Lisa Virtue:

All right. We are here today with MH, although I feel silly not saying Dr. Marie-Hélène, so welcome, but she gave me permission to call her MH. So welcome. Mh. I'm so happy to have you here. I'm just thrilled with the success of your book and the conversation that we're going to have in the topic about resilience and how that applies to our mental health at work.

Dr. Marie-Hélène:

Oh, Lisa, I'm glad, so glad to be here having this conversation with you. And love that focus we're going to have on women.

Lisa Virtue:

Yes, absolutely. And I was just mentioning this too a few minutes ago, but a lot of the listeners are moms or thinking about being a mom someday. And we talk a lot about resilience and building resilience in our children. But what about us? And do we still need it, and where do we need it, and what does that look like? So I can't wait to dive into that. But before we do, the listeners are always curious about the women that I have on what is your career journey look like? How did it get you to where you are today? So why don't you tell us a little bit about your background?

Dr. Marie-Hélène:

Yes. So I've really just throughout followed whatever I was interested in and what I happened to be interested in. Started with psychology, so I did that and then started early career, decided I wanted to pursue my PhD, and so I did that. And that research, it was now over 20 years ago, turned out to be on telehealth. So it was using videoconferencing to provide psychotherapy. It was before FaceTime existed. So I had to use six telephone lines to transmit video and audio data. I had to have a lot of funding to do that because of the technology.

And I had to manage a lot of people to stay with me on the team, to not introduce bias in the research, and I did not have money to pay them, so it meant that I had to do a lot of management. So right after this, I thought, I'm going to do an MBA part time. As I started to build my leadership expertise, and I started with very, you know, entry level type management, I was managing a call center, which if anyone's worked in a call center, it's like entering a fire every day. It's very demanding, but I loved it. And so from there, I moved into all kinds of more senior roles in the end as a chief officer. And I've worked in public, private sector, healthcare, insurance, various areas, and for the past six years had my own business where I mostly am a speaker, virtual and in person for organizations and professional associations and have a practice as an executive coach and still a small practice as a psychologist.

Lisa Virtue:

Lovely. And then this book was born. The resilience plan.

Dr. Marie-Hélène:

Yes.

Lisa Virtue:

So how did that come to be? Yeah.

Dr. Marie-Hélène:

It came because as I was doing my work with individuals and groups, more than once, people would say things like, I'm so glad I have this information now. I'm great. I so wish I knew all this before. And so hearing this quite a few times, I thought, well, maybe there is a way to get this in the hands of more people sooner in the overall process as they start their career, as they started their adult life. And I, and I said, I thought, well, if I can get this book in the hands of one person earlier, that will be something. And that's what led to the book.

Lisa Virtue:

I love it. And then you were also just telling me the success of the book. Tell the listeners, what did you just find out?

Dr. Marie-Hélène:

Well, we were just having an informal chat. But as you do things like this, what you want is your message to go out. And the more others see the message and share it, the more it does. So the recent news, Lisa, you're referring to is Forbes magazine and Ink magazine naming my book one of the top five books to read for yourself and also have your team read, which I thought was so perfect.

Lisa Virtue:

So, yes, your impact is being felt everywhere. So love that that is happening, and I love that we get to talk about it today because obviously it's being well received. So what does resilience mean to you? If you define the word resilience, what does that sound like?

Dr. Marie-Hélène:

Yes, and there are many definitions. The one that I work with and whether we're talking about individual resilience, team resilience, or even organizational, and it connects with personal, of course, it's our ability to go through adversity and come out even stronger. So it means. So, by adversity here, we don't mean only acute moments. It includes that, but it also includes chronic demands, things that are there over a long period of time. And sometimes we say, well, everyone's dealing with this anyway, so it doesn't count. Yes, it still does. So that, and this element of growth.

Right. We're getting something from this and we're getting even stronger. So one of the key pieces, there are many other pieces to this, but one of the key pieces is that sometimes we associate resilience with persistence, like at all cost, grit, keep going no matter what. And at times it may mean this, but at times it may mean stepping back and seeing that, I need to let this go, step away. So it's not just, you know, keeping going at all costs.

Lisa Virtue:

That's a great way to put it. I love that. So when you're working with organizations and leaders and teams, obviously this came out of a need. You saw that people either weren't having resilience or they didn't know how to grow their resilience. What kind of problems and pinch points are you seeing that there's a reason why people need to focus on this?

