Please note: This transcript is generated by computer and may contain errors

Introduction: Reflecting on Bad Bosses

Think of the worst boss you’ve had. What made them so bad? Do you think their top career goal was to be seen as a horrible boss? Or did they simply lack the training, skills, and self awareness to learn and grow in their role? Today we dive into the topic of bad bosses.

Exploring the Impact of Toxic Leadership

We look at the sobering stats around employee engagement, the financial impact to the business, and the scary mental health impact that often results from toxic bosses and workplace cultures.

Meet Rob Kalwarowsky: From Engineer to Leadership Coach

My guest today Is Rob Kalwarowsky, an MIT trained mechanical engineer turned leadership coach. Rob shares the eyeopening journey that led him from the world of heavy industry engineering to leadership coaching, along with important lessons for employees and bosses in today’s rapidly changing leadership landscape.

Welcome to the working well podcast, the show that [00:01:00] explores. the rapidly changing landscape of work and well being. Each episode, we dive into the hottest topics of leadership, employee well being, and the future of work. I’m your host, Tim Borys. Now let’s learn a little bit about Rob before we jump into the interview.

Rob’s Journey: From Heavy Industry to Leadership Coaching

As an MIT trained mechanical engineer, he’s Rob Kalwarowsky spent a decade in mining, oil pipelines, and heavy industry. His experiences with toxic leadership led to serious mental health challenges, and set him on a mission to positively transform leadership and employee experience. Rob is passionate about building a world where happiness and engagement at work are common.

People are led by great bosses. Rob was a three time academic All American in NCAA water polo. He played on the U18 Canadian national water polo team, is now a world renowned leadership coach and trainer. His TEDx talk on how to deal with an asshole boss comes out this spring.[00:02:00]

Rob, so great to have you on the show today. I’m looking forward to diving into a few different leadership topics with you. Before we get started what’s been new with you in your world? Actually, Tim, I’m out in Alberta, just like you are for the last few weeks. We’re just getting all the paperwork ironed out to be back down in Costa Rica for an extended period of time.

So I’m ready to get back down into the tropics because the snow is not working for me. Okay. So it’s almost springtime here. I don’t know. In Calgary, we’re We were plus 11 yesterday. So it’s, that’s basically spring, but it’s probably not as warm as Costa Rica. Oh, totally. Yeah. I know, like we lived down in Edmonton for a long time and it was like 11 is perfect for the spring.

And then now that we live mostly in Costa Rica, it’s every day it’s about 30 and sunny. And so you’re [00:03:00] just like, I never worry about what I need to wear. It’s always the same thing. It’s yeah, different experiences in Costa Rica versus Calgary and Edmonton. When we’re talking about leadership, you’ve got a very interesting background.

You came from the, heavy industry, mining, oil pipelines. And consulting in the heavy industry aspects of what got you into the leadership side? Yeah, so it’s actually because of that is why I do what I do now in leadership. So I guess a little bit further back. So I played water polo for the junior national team in Canada, went to MIT, got a mechanical engineering degree.

And then my first job was in mining and coal mining in BC. And I went out there and I was like, let’s go let’s save some money, let’s go on that corporate career track, let’s get going. [00:04:00] And I saved my company a lot of money. It was tens of millions of dollars in the first year I worked there.

And I didn’t know all the leadership stuff. So I was just like, I’d learned my whole life. Hey, post results, people will like you and then you’ll get opportunities because of this. Like when you play sports, score more goals, play well, people like you, you get on better teams, whatever. Or like in the classroom, you get A’s your teachers, your parents are all excited about that.

And then. You move up. This was the inverse. And so I saved all this money and I was like, Hey, promotion time give me more money. Get me like recognition dah. And it was like, Whoa, no. And there was a lot of pushback. And it was a lot of this Elements of can’t change.

We’ve always done it this way. And then my boss was also very passive aggressive. And so there was things like, now looking back at it, it’s like he had a lot of the [00:05:00] ego mindset stuff that we work on with folks. But it’s I hired this guy. He figured out that what we’ve been doing was wrong or could have been improved.

And it’s on me. I look bad now, and so I’m going to deny this, and I’m going to push that away. And for me, that landed in my experience as you don’t want me to work here. And so that put me down a track of, I suffered with depression, and I had a suicide attempt in 2013. And then basically I worked for the next six, seven, eight years, just drifting.

