Professional Learnings NSWPPA Educational Leadership

Mitch Wallis: Building Deeper Connections through REAL Conversations

• NSW PPA Professional Learning • Season 3 • Episode 1

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What if the key to unlocking meaningful connections and fostering psychological safety lies in the power of vulnerability and authentic conversations? Join us as we explore this with Mitch Wallis, a distinguished mental health advocate and the visionary behind Heart On My Sleeve. Mitch opens up about his personal battle with obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety, sharing how he transformed his silence into a source of strength and hope for others. Through his groundbreaking book "Real Conversations," Mitch demonstrates how genuine care, storytelling, and empathy can lead to profound connections and safer environments for discussing mental health.

Discover the practical frameworks that Mitch offers for creating emotionally supportive spaces in both personal and professional settings. We dive deep into his ELSA-B model—Engage, Listen, Safety, Action, Boundaries—and the critical role of attunement and emotional separation. Hear stories of Mitch's life-saving connection with his mother and the influential educators who made a lasting impact on his life, illustrating the power of presence and empathy over mere words. Mitch challenges the status quo, advocating for a shift from transactional dialogues to truly understanding and addressing emotional pain, providing a beacon of guidance for leaders and managers navigating the complex landscape of mental health.

Mitch's insights extend beyond individual relationships, offering transformative potential in leadership and broader societal change. Hear how embracing vulnerability can enhance trust and balance stability with forward-thinking in today's uncertain world. We discuss the ripple effects of authentic leadership, drawing on real-world examples of leaders who have become better communicators and lifesavers by incorporating Mitch's principles. Tune in to learn how real conversations and self-care strategies can prevent hardships, enriched by Mitch's personal mission to empower others through empathy, connection, and the relentless pursuit of well-being.

Book your network for REAL conversations through the NSW Primary Principals Association:  (NSWPPA) and experience the power of real connections through the 5 step framework as well as ongoing support for 12 months from your REAL Conversations course.

Links and references:

NSWPPA REAL Conversations link:   https://www.nswppa.org.au/realconversations
Mitch Wallis : Heart of my Sleeve Charity:
https://www.heartonmysleeve.org/stories/mitch-wallis
Mitch Wallis : Real Conversations: 5 Steps To Connected Relationships book and audio book available on Amazon:
A 5-step guide for how to better connect with the people around you, from a wellbeing educator with a mission to 'change the way the world feels'
Link: https://www.amazon.com.au/Real-Conversations-Steps-Connected-Relationships/dp/064861915X

Book your Network today through the NSWPPA!
Reach our directly to Drew Janetzki via @djanetzki@nswppa.org.au

To view our Professional Learning Offerings visit:
https://www.nswppa.org.au/professional-learning




Drew Janetzki:

Today we're thrilled to have Mitch Wallace with us, a globally renowned mental health advocate, speaker and the founder of Heart On my Sleeve. Mitch is also the author of the 2024 publication Real Conversations Five Steps to Connecting Relationships a guide that redefines how we build meaningful connections in our personal and professional lives.

Mitch Wallis:

You know you have so much choice out there. It's almost like imposter syndrome. I'm like are you sure that you want to continue working with me and my team? And they keep coming back to this works because it's hyper practical. Back to this works because it's hyper practical. You've taken something that is so complex and so emotionally charged and put it into bite-sized, digestible frameworks. That truly does go and create results. We are seeing leaders walk around the workplace and act differently after this course. We are seeing in our pulse surveys, when we audit our workforce, that they do feel more psychologically safe. Our peer support networks are thriving. Our leadership teams have a whole new dynamic to them. So I think it's the practical nature of this IP that really is the game changer.

Drew Janetzki:

It was a real privilege to listen to Mitch's amazing insights, his wisdom, as well as his ability to share such complex topics through his framework of real conversations. So if you're looking to build connections, no matter where you are in your career, your personal life, real conversations is a great framework to start your journey. Okay, mitch, thanks for joining us today. It's great to have you on our podcast.

Mitch Wallis:

Thanks, Drew, you're an absolute legend. It's a pleasure being working with you up until this point, so let's jump into how we can help others who listen, yeah absolutely, Mitch.

Drew Janetzki:

let's start with some background in terms of your journey as a mental health advocate, which has inspired countless individuals worldwide. Mitch, could you share your personal experience that's led to the founding of Heart On my Sleeve?

Mitch Wallis:

Yeah, Drew, I'm someone that has had an incredibly challenging internal life, despite a thriving external and, in a lot of ways, a privileged external as well. I've had the conditions to be set up for success beyond my control or doing, and I still remember the first moment I knew I was different, at seven years old, when I was touching a light switch hundreds of times and in this particular situation I was in my mom's car, blinking in a certain pattern, saying the word God out loud on repeat, and my mom looked at me and said what are you doing? And I said I don't know, but I feel like a bad person. And that was the day she took me to the doctor and I was diagnosed with acute obsessive compulsive disorder and anxiety. And I didn't know what that meant. I just remember walking outside the doctor's office and looking up at her, my mom, and asking her you know why is my brain broken? And she started to cry and that to me said from the outside world, there's something demonic almost inside you that you need to shield from the world. And so I got very, very, very good at pretending. I spent the next 20 years as a high-performing overachiever, top 2% in the state in the HSE school captain of my primary school, youngest ever intern at Microsoft, global product manager by 25. And all of this smiles and charisma on the outside was masking a completely insecure and broken boy on the inside. And it took until breaking point for me to finally drop the brave face. And one person's YouTube video saved my life of a guy wearing his heart on his sleeve, other than my mother's love, which was the life raft that kept me afloat long enough to see that video. Those two things together really set me on this quest to want to help others.