Dr. Marie-Hélène:

Yeah, one of the key reasons is that it is if we're investing in our resilience, often it will be from a proactive place, a place where we're able to step back and be strategic, be deliberate, look at the amount of demands that we are facing now or we're expecting to face. And all these demands are draining the battery. They're requiring energy, emotional, cognitive, physical, all this. And so the more we can plan for this and increase the baseline, so to speak, and, you know, the bank, the battery, the better we will be at dealing with these demands. We'll build a buffer and we'll be able to bring our best to them. So in a way, it is a way to. It is a protective factor for our overall mental health, but it. But it's beautiful in that it gives us this sense of self efficacy.

I can influence how this is going to go down for me here. So it's not just, it's going to be whatever it is, cross the river when I get there type situation. Of course, we're recognizing we cannot control everything or predict everything. But yes, there are things we can do here that will allow us to get to this next demand or next challenge, bringing our best self to it.

Lisa Virtue:

So I work a lot with job seekers and people in some kind of career transition, whether it's leading a new team or trying to. Trying to lead a new team, getting that opportunity in those places, I see a lot of time, resilience tends to come up.

Dr. Marie-Hélène:

Yes.

Lisa Virtue:

Right. You need to be resilient in the job search or resilient when you're leading a team through change or whatever that challenge is. So can you talk a little more about that and what you see as kind of maybe some myths that come up about what resilience should feel like or look like and in reality, what healthy resilience looks like?

Dr. Marie-Hélène:

Yes. Yes. And I love that you're focusing on these moments of transitions or additional demands and how you described it. Also that many of these are actually exciting. They're really. They're positive changes. I am looking for this new next job that I really want, or I am happy to lead this new team. And yes, even if these are things we want or embrace, they are still demanding more than when things are stable.

We are in between two states. We left this one and now we're doing this one. So it is, by definition, more demanding. There's more uncertainties and all that. And so sometimes one of the misconceptions is to think that we are resilient as a person. It's a personality trait, and you have all these previous experiences to show for it. Sometimes people will say, oh, I've gone through this. Imagine that.

And I did this. And everyone's telling me how resilient I am, how much of the rock of the team or the rock of the family I am. And so you get to a point where you sort of take it, you say, yes, this is who I am. And so. But the challenge with this, and we know it's not a personality trait, it is a state, which means, yeah, maybe you've demonstrated it, you've been in that state many times before, but there were variables, factors in your context that contributed to it, whether we recognized it or not. And so now, if we're here in this upcoming transition, looking for a job, new team, all of this is demanding. So therefore, yes, we want to invest in our resilience so we can bring our best to these, all of these things. And so one misconception is to think that it's in you, and therefore you don't need to do anything about it.

Now, sometimes, and, you know, another misconception may be to think that you cannot influence it. So there is no reason to invest that. Sure, you know, you could, whatever. Sometimes people will say it that way. I don't say that, but whatever, exercise or, you know, sure, spend time with friends or sleep well or meditate, and then they say, but I have so many things to do, and I don't have time to do this. Plus, I need to take care of my family. So, no, I'm not doing any of these things. Plus, it's not going to really change anything.

And here's the thing. We do know from research that literally these actual four things, if we were able to bring them more into our lives, they would increase our resilience. The exercise, nutrition, sleep and relationships. It may not be an immediate noticing of the needle moving, but over time it does. We don't want to just say, well, because I'm not seeing the immediate change. It's not doing anything we know, whether you believe it or not, whether you buy it or not, your brain's bought into it. Research is crystal clear on this and so it does make a difference. And so we want to take action.

And even if you're the parent of others, we know from research, especially from mothers actually, who will invest in themselves, that teaching for that modeling for children is extremely important. More than the amount of work hours that you work.

Lisa Virtue:

Yes. Oh, isn't it fascinating? The research I did too, especially as a young working mom and having those mom guilt moments and or shame or where should I spend my time? The research of it's not about the quantity of time, it's about the quality of time is what you're talking about too. Like that makes the biggest difference in the child's life, the modeling, when you are with them. Yeah, I love what you're talking about because that goes hand in hand with other research I've seen too, of. Yes, as moms in particular, like the modeling and taking care of ourselves is so crucial. And for some reason we still have this stigma in society that if you take care of yourself as a woman in general and you're spending time on yourself, you're selfish. Or we feel that way, or, you know, it just, it's so opposite, isn't it?