I wasn’t really. Trying that hard. It wasn’t really pushing because I felt I guess inside that if I did that, then I would get hit down like I did in my first job. And so I changed jobs, moved, did all the things, but I kept seeing the same things like in consulting. I went to, I don’t know, 60 facilities across [00:06:00] North America, everything from mining, oil and gas, manufacturing, power plants.

And I kept seeing folks that were working there, they were incredibly intelligent. There, these guys had worked there for 20 years. They knew everything that was wrong in the facility. And yet they all had the same thing. I told somebody else, I don’t know, five times, no one ever listened. And so now I just keep all this information in my head and I, and they’re all negative and they’re like, change doesn’t work and this doesn’t work and nobody listens and blah, blah, blah.

And then I started working with Susan, actually for my own growth, and what she started to teach me is what leadership could be, and it was, and that started turning the lights on actually, you know what, it’s like, this industry has a leadership problem, and it was because of that is why I was unhappy, and why all these other folks.

We’re not [00:07:00] only unhappy, but they were also like the performance was bad. Like, how can you work in a facility and you have this guy who knows all these things that are wrong and you could fix all these things and you would save millions of dollars and then you don’t want to do it. That always boggled my mind because I would always try to find that guy and be like, Hey, tell me what’s wrong in here and we’ll fix it.

And of course that was my limited perspective at that time. And now as I’ve pivoted into leadership coaching and I, I don’t work in heavy industry. I think I have one client who’s in heavy industry, but now I have clients across the board. And it’s very pervasive throughout the world is.

The Reality of Destructive Leadership

And the research backs this up, like I did a TED talk about how to deal with an asshole boss.

And the research shows that 65 percent of the workforce works for what’s known as a destructive leader. [00:08:00] And there’s six types of destructive leaders, but we’ll get into that maybe later. But it’s this is pervasive across industry. It’s all the population from the government to private to all these companies, and it’s not only is impacting our personal health and well being as people.

It’s also impacting the business results.

It goes back to that saying that. People don’t leave the company. They leave their boss. And I’m shocked that the number was that high. I knew there was lots of bad bosses out there, and I guess I shouldn’t use the word bad boss, ineffective bosses or bosses leading from they’re not leading bosses, dictating from the ineffective perspective, we’ll call it.

The, and you said something earlier in Aaron, one of your articles is [00:09:00] that Very few people really set out to be a bad boss. So how do you think there are so many out there? People having a negative experience in the leadership role. Yeah, Tim is what you said, right? Is, nobody sits down at the job interview and they say, Hey, Tim, where do you want to be in five years?

And you say, I’m going to be the greatest asshole boss of all time. It never happens like that. Everyone wants to, typically everyone wants to do a good job. Everyone wants to feel like they’re productive and that they’re getting things done and that they’re, their job has meaning and it’s useful and all these things, right?

And it’s flat out two, basically two reasons, if you distill it way down. One is the psychology that people have. And the other part of it is they don’t learn leadership. Yeah.

The Importance of Early Leadership Training

Harvard Business Review reported that the average person becomes a supervisor at 29 years old but doesn’t receive leadership training until they’re 42, 13 years later. Tim, you’re an incredible baseball player. Imagine learning on your own for 13 years and then being drafted by the Yankees only to get a coach then—it’s insane, right? We don’t do this with any jobs. When I was a lifeguard, I did training. My sister worked at Wendy’s and did training. We give training for jobs that are less impactful on people’s well-being than leadership. Yet, we often say, “Hey, you’re a great salesperson, now manage people,” or “You’re a great engineer, now manage people.” The skills to be a great engineer are not the same skills to be a great leader.

Promotion to Level of Incompetence

Absolutely, and you bring up a great point. There’s a saying where people get promoted to their level of incompetence. This is more common in technical skills—engineers, lawyers, doctors—where people show exceptional technical prowess and then are made leaders of other technical people. The skills that make you successful as a technical producer are not the same as those needed to lead people. The 13-year gap in training is impactful because after 13 years of leading, you’re likely less malleable than at the beginning. If you survive that long, you build habits and a framework. In my coaching and consulting, I focus on mindset first, then habits. Until you shift your mindset and become a learner, able to look critically at your actions, behavior, and outcomes, nothing else will change.