Mitch Wallis:

Never feel shame for going through mental health issues, because I think more than the illness itself or the situation itself. Whether you for going through mental health issues, because I think more than the illness itself or the situation itself, whether you're going through financial stress all the way through to bipolar, all this stuff is manageable. There are millions of people navigating the same situation. The degree to which it's difficult is the degree to which you feel shame about it. It's the internal dialogue and monologue that happens that makes it hard or not hard.

Mitch Wallis:

Now, I believe that when we see other people go through the same experience as us through storytelling which is what inspired Heart on my Sleeve, or through real conversations, like what I had with my mom, which is what inspired my book and my book, and, and this, this workshop that we run in corporates and since with the PPA. Um, it's really that what sits at the essence of of both of those things is is humanity going through a shared humanity where we're connected to self and other, really relieves us of a lot of the pain that life can can bring with it, and so, you know, it inspired me to share a story of my own where I drew a heart on my arm which launched this global movement, which is now the charity heart on my sleeve that I was lucky enough to found and form the bedrock of the IP that has now gone to four continents and thousands of people through real conversations.

Drew Janetzki:

Yeah, wow, Wow, . So many things to unpack. From what I've just heard right there, I mean that must have been so hard in terms of just trying to put on that masking, as you said, in terms of from that age. And I heard you said, I heard you said mum, I thought my brain, why is my brain broken? And just, was that mirroring that you or that masking it did?

Mitch Wallis:

How agonizing was that Very, and I think that that agony is shared and understood by a lot of the people listening to this podcast right now. You know, to some, we all mask and I think the degree to which it's a problem is how much mask we wear and how often. Right, because it's healthy to have a protection mechanism to not reveal your true self to everyone all the time, depending on the context and safety in which you're around. You might meet a stranger for the first time and be like I don't know you, I'm going to put on a bit of a character, cool. But when you're doing that to your nearest and dearest at all times, or worse yet, you're pretending to yourself, you're wearing a mask to your own awareness because you don't want to admit what's wrong, that's when we have a Houston problem, and I believe that life is a cost-benefit analysis At least that's how the brain algorithm is working at all times.

Mitch Wallis:

So something in the brain, if you have a big pretending game going on, is saying that it's less painful to live as a fraud than to sit in the discomfort of the truth. That I'm not okay, and what I'm here to say is that that rationale is absolutely flawed. I'm telling you, as someone that was an expert, spent decades doing, that the truth will set you free. In fact, the four words that have saved my life and that I devote my career to now is go toward the pain. Go toward the pain if you want to heal your nervous system. The answers that you seek are on the other side of what you avoid the most, and in the workplace setting with real conversations, the same principle applies. Go toward the pain in the conversation. If there's an awkward part, if there's a part that you're scared to address or ask someone or check in about, that's the part that needs our attention, our presence and our care the most.

Drew Janetzki:

Yeah, yeah, well said, easy to say but to implement. And that's the we'll go into, I guess, the next part of our conversation your book. Congratulations first of all on your book, real Conversation. Yeah, fantastic read. I love it. You can really feel the authenticity coming through. So congratulations. It's five steps to connected relationships. It's been praised for its practical approach, building deeper connections. What inspired you to write it and what are its core principles, mitch?

Mitch Wallis:

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Drew. So what inspired me to write it was probably two things. One was the life-saving connection I had with my mother and all the things that she did, right as someone that had me at 23, had no idea what she was doing parenting-wise, let alone psychologically. She was the furthest thing and still is the furthest thing from a therapist, but there was something about her style that worked so well for someone that was experiencing not just a little bit of mental illness, but severe and complex mental illness. So you know, a lot of this book is a forensic audit that now, with a master's degree in clinical psychology myself, I've gone back and tried to figure out what separates her from people who might not be as helpful.

Mitch Wallis:

The second reason why I wrote this is from a workplace standpoint. I've had managers in the past where they've made my experience of mental health issues so much worse than they needed to be, and we spend so much time at work. It can be a breeding ground for someone to get better, but if all work does is not make you feel worse, then that's a massive win. In fact, it's a legal responsibility to not cause or aggravate psychological injury. So I've had the privilege of working with some of the brightest minds at Fortune 500 companies around the world C-level executives, board members and I've trained thousands of people, so off the back of the workshops and really flexing this IP to see how strong it is and how much behavior change it can drive. And with companies like Microsoft, kpmg, american Express, lend Lease, nbn Allens these huge logos adopting real conversations as their primary training provider over institutions like a mental health first aid if you look at it purely from a wellbeing lens. But if you look at it from a leadership development lens, that's even more competitive. Around how many programs are on offer to create the leaders of the future, but these people are putting their highest paid, most important executives through real conversation at scale. That to me, was like well, I want to get this message out to as many people who don't work in those firms as possible so that at least the everyday person can access the core principles.

Mitch Wallis:

Which leads me to the second part of your question. What are the core principles? It's kind of all based around one core tenant, which is that not all conversations are helpful. I think we have this assumption that the answer to when you're with someone who's in emotional pain, all the way from I'm having a bad day through to I don't want to be alive anymore. Everyone has the same goal they want to be helpful, and so we instinctually apply the same tool to that conversation as we would any other, which is what I call a transactional conversation.

Mitch Wallis:

Right, and we've been taught our entire lives to get really good at transactional conversations in school, at work. It's how quickly you can solve problems, how quickly someone can present to you an issue and you can throw back a solution. In fact, I would imagine that we're almost rewarded, incentivized, compensated and promoted directly in line with how transactional we can be, how IQ heavy we can be. But that's not. Expecting that that one tool will solve every problem we encounter in life is expecting that we could build a skyscraper with only a hammer. You need different instruments depending on the thing that you're working with.

