Join The Construction Mental Health Revolution

Read time: 3 minutes

Welcome to Building Balance, a weekly newsletter where you'll get actionable strategies to help you build balanced construction companies, careers, and people.

Today's Highlights:

• The Goal: help you join the Construction Mental Health Revolution by being a mental health leader in your organization.
• Last year, I almost burned out and learned some important strategies for helping your people avoid the same fate.
• Burnout is a huge problem in Construction, and if you apply these strategies, you can make your company a Leader in the Mental Health Revolution.

Join The Construction Mental Health Revolution

Burnout is one of the top problems in construction today.

Especially when it comes to retaining young talent and building a construction company that lasts, understanding the mental health landscape is critical.

But most construction companies either don’t recognize burnout or they don’t know how to talk about it with their employees.

In 2022, I almost burned out in my role as a Junior Vice President. Looking back on it, it happened for 2 reasons:

1. I didn’t feel like the construction industry cared about mental health
2. I didn’t know who to talk to

I learned a lot from this experience. And I picked up a few key strategies that construction companies can use to do a better job managing burnout for their employees so that they are happier, safer, and more productive.

This newsletter is directed at everyone — Founders, Presidents, Vice Presidents, Project Managers, Superintendents, Foreman, etc. — because anyone can make a positive impact on mental health in your organization, no matter the rank or title.

Here are 3 key mental health strategies so you can reduce burnout in your construction organization:

Strategy #1: Talk about your mental health first

On my journey back from burnout, I learned a few key lessons.

The first of which is that employees model the behaviors of their leaders.

In construction, most leaders have never learned to talk about their mental health. In fact, they’ve learned the opposite:

• Feel bad about taking PTO
• Always answer the phone
• Don’t show any weakness

This is not their fault, it’s just how the industry has always been.

But if you can’t talk about your own mental health, how can you expect your employees to talk about theirs?

So if you want to improve mental health in your organization, the first thing you need to do is talk about it.

Example

Bad: “I’m great, but how are you? Tell me how you really feel these days. You can trust me.”

Good: “To be honest, I’ve been feeling burned out lately with all these deadlines. I’m working through it but it’s been hard. How have you been feeling?”

#1 puts the onus on your employee.

#2 puts the onus on you.

So remember: model those mental health behaviors first and foremost.

Watch how much more productive your conversations are.

Strategy #2: Create a safe space to talk about burnout and mental health

If you’re wondering… “why does talking about your mental health first work?”

Then you’re just like me.

I asked myself the same question.

I realized it’s simple — and the heart of Strategy #2:

When you talk about your mental health, you create a safe space to talk about burnout and mental health.

Humans are simple:

We don’t want to be left out of the group. We want to feel safe and secure. We want to be a part of the tribe.

For the last 100+ years in construction, the safe thing to do was be macho. Never show emotions. Act tough!

So of course people never talk about their mental health.

People are still scared to do it. Because they don’t want to get kicked out of the tribe.

Modern construction companies must change this narrative. They must create a safe space for mental health conversations. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it will make your teams much more effective!

Here’s a few ideas how you can do it:

• Have weekly 1-1 meetings with direct reports and always ask “how is your mental health?” (You can have a bigger agenda, but this question should always come up.)
• Take mental health days! And tell your people when you’re doing it. Encourage them to do the same when they need it.
• Set up weekly “Team Huddles” and ask everyone to share a positive and negative for the week. You’d be shocked how honest people get when they’re in a room with colleagues all sharing their struggles.

This stuff works. You just need to create the space.

Strategy #3: Never gossip

Gossip is a surefire way to increase burnout and cause cultural mental health problems.

If your employees hear you gossiping about other employees, then they will always wonder:

“What does he say about me when I’m not around?”

This fosters an atmosphere of fear and distrust.

Instead of one of candor and openness.

The simple rule: Never say something behind someone’s back that you wouldn’t say to their face.

If you commit to it, and get all your people on board, you will make an instant positive impact on the mental health in your organization.

My Journey To Happiness

On my journey back from burnout, I meditated a lot.

I realized everyone just wants to be happy- whether that’s your employees, clients, vendors, shareholders, or families.

Prioritizing mental health is an easy way to help all of your stakeholders have an increased likelihood of being happy.

Try it and see how good it feels. And watch the way it increases morale, productivity, and the bottom line.

So go in Monday and set up a simple 1-1 meeting with one of your direct reports. Don’t overcomplicate it. Just create a space.

See how it goes, and let me know how you do.

Once you have your results, reply to this email or tag me on LinkedIn and let me know what you learned.

If you enjoyed this, share it with your friends!

 Matt's Mental Health Corner

This week, I posted on LinkedIn about a new feature of Building Balance.

Starting this summer, we will host live Mental Health Sessions focused on creating a safe space for mental health conversations in Construction.

This is going to be the most impactful thing we have done yet and I can't wait to get started!

If you're in your 20s, passionate about mental health in construction, and would like to help make this happen, apply to join the team here.

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