Sports and Leadership Skills

I love how you brought sports into it. In water polo, you build skills as an athlete and team player that are transferable to business. Many effective leaders come from sports backgrounds because they learn these skills early. These skills allow them to step into leadership roles more effectively. What needs to change to erase the 13-year gap? Companies need to invest in their leaders sooner. To do that, a mindset or operational shift is required. We need to look at research and behave in ways that science has proven effective.

Employee Engagement and Leadership

Gallup’s state of the workforce report in 2023 showed all-time highs in employee engagement at 23%. This means one in four people on your team are engaged. Around 60% are passively quitting, doing the minimum, showing up, punching the clock. About 12% are actively working against your results. The cost of having someone actively disengaged is nine times that of a regular employee. A bad apple impacts the whole team, pushing back on every initiative. Data shows high-trust companies return 2-3% more in stock returns per year over a 26-year period. Trust is built through great leadership, not a boss who yells at you.

Training Budgets and Market Uncertainty

Especially now, with market uncertainty, people development and training budgets are often cut first. We should still invest in our people because it delivers a huge return. When employees feel cared about and see their development as a priority, they become more engaged. This is backed by research. Investing in better people with better skills is crucial. You’re speaking to the converted here—companies need to invest in their people and their growth. Technical skill training needs to happen, but leadership skills must be developed earlier.

Long-Term Leadership Development

When leadership training happens, it’s often a weekend retreat or short course. Then it’s back to business as usual with no follow-up. Long-term learning and reinforcement are crucial. One-off trainings have dismal retention and application rates. If it’s worth investing in, companies should put 20-30% into initial training and 70-80% into reinforcement. When I go into a company for a keynote, I ask, “Why are we doing this training? What’s the desired outcome?” If it’s just to check a box, it won’t solve the problem. Regular reinforcement is needed. Marketing shows that 7-18 touchpoints are needed for information to register. Most training programs don’t get 7-18 touchpoints after a leader takes a program.

Effective Leadership Development

Harvard Business Review reports that companies spend $356 billion per year on leadership development, but only 25% is effective because it involves changing leaders’ mindsets. To sustain change, we have to change people’s minds. Otherwise, it’s a four-day training, a Friday off, and back to work on Monday, forgetting what was learned. The boss then piles on tasks missed last week, and the cycle continues.

Effective Leadership Development Strategies

And like when we host our trainings, our programs, we run them for 8 to 12 weeks. Now, it’s not obviously, it’s not full time for 8 to 12 weeks it’s, an hour of content, an hour of group coaching, and then we also have some individual one on one coaching for each person, and it’s spread over that amount of time is exactly that, it’s, I can teach you emotional intelligence means in 30 minutes, but you don’t learn it because you don’t feel it, and you don’t practice it.

And that’s where that 8 to 12 week window is where you’re doing the reps every day. It’s starting to become integrated into you as a leader. And that’s truly what matters. [00:21:00]

The Importance of Long-Term Development

And we’re starting to see, obviously, smart companies are implementing these things and seeing greater change. I’d say it’s still a minority of organizations that are Putting these long term development models in place and really working with employees to get key metrics on how they’re being implemented.

We see it a bit in the wellness side of the well being side is employee engagement surveys and things like that. Leadership 360s.

Effective Use of Leadership 360s

When done poorly, 360s are a waste of time and absolute garbage, and they just disengage people, but when they’re done right, they can be powerful tools for change if they’re combined with a [00:22:00] leadership development program and follow ups.

And that’s, where executive coaches and leadership trainers come in. To really fill the gap, but I’ve spoken with so many people that say, Oh, yeah, I did my annual review. And it’s that’s the last time we chatted about those things was a year ago. If a year between every major strategic touch point is The window, then you’re going to be severely lacking in your ability to make course corrections along the way.

Engaging Employees Through Strengths

And and that’s the back to the what Gallup talks about are the 5 behaviors for engaging people. And it’s having a caring manager, focusing on strengths, constant development. Discussions I forget what the other two are, but it’s basically that, right? It’s like people want to feel one is that they matter to that.

They’re cared about [00:23:00] and that. They’re focusing on their own development and utilizing their strengths so they’re effective every day.

Creative Task Management

And literally I had a conversation with one of my leaders last week and we were talking about being creative with his people. On tasks, he had some folks that he was trying to give tasks to and they were pushing back and it was like, they weren’t good at these tasks, or they felt in their mindset that they weren’t ready to do them or whatever.

