5 FAQS About Mental Health & Leadership

In this episode of 5 FAQs, we’re joined by Dr. Tatijana Busic to discuss mental health and leadership. 
 
We explore how control plays a crucial role in leadership dynamics, the impact of personal experiences on leadership styles, and the importance of understanding the interplay between cognition, emotion, and behaviour.  

THE 5 FAQs WE WILL ANSWER: 

1. Why do leaders seek to control?   
2.  How personal experiences impact a leader's approach to their role and  their effectiveness?  
3. How do cognition, physiology, emotion, and behaviour affect leaders in their day-to-day decision-making?  
4. Why is it crucial for leaders to prioritize their own mental well-being?  
5. What do you envision as the future of leadership in relation to mental health and emotional intelligence? How can leaders prepare for these changes? 

Learn more about EHN Canada and starting your own mental health treatment journey at ehncanada.com.

To learn about how EHN Guardians supports Military, Veterans and First Responder communities, click here: ehnguardians.ca.

Transcript

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (00:09)
Hey there, my name is Jonathan Friedman and you are listening to the Five FAQs podcast by EHN Canada. This is the show where we scour the internet for the most frequently asked questions about mental health and addiction and ask an expert for their answers to them. Today it is my honor and my distinct pleasure to introduce you to my special guest, Dr. Tatijana Busic Dr. Busic is a licensed organizational and clinical psychologist with nearly two decades of experience. She has dedicated her career to enhancing resilience and emotional intelligence in individuals.

both personally and professionally. Her organizational work focuses on developing values-driven and purpose-driven cultures by transforming leadership from the inside out. Dr. Busic also provides trauma-informed psychological services to individuals with a mission to help people heal and thrive throughout difficult experiences. Her life's mission is to cultivate greater well-being in our world, empowering people to inspire change in themselves, their relationships, careers, and organizations.

She holds a PhD in Applied Psychology and Human Development from the University of Toronto, has been featured in several media outlets, including the Harvard Business Review and CBC. Dr. Busic Tatijana, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?

Tatijana (01:23)
Hi Jonathan, I'm great. I'm really excited to have a good conversation with you today about some pretty important stuff.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (01:29)
Heck yeah, I'm really, really excited to have the conversation with you as well. But before we get into the five big questions, I'd love for you to tell the listeners, tell us like, why'd you get into this field? Why'd you get into this space?

Tatijana (01:43)
Well, I think that psychology, regardless of who you are, regardless of any individual differences that exist, whether gender, sex, religion, race, cultural background, if we identify as a homo sapien, we have a psychology. So there is something incredibly powerful about a psychological lens, whether we're engineers.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (02:01)
Mm-hmm.

Tatijana (02:09)
or with therapists or addiction treatment facilities like EHN, teachers, educators, psychology is such a powerful framework that can really be integrated across multiple disciplines. So from an intellectual perspective, I was very much driven to understanding psychology and developing the skills of a psychologist. And from a personal perspective, I just find human behavior fascinating.

and especially around how we navigate complex scenarios and situations, including stress and trauma, and not just survival, but how we also survive, heal, and eventually the idea is to thrive through the various struggles that come our way. So those are some of the things that I love about my profession.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (02:59)
I love that. That's very, very interesting. Thank you for sharing that. And Tatijana, I want to know if you're ready to dive into the internet's biggest questions on leadership and mental health. Let's do it. So the first question, the number one most asked question on the internet about leaders and mental health is, why do leaders seek control? Like, how does control affect leadership? Is that why leaders become leaders?

Tatijana (03:08)
Yes, let's do it.

Well, it's interesting. It's a good question. Control from, kind of see it from two perspectives, two angles. We have control from a psychological angle. So we all have capabilities, various tools, whether they're behavioral tools or mental tools to help us navigate through a tremendous amount of data coming our way. The human brain can be considered as a information processing.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (03:30)
Mm-hmm.

