Laurence Nicholson is the CEO and founder of the N Cubed Group, My Better Life – Mind Coaching, and Exec Mental Health Solutions, through which he works with both Corporate clients and individuals to improve and optimize mental health, performance, and resilience, to realize measurable improvements in business and personal productivity and decision making. A Mind Coach, certified as a Corporate Mental Health Facilitator, holding 'Distinction' grade certifications in Life Coaching, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Psychoanalysis, Depression Counselling, Anger and Aggression Management Counselling, Criminal Psychology, Forensic Psychology, and Corporate Wellness Coaching, Laurence is also trained in Corporate Coaching and Mentoring, Behavioural Analysis, and to expert level in non-verbal deception detection and analysis.
He had spent over 35 years working across corporate environments as both a consultant and leader, and when he was first sent abroad for work way back in the 1990s, he became fascinated by how different people and cultures think and behave in different ways under the same conditions, and quickly became addicted to immersing himself within local environments, to get a true experience of thought processes and event-behavior associations.
Human psychology and behavioral patterns became his passion. He used his corporate consulting work as a way to enable him to travel extensively and to study wide and diverse behaviors, and investigate the ‘how and why’ of our brain’s processes, and more importantly, the impacts of stress and change on people, universally.
His business education and experience as an advisor and consultant in procurement, finance, law, information technology, organizational change, and executive management, combines with his life experiences and numerous culturally immersive experiences from working in over 14 countries around the world, to provide what his clients consider as a unique appreciation of their individual circumstances.
Laurence aligns himself with Jungian psychodynamic theory, with its spiritual element, and supports this as a certified and attuned Reiki Master Teacher and a Certified Meditation Teacher.
Welcome, Laurence. Firstly, how are you coping with the pandemic and all its impacts?
Hi, and thanks for having me here. It certainly is a surreal time we are living in right now, and one very few have seen the likes of before.
Thankfully my immediate family and I are all doing well, however we have had a couple of losses in our extended family to the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID19 as it is more widely known) pandemic and have seen serious health impacts in some of our neighbors who contracted this early on.
My experience has been a little contrary because my partner and I have been caring for a set of old folks both in the family and locally. A good friend of ours went into hospital 3 days before the first lockdown with acute leukemia. We were sourcing and delivering supplies to her, so we actually found ourselves going shopping every day, whilst most were remaining indoors. Then, as the lockdown restrictions eased and people started mixing again, we had to protect ourselves and become more isolated, so you could say I am out of phase with the process.
On a more professional level, I have unsurprisingly experienced a significant increase in clients struggling with anxiety, stress, and depression, driven primarily by the loss of physical proximity in the social interactivity dimensions of collaborative working. Social isolation, for a species that has a clear psychological requirement for community, as defined in Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (Deficiency Need 3: Love and Belonging -Intimacy, Friendship and Community), creates psychological impacts which can often become debilitating over time, and we should be preparing for the significant increase in mental health issues we will see over the next few years, as the longer-term impacts of social isolation start hitting home.
It is exactly this issue I work through with clients, both individuals and corporations, to increase awareness and put in place safeguards and tools to avoid, or at least minimize, developing mental health issues.
Your work with Mental Health sounds fascinating. How did you first get involved in this area?
I had come through the management consulting ‘machine’ with a global consultancy. I progressed to Executive roles, creating and selling on consulting businesses, as well as providing consulting and advisory services to some of the world’s largest and best-known organizations, experiencing the familiar expectations of 60+ hour weeks, 24/7 availability, and ever-increasing demands, seeing people I worked with fall into poor mental health. In a few cases, mental illness, almost entirely caused by workplace stress, with little or no psychological support from management or their organizations, piqued my interest as someone who has always had a fascination for human behavior psychology.
It was when I myself succumbed to a full-blown mental breakdown, diagnosed as clinical depression, that I experienced the true depth such a condition can bring, at one point finding myself in a situation where I was actually given a ratio of likelihood of surviving the day.
I was extremely fortunate in that I was put under the care of one of the region’s best psychiatrists and his connected psychologist and was treated, guided, and supported back to being a fully functioning member of society.