And I was like why don’t we take some other folks, give them those tasks and then hand the tasks that these people are good at to. Like cross pollinate to work a little bit differently, and it doesn’t take this massive effort, right? It’s hey, Tim, this Excel spreadsheet data tracking stuff let me do that.

And then you can work on, going out and building connection or going out and engaging people. [00:24:00] And it’s not this huge shift. It’s a couple tweaks and

Dealing with Bad Bosses

going back to what we talked about before about how there are so many bosses out there and people haven’t had that training. They haven’t had the coach sitting down with them and really asking those challenging questions and working through that development process.

I guess most people. I wouldn’t say most people. There’s a split between how people deal with a bad boss, the most common would probably just quitting your job, but that’s not feasible for everyone. So what are some effective ways to stay in the role and hopefully make it better? As an employee, absolutely.

It depends what type of boss you have first.

Types of Bad Bosses

So [00:25:00] when I the 6 types of bad bosses, basically 2 of them are known as arrogant and violent and abuse of narcissists. These are, they make up roughly roughly 25 percent of the workforce experiences those type of bosses. These are your Gordon Ramsey, Hell’s Kitchen, throw the dish on the ground, yell at you, those kind of guys.

I know he’s not exactly that, and that’s more role, but it’s for the point. Those folks. aren’t typically going to change unless they do a lot of therapy or they have this big moment where it’s like the light turns on for them.

Handling Arrogant and Violent Bosses

Those are in your quit category, right? And also, sometimes if HR is effective, you can also report their behavior. Or, those kind of things are also options for those. But typically, you’re just going to have to leave or find something new. Whether that’s [00:26:00] internal or external is up to you.

Handling Different Types of Bosses

Some of the ones on the other side, though, there’s two types of bosses.

One is called the Cowardly Boss, and the other one is called the Messy Bosses. The cowardly boss is these folks that go that’s not my decision. That’s for upper management or something like, you know what, Tim, you’re the SME and you should decide not me. Basically, they have a mindset where it’s, I don’t know if they don’t feel good enough or confident enough or whatever, but they don’t want to make, they don’t want to be accountable for decisions.

So they don’t do it.

Managing Messy and Cowardly Bosses

Then we have the messy bosses where. It’s probably just a training thing where they haven’t learned necessarily how to delegate properly, communicate properly, set deadlines, instructions, clarifications, specifications. It’s just hey, Tim, you figure this out, right? For [00:27:00] those bosses, you can actually manage them.

And so it’s like. When someone just throws a project over the fence, it’s Rob, you know what what time, when do you want this done by? What are your expectations for the output? Can you tell me what my budget is? Or can I employ other resources from other departments? Or, I need help with this or that.

And get them to define for you a project plan. And you can teach them over time as you mentioned, one time isn’t going to be enough. But it’s like over time, if you continue to ask these questions, They’re going to learn, oh Rob wants, Tim wants this kind of thing when I delegate work to him, and so that’s what I’m going to do.

For the cowardly bosses, they don’t want to make decisions, but you can say to them, hey, Rob, I need, Support, and I’m going to ask Tim to help me on this project. How does that sound? And it’s more like [00:28:00] you’re asking them to agree instead of decide for themselves. And so you’re like telling them in a way you’ve decided, but you’ve telling you’re telling them Hey, this is what I’m going to do.

Is that good? And then they can most likely they’ll just be like, yeah, that’s fine. And so those are the bosses you can coach in a sense. There’s managing. Absolutely.

Taking Control of Your Career

The biggest thing I want folks to leave with this is, and also if you want, I have a free ebook on my website, how to deal boss.

com. You can go there and it’ll break out the boss types and some of the strategies. But the biggest thing I want folks to take away from this is you need to lead yourself. And so this starts with you deciding on what’s acceptable and not acceptable. And then also how you’re going to navigate. And it’s just like the training, right?[00:29:00]

You need to take control of your career and go, I want to be whatever. If I want to be a leader I need to get leadership training. Or if I want to be the best engineer in the world I need to get continued development in engineering so I can do this. Whatever that is, you need to decide and invest where you need to because your company is going to do stuff.

And it’s great if they kind of align, but often they won’t. And that’s where you need to start choosing for yourself, because that’s where you’re going to become your best. I love that.

The Importance of Self-Leadership

And you bring up an awesome point that often gets lost by people who are facing toxic workplaces or bad bosses, is that they just This is out of my control.