Tatijana (03:52)
system or some people refer to it as a type of machinery and every single second the human brain processes something between 60 to 80 million bits of information per second and a large majority again, there's some there's some debate around this but 70 ish percent is Instinctual and emotional outside of our awareness So if we didn't have control measures in place

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (04:04)
Wow.

Tatijana (04:22)
to navigate this, the brain would be completely, quite literally overwhelmed. In fact, we likely would not have survived in the species. So control also has adaptive and important regulatory importance. Now, I think when I think of control from a psychological perspective, it's on a continuum. There's two opposite extremes on that continuum. One is over control or absolute rigidity.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (04:30)
Hmph.

Tatijana (04:50)
and one is no control and complete overwhelm. We want to navigate ourselves, hopefully not on either end of those two extremes, but over various experiences, the lifetime, we're going to navigate somewhere on that continuum. But it's about adaptively using control to help us work through a tremendous amount of data in being alive and being a human. So there's a balance there. That's from a psychological perspective.

From a business or organizational perspective, I think that leaders are sort of analogous to a conductor in an orchestra. You have an orchestra, you have all these different systems and parts to the orchestra, and the leader does have some authority as part of their role and their responsibility to navigate that orchestra. Otherwise, the orchestra's maybe gonna sound not so nice.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (05:23)
Mm-hmm.

Tatijana (05:48)
Nuts are harmonious, maybe even a little chaotic. exactly. And so in the leadership space, there is an inherent amount of control as part of the responsibility of good leadership in navigation. Does that make sense? This kind of psychological and business kind of.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (05:51)
Maybe people won't be in time with each other.

Yeah.

Totally. I'd love to dive a little bit into like, just off of that. What is the process of understanding that control? Like, sure, like it sounds like it's important that there's this balance between, you know, maybe that sort of laissez faire versus having sort of that extreme authority and knowing, you know, when it's important to get your orchestra.

know, keeping on to a certain tempo when it's important to let us, you know, maybe a soloist do their thing. But how does that type of control, like, how does it affect a leader's teams? How does it affect their families? Where does a leader start to understand themselves in context to and in relationship to other people and what kind of control they want to have?

Tatijana (06:52)
Yeah, well, I guess maybe like I'm thinking out loud with you right now, but maybe if we check in on what is the intention and purpose of that control measure. So if I, for example, have experienced certain types of life events where I have had to exercise an extreme amount of control to keep myself safe,

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (06:57)
Please.

Tatijana (07:18)
to keep myself, to protect myself, to ensure that I'm able to do things adaptively and safely, I may have some, I might show up as a leader where that is my predominant go-to. So if I'm exercising control as a leader based on my own personal sort of fears or maybe triggers or even...

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (07:33)
Mm-hmm.

Tatijana (07:43)
sort of perceived, whether it's actual or perceived threat, but I've got a strong association to something feels threatening in that. And if I'm controlling from that place, that could have some significant negative impact on the team around me, because it's about me and my own fear or difficulty tolerating certain types of stress or certain types of ambiguity. And the way that that might show up to others is that I don't trust you to do a good job.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (08:12)
Mm.

Tatijana (08:14)
And that doesn't feel so good to people and teams around us and could erode trust over the longer term, team engagement, impact culture, all kinds of other things. I think about human beings are biologically, we've got a certain innate kind of drives. Two that come to mind around control and autonomy and togetherness and connection is first, we are all individuals.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (08:35)
Mm-hmm.

Tatijana (08:43)
So as much as you and I are the same as human beings, we have very similar, same brains, physiological systems. We're also completely different from each other. And that's the individuality of my own autonomy, individuality, and my need for self-expression. But at the same time, I also have a drive for connection, for collaboration. So as leaders kind of thinking about when you're exercising control, are you respecting the autonomy and the individuality of the person?

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (09:11)
Mm-hmm.

