Emma Flaxman is senior commercial comms lead at Channel 4 and a mental wellness influencer in adland, having led on mental health for the likes of PHD and Omnicom Group UK. Emma is superbly open about her own challenges, especially where they relate to becoming a single parent. She blogs about her experiences on her blog. In this brilliant conversation, Emma talks about spotting burnout in yourself and in your team as well as what life looks like for her as a senior leader raising two children on her own. We also discuss the importance of movement and recovering from the trauma of school sports to reclaim physical and mental fitness as an adult.

Key takeaways:

• Burnout often goes unrecognised until it manifests in behaviour changes
• Managers should ask their team members open-ended questions to understand how they’re feeling
• Giving back to others can make you feel great, no matter how busy you are.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

NABS Managers’ Mindsets
NABS Inclusive Leader
NABS Advice Line
Insanelynormal
Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM)

 

Louise (00:01.806)

This week, my guest is Emma Flaxman, senior commercial comms lead at Channel 4. Emma is a growth marketing expert who leads on brand and marketing for Channel 4’s advertising arm. Before joining Channel 4, Emma was the wellbeing and Engagement lead at media agency PhD on top of her marketing role there. She also led on mental health for the agency’s parent group Omnicom Media Group UK.

Emma holds a postgraduate in neuroscience and psychology from King’s College London and works pro-bono as a workplace wellbeing consultant on top of her job at Channel 4, as well as mentoring for the Brixton Finishing School. Emma is a Marketing Academy Scholar, a Campaign 40 over 40 winner and one most inspiring senior leader of the year at the This Can Happen Workplace Wellbeing Awards. Emma is a super busy solo parent to two children and blogs about her experiences at insanelynormal.co.uk.

Welcome Emma to the NABS podcast. How are you doing today?

Emma (01:02.232)

I mean, I am very excited to be here. I have felt better. Thanks to my children, I’m full of cold. But apart from that, I’m all good. Thank you.

Louise (01:11.45)

Very much appreciate you powering through on this. have to say, you know, obviously we are a wellbeing organisation and I did say to Emma, if you want to reschedule for when you don’t have the lurgy, that’s fine. But Emma has very kindly decided she’s feeling okay enough to do this. With a big thanks very much to your children for sharing their cold with you, we shall crack on. I’m very much looking forward to the conversation.

 

You’re such a leader when it comes to mental wellness in the industry. You’ve got your fantastic blog, which we’ll talk about.

And of course your own mental wellness journey, which you’ve been really open about. So can you tell us about a couple of challenges that you’ve had to face?

Emma (01:50.692)

Yeah, I mean, I’ve faced several actually, I think we all have. I’m really lucky that most of my ill mental health experiences have been down to life moments rather than any neurological issues. This means that I’ve never really needed additional support such as therapy or medication to get over them. I’ve just found ways in order to manage them myself. But I am a massive fan, by the way, of therapy when you don’t need it, or you think you don’t need it, because I think it’s absolutely…

 

Louise (02:14.413)

Right.

Emma (02:17.658)

Sometimes there’s a quote, it says it’s wasted on the sick and I fully agree with that. I think everyone should see a therapist if they can and they have the capabilities to do so. But yeah, I mean, I first really started to understand about mental health when my sister attempted to take her own life. That led me to pretty much where I am now. I wanted to understand everything that I could possibly learn about it and how to protect people from potentially going down the same route.

Thankfully, my sister is very, very healthy now, very, very well, but it was possibly one of the most scary things I’ve ever dealt with. For me personally though, I think recently, you mentioned that I’m a solo parent. I am a single parent. I’m a single mum. It’s taken me quite a long time to be proud of that statement, I think, because there is quite a negative portrayal on single mothers.

But, you know, I mean, I look after a six-year-old and an eight-year-old, single-handedly raising them while also doing all the other things that you’ve just mentioned in my bio. And when I think about that as an achievement, it actually makes me quite proud. I split with my partner two years ago and we made the decision to try and live together, but that was not easy. I’m sure when a relationship breaks down, most people can understand the difficulty of that. But I left the family home in January this year and now I’m so much happier, so much more tired, but so much happier because I think the fear of being that single parent or being a single mum was absolutely overshadowing my ability for happiness.