Mitch Wallis:

Now, when it comes to emotional issues, we need a new type of tool and technology that will be helpful, and this is the technology of real conversations, which is that the moment that you're in relationship to someone who's experiencing an emotional problem, not a practical one like where's the bathroom, what's the forecast on the PNL?

Mitch Wallis:

How do I get my computer on, when someone says to you, my dad's just died, I'm feeling anxious, I have no self-worth. Our metrics and our interventions must change, and helpfulness is no longer how well can I fix the problem, but flipped entirely to how well can I understand this person? Because, as counterintuitive as it feels, what gets people better emotionally is care, not advice, because people can solve their own problems and situations. Practically what they can't do is eradicate their own shame, eradicate their own loneliness and dissolve the lack of love they feel as a result of encountering that emotional issue. So listening becomes the primary intervention. Instead of speaking at someone, and instead of going and trying to drag someone out of the mud, away from the pain, we're going toward the pain and sharing it with them.

Drew Janetzki:

Yeah, and I mean unpacking that further makes complete sense. But in terms of just, I guess there's that balance of do as a manager or as an educational leader? Do we, you said, lean into the pain? It's a matter of the question in the back of people's mind. Listening is how much do I lean in Mitch, like I'm a manager, do I just give the EPAC card to a person which becomes transactional? But you're not intending to do that. But the system around you, if this is making sense, forces the manager to, or the principal to use the systems to support well-being, when that's not the. And we're not saying I'm not saying epac is um, and we're both not saying epac is not a bad thing to go to like a service support system at all. Here we're not saying that in this conversation. We're saying that is a tool, support mechanism that can support a person who is having some mental issues. So I guess in terms of navigating that that's so complex.

Mitch Wallis:

Can we pick up on that, because it's actually the number one issue I see in workplaces and now doing a lot of work with principals through our relationship. It's also a massive misconception I see with this audience too, and that is let me come up a level before I answer that Humans are instinctually wired to think in black and white. Why? Because the brain loves certainty, it's obsessed with certainty. Why? Because the brain loves certainty, it's obsessed with certainty? Because when things are certain, we feel in control, and that is an absolutely fundamental thing to feel sane, right. The brain wants to. The brain is a risk mitigation device. Its biggest fear is losing control, not being able to forecast risk effectively. So as a result of that, it's natural for us to want to say that's good, that's bad, that's black, that's white, that's up, that's down. So, as an educator, I'm sure many people can relate to this when you're trying to teach a student something, 99.9% of the time life isn't black and white, it's gray, and the answer is often somewhere in the middle. Even if it's 1% off the edge of the margin, it's still not on the margin, and so you can relate that to your own thinking. If it's hard for students to think that way. It's going to be hard for you to think that way, and that is that.

Mitch Wallis:

Well, I was taught and told that when someone brings me an emotional issue, I should guide them to a professional. Yes, but it's not that black and white. You don't want to become someone's psychologist, but the biggest mistake you can make is telling them to go straight to a psychologist. The middle is where you want to be, which is that person is not looking to you to wave a magic wand, be a magician and make them all better, or to overextend your boundaries and do cognitive behavioral therapy with them. If you haven't gone to university to do that, what they're wanting you to do is see them as a human before you, treat them as a process, and that we all have the capacity and capability to do. Now, often that requires some teaching around the art form of how do you find that middle ground, how do you sit in that space with someone of that humanity without taking on their problems entirely or completely dismissing them? But that's why we do this course right.

Drew Janetzki:

Yeah, yeah and absolutely, and that is the why, and we'll go into that niche as well further in our conversation. So, in terms of going into the why, why do you think real conversations are especially important for educational leaders and how do these principles help them navigate the complexities, as we've discussed briefly, and how do these principles help them navigate the complexities, as we've discussed briefly, of managing staff students?

Mitch Wallis:

And the broader school community. Yeah, okay, cool. So I'm going to unpack this in a bunch of layers, but I'm going to say plain and simply teachers are, as you know, one of the most important people in our society because they are responsible for raising the next generation of our planet. Teachers probably spend more time with children, ie the future of our world, than their own parents do, particularly during certain age brackets and certain times of the year Highly, highly, highly influential to someone's development of self nervous system, future regulation, etc. Teachers in australia, according to research, are five times more likely than the general population to experience stress, anxiety and depression. What we're seeing here is a low probability that we can raise mentally healthy children if we don't have mentally healthy adults in their ecosystem. That's where this all stems from, right. So, as a principal, also known as a leader of teachers who are raising the future of children, principals must be able to create psychologically safe environments for their staff, not just for the sake of their staff, but for the sake of everyone who loves the child that depends on this school system to raise and treat them well. All principals, all teachers, I would imagine, get into this game for the same reason. They have massive hearts, high EQ, get into this game for the same reason. They have massive hearts, high EQ, and to some extent this is probably a stretch, but I read this yesterday in a quite timely, serendipitous post online before this interview today. I think some teachers get into the profession to give people children a role model that they didn't have, so that they can rewrite their own story in a better and more healthy way. So all that is really good stuff.

Mitch Wallis:

The issue is that when the system becomes so intense which it does through under-resourcing intense, which it does through under-resourcing through life happening, through the rise of mental illness good intentions go out the window and we go back to default, which is fix, fix, fix. And that's when the rubber meets the road and tension comes in, and principals as well might think well, my job is to run the operations of the school, when, in fact, just like any leader of a workplace, your number one goal is to build healthy relationships with your staff, to protect them and empower them to do good work, something you cannot do if you're not connecting well. Final point on this is I spend most of my time when going into corporate workplaces trying to get people to be more open-hearted to extend themselves more deeply in relationship with their staff. When I work with principal cohorts, I have the opposite problem, but still an equal problem, which is knowing how to have boundaries. Boundaries are the heartbeat of relationships right.