Tatijana (09:11)
and also the need for collaboration and connection as a team. We're here to do a job. So those are some of the things that come to my mind.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (09:20)
It sounds like it's possible that as a lead, like maybe as a new leader, you're starting to experience like, okay, cool, know, like I'm getting into that project management type of role. And, know, I really want to, you know, be strong and be directive. But sometimes when I do that and depending on the ways in which I do that and in which the ways I want to have that control, I could actually be not respecting the autonomy of my team perhaps, or not.

taking the time to build that trust. It's another way where it's like, that balance is really important. It's understanding our own need for control and where that's coming from against, know, respecting that other people need to have control of themselves and their environments as well.

Tatijana (10:07)
Yeah, and sometimes I hear leaders say stuff like, well, if I don't manage them, if I don't control this, then people are lazy, their motivation is going to dwindle, things like that. That's just, that's an inaccurate, it's a false perception. Most people don't want to lie down on the couch and do nothing. We all have drives. We're always motivated for something. Without motivation, again, we wouldn't be existing. It's like time's up in your lifetime.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (10:17)
Mm-hmm.

Right?

Tatijana (10:36)
So people aren't inherently lazy. We are inherently driven to express our agency or functioning. We want to do stuff. It's about working with the individual and your team adaptively. But micromanagement and control does not ensure that people are going to do their job. In fact, it has the opposite effect in many, many cases.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (10:58)
I think that's a good segue into our second question, which is, and I think I can already get a sense of what the answer is, but in what ways do you believe personal experiences shape a leader's approach to their role, shape that need for control perhaps, and how this can influence their effectiveness, influence their teams? What are your thoughts?

Tatijana (11:20)
Well, you human beings are social by divine. And so from birth until death, our experience, all of our experience shapes us and it's continually shaping us. So the way in which we perceive ourselves, the way in which we, models in which we view others, how we see broader systems in the world around us, what biases

I mean, we're all born with a lot of different biases that are biologically based and have evolved throughout evolution, but then dependent on experience, we may have exercised more biases than others. So I think that experience shapes everything. And if there's so much learning through experience, so what's learned, what I love about psychological agility is whatever is learned, you can also unlearn.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (11:55)
Mm-hmm.

Tatijana (12:20)
which is pretty cool. But it is really important, I think, to pay attention to honing our self-awareness so that the question isn't what biases am I perceiving others or the world from or what beliefs, no, I'm sorry, if I can go back, not if I am, the question is which ones am I engaging in? So that we can navigate ourselves and make decisions and choose behaviors and ways of being

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (12:41)
Mm-hmm.

Tatijana (12:49)
in our organizations that is grounded in the present and what it is that the job actually is requiring from us. Otherwise, we're kind of subconsciously, know, outside of our awareness guided by all of these different frameworks that have evolved over our lived experience. So I think it's huge, very huge.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (13:12)
So it sounds like it's really important as a leader or anybody on the team that you really got to be aware of what you're coming to the table with, like how you're, you know, the way you might have approached something or maybe the way you might have been approached about something in the past and how that affects how you behave now as yourself around people, around your teams, maybe even around your families too.

Tatijana (13:35)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's not about being like perfect and having some kind of 100 % mental health thing here. Yeah, it doesn't work that way. But it's about how do you develop the capabilities as a leader or if, you know, we're looking at a family and maybe as a parent or a caregiver running a home, how do you develop the capability?

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (13:45)
perfect score.

Tatijana (14:03)
to work with yourself and your own biases, your own models, your own beliefs, your own fears, your own everything adaptively. And so even if you do fumble and make a mistake, which you will and which we all do in a regular every single day basis, I think the impact that it has on our team isn't the mistake itself. It's how we handle ourselves when we fumble around to make a mistake, don't know something or.

You know, even make serious mistakes. How you handle that and take ownership and accountability and then how you communicate that with others determines the impact of that.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (14:40)
I remember a while ago, and I forget if it was in my own going to therapy or where exactly I heard this, but I remember somebody telling me when people are anxious or struggling to think, the first thing that they do is seek where they can control their environments around them. And I think in my own personal development as a leader, this is my first corporate job, I'm feeling it out, I get to work with a really awesome team.