And I think also for women, I think it’s difficult. We’re all told that you need to get a partner, you need to get married, need to have children by a certain age and you feel like you failed if you don’t get that. That unfortunately forces women into relationships with the wrong people. And, you know, it’s actually harder

Emma (04:12.624)

to be in a relationship and lonely than it is to be on your own. So yeah.

Louise (04:17.582)

And you’re actually setting a good example for your kids by showing that you can go for happiness as an adult, as difficult as that journey might be, right?

Emma (04:28.102)

I mean psychologists have actually proven that the happiness of a child is very dependent on the happiness of the parents. So if you’ve got two parents who are not happy together, that filters down and they feel it. You know, they want to be around mum and dad at the same time. My children have struggled with that. But actually being around me now, we have so much more fun because I’m in a better headspace and I’m sure he feels the same. So I fully support anybody who feels like they’re not in the right place.

Emma (04:56.674)

It is scary to get out of it, but it is better on the other side. I can absolutely say that in my circumstance.

Louise (05:02.678)

I think that’s really good for people to hear. Despite the fact that we have quite a high divorce rate in this country, I don’t think we hear enough from single mums or single dads, to be fair. I just don’t, I don’t think that narrative comes through. So I’m really glad that we’re having this chat and you can show that, yeah, it is hard work, but it’s worth it.

Emma (05:12.569)

No, parents in general.

Emma (05:23.302)

Yeah, it really is. I I think one of the biggest things, I mean, I have suffered burnout, I’m not going to lie, this year has been particularly difficult, moving house. And I only just started at Channel 4 last October, so I’m coming up to my first year and taking on a leadership position in a new company after 12 years in my old one was quite daunting in itself and having to learn everything there was to know about Channel 4 while navigating the emotions of my children, trying to get them into a new school. It was a lot, I’m not gonna lie. It was really, really difficult.

However, I’m really, really lucky because I work for a business that, you if I need to go home at four o ‘clock in the afternoon to make sure that I’m home when my children finish their after clubs, I’m there for them. And actually that, the stress of working around children is not easy, but the stress of them worrying about their separation anxiety, because I’m not there, is actually harder. I just kind of balance the lesser of two evils and you know their happiness massively impacts me as well. So I think I tend to count to that above my own.

 

Louise (06:30.816)

And I think most mums would, right? Most parents are massively, what’s that phrase? You’re only as happy as your child or you’re only as happy as your child is unhappy. It’s something like that. But basically if your child is happy, you’re happy. And if your child is unhappy, you’ve got issues that you have to deal with. Yeah, for sure. It’s real. There’s a couple of things that I’m really keen to pick up on here. Firstly, burnout. What did it look like for you?

Emma (06:43.961)

Yeah, exactly. Mum guilt, serious mum guilt.

Louise (06:56.118)

And how did you support yourself through it? It’s one of those words that’s used a lot, but possibly not understood that well.

Emma (07:04.27)

You know what burnout is a tricky one, because it’s so easy to be in it and then you don’t realise you’re in it until you’re in it. I mean, I think it does impact people differently but you can if you know somebody well, say you’re working on a team with people and somebody starts behaving slightly differently, you should start to pay attention to that and actually it might be a mood, it might be just they’ve had a bad morning but if it’s continuous over a couple of days then there is potentially time to ask some questions.

But for me I get really, really shouty and I’m quite a quiet person, naturally. I get stressed really, really quickly over the stupidest things. And I realise at that point, God, I’ve been taken on too much. And I am a, I would say a rather overly productive person. I like to be busy all the time, but there are moments where, I mean, it’s been proven now that actually strong bursts of lots of energy followed by a period of rest actually really helps your mental health, but there are periods where we just do not get the help, the respite, we just don’t get it, and though I would say when we were talking about single parenting earlier, I’m really lucky because my children still have a really good relationship with their dad, so they see him every weekend and I miss those weekends, you know, the time to be a fun mum, but I’m not I’m not joking I had all these plans of going…

Emma (08:31.286)

I could go and see parts of London that I haven’t seen before without kids and you know, I could go out and see my mates. I could go out on nights out. I have not done any of that. I am so tired by the time Friday night comes once they go out the door. I’m literally on the sofa and that’s it. I’m not moving. So that is my time to, you know, rest.