Having gone through such an experience, I started thinking about what had happened at a psychological level, but more importantly, how it could be avoided. This led me to research not just the psychology but the neuroscience associated with brain functioning and stress response, and into the area of prevention rather than symptom treatment, and started developing a pragmatic approach for both companies and individuals to improve mental strength and resilience. Now I deliver proactive mental health training all over the world, with my last in-person workshops delivered in Tokyo and Singapore in 2019 to a global Pharmaceutical company.
That is quite a traumatic experience, and I can see why you would want to prevent others from going through it. I imagine success stories are a great source of satisfaction for you. What would be one incident or situation which, for you, epitomizes the reason why you do this?
A great question, and you are right. I get far more from seeing people not just avoid the impacts of stress but mentally improve their performance.
For me, it is the recovery of individual sufferers that makes everything I do worthwhile, a great example of which was an individual I took on whilst doing some leadership behavior coaching at a large household name company.
This person approached me and asked if they could speak to me privately. On sitting down in a quiet office, they broke down in tears and explained they were struggling with work and life, were not getting support from the company or their manager, and didn’t know what to do. When I asked why they had approached me, someone they did not know, they simply said they felt, from watching how I worked with the management team, that I was someone who would care and try to help in any way possible.
We agreed to have two 30-minute informal chats, over coffee, each day to talk about things and to find me immediately if they were struggling with something and it could not wait. I could see they felt they were out of options and had no idea what to do.
Over the next 6 weeks, our sessions brought out several issues, and I talked her through different ways to think about how to react and deal with them. By the time I finished my coaching of the leadership team and was preparing to leave the organization, she agreed that she felt much stronger and able to cope whilst she still had bad days.
The evidence of this, and the answer to your question, is that some 6 months later, I received a message from them telling me they had experienced a particularly low day, after some challenging work issues, and had found themselves stopping halfway across a glass bridge which spanned the atrium some 7 floor up, with thoughts of jumping, but whilst standing there looking down, “heard my voice in their ear” as if talking through her feelings with her right there. She realized it was not the thing to do. She said I had 'literally saved her life.'
Even though it was her own mind that had processed the situation using the tools and techniques I had coached her in, the simple fact that those weeks of sessions had led to her not jumping, made every second of it worthwhile, and had again given me a great sense of satisfaction and purpose.
Just one such story makes it worth the effort, and for each time this happens, it never lessens the emotions I feel at being able to help someone.
I can see how having such a profound impact on someone’s life would motivate me to continue. Now, coming back to today, you have carried out studies on how Executives have handled the Pandemic's challenges and published the first report in 2020. What were the main insights you gained from that?
Sure. In 2020, in response to the continued Covid19 impacts, we asked a large group of C-Suite Executives to comment on the effects they had felt and the actions they had taken, and for their learnings from dealing with this unprecedented challenge of our times.
46 executives provided feedback, covering 5 industries across the UK, Europe, SE Asia, US, and Asia Pacific.
It is clear that SARS-CoV-2 (COVID19) has had, and continues to have, profound effects, including communication problems, isolation effects on wellbeing, restructuring of organizations, and new topologies of the employee landscape, which will all eventually establish themselves in a position in which much is familiar, and some are new.
The main points of learnings can be condensed into the following areas:
Learning to step back and consider the whole situation and potential issues quickly but calmly is paramount to being best protected from the impacts.
A Servant Leader style is felt to have resulted in less anxiety and panic from the workforce.
Communication by leaders, and active consultation with the workforce, provided a level of confidence and support, which lessened the stress and anxiety.
The psychological impact that remote working brings, not just from the isolation from the work environment and colleagues, but also the blurring of work and home boundaries, is placing stress and pressure on relationships.
Work-provided counseling was reactive rather than proactive service for all staff members and leaders, and heading off such issues would have been far more effective in addressing them. It should be part of every Corporate Wellness program going forward.
During such unprecedented times, leaders can become more vulnerable to self-doubt, and portraying surety and strength to your workforce is a requirement, so managing through such self-doubt requires a new skill set, which has to be learned quickly.
Making workplace wellbeing a proactive activity will be both necessary and beneficial to both individual and business productivity.