Dr. Marie-Hélène:

It is. And, you know, and in some circles and some cultures, in some, you know, it varies with people around you. But you're right, there's still overall this, I guess, dominant discourse that we should be turned towards the others and do that. And it's not supported by research. So the, sometimes what we need to do, it's almost like we need to think of ourselves as the CEO of our overall life. And if you're the CEO of your overall life, you and only you get to decide from which values I will operate everywhere, family and personal and work and everything, which, what are the values I'm operating from, what are the types of demands I'm facing and therefore what type of supply of energy I just need to bring in. And then looking at your overall context of how you're going to do that and having a deliberate plan, a strategy on how you're going to do this, and if you connect this whole planning with the values you're operating from, which some people will call their meaning their why, that sense of being grounded in who I am and the unique contributions I want to bring, then it makes it a bit easier to feel solid in this as opposed to because, you know, the guilt situation sometimes comes from, oh, there's this rule I should follow, and I'm not following it because I'm taking care of myself. And there's this outside rule of I should be only taking care of everybody else.

Now, you see, I'm not even in my chair anymore. I'm sort of over here in someone else's value system. And so, yeah, no, in I value system, you design yours and you operate from yours and it's not going to make you guilt free forever. I wish it would be a nice thing to do, but it helps. It allows you to have a place to go back to and feel grounded in.

Lisa Virtue:

Yeah, being grounded and feeling like you're living your values. That's why so many people are looking to shift jobs or teams or do something new because they're searching for that fulfillment. So you mentioned four basic overall wellness components. Right. So exercise, diet, sleep, and what was the fourth one?

Dr. Marie-Hélène:

Relationships.

Lisa Virtue:

Relationships. Thank you.

Dr. Marie-Hélène:

Yep.

Lisa Virtue:

And I wanted to ask, is there any research to show if somebody's like, I feel like I'm failing on all fronts, which one should I start with? Is there any research that backs that up?

Dr. Marie-Hélène:

No. No. The researchers will sometimes have a vote on that. Here's my answer, however, to this. If we go a bit in, a bit more, and there are others. Right. Time in nature, investing in your spirituality if you have one, volunteer work. If that's something that your overall schedule allows, there are many.

Sometimes for others, it will be protecting their boundaries better or evaluating time better instead of always underestimating. So there are many others as well. But if we go back to the four basis of the pyramid ones that we were just talking about, what we're looking at one notch more specifically on exercise, ideally we're looking at cardio strength training and meditative type activity. On the nutrition, most of the research is on mediterranean type diet. So leafy vegetables, olive oil, that kind of thing. On the sleep, we're looking at seven to 8 hours. And relationship, we don't have quantities there. So I would say start with at least once every three months.

If nothing's happening right now, then move to once a month and maybe at least once a week. Now that we've added a bit of these details. And if we get even more specific, say, on the exercise front, often the recommendation is five times a week, at least half an hour, for example. Okay, so still back to your question. Let's say I'm doing none of this and I want to start somewhere. I would say, being my practical self, start with what seems the easiest for you because done is better than perfect. No one has a lot of extra time. So for a lot of people who are extremely busy, what's not happening at all is meditation zero.

They've tried and they say my mind does not calm down. It's not for me. And if that's your situation, that probably means it's really something. That would be great. It's good for all of us. So change your criterion of success not to did I calm my brain but just did I do it? And by doing it, if you're doing nothing right now, it could be as simple as each time you wash your hands, five deep breaths, starting with exhaling air out. It will take the same time, it's about 20 seconds they recommend and we are washing our hands many times a day. Great.

It won't take more time. That's very easy, very friendly if you're sleep. But I would go second as sleep because if your sleep is way far, very far from the seven to 8 hours, everything else is going to be very hard to do. So investing in better sleep is probably a good idea. And if you're wondering, okay, so what should I do there? Often protecting the 1 hour before going to bed is the thing your next action. Instead of working or getting things done right till the moment. Brain needs a buffer, a moment to slow down before going to bed. That would be one and I've got some others, but these would be some examples of where I would start.

Lisa Virtue:

Those are great tips. Oh, I love the meditation while washing your hands. That's a really good one.

Dr. Marie-Hélène:

Very friendly.

Lisa Virtue:

Yeah. And meditation doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to, you know, we're not monks and meditating all day like people. I think put a little more oomph to it when you really just can start slow and easy and you don't have to do anything major to see benefits.

Dr. Marie-Hélène :

That's right, that's right. And then you're, you're building, the more you've started doing this, it actually, it does create a calming effect. The deep breath is a direct conversation with the brain to say, oh, look at her, she's calming, she's calm, she can handle things. Whatever comes after she wash her hands. And there's more. Of course you can grow from there, but we need to start somewhere. And when we do, then we're starting to see that belief that we can influence things, that self efficacy which we know then builds our belief we can influence other things moving forward. We need that.