Mitch Wallis:

And connection isn't just this drug where you can administer as much as you want and exponentially everything gets better on an infinite curve. Eventually, connection, just like anything. All medicine becomes poison, depending on dosage. You can overconnect to the detriment of self and other, to the extent that the whole system collapses because you don't know how to say no. You don't know how to dance that dance. You end up building resentment against your teachers instead of just implementing some healthy limits on how involved you can get in the supportive process, which is both beneficial to you and them. So really, when I'm working with principals or educators, it's helping them find that sustainability line versus how to lean in at all.

Drew Janetzki:

Yeah, which makes it so complex? Yeah, but doable, and we've proven that my colleagues listening in there is hope because you know that saying I heard you said talking about just it's the principal's responsibility. That's a huge responsibility to think of as a principal, saying what it's my responsibility as a principal to oversee um mental health. Or are we am hearing that right? Or is it still the onus on the teacher, obviously, the student and the parent to own their mental health as well?

Mitch Wallis:

Let's reword that because I think that'll scare a lot of people to be like I'm not responsible for someone's depression and that's true, right, because there's so many parallels to the corporate space. I always say to people, managers in that world, no one's ever going to leave a job and say you didn't cure my depression, right. So if we bring that into the principal scenario, you don't need to handhold someone through a mental health issue or a difficult life situation. You need to have the skills to not make them or you worse in the process, first and foremost. And you have a legal, economic and ethical responsibility to create a psychologically safe workplace. And at the middle of psychological safety is healthy, trustworthy relationships. That's the lens I want people to look at this through.

Drew Janetzki:

Yeah, and we'll unpack that further throughout our discussion on the how and, obviously, going through forward in terms of how they can do that through the Real Conversations course. Let's talk about your own school experiences, mitch, and were there any teachers or educators that significantly influenced your journey and you could able to share any particular memories of a school principal or or principals that stood out and shaped your, your perspective on educational leadership?

Mitch Wallis:

Yeah, it's interesting, drew. I think so much of my childhood was scattered with such traumatic mental illness at a time where this stuff wasn't talked about that I've almost dissociated somewhat from that, which is a shame because there were so many happy memories there too, but it's kind of clouded with this confusion of identity and this constant feeling within myself of, you know, that pit in my stomach of anxiety and the cloud of depression that at an age where I had no idea that that's what that was. But there were many happy memories, I think. You know. When I think about my primary school, where I was school captain, what I remember is, you know, of a weekend back then you could ride your mountain bikes through the school oval and there were bike jumps nearby and I remember that time as being a chapter of exploration of you know so many. So much was exciting during that time and you know, some teachers were great at incentivizing that curiosity that is peaking in you at that age and harnessing that for the good and looking at every student as an individual versus just a peanut butter approach to interrelating with students at that age. I think where things were most formative for me was in high school.

Mitch Wallis:

I went to an all boys Catholic school and there was one teacher in particular, mr McDonald, who I developed such a strong friendship with. I was also the first seed in our squash team and the captain of our squash team and he happened to be the squash coach, but he was very senior at the school and was a year coordinator and, more importantly, when my mental illness really started to flourish and I couldn't hold that in, he was someone that I would go to in moments to talk about it and he was such a safe place. And as we talk about in the curriculum, it's not what he said, it's the energy that he brought to these conversations. Now that's the subtlety that a lot of courses don't go into and I'm really proud we do and I think why it's been so widely adopted is we're going to spend as much time helping you understand your own internal biases, complications, et cetera that are accidentally spewing out in conversation, non-verbally, toward other people. That's making them feel uneasy way more than the script I can give you to say things perfectly.

Mitch Wallis:

I don't remember what Mr McDonald said to me 20 years ago as now a 34-year-old man, but I do remember the way he made me feel and I can tell you what was surrounding in his office and the look on his face and just this safety and warmth. I felt when I was around him that I don't know what it is, but this man has my best interests at heart and he's going to protect me and, at the very least, he's not going to judge me and I can seek refuge here. There was another teacher, brother Mark. We had brothers, priests in our school teaching and Brother Mark was as special, but in a different way. Mr McDonald was really that adult, masculine, sturdy influence. Brother Mark was this flamboyant, extroverted priest who was walking around in a robe through the schoolyard and to me he represented play that he would pull me out of funks simply just by being this positive, radiating source of jokes and smiles and playfulness that I'm so glad that his energy was around during that time as well. Yeah, wow.

Drew Janetzki:

Lucky to have the Mr McDonald's and Brother Mark's in the world because, as you said, you don't even isn't it interesting? You don't even remember what was said. You don't even you don't, isn't it interesting? It's not, you don't even remember what was said, but it's actually how you were, how they both made you feel, and they both made you feel secure, safe, a person to confide in and work through those, and that's essentially what Real Conversations is about.

Mitch Wallis:

Yeah, it's about care, Drew and care, and this is the whole premise. It's this counte r intuitive premise that feels like you're putting your shoes on the wrong feet. In so many of our brains we think that care is a practical thing. 10% of it is practical, 90% of it is practical, 90% of it is emotional. It's actually not what you do. It's how you make someone feel, and a lot of that is about listening and receiving them, as opposed to changing them or their situation.