The biggest struggle revolves around the psycho-social effects of isolation restrictions and relying on technology to stay in touch. Research by Jean-Pierre Brun (Director of the Chair in Occupational Health and Safety Management at the Université de Laval) and the World Health Organization (2020) identified isolated or solitary work as a major factor in increasing stress concerning our need for interpersonal relationships:
'Interpersonal relationships failures (inadequate, inconsiderate or unsupportive supervision, poor relationships with colleagues, bullying/harassment and violence, isolated or solitary work, etc.)’
Those same sources identified that an organizational culture that didn't provide clarity about organizational goals is another cause of increasing stress at work:
“One CEO talked about how purpose enabled her to help “people move beyond grief to action” while another emphasized that “by reminding teams of our purpose and why we are working hard, we can do more to handle the crisis and strengthen our reason for existing.”
When combined, such rapid reactionary changes and job insecurity mean an increase in stress.
Studies into workplace stress have identified it as a significant cost for companies worldwide, running in 2019 at £45 billion a year in the UK and between $80 billion and $100 billion a year in the US.
To account for the physical, psychological, and emotional impact of the new work environment and increase employee satisfaction, many experts claim that employee engagement in terms of well-being and happiness will be the only metric that CEOs will worry about in the future.
So it highlighted ‘knee-jerk’ reactions, more non-collaborative leadership styles, and lack of open and clear communication as significant improvement opportunities.
Yes, that is correct. When such turbulent and uncertain times present almost daily challenges, the more timely, considered, and informed your decisions are, and the more aware your workforce is of the rationale behind them, especially if they have been involved in the decision-making process, the less anxious people are.
And I hear you are updating this report for 2021 and are including more Executives in the process. Who can get involved, and how do they do so?
Yes, I am going through an exercise of refreshing and updating the report. Now we know more about the impacts that are beginning to show from the actions taken in response to the pandemic. I have sent out invitations to a further 100 SME Leaders, but happy to have more responses if any CEOs or Executives responsible for well-being in their organizations in your audience want to get involved.
There is still time, as I will be closing the consultation period at the end of April, so if they head over to ‘https://execmentalhealthsolutions.simplybook.it/v2/’ and choose an appointment time, they will go through a brief 15-minute interview, and their responses will form part of the data set for the update.
Great, and I know you have some articles on your websites, so if I was to read your articles or the reports and decide I needed to focus more on my own mental health and that of my workforce, what can I do?
Well, I am moving some of my training online, as an 8 week (once a week, 30 minutes) course, to enable learning to continue during travel and gathering restrictions, so if you want to drop me a line, using my website, contact form, or directly by email, I can talk you through the options.
Alternatively, the first cohort of the online course will start the 2nd week of April, and pre-registration is open for this at https://ecmht.thinkific.com/, so sign up pre-register for that course.
If you are looking for a local resource for such training, I have a good global network of suitably qualified Corporate Mental Health Facilitators, who I could connect you up with.
That sounds like something everyone should do. Is it only available to Executives?
Absolutely not. The on-site workshops are usually for up to 10 people, quite often whole teams, and can be any group across the organization. I do have a specific set of workshops or online course aimed at Executives, which is the first one going online, that I mentioned just now, but anyone interested in providing this learning opportunity to their wider workforce can contact me, and we can discuss how to set up a standard Corporate Mental Health Training Programme.
So, I take it you are a busy guy. How do you apply this to your own life? And when do you get time?
Yes, I do get very busy, and I tend to work best like that. However, I apply all the techniques of stress management and performance optimization to the way I work, as well as play, so I never overwhelm myself, because I would not be operating at my best then, and that is not good for me or my clients.
I tend to break up my time, so I focus on providing this training and coaching at specific times and on other things at other times. This way, I am not trying to do too many things at once because it is actually impossible to multitask. Our brains cannot function that way, but we end up rapid-switching between tasks, and this can easily lead to lack of adequate focus, attention, and stress reactions as we rapidly become overwhelmed.
I would say my time is full-on but organized and structured.
You mention ‘other things’ you spend time on. Can you elaborate a bit on that?
Of course. As I mentioned I think, I have a lifelong passion for learning and for using my skills to give back, or forward, whenever possible. I am currently in the middle of completing my NCFE CACHE Level 3 Counselling qualification, which will enable me to move toward providing my counseling and therapy services to the NHS so more people can get access to psychological help.