Lisa Virtue:

Yeah, I love that. You know, the sleep part for me was a big eye opener. And I have another podcast episode on if you're having trouble sleeping, like, there's thing, you know, external components and things you can, that can help you with that. And so I encourage listeners to go find that episode, too, because there's a lot of really fun tips that we talk about. And in that episode, I mentioned that I got a Fitbit to do more exercise. I had been laying in bed the right amount of hours, but my sleep quality and quantity actually was a lot less. And so the Fitbit actually exposed to me. My sleep was my problem more than the exercise.

So now there's tools, too. If people are really wondering, you know, if they usually, you don't need a tool to tell you that. But for some reason I did last year, it was, oh, why am I so tired all the time? I need more exercise. That's going to help me. It helps you sleep, too. But what I found was once I got my sleep sleep regulated and just like, focused on that for a week or two and got into a really good routine and really protected that, then I was able to add the next thing right, and you got to start somewhere and build.

Dr. Marie-Hélène:

Got to start somewhere. And often I find people, people, including me, all of us, we need something. Sometimes it's a tool like the Fitbit. Sometimes it's a friend or a peer that we're saying we're going to check in with each other once a month. Okay? It changes things. Sometimes it is a book. Yes. Sometimes it's a community.

Sometimes it's a conversation with your spiritual leader. But we often need some form of support just because life is so full, seriously. It just is.

Lisa Virtue:

You're so right. And so let's talk more about this relationship piece, because I think that's really important when we're talking, especially job seekers. I'll mention what I've noticed, and I encourage my clients always to seek out people, not just for networking and getting referrals, but literally, when you're in a job search, you feel very isolated and lonely, and it takes a hit to your ego a lot, the highs and lows of that process. And so just reaching out to people to build those relationships and maintain them, especially to remind you, like, oh, yeah, I worked with that person. It went really well. And then once you start connecting with them, they remind you of your brilliance. And so then it boosts that confidence when you go into an interview, for instance. So it's beyond this word of networking, but I'm interested to hear more about resilience in that way with relationships and what is the correlation there and what does the research tell us?

Dr. Marie-Hélène:

Oh, it's a, it's extremely important for so many reasons. So what we do know is we want relationships, spending time with people we enjoy spending time with. That's the definition of what we're going for here. And what it does is it creates, it does a number of things. Because in this conversation we may not necessarily speak about, you know, put our heart on the table or you know, we can, but we don't have to. Just spending time with people we enjoy spending time with has been shown correlation with increasing our resilience. So not even just correlation, actually causation. So as we're part of what's happening is it looks so simple sometimes I say, it's almost like if I said stand on your head for 2 hours every day and you'll be more resilient.

People would be trying, like really trying to actually get to a point where they can do this and it'd be like, great, you know, I've got it. It's almost because it looks so simple, it looks like something we do when we have time that we cancel. If we feel we don't have time, we put everything else before it, it goes away. And we need to shift this to prioritizing really. So sometimes ill say that and people will say, okay, I will try to schedule a lunch with a friend or a zoom with a friend on a regular basis. Great. And right now it looks perfectly all good. But then you get there two weeks later or a month later and of course things are piling up, you're busy and you feel like canceling.

And I would say if that happens, consider that conversation, that moment, the same way you would treat an important appointment with a physician specialist you've been waiting for for six months. Would you cancel it because you're busy? No you would not. You would go and so same, and we've been there. We've all been there. Really, what happens? We make it work. You come back, the world did not fall apart. We figure it out. Same thing.

It's an hour or half hour, whatever it is, keep it. And it's something that builds over time. We want to do that. And I love how you're also positioning this specifically for job seekers because for a job seeker, networking is part of what we need to do for the job seeking process. So of course do it there. In addition, and if you were to create your strategic resilience plan for this phase in your life, your strategy would probably include being active every day or at whatever frequency, but consistently active on the actual job search actions you need to take. Okay. But then you may have another pillar, I would argue possibly the second one, which would be investing in self management, and then you would possibly have those four things.

And if we're in job seeking mode, I would say, get on these, need to be there every day. You're doing efforts on these every day, and it may not mean you're spending an hour with a friend every day, but it may mean, I don't know. You're remembering people's birthday and you're connecting. You are remembering a good friend that now lives in another country, and you're sending an email to possibly plan for a zoom next month. You're surrounding yourself with these people. You make sure you go for a walk in a part that you like, close to where you live or wherever is possible. And if you make eye contact with someone, you say, good morning, extra notch. Because contacts with stranger people we don't know also has been shown by research to help.