I don’t have any role over this. This sucks. And it’s easy to get down in that negative spiral, [00:30:00] regardless of the situation, we always have control over how we respond to that situation. And, even Viktor Frankl, mad search for meaning I reading that the first time was just this light bulb moment of, yeah, it doesn’t matter how bad things get, cause you can’t pretty tough to get much worse than his situation and still to be able to choose.

The C. The positive and to learn and grow and develop and keep control over the things that you have control over. That is critical to health happiness while being success down the road. And we are going to face tough times. We’re going to face tough people, tough situations, being able to. Take a step back and use that personal growth and the learning that we take away from it.

One of the [00:31:00] positive intelligence is programs talks about the three gifts technique. It’s like whatever you’re facing, what are three gifts I can take away from this learning insight and self growth are just different ways to look at it. But. I love that. I love that you said that. And thinking back to something I read from Brian Tracy ages ago was every employee or every person is the CEO of their own personal services company.

And so I love that approach and that mindset and because a lot of employees, especially in the toxic environments, just say, whatever, I’m going to do my thing and I don’t have influence, but you have. Influence over how you show up and as you said, if you’re in a situation with that, 25 percent of the bosses quitting might be the [00:32:00] best option.

If you’re being abused mentally and physically, then yes, leave for sure. It’s not worth staying in that situation, but there are most. Most situations are not that type of situation. So there are opportunities to improve and grow. And so I think there’s so much of that can be helped. Now, hopefully, as you said, the people don’t have to deal with asshole bosses and that companies are investing in leadership training earlier.

Mental Health and Workplace Challenges

What would you say is The future, with so much awareness over the past four years since COVID particularly, there’s been a sea change in terms of the awareness around mental health in the workplace, leadership. Where do you see us being in five [00:33:00] years? So the first, I just want to go back to what you just mentioned, and this is hard, taking control of your life and career is hard, especially when you’re in a toxic environment, and the stats prove that out is folks who work for a bad boss typically stay there two years longer than other people in regular jobs and especially if you’re in one of those ones where they’re abusing you or they’re, Attacking you, it’s, it eats away at your control, right?

Your brain toxic workplaces increase depression 300%, right? Even your physical risk goes higher as well. So you’re more at risk for major disease, heart attack, strokes, all these other things, right? And the reason I’m so passionate about it is this, is [00:34:00] I was there. I literally tried to kill myself and then the next morning I woke up and I went to work and I knew my workplace was killing me, I knew my boss was killing me, and yet my brain was like Rob, you should just go to work because that’s what you do.

You got to make money, you got to be important, you got to be whatever, right? I could have quit my job. I could have. Like it wasn’t a money problem. I didn’t have any like logistically I could have quit my job got in my car and drove Away, right? It wasn’t that it’s the psychology that shuts you in And the biggest part is for folks out there that I want to give to you is You can choose And if you have a bad boss, I give you whatever power I have to tell you to quit your job and move, right?

These are things that are possible, [00:35:00] and it’s just now we got to start implementing that. Because I know it’s incredibly hard in the moment. I’ve been there. I didn’t do it. But I want my experience to be something useful for you, because I didn’t do it, and I spent another, year and a half at that workplace.

for this. And it was awful every minute, and I hope that me sharing that helps you get the resources you need to change and move and get out when you need to. Because ultimately, this is 1 thing my dad said to me is no jobs worth your life. And that’s 100 percent true. And thank you so much for bringing the topic back to that.

The psychological challenge of actually making that change. That is something I, yeah, I absolutely didn’t mean to minimize or skip over. And it’s [00:36:00] so important. I’ve seen that in lots of clients I’ve worked with. I see it in myself. Some of the business challenges that I’ve had over the past is like you, when you get into that spiral and how I explain it and describe it to clients is the, It’s like a whirlpool at the beginning.

You’re still in, you’re in this downward spiral, but it’s slow. And it gets to this point where you get to a certain point and it’s almost next to impossible. It feels to pull yourself out of it because you’re getting sucked down so much. And that’s where, like you said, you, I, And to, I can’t even fathom how it would be to try to commit suicide and then go to work the next day in the same environment that was causing that.

Seeking Help and Support

The piece, Tim, is that is actually the most common thing that suicide attempt survivors do, [00:37:00] is their life doesn’t change. We think that it’s oh, we hit rock bottom, we move to the beach, right? That’s what the movies tell us. But actually, that’s not always the case. I didn’t learn I spent six years after that just drifting, trying to figure out what’s going on, not really being engaged.