And I think there’s quite a lot of other things that people do. mean, you could burst into tears at any moment. You could drop a teaspoon and burst into tears, but you’re managing all of this stuff in your life and it’s the teaspoon that sets you over the edge. And you’re exhausted, like mentally and physically exhausted. Burnout can impact your entire body. You do honestly need, and it doesn’t necessarily need a weekend on the sofa. It could be just going for a walk, stepping away from…

Emma (09:23.194)

…whatever is taking up quite a lot of mental capacity. And sometimes you just need those regular breaks in order to just regulate your body.

Louise (09:32.514)

You mentioned that if you saw someone’s pattern of behaviour change and it lasted for a couple of days, that would be the point where you’d want to ask a question. What kind of question would you go in with as a concerned manager?

Emma (09:45.488)

So I think the one question to avoid is, are you okay? Because the, exactly. Yeah, fine, why are you asking? No, I think it’s how are you coping? How’s your workload right now? Is there anything I can do to ease that? Is there anybody else on the team who’s taking any part of your work away or could they support you? I think it’s much more open-ended questions, enabling somebody to really open up because actually,

Louise (09:48.79)

Yeah, because what are you going to say, yes or no?

Emma (10:12.11)

When somebody asks you those kind of things and you are struggling from burnout, it’s actually quite hard to hide it, because you tend to get a bit emotional. know, everybody feels it when somebody goes, are you okay? And they ask you in that voice and then you go, yeah, no, I’m fine. And then that’s it, the tears come out. I think it’s those types of questions where actually you tend to ask yourself the same question as somebody else asks it. And I think that’s when you potentially come up with the answer in your head. No, I’m probably not coping with workload.

Emma (10:40.666)

I’ve probably got too much on. Yes, there is stuff I could potentially delegate to other people. know, and some people, I am actually a classic example of being very, very closed. I tend to go quite quiet when I struggle with mental health. I highly recommend everybody talks about it and I am literally the worst person. I won’t say a word. And then once I’m out the other side, I’ll happily talk about the fact that I know last week I was like this, but this is why, and I’ll quite happily talk about it openly after the fact.

 

Emma (11:10.392)

So sometimes you need to just let someone come through the other side, but it’s just being mindful of what is the… what could you potentially do to ease that for them in that moment.

 

Louise (11:22.574)

So we know that there’s a massive appetite from people in the industry to have a more open conversation about mental wellness. We had our All Ears community consultation. More than 70% of respondents said they wanted the mental wellness conversation to open up. Around 40% said the first person they’d go to if they had a mental wellness issue would be their line manager. But we’re only fairly recently coming around to the idea that it’s good for us to be open about our mental wellness.

And despite you saying that you tend to clam up when you get really stressed, generally you are very open. You talk about it, you lead the way and you have your blog. How have you found it being so open about your own experiences, especially as a senior leader?

Emma (12:06.864)

But you know what, when I first came into this industry, I hid so much about myself and that stuff impacted my ability to do my job. And I’ll say things like, so I’ve got ADD and dyslexia and I’m a comms professional. So I cannot tell you the amount of times I was in a development review and somebody was going, your attention to detail is off. I could look at that document a hundred times and not see my own typos. I could spot someone else’s an absolute mile off, but my own, just couldn’t do it.

Emma (12:36.74)

But those cognitive problems for me enable me to be very solutions-driven. If somebody’s talking about a problem, even if it’s not to me, my brain’s going off on one. It’s coming up with all kinds of answers, mostly with quite creative flair. So this is why it works in marketing for me. But hiding those types of things made me completely doubt my confidence, my ability to do my job. It was quite depressing thinking that I couldn’t do what I was being paid to do.

Emma (13:04.078)

I love the fact now I can see younger generations coming into our industry and being very open about who they are. What could potentially, you know, falter their possibility of doing the nine-to-five in the office every day and that flexibility now of, you know, remote working, opening people up to be able to be themselves. Those types of conversations are the perfect starting point to enable somebody to be better at their job because those things, hiding parts of yourself…

Emma (13:33.966)

…can lead to bigger problems. You know, can become quite depressed because you’re not being open about what is potentially holding you back. I’ve got Grammarly all over my computer these days and it’s constantly spotting my typos for me. Life changer, absolute life changer. But I was too embarrassed to say it back then. I think back then people didn’t really understand it either. You know, it was always a negative thing. I think people are now seeing the positive…

Emma (14:01.402)

…potentials in neurodiverse issues, especially within our industry. mean, most creatives have got some sort of neurodiversity.