I am also on my last modules of a Bachelor of Laws Degree (LLB), which I chose because of my interest in criminal and forensic psychology, which I have diplomas in, and I am currently in late-stage discussions regarding a Trustee role with a local mental health charity, as part of my volunteering activities. I previously held a voluntary role as a member of the Family Mediation Standards Board of England and Wales.
I continue to provide Life and Leadership Coaching and behavioral therapy alongside the holistic services of Reiki Healing and Meditation I offer.
Wow. Any time for ‘Play’ in your life? What do you do for Fun?
Of course. As they say, all work and no play makes Jack a very dull boy, so I always balance my ‘work’ with sufficient ‘play, and I do this in many ways.
I regularly practice and occasionally teach, Aikido, which I began some 15 years ago, after moving on from Judo and Jiu Jutsu, which I had practiced since the age of 10.
I also enjoy national-level target shooting in smallbore and fullbore disciplines, shooting up to 1200 yards at the National Rifle Ranges at Bisley.
I am a lifelong motorcyclist, having been an instructor at a younger age, and I combine this with certain charity works such as The Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride each year, where riders of classic motorcycles take to organized rides in over 26 countries worldwide on the same day, to raise money for men’s mental health and prostate cancer support and research. To date, we have raised over US$24M.
I also enjoy writing, having published a novel, under a pseudonym, gardening, which we all know and are experiencing more so since lockdown is great for our mental health, and of course, spending time (real presence) with loved ones.
Do you not sleep? It sounds like every minute is packed. Despite all this, are there things you want to achieve still?
Actually, I don’t sleep much. On average, I have about 2 to 4 hours per night, and have done since I was a young child. You can imagine this is quite annoying to my partner, who likes her sleep a lot.
As for what I want to achieve, I always want to do more to improve access to all to counseling, so constantly looking for new ways to provide my skills to those in need both in mental health support and in business and leadership skills for those looking to run or improve the organizations which provide it.
It has taken me half a lifetime, but I believe I have finally found what my true purpose is, at least for now, with my work helping prevent people from falling into poor mental health from work and life stresses, and helping those already suffering to improve their lives as much as possible. The more awareness I can bring to these areas through public speaking and training can only be a good thing.
On a lighter note, I am trying to learn Japanese, Italian and improve my French, and I would love to learn the piano.
Just listening to what you do makes me exhausted. You make it sound like something so easy. So, thinking about what our audience can do, what should we all be mindful of to avoid having similar experiences?
I guess as I have been like this all my life, I don’t notice the amount I get through.
Even without choosing to take advantage of formal training, people should be mindful of their ability to focus on what they are doing properly, manage their impulse control so as not to make decisions without giving them proper consideration, and practice maintaining attention in the face of often overwhelming interruptions.
Spend time to understand how the brain deals with stress and thinking, and learn how to use that knowledge to best effect.
Well, as simple as you make it sound, I am sure it requires effort, but I can see it would be an investment well made—an investment in ourselves.
Absolutely. All good things require effort, but they also result in the best benefits.
We are the best and most important thing in our lives TO invest in. After all, if we don’t feel we are worth investing in, why would anyone else?
A good point! So lastly, I am sure our audience, as I know I have, has suffered the anxiety or panic attack we call pre-meeting nerves. You know, the sick feeling, light-headedness, racing pulse… Any tips on how to handle that you can give?
Sure. This is a topic I go into in my training, but an easy couple of techniques to calm yourself, part of the arousal control practice, are:
1. 4-7-8 breathing, where you use your breathing to affect your vagal nerve system by taking a deep breath in through your nose for 4 seconds, holding this full breath for 7 seconds, and breathing out slowly through the mouth over 8 seconds. Do this 3 or four times when you feel anxious or panicky, and you should find your heart rate slowing back down and your lightheadedness ease.
2. It is also a good practice to do a mindful 5-minute meditation, something else I teach, which can have similar effects to the 4-7-8 breathing technique. There are many tools and options online for guided 5-minute meditations if you struggle to do this without help.
Great. I will definitely try that next time. Many thanks for your time, and remind us of where we can find out more about your services…
It has been my pleasure.
You can find out about my services at NCUBED Group, My Better Life Coaching, and Exec Mental Health Solutions. You can access a free 30-minute training session.