Like when I am fumbling about, am I then going to other people on my team and saying, hey, like nothing is working, so you need to do this and you need to do this? Or am I saying, hey, like you know what, we made a mistake today. And I want to brainstorm how do we do this in a better way next time? How do we fix it now? And kind of go there.

Tatijana (15:29)
That's right. So it's not so much a question of not derailing. The question is being aware of your derailers and how you behave, what your go-tos are when you are especially stressed, and then working with those.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (15:43)
Mm-hmm.

So moving on to our next question, our third question, how do you see the interplay between cognition, physiology, emotion, and behavior affecting leaders and their day-to-day decision making? I think like for me when I'm scrolling on TikTok or scrolling on Instagram, and I feel like a lot of people are talking about like, this is how we should be thinking, this is how we should be behaving, this is how we should take care of our emotion, but we know it's a lot more holistic to that, there's a lot of interplay there.

Tatijana (16:16)
And in some ways that whole these are the five steps and do this and you're going to be happy is like in some way a coping room a way of coping with the tremendous task of understanding, you know, the complexity of your internal system. So it's like, if I follow these things, kind of it gives you a little bit of relief because then, okay, I'm on the right track, but it's not the sustainable longer term deeper kind of well-being work or foundation work.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (16:22)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Tatijana (16:46)
So when it comes to the interplay of what you mentioned, you know, I think of, you know, the individual as system one. And so before I come out and work with you, my team member, my colleague, I need to focus my attention on how am I working within my own internal system. So as a psychologist, when I'm doing like leadership assessments or personality assessments, things like that, I'm always looking for what's going on in the person's

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (17:08)
Mm-hmm.

Tatijana (17:14)
cognition. You know, we have these things called thoughts, stories, and we are designed to be observers of those thoughts. How is this individual observing and relating to the thoughts that they're having? Then we look at the second part of this system, which is the emotional world. And we have something like, I don't know, 80 or 90 different emotions.

that were designed to experience on an every single second basis. How are we experiencing the emotions that were experiences of emotion? So what's your relationship to how you handle yourself when you're afraid, anxious, embarrassed, etc. I look at physiology. So there's cognition, emotion. How is my body interacting with those thoughts, experiencing those thoughts and those emotions?

How do we regulate? How do we work with our own physiological systems? And then there's behavior. What's the behavioral response to these three things? So those are the four components of kind of a whole human being, but it's really important to also have the social contextual kind of setting. No one is completely functioning in isolation. No, there's always a...

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (18:35)
Nobody lives in a vacuum.

Tatijana (18:38)
political, social, environmental, all kinds of different elements to the context around us. So how is that individual interacting with the system of systems around them in the context? And so we want to understand, gather a few data points, some of the strengths, and then what are some of the areas that need some attention? So, yeah.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (18:54)
Mm-hmm.

It's interesting because I think like behavior is always a thing that we see and that we all interact with. But really, there's a really complex interplay between how all of these things work together and all of the different things and contexts that people live in within that team, but also individually, like somebody coming into work at 9 a.m. or, you know, maybe they're coming in late, somebody on your team. Like, hey, like we don't want you to come in late. That's the behavior. But

you know, really we don't know if they had a fight with their spouse in the morning or all of the other different pieces and taking time to just focus on that behavior in isolation, it doesn't really give the full context.

Tatijana (19:39)
No. And I think that we're also kind of, this is broadly speaking now, very generalization here, but we're kind of in an era of a lot of judgment. they're late, they're lazy. they're late, they don't care. they're late, they're not hardworking. So you're judging this entire human being based on this tiny snippet of thing that you're observing, which when I think about that is like, is so irrational.

But when we're judging, we feel so like smart and strong and rational. It's like, I know who you are behind that behavior. But if you really stop to think, well, how could you? You don't, it's just not possible. So a little bit of humility, self-awareness and a little bit of humility and catching ourselves, kind of making snap judgments like that, I think is really important.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (20:19)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

that. I think that's a really great segue to our next question, which is like we're talking a lot about behavior, we're talking a lot about emotions, like mental health is a really broad topic. How do you define it in the context of leadership and why is it crucial for leaders to prioritize their own mental well-being? I get a sense that it's important to take care of it so you can, you know, check yourself and have that resilience and be able to notice these things more and more in your day-to-day. But yeah, let's start there.