Louise (14:07.158)

It seems like every second person I meet in the industry has ADHD or as you say, some kind of neurodiverse wiring of their brain. It’s becoming the norm, I think.

Emma (14:19.915)

I think more people are realising that neurotypical brains are probably not the majority. Yeah.

Louise (14:26.838)

Yep, yeah, absolutely. I am the parent of a child with ADHD and who has just received the diagnosis. We’re on the journey with treatment for that. It is an interesting and challenging journey and very interesting to hear the adult perspective, someone who’s navigating the workplace and the importance of being open about where you’re at so that people can actually understand you.

Do you think there are some businesses that are saying, sure, talk about yourself and the talking the talk, but actually there’s not much walking of the walk going on?

Emma (15:01.938)

I’ve seen a lot of this sadly. I worked in new business, which I have to say is one of the most stressful roles. Pitching in an agency is possibly one of the most stressful things that you can come across in your career if you’ve ever done it. If you’re quite good at it, you get pulled into quite a lot of them. If you’re new business, you’re in every single one of them.

When one pitch team is recovering, the new business team is still cracking on with the next pitch, which is late nights, early mornings, quite a lot of pressure, a lot of deadlines. And I’ve seen very, very senior people in businesses talk about how important their people are. And then they’re the one 24 hours before a pitch saying all the slides are wrong, need to redo them and putting that pressure on the pitch team, which really frustrates me. I wouldn’t care if they weren’t just stood up the day before talking about how our people are our biggest asset and our most important thing.

Emma (15:55.206)

And then literally they’re putting the pitch team under so much strain 24 hours before delivery. We saw it with the Pitch Positive Pledge. I don’t know if you remember that, but it came out. nothing changed, nothing. And I would love to work. I mean, I don’t work in an agency now, but I would love to work at an agency who literally stood there and went, your deadlines aren’t going to enable our team to deliver you the best results. So we will pull out of the pitch or give us till the end of however long…

Emma (16:21.06)

…so that we can give you the best experience from our agency, because our people are our most important asset and that’s what gives you the best ideas. If I work somewhere like that, that would be the dream because actually as a client, I would pay for that. I would wait. You know, if we’re waiting for projects that we know are going to be, if you’re waiting for your kitchen to be done, you don’t want it speedily done and it’s a bit shit. You want to wait, it’s going to take a few months and you’re going to have to, you know, cook in your living room on a stove or whatever. I’d rather that.

We want the best stuff, but the pitching just doesn’t enable people to deliver it. People work their best when they are well rested, when they are slept properly, when they’re eating properly. I mean, can’t tell you the amount of nine o ‘clock pizzas I had in the office because, you know, can’t get home for dinner.

This is the kind of stuff that actually puts people, you know, in a better place to deliver their best work. We work in an industry where people are our product. Our clients are buying ideas from people’s heads. If those heads aren’t well, the ideas are a bit shit and then we just don’t get what they don’t get what they’re paying for.

Louise (17:24.738)

That makes absolute sense. We’ve always thought at NABS, you want to take a preventative approach and you want to keep yourself topped up along the way. Whilst we help plenty of people who wait until they get to a crisis point and that’s what we’re here for, and we’re really happy we can help people, if we can encourage everyone to get to more of an ongoing preventative model, then that can only do everyone a whole load of good, right?

Emma (17:48.44)

Absolutely. I’m a huge fan of wellbeing strategies that are actually educating people on how to look after themselves. My generation was not brought up to know that PE was good for your head. We were taught that PE was good for your body. And I’m so grateful now that my kids are at school where they’re talking about wellness and wellbeing. And I constantly do. I mean, I probably bore my kids to death with all the things I know about mental health, but they have, we had a separation…

Emma (18:18.064)

…this is just good for your body. You forget how much exercise impacts your head and your food impacts your brain and all of it, but we just didn’t get taught it. So I think when you’re sharing wellbeing strategies with professionals and experts from nutritional backgrounds or physical health backgrounds or neurological backgrounds, I think that’s when you start to make a difference.

