A few words about mental health and agile.

The month of May is mental health awareness month.  In many businesses and cultures, discussing mental health is a death sentence for your career.  Business leaders are afraid to trust people who struggle with symptoms of mental illness, and the stigmas associated with being mentally ill stretch back hundreds of years, forcing people to mask and self-medicate their problems.  I speak from experience because I have witnessed too many neurotic, damaged, and plain mean people placed in leadership roles to hurt others.  These are people with the self-awareness of small furry woodland creatures who then inflict harm on the people they are supposed to serve.   

I have written about mental health before on this blog.  My primary thesis is that the pressures of contemporary business and poor leadership create a cycle of abuse and illness in industry.  The situation is made worse with alcohol and other drugs to self-medicate.  It is a prescription for a decline in mental health and business success.  As agile coaches or scrum masters, we must be frank with ourselves and others when we see this cycle perpetuated. 

Many of the worst environments I have worked in have leaders who are not accustomed to hearing no and possess deep wells of rage. These individuals were also good at something called gaslighting. I have had serious moments of doubt about my competency and sanity working for these individuals throughout my career. Each layoff or termination became a liberation, as time and distance taught me that working somewhere else was a good career move.  

Working for an organization that sets you up to fail is profoundly disheartening.  It could be unrealistic deadline pressures or workloads that require more people than the organization is willing to hire.  It could also be giving people responsibility for situations without the requisite authority.  You have not been in technology until you have seen an IT director in the cardiology unit receiving a phone call from the CIO about a software system before they experience an angioplasty.  The organization demoted that person when they returned from the hospital because he did not deliver the software on time.  Ironically, his replacement received more people to do the work and money to get the job done.  

Organizational dysfunction requires people to work together in good faith to attempt to fix those problems.  Do not drive yourself insane for organizations or people who do not care.  If the organization does not care, neither should you, and you should work elsewhere.  As my mentor, Monica Gilroy, says, “Do not run yourself ragged for a ragged organization.”

Work should be sustainable, satisfying, and sane.  If it is not, then walk away for your mental health.  Life is too short to wallow in madness. 

Until next time.