And so it’s I just want to give that to folks because it’s we’re taught in movies, you hit rock bottom and then it’s like a voice speaks to you and you’re like, oh, I should become a leadership coach. Now. It’s that actually didn’t happen. It took me, 78 years to get to that point.

But it, whatever it needed to go first was I needed to start going back into learning and growing. Which I had cut off completely for about four years after that, because I felt every time I would. Try to read something or grow, I would get my mind, my brain would be like, Oh, [00:38:00] it felt like it was an attack on me that I wasn’t good enough or I needed to take whatever advice I was listening to and implement it today and all of it.

And it was very hard for me to start doing that, but taking some of those small steps, going to therapy, getting psychiatrist, getting a coach, surrounding myself with folks who supported me. That’s when you can start doing things and then you can pull yourself out of it. And so definitely it starts with like I think it starts with having that network.

And like you mentioned, like that slow spiral is that’s the point of having all these habits and the support systems in place is that helps you never go down. Yeah, you’ll have a dip. Like it’s totally everyone has dips, right? I have dips. You have dips. Everyone has dips. But it’s like, When we’re dipping, then we have folks who are like I literally have my wife, my therapist, and my coach go to me, like, when I start [00:39:00] overworking, I have them watching out for me.

And it’s Rob, you did, 10 hours this weekend. Are you, how are you feeling? Or, you’ve been working nights and weekends every day. How are you feeling? And it’s I’m tired. I’m burnt out. I’m not feeling engaged. Okay, we need to work on let’s put some boundaries there.

And it’s that’s the importance of having those folks because it’s hard for you to see yourself.

Thank you again for sharing that. I know that will be valuable to lots of people listening. Talk to a lot of leaders, particularly executive leaders that are in that situation and they don’t see a way out. I think there, we talked about the mental health stigma and while there’s more awareness around it, There’s still, and there’s definitely more [00:40:00] conversation happening, which is good.

I think in the leadership space, especially at the executive level, it’s still pretty taboo to admit that you’re struggling. What have you seen around that? I think it’s also like partly a generational thing. And like the Gen Z folks, like I did, we worked with an NCAA team last year, and, these girls were, 18 to 22, right?

And they were all talking about going to therapy. And I was thinking back when I was in college and I was like, we would have never talked about this. It’s just not even a thing. And it’s that’s the hard part, right? And I totally was there, right? But when I started getting depressed, I didn’t walk in to a doctor’s office to try to get help for nine months.

And I was trying [00:41:00] literally everything, I like, running outside, more sunlight, getting like all the stuff that people tell you, right? But it was like, I didn’t want to be vulnerable enough to be like, I needed, I need help and this isn’t working. And so it is hard, but ultimately, the hard things are where you exactly what you said is where you learn and also where there’s opportunity for growth.

And that’s the big thing for leaders is you don’t actually have to tell anyone that you’re depressed except for a doctor or a psychiatrist or a psychologist or even a coach, right? You can literally call me and I’ll be like, we can sit down and talk about it. And it’s never going to leave the room there’s no one saying you got to come out to your whole company and be like, you know what?

Yesterday I was so sad, or I’m burnt out, right? You don’t have to do that, [00:42:00] but you need somebody, a psychologist, a psychiatrist. You need somebody who can help you with those things. And that’s why you have therapists. That’s literally their job. And that’s where, if you’re out there and you’re struggling you’re welcome to shoot me an email rob@elitehigherformance, happy to sit down with you, but find those folks who can support you with those things, because that will change your life.

The Journey to Finding Effective Support

So for you, what was the catalyst that got you to reach out for help and go to? Yeah, it was actually a friend of mine. So I had worked, yeah, it was a friend of mine and she was a social worker and I was like, I was really struggling.

Like I had a lot of like very intense thoughts and It was, I was talking to her and I was like, I’m having these problems what should I do? And she was like, [00:43:00] Rob, go to the doctor right now. And that’s what I did. I actually drove to ER. I was in a small town, so it was like, I didn’t have a family doctor.

But I drove to the ER. And then, they, wrote me a prescription. And then they got me into therapy and group therapy and all these things. But, and I just want to say for folks, it took me a long time to find support that works. So just for folks, it’s not like you’re going to get the first pill and it’s going to work.