Louise (18:43.758)

Absolutely. So there’s a lot, I think, for our generation about unlearning the toxic ways in which those messages were delivered, i .e. sport looks like you standing in a netball field and if you’re not amazing at netball, then you’re just standing there with people screaming at you that you’re rubbish. Or…

Louise (19:06.414)

You’re a female, so food looks like, make sure you just have 100 calories a day because you need to be really, really skinny because that’s the only thing that’s acceptable. So we’ve had to unlearn all of that stuff as well as learning what is actually the case that there are lots of different types of movement. Find the one that’s good for your body and your soul. Food is about fuelling your body, put some good stuff into it. Forget being skinny, what a nonsense. It takes, you know, those messages were so…

Louise (19:35.374)

…drilled into us, it takes a long time to redress that balance.

Emma (19:37.956)

It really does. It really does. I’m really glad that, I mean, the younger generations right now are still struggling with their mental health. I mean, they’ve got different problems now. Social media, I’m glad I did not grow up with social media. I feel quite lucky about that. And I’m quite scared for my children. However, the education around how to look after yourself is so much better now.

And, you know, when I was doing my degree, they were talking about the fact that GPs have had the same training for the last 70 years, but mental health has come so far, even in the last five, but GPs are just not trained in it. And we’re always told, # you’re told, go straight to your GP. It’s like, my GP doesn’t actually understand what I need help in right now. So, you know, we’re getting there slowly.

 

Louise (20:26.168)

It’s why it’s really important for us to have conversations, to get empowered within our industry and to try and help ourselves that way.

So we talked about your single parenting and you flopping at the weekend, which sounds lovely and necessary. If you’ve got any other tips for managing the juggle, and there was one thing that really, really struck me is being very, very brave that you did, that you referenced in your blog when you realised you had all of this stuff going on. There was a single parenting journey that was starting, the new job…

Louise (20:58.486)

…moving house and you were doing your studies at King’s and you decided to cut them short early, which to me sounded like a really, really brave decision because it was obviously something that was very important to you, but you were like, something’s got to give.

Emma (21:12.358)

As I said, I think it’s managing the lesser of two evils. I know that we don’t always have to choose one bad thing over another, but sometimes we do.

You  know, I, so yeah, you’re right. I wanted to do masters in neuroscience and psychology of mental health at King’s. And I was absolutely loving the learning. I’m not going to say I loved the 21 hours a week on top of a full -time job because I absolutely despised it.

Because my plan was, to do a couple of hours study in the evening once the kids had gone to bed. But I was working again. I was so busy at that time at work that I just didn’t get the opportunity. So all my weekends were full of it. And I had to keep saying to my, she was five at the time, she kept coming in my room and I was like, mummy’s studying, pop it. And off she trundled back out again. And she seemed like it wasn’t impacting her, but me saying that to her was impacting me. And I just felt so guilty and I thought they’re never going to be this age again.

Emma (22:10.938)

They’re never going to care about being in my presence as much as they do right now, know, when they’re teenagers, they will not care at all. And I thought, there is a possibility of me picking it up. I had six years to complete it, but I decided to call it a day at a postgrad and I walked away after three months instead of what would have taken me nearly two years to complete it. And I don’t regret a single minute of it…

 

 

Emma (22:36.41)

…because I am still learning, I’m just not paying Kings for it now. I’m not going to walk away with that certificate, but I’m still reading everything I can read on it. I’m listening to podcasts, listening, you know, reading, watching YouTube. In fact, when I was actually doing my masters, or postgrad, as I ended up to be, I really, really struggled with the way that academics teach you. And I actually learned most of it by going onto YouTube to understand somebody else say it in actually English, because…

Emma (23:04.14)

It was so complicated and it was an online degree so I couldn’t ask the lecturer all these questions all the time. I did have somebody I could reach out to but I’d forgotten the question by the time I got around to speaking to them. I, yeah, I mean you can learn this stuff, it’s everywhere but it is, I did walk away from it and I am glad, I am glad.

