According to recent estimates (Greenberg, 2015), depression costs the US approximately 210 Billion annually.  What is it costing your company?  How do you know?  What percentage of your people utilize your EAP?  Do you have an EAP?  And is your EAP good?  Again, how do you know?  When you add the costs of addiction to depression in the workplace, the parasitic losses to productivity and opportunity become near cataclysmic for certain companies.  How is the mental health of your employees shaped by you, consciously or not?  What is their responsibility?  And yours?  When is a lapse of performance or absenteeism a personnel issue?  When is Mr. Machiavelli (uncomfortable cough, “Narcissist”) in the boardroom really just exhibiting mental health flags?  What if this toxic individual is actually a high performer?  Is there such a thing as healthy narcissism and if so, how do we manage it successfully?  How do you weigh productivity with corporate citizenship that affects the whole? 

​Weight of the Wielding – You Deciding for Us
 
Etymology is your secret little weapon, and I’m not referring to bugs.  Decider, latin root of decision, means to Slay. Some humans are designed for deciding.  Others overthink, hem and haw, see ambivalence everywhere and cannot kill option A to follow option B. This is because people and companies are complex (too many options) but Leaders simplify the field by focusing on the goal.  Reluctant leaders prune the thick forest so the best trees may flourish (people and outcomes).  How?  By slaying.  You can fire anyone so long as you step aside when your protégé can take things beyond your capacities.  And you will be wrong.  Can you accept this with humility?  You will hire a disaster and fire a genius.  Are you good with this in an open sort of way?  Or do such choices close you off, harden you, make you contract?  When this happens:  consult, reach out, let consensus inform. Be open to defer.  But only on the mission critical items.  You will decide the vast majority of steps – unless you are organized around team input.  Are you and your company balancing these dynamics?