Issue 3 2019

44 CORPORATE VISION / Issue 3 2019 , Loneliness at the Top: Why Stressed Execs Don’t Seek Help Despite increasing calls for staff wellbe- ing programmes, one emotional health spe- cialist has discovered that leaders of organisations still regularly dismiss their own health needs. After 21 years working in a high-stress financial services environment, Julian Hall paved a new career path by training as an anger management coach. After struggling initially to even bring the word “anger” into organi- sations, he rebranded to ‘Calm People’ and now talks instead of “emotional resilience”. But after over 50 years of bringing these emotional resilience programmes to businesses under the banner of Calm People, Julian hit another hurdle. Calm People would need to treat senior management differently. “I spent a number of years trying to take [anger management] work out into organisations. I real- ised the brand associated with anger is really, really not helpful because people just don’t want to engage with it”, Julian tells us. “Some employers don’t like to talk even about stress. And we might have the same workshop running in three different organisations with three different names and those names reflect the different ways each organisation wants to present them. They’re either really into stress or they’re really away from it - so we just change the name accordingly.” CEOs and senior executives are among the least likely to take part in staff wellbeing programmes. Finola Billings explores why in an interview with emotional resilience specialist and founder of the Calm Execs programme, Julian Hall.