Louise (23:28.268)

You still have a lot of other stuff going on as referenced in your intro, which made me and our producer Lewis feel very inadequate, I have to say. When you’ve won so many awards, you’re doing so much to give back. And I said to Lewis, we are basically just watching Netflix in the evening. I don’t know how you find the time to do this and look after yourself. So where is the space for your wellbeing support and how practically do you manage that?

Emma (23:48.358)

Do you know what?

Emma (23:53.434)

Sometimes people who have suffered or understand what it’s like to suffer feel better by supporting someone else. So when I add all this additional stuff on my list, it actually gives me dopamine hits.

So, you know, I remember interviewing a woman for the Marketing Academy, which is a scholarship program that I got onto. And then I now interview the next cohort. And she was transitioning from a marketing role into much more of a brand wellbeing and employee engagement role. And she literally rang me last week and asked me if I could give her some support. And I was up to my eyeballs, but I paused and I sat out for an hour and I gave her all the advice that she needed.

I told her that she was worried about shrinking her opportunities in marketing if this changes and she wants to go back into something else. And I’d said to her that that’s exactly what I did when I was at Omnicom. I was very focused quite a lot towards the end of my time there on mental health, but I was still running a huge event for PhD.

And now at Channel 4, I don’t do anything around mental health. In fact, I literally just had to leave the Four Minds team not long ago because my resource in my own marketing team is not big enough for me to do anything on top of that job.

But giving that one person an hour of my time massively changed my mood for the day. And actually I was so productive in the afternoon because I felt so good that I just helped somebody. So I look at the, you know, the Brixton Finishing School, my mentee, she’s amazing. I love the fact that I can help her because I never had a mentor when I was her age. And the difference that it could have made to my life just having some…

Emma (25:45.706)

…strong woman in your corner going, you’ve bloody got this, this is really hard. I, you know, especially if they understood that, you know, having dyslexia is not a barrier to being a comms expert. If somebody had told me that when I was younger, it could really helped me. So I think that’s why I do it. So I do see that stuff as helping me. Maybe it’s quite selfish that I do it, but I do it because it actually makes me feel good.

Louise (26:11.406)

There’s definitely something around the power of kindness and giving back the science around, there’s been lots of research into it. So I guess you’re tapping into that.

Emma (26:23.226)

Yeah, quite possibly. mean, it’s one thing I tell my children all the time. It doesn’t matter what you achieve or what you own or how much you earn. What matters is what other people say about you when you go. And if I’ve helped people, whether it’s one conversation or three months of mentoring and they’ve got something good to say about it, then I’ve done what I came here to do.

Louise (26:50.574)

Whenever I’ve been to funerals and they’ve mentioned in the eulogy that the person was, you know, very influential in the community, or they’d helped lots of people, or they were known for being a great family person, whatever it was, if there’s a notion that they were actively giving back in their life, that’s the bit that stays with you.

Emma (27:07.034)

Yeah, exactly. mean, I don’t think I actually realised why I did it until you just asked me. But I think when it’s the… actually, was when I wrote the blog, I wrote a new blog over the weekend and it was, that is where I get my dopamine hits, it is helping other people. Because I, do know what it is? Because we don’t understand that much about mental health.

 

Everything I learned on that postgrad or things that I learned from podcasts or documentaries or anything I want. I want to tell people about it because we all have it. It’s not a niche thing that you’re in, you know, you’re in a, if you work in finance, you’re to bore somebody to death with finance. We all have mental health. Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes it’s bad. For some people, they never recover from it. And it’s really heartbreaking to know that there’s absolutely everything they’ve tried and it just didn’t work. But there is…

Emma (28:02.758)

…so much, so many people that it can help if you understand it properly. I think, you look not even about 10 years ago, you talk about medication, it has such a stigma attached to it, but we are chemicals, our whole body is made up of chemicals. So if one chemical isn’t working, pop in a tablet, that chemical is now there. It’s that straightforward, but we weren’t taught about it like that. It was all shown in the media that obviously we’re in asylums or we’re psychopaths or, know, so you…

You instantly get a fear of telling anybody that you’re on antidepressants because people instantly don’t know how to respond around you. But all you’re doing is giving your body a chemical and it’s not producing on its own. It’s that straightforward. And I love talking about it because people go, right, God, yeah, didn’t even think about it like that.