Tatijana (21:13)
Well, I think that historically, again, broadly speaking here, mental health has been associated with illness and mental illness. And while mental health issues and illness and diagnoses are certainly a part of mental health, there's a whole vast world here in terms with respect to how you learn, your learning styles and preferences.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (21:23)
Mm-hmm.

Tatijana (21:43)
and how your brain is neurologically kind of wired to perceive and function. Mental health is about absolutely every single component and aspect of your life. And so when I hear sometimes leaders say stuff like, you know, well, I'm a rational leader. We don't need to, you know, focus on mental health or emotion here.

essentially you're dismissing something like, you you're dismissing a very large component of data in how your team and yourself are functioning. So it's like saying, okay, I'm just going to ignore 80 or 90 % of the data right here when I'm making these decisions by over-focusing on rationality. So mental health, think is foundational for sustainable leadership and understanding kind of clearly that it's about decision-making. It's about

whole bunch of different cognitive processes. It's about how do you innovate? How do you tap into your creative centers? How do you understand and manage ambiguity? How do you make sense of information? How do you connect the dots? In addition to all the other stuff around how do you work with sadness and fear and emotion and everything else? And so really kind of demystifying a little bit this concept.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (23:10)
Mm-hmm.

Tatijana (23:11)
bringing it down to earth for what it really is and debunking some inaccurate perceptions around mental health and mental or psychological functioning.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (23:25)
I think it's really interesting because if I think of myself, and I'll only use myself as an example, when I am in that heightened state, like I really struggle with anxiety. And when I'm in that heightened state, my ability to make strong decisions, it could be a fluke that I make a good decision, but when I'm in that heightened state, it often brings me to a worse decision than if I would have had the time, the space.

Tatijana (23:25)
And I go ahead.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (23:54)
to think it out when I'm taking care of myself, when I'm going to therapy all the time, when I'm working out, when I'm taking the time to do the things that fulfill me creatively, like guitar and all of those other things. It gives me the time and space to actually be more functional as a leader or as a partner or so on and so forth.

Tatijana (24:15)
Yeah, and all the activities that you just described, that's under the umbrella sometimes of self-care. And I get a little bit around the self-care movement too, where it's not simple, like just have a bubble bath and get yourself a nice robe from the bookstore. Self-care is around understanding how to regenerate and replenish your internal system.

And so if we are functioning and working in ways that are taking away, taking away, taking away, they're degenerating and emptying out our cognitive, emotional, physiological system, spiritual, it's taking out. so mental health being about, it's actually responsible. It's mature. It's actually being an adult, learning how to replenish and regenerate your internal system so that you can show up, not...

Not just the way you want for other people, but for yourself.

Like for you. So I think it's foundational, especially in today's world. We can't ignore it anymore. It's irresponsible to ignore it. And I think that organizations are really coming to, it's a process, but the process has begun of it can no longer be ignored. The facts are kind of on the table and perhaps the last three to five years globally have really

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (25:24)
Mm-hmm.

Tatijana (25:46)
brought that to surface.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (25:49)
So when organizations are taking stock in that way and they're seeing like, we now realize this is something that's really important that we should be bringing to the table. Like where does a people leader even start to bring that kind of care into their organization? Are they calling up different like therapy clinics? Are they starting to look into like EAPs? Where does an organization start? Is it culture?

Tatijana (26:20)
Well, perhaps, I know that it'll depend on context and what's going on in the organization and the sort of, you know, where they're at in terms of things like psychological safety, well-being, how the people are doing and how the organization as a whole is functioning. But a good place to start is take a minute and turn your attention inward. How are you doing?

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (26:33)
Yeah.