Drew Janetzki:

Yeah, yeah, let's keep going. The role of real conversations in leadership. In your book, you highlight five steps to building connected relationships. As we've said In the school context, mitch, how can school leaders use these steps to strengthen team dynamics and, importantly, foster trust?

Mitch Wallis:

So I'll just highlight each of the five steps and give you kind of the headline learning. So the model is called ELSA-B and so many of us will remember this by the movie Frozen If you have children, elsa is the main character. So ELSA-B stands for a chronological process of engage, listen, safety, action, boundaries, boundaries kind of sits through the Elsa part and holds it all together. So engage is how do you set up a conversation for success that's not practical in nature and allows us to get that person in a state where they can receive our care and our love and get us in a state where we're primed to be therapeutic without being a therapist, which is absolutely possible. And the headline there is to bring the right energy. It's an inside out job, it's not the script, it's actually cultivating an internal world of openness and compassion that will allow that container to be filled with medicine.

Mitch Wallis:

Listen, module two is all around. How do you actively allow someone to feel understood for them as a person, not just their situation and problem? Our default is to those of us who are positively curious, which is a great attribute is to be curious about the situation itself. Oh, you're going through a divorce, what's the timeline on that, or you're struggling financially. Who are you banking with? Is it that you have high debt or not enough revenue? We'll go situation, situation, situation. Whereas listening is about listening to the person, not the problem, and that nuance is catastrophically important how they feel what meaning they've attributed to this thing. Right, you know, a student can get seven out of 10 on a test. Two students can draw completely different meanings from that. One person might be overjoyed, another might think they're an absolute failure. Life is just a lens. The stimulus has to then rotate into perception, which causes an emotional reaction. Right? So if you're just listening for the situation, you won't connect with them on an emotional level because you haven't heard the story underneath.

Drew Janetzki:

Yeah, the art of listening is so crucial. And keep going. I've interrupted because I'm listening and I've interrupted, keep going.

Mitch Wallis:

No, you're good. No, you're good. No, that's totally fine, because your energy speaks so much louder than your words, which is that of genuine care, safety. Safety is about how we, if we're going to get real, if we're encouraging people to sit in the mud, to go and rub salt on the wound and disinfect the wound. And I say you know, a lot of our participants that go through the course are like this is outstanding stuff. But I feel like this is I feel wrong, I feel evil for asking questions like this, like how does that make you feel? You just lost your mother? Are you sad about that? That is that's going to make them feel worse. And I say if someone came to you with a graze on their elbow, would you bandage it straight away? No, of course not. You would have to disinfect it first. If it's not stinging, you're not helping, because when you bandage that thing up and you use pleasantries and avoid the pain, what's going to happen is you're going to have to deal with that infection two weeks later. You're delaying the inevitable. People get better by going toward it, feeling it, not so that they can get stuck in it, but so that they can process it and let it go A law of the nervous system, and emotion must be felt for it to be released.

Mitch Wallis:

You cannot repress it. It will find you in one way, shape or form. So listening is really the art of cleansing the emotional wound, which doesn't always feel good but results in therapeutic outcomes. So safety is all about. Well, sometimes the process of listening will get very real. A lot of the time it'll be in a range where you feel comfortably uncomfortable enough to sit in it, but in a few situations they might talk about not wanting to be here anymore. So we want to give you a framework as to exactly how to navigate that, to label risk and to triage that risk effectively and deal with it, because there's a big difference between thoughts, plan and intent to take one's own life. So that's safety in module three.

Mitch Wallis:

Module four is around action. So I'm not asking you just to disinfect the wound. You can bandage it. But it's a chronological thing and when we're taking action we need to do that effectively so that they actually stick to and are motivated to get themselves out of the hole that they're in Now. That is around flipping from an advice model, even when we're fixing, to a coaching model.

Mitch Wallis:

How do we ask the right questions. How do we mine their own wisdom to build a map that they are familiar with and can navigate through? So action is very much, you know. There's the obvious getting them to professional therapy, blah, blah, blah, after you have met them as a person. But it's the art of bringing the best out of them using their own knowledge.

Mitch Wallis:

And then boundaries is how do you identify your attachment style and your natural habits to not be over or under involved, because we all instinctually swing a certain way depending on our upbringing.

Mitch Wallis:

And then how do we either enhance or reduce the limits that we've put into these relationships to balance connection and safety as a trade-off so that we ultimately have a sustainable, mutually beneficial relationship? Now, drew, I think that that's kind of the five core tenants of of the curriculum that result in someone having a much higher confidence index to connect and be helpful with people, um, when they're experiencing emotional issues or just proactively in the absence of issues. But the easiest and most accessible way into this curriculum is identifying with one of the five disconnection mistakes, and we call them the five characters of disconnection the magician, the thief, the blind optimist, the helicopter and the ostrich. The magician's constantly trying to wave a magic wand and fix people instead of putting it down and just sitting with them in their pain. The thief is constantly talking about themselves and stealing the focus of the conversation by saying same or me too, and that person now feels like they need to take care of you. This comes with a good intent, but it's not effective.

Drew Janetzki:

It does. It's interesting when you are a third observer and watch that play out, and I'm sure you do too.

