somehow wanna bring this back to how, let me call it a softer science of faith, of mental health, how do you bring all that to bear as operating committee leader of a major corporation, how do you bring that to bear?

And I'm not gonna say be laughed out of the room, but how do you make sure a corporation knows that these things really are important?

And are they really important?

- Absolutely.

Well, Cindy, Myque and Dr. Shoemaker both, they all said some really important things, you know.

And I'm gonna try to tie it together, but ask for their help, because I can't possibly capture how well they said it.

You know, here's what I would say.

Cindy brought up safety, right.

And one of the things that is getting a lot more discussion is psychological safety and how important that is, how important that is to enable empathy, enable diversity, equity and inclusion, enable the empowerment of people to to to to be able to internalize, what am I learning here?

How do I take this as a moment of growth?

And so, and so, when you, when you think about those things you've gotta, you've gotta enable a safe space to bring that to life inside these unbelievable entities that we all have that we're all blessed to be a part of, right, and privileged to be a part of, right.

And so, and so, one of the, one of the ways that we're doing that, well, the first one is sensitive to the individual circumstances and impacts that this has created.

Myque, Myque went into this from a community standpoint.

You know, it's affected people in different ways.

We need to understand that.

We gotta, we gotta meet people where they are, right.

And and and if that means that gosh, I can't come back into the workplace right now.

I've gotta, I've gotta, I've got an aging parent.

I've got, I've got children who their schooling has been disrupted and I don't, I don't have the income to go you know, fund daycare or what have you.

And so so, we as organizations have to then enable flexibility, right, to help them, because people bring their whole selves to our organizations and we want them to, because that's when we get the best.

Right.

So, that's one thing.

The second thing is through some very intentional ways to get the dialog going.

So Cindy mentioned lessons learned.

We're rolling out, we're rolling out forums across our organization globally, putting our leaders in positions to initiate discussions on this, the look back.

You know, not the, Myque didn't use the term look back, but let's look back with empathy on what we've been through.

How does it inform where we're going and what we've learned?

And then, what do we do as leaders to make sure that we're bringing that to life, day in and day out in a way that these lessons are sustainable, and it's going to strengthen us.

It's going to strengthen us.

This is what, this is what we're going to go about doing.

You know, we haven't done it yet and quite frankly, we're not out of this pandemic yet, right.

We gotta remember we are not outta this.

And and and and so, so we're conducting leader led sessions and dialogs around empathy, including self empathy, focus, resilience and growth.

And by growth I don't mean growth of a company.

I mean growth of the human spirit and and and and leadership.

And and and just grow so that we're enabling these dialogs and and we're actually working on psychological safety, but we're not sayin' it, because people will say, what do you mean you're working on psychological safety?

Well, let's just go work on it.

And and and so, so that's what I, those are the things, those are some of the things we're doing.

And there are other programmatic things we're doing.

There are many.

But those are the two, two main I would say.

- Cindy.

- Chris asked about, pardon me, about resources of faith.

I would say, I mean, the church iha tried its best this past year to keep deliverin' resources of faith to congregations.

It's been very difficult, but I would say in terms of those resources, first, hope, hope based and a sense of the goodness of human beings and the goodness of God, we need that.

The, the resource of, of community itself that now we're gonna start being developed again.

We've suffered this past year.

I think someone described people in churches as angry, anxious, and afraid, which I think describes society in general.

So, we're gonna be addressing those kinds of things.

The last thing is the value of kindness.

The Dalai Lama said, my religion is kindness.

And so, what I've been urging people in my congregation is being gentle to one another and to yourself during this time.

- Well, I just wanted to jump in and say that I think that it will be really important, whether it's on an individual level in our families and our corporations to really reassess our expectations, because that was one thing that we saw, especially you know client to client, situation to situation, that the pandemic was happening and there were still expectations.

So, kids were in school, they were virtual, their parents at home, but the expectation was still the same, right.

So, I think now that we're transitioning out we really need to look at how do we reassess our expectation?