Louise (28:47.982)

There have been increasing numbers of conversations in my circles over the past year, couple of years, where people have said, yeah, I’m going to take my antidepressants or I’ve changed my dosage or whatever it is. And people are being very open about the fact that they have sought support and they are taking tablets and it’s helping them, which I think is really great to normalise all the forms of support that are out there for people.

Emma (29:09.254)

Do know what’s funny? One of the things I learned on my mental health first aid course back in 2019, the woman said, I had a really bad cough in the room and the woman said, don’t worry about it. I mean, I love the fact that you can come in here and you can talk about the fact that you’re not well and you’ve got a cough, right? Which could spread to this entire room, but nobody cares. If you’d have come in here and say, I’m really depressed today, everyone would have freaked out even though they can’t catch it.

Emma (29:38.138)

So we need to change that. I… thankfully for COVID, this is why I’m now at home with this nasty cold. I wouldn’t even dare go to the office because everyone would frown at you because it’s like you can work from home now. Don’t bring that to me. That is the stuff we need to be going. Yeah, stay in bed. Stay away from me. But if you’re depressed, come near me. Talk about it. What can I do to help you?

Louise (29:57.528)

Yeah, absolutely. And this is a good point at which to say, if you are affected by any of the issues or you need someone to talk to, then give the NABS Advice Line a call. Our support advisors are brilliant. They will listen to you and they will give you the help that you need.

Now, how does the advertising and marketing community lift you up? Is it because of that ability to get stuck in and give back? Is there something else that makes you feel really kind of uplifted and energised apart from that?

Emma (30:27.296)

I’m going to quote something here from Sherilyn Shackell, who actually runs the Marketing Academy, and she genuinely believes media marketing and advertising people can change the world because we are creating things that are seen by almost the entire population. So being in an industry where we have the chance to make things right among ourselves enables us then to take it out to the wider world. So whether it’s the latest Calm campaign which was amazing, heartbreakingly amazing…

Emma (30:57.03)

…or just supporting each other in business and actually putting that forward as a revenue driver because it’s actually now worked out, I think it’s between £5-£8 per £1 ROI you spend on wellbeing.

There is a financial benefit to supporting people. And I think that marketing and advertising are miles ahead of some industries. They’re further behind others, but they are miles ahead of others. And that to me, just makes me feel like I’m absolutely in the right place. That ability to make things right in our own industry and then take that message out to our clients and our brands that we work with who are touching everybody’s lives, I think that that’s what lifts me up. I will say…

Brands looking after it, giving people time to rest and being in the right environment or having the tools and resources when times are tough. If businesses start doing that, the impact that could have on the NHS.

If every company that looked after its people looked after things outside of just the working environment, and they were supplying people with therapy or they were supplying people with tools and resources that they need to recover or education on how good food can support, you know, brands, some brands are highly successful. They got bloody way more money than the NHS. If they were doing that for their employees, those people wouldn’t need the NHS as much for this kind of stuff. And I genuinely, that’s the stuff that excites me about the marketing industry and the media industry. We’re trying to do that. And I think that that matters.

Louise (32:43.48)

Yeah, very good. What’s the best lesson you’ve learned about how to support yourself?

Emma (32:51.622)

I think the biggest lesson I have learned is trying to get to grips what works best for me. So I’m an ambivert, which actually is like an extroverted introvert. So extroverts get their energy from people, but they quite struggle, they struggle to be on their own for long periods of time, it actually zaps their energy being by themselves. Introverts obviously the complete opposite, they get their energy from being alone and having peace or small groups of people.

I get a bit of both, but I will have to say that most of the time I’ve had to kind of fake it to make it, because being an introvert in the marketing industry is actually really hard, because quite a lot of promotions and you know networking opportunities or talking speaker opportunities don’t come from introverts. We’re not we’re not that exciting to watch on a stage.

 

Emma (33:48.588)

I think learning about mental health made me more extroverted because I wanted to talk about it more. I wanted to share it. I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and tell other people, even random people I’ve never met before. But I spent most of my career being really introverted. I sit there and I listen.