Mitch Wallis:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, and because we don't know what else to say, so we bring it back to our own sphere of reference. But instead of doing that, we need to figure out and learn what to say and do. And talking about you has a place, but if it's your default reaction, you're never going to allow that person to feel valid for their own experience. The third mistake is the blind optimist, someone who's constantly silver lining something Now again positivity and all that stuff has its place. But if you do it too much, or straight away, that person feels invalidated for their pain and goes deeper into a shame spiral and creates what's called comparative suffering. The fourth mistake is the helicopter, and that's where we, as a supporter, freak out or freeze up when someone's trying to hang on to us for stability. That often comes when we care a lot. The parent-child relationship is the number one thing that's going to blow us out of our own sense of self and completely enmesh with the other. But emotions are scientifically proven to be contagious, so we need to figure out how to allow them to show I'm attuned to you a core tenet of psychologically safe parenting attunement. I'm aware of how you feel, I care about the way that you feel, but I'm not going to become the way you feel, because it's not helpful for me to do that for multiple reasons. If a child fell off the bike and came to you crying, if you cry back at the child, they're going to grow up thinking that the world is chaos. If you don't pay the child any attention, they're going to grow up thinking the world is completely rigid and doesn't care. We're trying to show attunement, but also a healthy amount of separation, which is how to overcome the helicopter aspect of disconnection. And then the fifth character is the opposite of the helicopter it's the ostrich. I'm paying no attention to you. I'm burying my head in the sand and I'm pretending that this emotional issue does not exist because I want to avoid an awkward thing. Awkwardness is like we treat it as if it's lethal, when actually it's.

Mitch Wallis:

Part and parcel of being a human is to know how to sit in these moments without ejecting, and if you're a parent or a teacher or a principal, you've signed up for this. This is an enormous part of the role that you voluntarily consented to is sharing experiences with someone that are hard, and the way to get someone out of an ostrich is telling them. You can do hard things without imploding when you know that the benefit is to the person that you actually want to be helpful to and ostriches the first people to hand others tissues when they're crying, when actually that's the biggest mistake you can make, because it symbolizes clean yourself up and hurry up. The best tissue you can give someone is three words take your time and then stop talking. Crying is the catharsis, it's the nervous system purging. It's a good thing. We don't want to stop that. We want to witness someone in their pain, because that's when the resolution happens.

Drew Janetzki:

Yeah, wow, so much to unpack in that and such valuable knowledge and hence why Real Conversations is a professional learning piece, because what you've just unpacked there in the last five to eight minutes is huge. I know you simplified it with the ELSA. I love the ELSA acronym there as well. It just simplifies that process. But in just embedding it and being a participant myself, it's that leaning into that pain but I think people listening in is that's a real skill set. Can that skill set be learned? Or people going, hey, mitch, that's all great, but that's not me. I'm established, I'll do my what's in it for people listening to this conversation.

Mitch Wallis:

Yeah, you will become a better person and you absolutely can do this. You know, I work with industries that are hyper IQ based, so that where this is very, very unfamiliar, way beyond the territory of teaching for example, professional services, auditors, accountants by no means worse people at all I have dear friends that work in this profession, but just in terms of this particular skill set is quite foreign, and even they leave sessions like this going. Wow, this is a genuine game changer, because deep down, we know that the quality of our life is directly proportional to the quality of our relationships, and so it's almost like do you want to live a good life? That's what this course comes down to. Do you want to have a good career?

Mitch Wallis:

If so, you cannot avoid learning how to become a better, real conversationalist, because at the heart of everything is connection, is a core capability, particularly at the heart of leadership, and a lot of it is just a willingness to suspend the rigid belief systems or, probably more relevant, to get the courage to go toward the pain and lift up the hood of your own way of being and saying. I wonder how I might be able to show up better. Not that I need a complete overhaul there's so much goodness and positive reasons as to why you're acting the way that you are, but is it worth becoming a better person for myself and those around me that I love and that love me? And that might involve looking inward for a little bit, and invariably the answer to that is yes.

Drew Janetzki:

Yeah, yeah, well said. It's not just for those listening. It is a one-day course, so to speak, but it's more than that. There's also a whole raft of support mechanisms put in place. We can go into that now if you'd like to.

Mitch Wallis:

I just want to pick up on that, Drew, because it's really important and I spend a lot of time working with clients to help them understand. This is not a one-day course. The the workshop is the flagship part of the program. In fact, I don't even call it a training, I call it a program so that people understand that the one-day workshop is the tentpole moment for us all to come together, connect in real time to do the practical elements of the workshop like put it into practice and learn the curriculum. However, we pride ourself on because I don't know any other vendor that does this giving a complimentary year's worth of coaching after that workshop, where we host twice monthly coaching and community calls refresher trainings. We have an always-on e-learning hub with downloadable resources and the whole video curriculum of me delivering it and a whole raft of other things that we go on a 12-month journey. We kind of give you the 80% you need in a day and then embed the remaining 20% over the course of 12 months following.

Drew Janetzki:

Yeah, extremely powerful, absolutely, as an advocate myself and a participant myself. Now let's move into mental health in education. Mitch, what do you see the key mental health challenges in education today, and how can leaders use real conversations to address them?

Mitch Wallis:

I think we're experiencing, from a leadership perspective, a broadening scope of the responsibility and role of the workplace, which is really overwhelming for principals, understandably so.

Mitch Wallis:

I myself I'm a leader of a business and I can feel that, and so I think for educators or educational leaders it's double as complex because then the layer down from that is children are involved and there is an emerging landscape of newness in that, with the huge increase in neurodiverse populations at the moment, on a micro level, as opposed to macro meaning, kind of an always on, but micro meaning timely there's a financial constraint that particularly Australian educators and children and families are feeling we are going through a huge geopolitical changing landscape which plays on all levels of that, both parents, children and educators.

