This Mental Health Awareness Week, CJPI has worked alongside mental health support provider and therapist Jasmine Granton, Founder of revu, to share 5 simple things CEOs should consider to improve their loneliness and mental health.
Jasmine comments: “The higher the role, the more pressure there is to project certainty, and the more urgent the tasks feel, which can often lead to high stress and burnout. This, combined with the pressure leaders place on themselves as well as the isolation that comes with this, is the most common challenge I see within my work.
“Here are five things I’d encourage any CEO or senior leader to consider:
Name what’s actually happening
Burnout often starts quietly, which can make it tricky to spot early. It tends to show up first as irritability, reduced motivation, or a creeping sense of detachment from work that once felt meaningful. You’re still showing up, attending meetings, even hitting targets, but deep down, you feel like you’re running on empty. Noticing those signals early and naming what’s happening rather than pushing through them, gives you far more options.
Build at least one genuinely honest relationship
Most leaders have lots of contact and very little real connection which is important when it comes to that feeling of isolation. Whether that’s a peer, a mentor, a coach, or a therapist, having one relationship where you don’t have to perform competence can really support not only their mental health, but their ability to perform at a high standard.
Protect your recovery time as seriously as your calendar
High performance requires genuine rest, not just time away from the office. If your downtime is still full of low-level email checking and mental rehearsal for tomorrow, you’re not recovering, you’re just working more slowly. Actions like building in non-working holidays (where you can genuinely switch off) are helpful, but also building in ‘deep work’ blocks into your calendar, even 90 minutes every other day for deep work can help complete ongoing tasks that keep looping in your brain.
Separate your identity from your output
When you get to a high level in your career, it’s easy for this to become your main identity and where you see the value in yourself. Whilst it’s great to be ambitious and proud of your success, it’s important to seek experiences outside of the workplace too. It’s very easy for CEOs and leaders to only equate their value to last quarter’s results, and that becomes unsustainable over time. I often encourage leaders to try new hobbies, at least now and then, to fail… to do things they know they’re bad at, to see that this doesn’t change their personal value.
Get support before you need it urgently
The leaders I work with who fare best are the ones who invest in their mental health as an ongoing practice, not a crisis response. Waiting until you’re at breaking point dramatically limits what support can do. Treat it the way you’d treat any other form of performance investment. It’s easy to keep putting off getting support, because it can feel like another item on the never-ending to-do list, but this isolation, constant stress and fatigue can lead to burnout that takes far longer to recover from than dealing with the challenges in the here and now.”