Typically it doesn’t. I actually did around 20 medications before I found one that was effective. And I also went to many therapists before I found one that was effective. And so just to put that out there, it’s not like a broken arm where they just set it and put a cask and everything’s great.

It’s very complex, and there’s a lot of ironing out that they need to do with it. And you probably will have to ask many times.

How did [00:44:00] you feel through that process of experimentation with trying to find the right fit for a therapist? What were some of the thought processes you went through? That was actually the reason why the six year dissociation happened, was the first round of help I did, I don’t know, it was like 10 different medications or so, and I saw a few different therapists, group therapy, all of it, and it actually, some of it made me worse.

It’s literally on some of the medications, like SSRIs, especially, they say In certain people, it increases your risk of suicide or it increases your risk of depression. And that happened to me. And I actually, after about a year, I was like, I don’t think I’m even helpable. It’s I don’t think it’s even possible for me.

And so I, I basically stopped [00:45:00] going to all of it. And then the second time around was in about 2019, and I did again, right? I did another 10 different medications and did a few therapists and then it was actually finding kind of the new strategies that they have now, where it was like, and literally now my psychiatrist and my therapist are incredible.

And the biggest part that both of them did, or do, is they were constantly learning things and constantly saying, Hey, like my psychiatrist, first session I walk in, he’s Hey, we do a genetic test to figure out what medications work for you. It’s new. But, and I was like, here’s 500. Do it now. And it was like science.

And then every time I would go see him, he would show me a new paper that he read about the treatment path that we were doing. And I was like, Ooh, I like this because he’s on the edge and he’s [00:46:00] learning and he’s growing. And then even my therapist Almost every other week she would be in a new training course and she’d be like, I learned this.

Do you want to try it? I’d be like, yes. And it’s like those growth mindset focused people. Those are the people. They’re always good. It’s not and some of the other psychiatrists like, You could tell that they haven’t read a book in 50 years and it’s yeah, like it was great when you took your psychiatry degree in 1970 but we’ve come a long way.

And I think that’s the big thing for folks. And even for people out there, if you’re thinking, obviously if you’re listening to this show, you’re into development, but keep on that path and surround yourself with people who are also. On the growth path. Absolutely. And you just used a great example of leadership skills is tailoring the [00:47:00] delivery to the team member or the client, knowing that you’ve, with your engineering background, that you’d be like, yes, absolutely.

The, you tend to think science based and logical and let’s try new things and let’s experiment. And so for them to. Present it to you. That way shows their growth mindset, but also caters it to your learning style and your preferences and leaders do that. Rob, it has been such a fantastic chat. And I know our topic went a bit more to the mental health side, which is amazing because I think it’s so important and it doesn’t get talked out particularly on the leadership side as much as I think it needs to.

Final Thoughts and Resources

Before we go, what’s, we recap the top takeaway you think you want people to walk away from this episode and the number one action they can take. Biggest thing for [00:48:00] me is becoming your own leader for you. And this can be in your growth, investing in your growth. This can be taking accountability and quitting your job if you have a bad boss.

This can be going in and trying therapy or getting a psychiatrist, right? If you’re struggling with mental health but it ultimately starts with you making the best choice for you in this moment. And obviously, Tim and I, we don’t know what that is, but you have all the information and so you can choose to do the best choice for you.

And so get out there and do it. Excellent. And hopefully that some of those choices involve. The support system around you for people that are feeling like they might not have as many options as they think. Thank you, Rob. I look forward to reconnecting and where can people find you? Yeah the first thing is [00:49:00] head on over to the Leadership Launchpad Project podcast, wherever you’re listening to Working tim is actually going to be a guest on our show in real world. I’m interviewing him in about five minutes in podcast world, who knows? So check that one out. And then for all things, bad bosses, how to deal boss. com. That’s where the free ebook is. And we actually have a training program as well. So you’re welcome to check those out.

And then for all things, leadership development. One on one executive coaching head on over to elite high performance. com for all of that. Wonderful. Make sure those go in the show notes and we can link directly to your sites. Thank you again for your time and your insight and for sharing so genuinely about your experience.

Thank you. Thank you so much. That wraps up another episode of the working well podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please rate [00:50:00] review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Which guests or topics would you like to see featured on the show? Message me through LinkedIn or on the contact page of timborys.com. Thank you for tuning in. I’m Tim Borys with Fresh Group, and look forward to seeing you on the next episode.