Mitch Wallis:

So I think that the kind of the core theme at the heart of all that is that we are in a high learning, high newness phase of life, society and and and work. So, as educators, the ability to traverse that landscape in a cohesive manner means having the competency and skills to bring people along that journey, and that is the delicate art of being vulnerable in the right moments, of showing your humanity, showing cards. To say this is hard and as a human being I'm I'm struggling with a whole bunch of this stuff, too. That buys you trust whilst also showing stability and confidence and future orientation of, and here's where we can head to as well and steer the ship. And this is a nice kind of poetic call back to the start of our conversation, which is if you choose black or white there, it will fail. If we somehow integrate both the soft and the hard approach of leadership, we will be where we need to be in this incredibly complex, ambiguous time.

Drew Janetzki:

Yeah, and that's the struggle. The struggle is, many leaders struggle with vulnerability and being generally authentic, so to speak, especially in the context leading such a diverse communities with a lot of transactions in any given day or week at a school. Your book, Real Conversations Five Steps to Connective Relationship how does it offer a framework for overcoming these challenges, Mitch?

Mitch Wallis:

Well, I think we've covered a lot of that in our discussion so far, whether it's the book, the workshop, the keynote is the exact technology to be helpful in emotional issues. You have so much choice out there. It's almost like imposter syndrome, I'm like. Are you sure that you want to continue working with me and my team? And they keep coming back to this works because it's hyper practical. You've taken something that is so complex and so emotionally charged and put it into bite-sized, digestible frameworks. That truly does go and create results. We are seeing leaders walk around the workplace and act differently after this course. We are seeing in our pulse surveys, when we audit our workforce, that they do feel more psychologically safe. Our peer support networks are thriving. Our leadership teams have a whole new dynamic to them. So I think it's the practical nature of this IP that really is the game changer.

Drew Janetzki:

Yeah, absolutely Mitch. In terms of going further into the advocacy of your work, are there any particular moments or stories that highlight the power of that meaning of connection that's transformed lives?

Mitch Wallis:

Yeah, I mean we go into this course in a workplace setting to help people become better leaders and sometimes better staff members as peer supporters, sometimes better staff members as peer supporters. But what makes me most proud is that, of course, we accomplished that goal. But I see them leaving as better parents, better partners, better siblings, better friends. And what heartens me is the next day receiving a DM on LinkedIn, for example, from someone that said I just had the most connected conversation I've ever had with my 12-year-old son tonight, and this is a CEO that ultimately, at the end of the day, I know that that is what makes his life worth living, way more than anything in his career, hobbies, interests et cetera, that's it and to add value in that part of his life.

Mitch Wallis:

Or even, you know, I've spoken to participants where that weekend they will be supporting someone who's in a crisis, who's actively suicidal, and they've just there's no way they would have had the framework to navigate a conversation like that had they not gone through the program. And they're not just life-changing but potentially life-saving things and the ripple effect of what happens exponentially when you drop that rock in the water. That's what excites me is if we can get a saturation point in certain industries or in certain segments and at-risk communities within Australia and abroad, that this living organism starts to become a thing and real conversations becomes a tool and a skill set that's available to the vast majority of the population. We will start to see reversing trends in the worrying statistics that we're reading about on a daily basis.

Drew Janetzki:

So there is hope.

Mitch Wallis:

There is hope. There is hope I mean we can balance present moment concerns with future optimism and hope at the same time, because it's about holding multiple things in the same container. I think without hope, we're starved of the core essence which drives us as humans, which is the want to progress. And you know, I personally choose to use the word belief instead of hope, because hope feels theoretical and abstract to me. Belief is, I know, things will get better. There's a certain certainty to it and you know, with real conversations, I believe in it. I don't hope it works. I believe it works because I have evidence to prove that and I have evidence to prove in my own life, as someone that has overcome complex obstacles, that I didn't think possible, what kept me alive in moments that I didn't think I could be here, wasn't hope, it was belief.

Drew Janetzki:

This will get better could be here wasn't hope, it was belief. This will get better, yeah, yeah, and you can really feel that coming through and you must pinch yourself when you get those messages from CEOs about that impact and does that continually drive you Mitch in terms of your mission.

Mitch Wallis:

It does. The impact definitely drives me. Ultimately. What drives me is coming back to I want to help one person not go through what I've been through. When it all gets big and ego gets involved, the bigger things get, and so I constantly try and humble myself, or the universe humbles me. To come back to the core essence of why I'm doing this and a lot of it is a selfish reason to make meaning from my own pain, because when I wake up in the morning, for me to play the game of life, I have to believe that this is 51% good, because if it's 51% evil, I would opt out. And so for me to continually go along that belief system and schema, I have to perpetually make meaning from pain, otherwise it's pointless and worthless, and that's just not what I subscribe to. And so if we can serve those around us, not only do they benefit, but we benefit from an intrinsic sense of self-worth which will buffer against anything bad that can come up in life.

Drew Janetzki:

Your mission doing that and making sure that it is, as you quote, 51% for good. How do you balance your own well-being while advocating for others to prioritize theirs?

Mitch Wallis:

Do you find that hard? Well, there's a book coming on that soon. Okay, yeah, my core focus as a psychology thought leader is all in on relationships and conversations and healing through other. But I also have an IP that I use in my keynotes but will soon be a book, which is nervous system regulation very focused on just self supporting self as opposed to supporting other. And so if I borrow from some of that right now in terms of how I navigate my own life is well A boundaries are an enormous part of it Boundaries with the world, boundaries in relationships with other people, boundaries with myself, like being really conscious about my limits.

Mitch Wallis:

Therefore, being conscious about my energy exchange is a vital part of my self-care, and my boundaries with my work is mission critical as well. So connection, the right type of connection, is key Coherence. So for me, journaling is an enormous part of my self-care strategy Understanding why I feel things the way that I feel, integrating my logic with my heart. Like all those, I journal on a daily basis to orientate myself in the world and in my nervous system. And then another part is like the chemistry component of mental health, the bio, biological, body-based stuff. So what are the pistons I need to fire regularly to keep myself sane.