Tatijana (26:48)
So often leaders will come to me and say, need some help motivating my team. And I'm being a bit silly right now, but I'm like, forget it. You can't motivate anybody else. You've got to begin first by going internally, following the five steps or 10 steps of the motivation that you learn in a really great workshop. You'll practice it, but then you're going to, it's likely going to dwindle after maybe a few days, a few weeks, you might keep one or two nuggets. It's not the sustainable type.

But when you begin with understanding yourself first and what's going on with you, that sets up the foundation for then being able to implement those 10 steps in a way that has a much broader reach. So we have a lot more autonomy, think, autonomy possibility.

Like it doesn't necessarily have to be these massive, large projects and interventions necessarily. Sometimes, yes, absolutely. Again, lots of different types of services out there for organizations. But a good place to begin is kind of going back to the basics of how am I taking care of myself and communicating within me? And then watch how that translates when you're delivering some tough feedback.

or something like that to your team. That would be, think, you know, let's think of there's the self-self and looking at how you are relating to yourself internally and then going outside the self. But again, we do sort of, you know, broadly, generally speaking, live in a world that's very outside focused.

Yeah. Does that answer your question? that? Yeah. Yeah. OK.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (28:32)
So yeah, you crushed it. Awesome. So looking ahead, what do you envision as the future of mental health and leadership? What are the trends? Where are things going? Maybe where would you like for things to be going?

Tatijana (28:50)
Well, according to institutions as big as the World Economic Forum, emotional intelligence by next year is the top most sought after skill in leadership, period. And so I think that we need to really kind of accept that these are not the soft skills. They have never been the soft skills. They have always and are the hard skills and the power skills.

of how to lead in a way that will help you navigate 21st century complexity. And it is a complex world. It's not the first time we've been through some complexity. That's for sure. know, change, transformation, suffering, all this stuff has been going on from the beginning of time. But there is something different about this period of time in terms of the speed of data.

coming at us, that has shifted tremendously in a matter of 20 years. And so EQ, emotional intelligence, capability, again, it's not about being emotional or sitting around in circles and talking about feelings with people all day long. No, these are hard tools and capabilities that need to be exercised and brought into the fabric of organizational culture.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (29:46)
I feel that.

Mm-hmm.

Tatijana (30:13)
and models of communication. That's what I would like to see. So even 10 years ago when I started as a doing my PhD, I'd mentioned the word psychology and organizations, shh, no, only management, HR, do not talk therapy. I'm like, nope. Now everybody is really that those conversations are happening. And my hope is that we continue to go in that direction.

because that as a foundation can help us with all of the other issues and complex scenarios that we're facing.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (30:49)
Amazing, amazing, amazing. Well, that brings us to the end of our, five big questions. was really, really amazing and a pleasure to, and really exciting to hear your thoughts on mental health and leadership. Where can people find you? Where can people get to know you a little bit more? I know before the show, we were talking a bit about your new website, which is upcoming, which is really exciting. Tell people where they can find you.

Tatijana (31:17)
at tatianabusic.com. The name of my practice is Bucic Psychology and Consulting. And something that we do that's a little bit different than some other practices, whether the therapy practices or consulting firms, we provide a hybrid approach. So we work on professional and leadership issues that individuals are facing, as well as the personal. There's no division in our work.

And this is a part of the holistic kind of view. So, tatianabusick.com, that's where you can find me, or LinkedIn. And I love talking to people. So when people reach out to me with a question or things like that, I do my best to, you know, respond and I really enjoy connecting with people all over the world. Yeah.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him) (32:06)
Fantastic. Thank you so much for coming onto the show. Just to leave listeners with a little bit about us as well, recovery is possible and EHN Canada is the place for both virtual and inpatient treatment programs for mental health and addiction. To learn more about EHN Canada and how you can begin your own recovery journey, please go to ehn.ca. To listen to even more episodes of the Five FAQs Podcast, you can check it out on your favorite streaming platform. Tatijana, thank you so much and we will see you next time.