Emma (34:13.318)

Yeah, I mean, right now I work at Channel 4, I work on their sales team. It is a very noisy floor and 90% of my job is writing. You know, I write a lot of content. I have to write the brand’s narrative of why people should advertise on TV. And it’s really, really difficult for me to concentrate in that environment.

I love being in a brainstorm with select people and coming up with ways that we can make things exciting at Channel 4. It’s such an amazing brand. And that gives me energy. And then I walk out of that room and I’m absolutely broken and I need just five minutes of just being on my own and not listening.

So I’ve never once eaten in the canteen at Channel 4. The food apparently is amazing. I’ve never once eaten in there because I have to get out of that building at lunchtime and just do a walk around the block. don’t care what the weather’s like. I have to get outside because my brain is so overstimulated.

 

And learning that actually I’m going to go home this afternoon because I’ve got like 15 different website documents to read and I cannot do it in that environment. Having my children interrupt me instead is the lesser of two evils.

So I again would rather plough through all of that stuff at home after being in meetings with all the right people. And I’ve learned to balance that and knowing when I should be around the people and when I need to be on my own. That has massively helped me.

I love working from home because it actually forces me to do exercise as well, because I could do it on my lunch break and then I could eat something at my desk and no one’s judging me that it’s three o’clock in the afternoon and I’ve only just started eating, but that’s fine. In the office, nobody judges you anyway, but we have a lunch hour and nobody’s on the floor at lunch, which I’m a massive fan of by the way, didn’t see that in agency life. But I think it’s just working where you work best, being…

Emma (36:10.16)

…taking the things that help, make you more productive and understanding what doesn’t help and stepping away from it or asking for support or delegating something that you just can’t do all on your own. I think it takes age and experience to be better at that, but I think I’m navigating it now. I am much better at it.

Louise (36:36.494)

But that’s why it’s so important for senior leaders to model the way. Because the people with the age and the experience that you have just correctly referenced need to show how that plays out so that younger people can learn.

Emma (36:41.018)

It is.

Emma (36:50.624)

We are role models. We are absolute role models and we have the opportunity to shape the next level of managers to be like us, whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, depending on who the individual is.

And in fact, earlier you talking about management line managers being, you know, the port of call for those people who need to talk openly about their mental health. Some people are excellent at their jobs, but they are not excellent at managing and they do not necessarily deliver the role model behavior that we need and we need to see. And I think some of the stuff that NABs is doing in terms of the training managers, I think is so important because that role modelling behaviour needs to come from people who are experienced and know how to deal with people.

And you’re right, I am much more mindful of my team and behaving in a way. mean, right at the very beginning of the year, my children stayed with their dad when I first moved back to London because they needed to stay at school and I needed to organise their new school.

I cannot tell you the pain that caused me leaving my children not in my home. And I was coping, shall we say, was coping, going into work, learning this new job, meeting all these new people. And one day I snapped, I just broke down and I turned around to my team and I said, I’m really, really sorry, my mental health is at an all-time low, I’m going to have to go work from home, because if somebody comes near me in the next 20 minutes I think I might cry.

And I openly said it to a brand new team who had only just started managing and all of them were just really grateful that I was honest. Because I knew I would have broken down, I needed to get home, I needed to just be on my own away from the rest of the office, because I was going through something really, really difficult. I wasn’t going to stand there and give them my entire life story.

Emma (38:44.848)

But when I came in a few days later, I explained to them why I was feeling the way I was feeling and they were really, really grateful. And since then, they’ve been really open with me. And I think that that’s the most important thing is opening yourself up so that others reflect that and do the same.

Louise (38:59.352)

That is the perfect note on which to end and we will pop a link to NABS’ management training in the show notes. We’ve got courses that will help you to have these kinds of conversations with your teams and to create more inclusive atmospheres in which people can open up. I am so glad that things are more of an even keel now when you’ve got the kids back and that your sister is doing better.

You have a cold, yes, but that is a temporary situation and I’m sure that you will be over it extremely quickly. Emma, you’ve been absolutely fantastic and really inspirational and flying the flag for ambiverts and solo parents everywhere. So thank you so much for giving up your time today.

Emma (39:41.242)

My absolute pleasure, thanks for having me.