How can we have a better understanding of what our individual needs are, what the need is for our family, what the need is for our corporation or the organization that we work for?

Because if we go into things with the same expectation we really may be misleading ourselves to set ourselves up for more anxiety, to just go right back in to the rat race, have the same thing over again.

We're basically moving away from our values and just working on auto pilot.

So, it's really important that we say, what is my need, what are my needs?

What are the needs of people, what are the needs of people around me?

And how can I really set expectations that really meet this time?

I think that's very important.

- You know, you know, Myque, you inspired something, what you just said inspired something, because sometimes when we do those things we can end up feeling like our head is in a vice, because when we reassess expectations and needs as human beings, we, we're like okay, I need, I need something right now.

I don't even, I might not even be able to name it, right, and I, but I'm feeling anxious, I'm feeling depressed, I need something.

We feel that in our family units, however we define our camp.

We feel that in our communities.

We feel that in our companies.

We feel that in our churches.

And then you step back from it all at a time like this, and you're like, I feel like my head's in a vice.

And so so, I take it back to what Steve just said.

Steve just said you know, it's that self empathy.

How do we make sure that we're keeping ourselves healthy, mentally, spiritually, physically?

However you define and go to that place you go to to be healthy, so that we can, so that we can strengthen ourselves for others.

That's that's that's what I think is so hard right now, right.

It's just, and that's where like I think all the time, honestly, my wheels turn all the time.

- Well Jennifer, why do you think it's so hard right now?

- Part of it I think is because of the continued uncertainty.

We're not outta this.

Part of it's because of the differences in ways that we, we have been, our communities have been impacted.

I walk around, I walk around the, you know, the streets of Chicago and other places that I've traveled to and I see, I see businesses closed permanently.

There are families behind those businesses.

And and and, and they don't know, you know how you, you know how you think forward and you think, I wanna believe I'm gonna get out of this.

I don't know what, I don't know what getting out of this looks like.

And and it's not as though we haven't been through difficult things like this before or different, but this has been this has taken on, this has taken on a whole new dynamic and, and pitch, you know, because of the social, economic, mental health and physical check globally, right, globally that we're going through.

And then you don't you know, and then we could kinda talk about the role of the media.

I'm not gonna get into that right now 'cause we are media, right.

I'm supporting this medium of having this healthy dialog.

But sometimes that surround sound can, can help in the case of what you're facilitating here.

Sometimes that surround sound doesn't.

And so, and so, I mean, I, that's a good question.

I mean, it's a really good question, Chris.

But, I wanna listen to my teammates here.

- As someone who's been discussing this long before it was popular, it's really our culture, our education system, our work cultures, did not teach us to reflect on what personally makes us healthy.

We are focused on external goals.

We're focused on those expectations.

We adopt a lot of those unconsciously.

We don't even stop to think, is this a hit for me?

Am I in, going in the right direction?

Is this conversation working for me?

And we don't even have an internal dashboard to know when we're getting off base from our mental, physical, spiritual groundedness or well being.

So, as you were saying earlier, Jennifer, having those wonderful conversations about what does work for me?

What does work for this company?

When do those align?

How can I build on what works?

How can I communicate what works in my family unit?

You know, this doesn't work for me.

How can we build that?

- Yes, and Cindy, and I think one of the other things that makes it difficult, Chris, is exactly what Cindy, I couldn't agree more.

We, we we have, and inside companies it's, it can become particularly problematic, because inside companies, that's where we go, that's where some people go, we I mean, we go to succeed.

We go to succeed.

We go to thrive.

We go to add value and be valued, right.

And in this framework of success, sometimes we have difficulty being vulnerable.

And these discussions are requiring vulnerability and authenticity to show that we are human, all of us.

- And value ourselves.

- And value ourselves.

- Okay so, not to overstate, not to over reach, but Dr. Shoemaker, as we've been talkin' about this what occurs to me is it's not done yet, but number two, is there any, and again, this is gonna sound a little ethereal and almost preachy, is there some great awakening that is going on among everyone because of the experience that we are having right now and have come through?