So we want to mix and just create these opportunities in all the ways we can. We actually, now that's the other piece. As we continue with life and our careers and work, AI will be even more present. We know from emerging research on AI that we will have colleagues who are possibly robots or just AI in general. And sometimes we may interact a lot with these other types of colleagues, but we know from research that maintaining relationships with humans is extremely important. Otherwise, we could have that sense of isolation and other not so desirable consequences. But if we do that, then we're maintaining what we need. So many reasons to invest.

Lisa Virtue:

Oh, you're preaching to the choir. I love it. This is something I work with my clients on. Can't wait to have many of them dig in further into the self management plan that's so important, especially. And as a new leader, that was something for me and my journey that I realized, too. It's really easy when you get promoted or you take on a new team to think, okay, I have to invest all my energy right now in this transition period. But if you flip it and you support yourself, then all of that comes, doesn't it?

Dr. Marie-Hélène:

Yes. Yes. And the same thing will operate to what we were talking about within, say, people in our personal lives, that modeling that we were discussing with others around us. Same thing happens when we are within a team. If we are the leader of the team, that modeling has even more influence. Whether we think of it that way or not, sometimes we're not wanting to give ourselves that much. Whatever importance or, you know, we're there to support the team. And that's true.

It's a very sort of humble and healthy model of leading. The reality still is that you are in a leadership role. You are in a powerful role that holds a lot of opportunities for you to demonstrate and model these things of creating a culture in this team where we take care of ourselves at all times before highly demanding moments, in highly demanding moments and after.

Lisa Virtue:

Yeah, I can't emphasize enough how much, not just the modeling, but also how you're interacting with your team members. For instance, if they're offline or they're on a vacation and you don't schedule your email to go out when they get back, don't send it because people are tempted to pick up their phone or look at their email. And I've seen it done really well with some startup environments with great female leaders where it was, you know what, we're going to incentivize you. If you actually stay unplugged for the whole week and we see that you don't check your email or anything, then we're going to give you dollar 500 bonus. So things like that, where it's not just the modeling, but it's also the actions we take and how we're managing others and helping them with knowing what the priority is. Because we know resilient team members make the whole team resilient and then we're able to meet our KPI's and achieve our business success we're looking for.

Dr. Marie-Hélène:

Yes, yes. Supporting the positive choices that team members, team leaders make is so important. Your example reminds me of another one, someone I worked with. So in their organization, they had sort of job well done certificates kind of thing, which usually would be given when someone just gave it so many more hours in the past couple of weeks to get the project through the finish line, you know, things like this, the more traditional ways and, but in their particular situation, they had so many extremely demanding projects over a year that extended, you know, it was like. And so therefore they, the entire team had to take time off. They had to maintain their protection to be able to carry on. So all of the job well done were all done for protecting boundaries, basically. So, job well done, you kept your vacation, job well done, you still went to your soccer child soccer team game, that is ten hour drive.

So you took three days off to do that job well done, you know?

Lisa Virtue:

Yeah. Still reading the human and the rewarding those positive choices, like you said. I love that so much. Those are great examples. Yeah. So good. Well, we could talk about this all day because resilience is something we all need, but our time is coming to an end. So, mh, how can people reach out to you and, and also find your book? The resilience plan?

Dr. Marie-Hélène:

Yes. Well, it's everywhere. So wherever you do your purchases, you can go to your local bookstore. We always want to support them, and even if you don't have the book, you can order it from them. They'll bring it in and you'll go in. Support your local bookstore. We love that. You can also buy it online, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and all the usual places.

It's there. You can see my work at theresilianceplan.com will lead you to the book and also other things I do. And LinkedIn, of course, always enjoy connecting with people, hearing how things are going, and that way you can also contribute to that conversation online.

Lisa Virtue:

Yeah, love it. Is there anything else you want to have our listeners take away with them today?

Dr. Marie-Hélène:

I would say. I would say maybe stay curious to find what's your one next action in the next couple of days. And if you're not sure what it is, make it well, it could be breathing as you wash your hands. That would be a very simple one to pick if you want, but otherwise, step back and see what could be my next action to increase my resilience even more and then start there. If you find you need support, need or could benefit from, connect with someone else who is doing job search with Lisa, potentially, or a book, whether it's mine or another one. But I would say take one action because we know that just being in your head is nice and all, but sometimes we stay there and what's going to change something is your next action. And so I would say you've got a plan. You're already doing whatever you need to do in your current context or transition, and maybe find one next action on the resilience front, I love it.

Lisa Virtue:

And you mentioned community earlier too. I can't emphasize enough, especially if you're going through a job search or transition. Find that community, find that support system. That helps for sure. Well, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it, and I can't wait to keep digging into your book and all your exercises for my clients as well. So thank you so much. Mh, wonderful.

Dr. Marie-Hélène:

Thank you, Lisa.