Our resident corporate Agony Uncle, CEO Ken Cheng, tackles business challenges – so you don’t have to
Q. Do you think we need to talk about male mental health? – Bradley, Portsmouth
A. God yes. Male mental health largely goes ignored in the workplace.
News alert: men get sad too.
For example, I was really sad about something that happened in the workplace. And guess what? Not a single person came to comfort me despite the fact I sent the usual male signal for help: I pretended like everything was okay and didn’t tell anyone.
What happened that set me off was that I got into a very heated argument with one of my employees, a woman no less. I lost my cool and raised my voice at her and she got really upset. Every single person labelled me a monster and took her side.
But do you know who else got upset because of my actions? Me.
The guilt I felt was way way worse than being shouted out. I was torn up about it for hours, and not a single person checked in on me. I even said the phrase “I want to be on my own for a bit” and not a single person approached me to help?
It would not be the same the other way around. If I were a woman and she had been a man and I was the one shouted at, people would be coming to my defence too. It’s just unfair.
We need to change. We need to start checking in on our bosses who abused their co-workers more often. They are victims too, in their own right. Possibly even more so than the actual victims.
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