- Well, I think it's been eluded to by the other guests, I think one is those families, you said were secure enough to keep going, they have re-experienced family in a healthy way that maybe they haven't experienced in a long time, with parents spending more time with their kids and things like that.

So I think that that's a rebalancing of things that's helpful.

The internal work that a lot of people have been doing as we have talked about today of discovering your deepest values has been, has been very important.

So, those would be the two things I'd talk about.

- Myque.

- I absolutely think that there is a shift that's happening and I agree with what Cindy and Jennifer said and Dr. Shoemaker.

I believe that even though it can be challenging for some, I think people are hungry for this change.

I think that even though it can be intimidating to start to go in and start to operate from the floor and be more vulnerable, as Jennifer said.

I think people are really hungry to learn how to do this and to do it more individually, in their families and in their corporations, which is why I think it is really imperative that major corporations are starting to offer workshops and offer things to say, how can we help you tap into the best version of yourself?

How can we help you be more authentic and therefore, really contribute to the organization in a better way?

So yes.

- I'm sorry, Myque.

Let's stay with that for just a second.

So, as Jennifer talked about empowering people within the organization, do you feel that people are at a place whether it's small or big or maybe unemployed that they have enough courage to follow through on whatever this change is gonna mean for 'em?

Are they saying that to you?

- I think some.

I think some.

You know, and I think I'm also coming from a unique niche where people that are reaching out for therapy and reaching out for life coaching are at a place where they are a little bit more ready to say, hey, how can I do this work?

So, I can't necessarily speak for every population, because I think there are populations of people out there that are like, I absolutely, I wanna keep doing things the way that I've always done it.

But, I see in my work, especially the way that I work as a integrative psychotherapist, we're wanting people to really tap into who they are and get to the core of their belief system, the core of who they are, and be able to say, what's important to me and how can I actually live into that more purposely.

So yes, on some levels I think because mental health is being less stigmatized, because wellness is something that people are really reaching out for more, more people are really willing to do it.

And if more people are doing it, there's absolutely going to be a societal shift.

- I've seen before people are even hungry for meaning and that's really going to drive us forward.

At the same time, we need what Steve mentioned, the kindness for those people for thoughts like that are a pure luxury, 'cause they cannot even make it through the day very well.

- Absolutely.

- So, for those who have the luxury, really taking the lead and helping this move forward and bringing up those who need the help.

- Yeah, we think of, you know Cindy made me think of Moslow's hierarchy of needs, right.

Like, people that are saying, hey, I'm just trying to survive, right.

And I think there's acknowledgement of that and it goes back to the kindness and compassion of others.

If somebody is suffering because they had a major loss, whether it was a family member or a business or some aspect of major change that was going on in their lives, how could we really connect to support one another?

And I think that's where the shift is gonna come, where it gets back to your first question, Chris.

We can be better off if we do the work together.

- Well, let's get back to the place we started.

Jennifer, you get the last word.

That seems to be a good place to stop and literally we have a minute, less than a minute.

Jennifer, do you find that your cohorts and your colleagues among organized businesses are giving people a safe place to re-examine their priorities?

- I think that, I think it varies.

I think it varies.

I think, I think we're all on a journey to figure out how best to do that.

And I would like to say I hope and believe and I do think Dr. Shoemaker talked about hope and my mother always used to say hope springs eternal.

And so, my hope springs eternal on that, on that one, right.

But, I do think, I think that Cindy talked about meaning, and all of us have talked on some level about meaning, either explicitly or implicitly, and you know, from the standpoint, I think people have stepped back and said, I may need to redefine where I go for meaning and what I find meaning in.

And I think that is a very very healthy reflection point.

- Okay, all right.

Jennifer, thank you.

Cindy, thank you.

Myque, thank you.

Steve, thank you.

I don't get, this doesn't happen often, but I actually got chills during this business/policy program and I hope we weren't just surround sound.

But, to you all, bless you, bless you all.

Thank you for watching our program.

Until next week, I'm Chris William.

Good night.

- Thanks for having us.

- Thank you.

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