Mitch Wallis:

Exercise massive one. Um you know, steam rooms and ice baths help me a lot. Eating, eating the right things, getting the right sleep. Oh my goodness, a couple of bad nights sleep not good. The inverse is true. If I can really get some deep, therapeutic sleep, my resilience level goes through the roof. It is such a good ROI sleep. Every dollar you put into that slot machine you'll get at least a dollar 30 return on that. So, um yeah, I'm I. I would say those three pillars of my non-negotiables connection, coherence, chemistry.

Drew Janetzki:

And that is built up over time, or you've learned that through your research.

Mitch Wallis:

Absolutely, Drew, both, um, I, I. I tend to be a learner or a teacher actually, because, you know, a large part of my profession is teaching. I never thought I'd be a teacher but, you know, I came to realize in the past 12 months holy shit, I think I'm a teacher, um, because so much of the work that I do is is educating people on frameworks and standing in classrooms. You know, um, and so you know a lot of my style and my approach, for better or for worse, is intuitive first, logic second. So I try and figure out what works, regardless of the research. Just, you know instinctually in my own life, what do I believe to be true. And then I go back to say do I need to tweak that? Did I just make that up? Can the research help sharpen that or at very least explain why it does? And so you'll see, in the book I'm constantly moving between the personal and then the empirical and marrying those two in the work that I do.

Drew Janetzki:

You're a lifelong learner Mitch, which is incredible.

Mitch Wallis:

Amen, I love learning Drew. It's such a passion of mine, I'm sick for it.

Drew Janetzki:

Yeah, but as you said in our conversation, there is so much out there in terms of you said in the previously, like you know why come back. The point of difference is the real conversations is well, it's real and it's practical. And if we apply that to an educational leadership perspective, now we've got in the New South Wales PPA, we've got a membership of over 1,800 principals I hope you're all listening in colleagues. They've got such a diverse amount of school communities. How can the strategies from real conversations help improve communication and foster a culture of support?

Mitch Wallis:

Foster a culture of support. It'll give you a framework to validate what you're already doing or extend what you weren't. So what I mean by that is some of the principles that go through real conversations in the cohorts we've run previously. Drew, everyone absolutely comes away with skills that they can apply that evening. But I think what's as beneficial and I'm okay with this is this enormous peace of mind that comes from fuck, I was doing a lot of things right. So a lot of people leave the course and what's as helpful for them as they say, wow, there's a lot of things that I was doing right and there's something in that you know being validated and affirmed that what I was doing instinctually is correct empirically, and it just brings a sense of renewed confidence into these conversations and into the leadership that you're carrying back into your workplace and I think as well it motivates you to continuously have psychological safety at the forefront of the way that you show up in the world and good things come of that in the months to come. It just does.

Drew Janetzki:

Yeah, and if we go to the big word in education and, I'm sure, across sectors, is that word about impact and measuring the impact. Mitch, what advice would you offer leaders who are listening, looking to measure the impact of real conversations into their school context?

Mitch Wallis:

Yeah, so at the moment the main measurement we use is how much can we boost connection as a core leadership capability, and at the moment the best way we can do that is a self-reporting tool pre and post intervention intervention and what we found is we can boost connection as a capability by up to 400 percent. Now we might not see those types of numbers in in this audience because we're coming in with such a potentially high um level of intrinsic skill, being eq orientated people in this demographic originally. But what we might also do is change some people's self-reported metrics by. I thought I was connecting well, but actually I had not the same definition of connection, which is understanding a person, not understanding a problem, let alone fixing a problem. How practical I can be, I thought was being a good connector, and now that I've learned this, I actually exponentially improved that capability. But also so I think that's one way to measure success.

Mitch Wallis:

Another measure of success is I got to deeply connect with my colleagues in the business and hear from them in ways that I'd never known before. That's a huge outcome from a qualitative perspective. You know, was this a good investment of time? A hundred percent. We've never not seen that good investment of time from a PL standpoint. So there's absolutely no risk to taking people out of the business and thinking was that a wasted use of resource and funds?

Mitch Wallis:

And then downstream, what eventually? What we hope to do is because we do this with companies, they then use their own surveys to pulse and say is this more psychologically safe? And they have their own ways of asking that. And I think what we would eventually like to do is, with the PPA, go, have we hit enough saturation point of principals going through real conversations and then pulsing teachers that report to them and asking, on average, do you feel more psychologically safe at work, do you feel more supported by your leader? And if that is trending up and we can materially link that back to real conversations, to me that is huge structural change in the biggest employer in the Southern Hemisphere.

Drew Janetzki:

Huge, huge and a huge challenge, which I know that you will not lean away from. That pain point, mitch, it does. It excites me too because there is a belief there, a real belief, that this work can change people, this can support leaders, this can support principals, this can support principals, this can support their teachers, this can ultimately have the flow and effect of supporting students and the whole school community. So very powerful, and we're only in early stages, as you know. But when you talk about the measure of impact, we haven't seen surveys like this come back to us and there's only been a small amount of workshop, which excites me as well.

Drew Janetzki:

Quotes such as the best professional learning I've done as a principal. I use it every day. What a powerful quote. That was from our pilot program, quote that was from our pilot program and we've had those similar type of conversations or evaluations come through, which is excites me and excites our members, should be exciting our members to. If you're thinking where, I guess in terms, we'll go to where to next, but in terms of going to real conversations for schools, what's the lasting impact of educators and students, or what would you like to see the lasting impact for both educators and students in New South Wales public schools, or not just New South Wales beyond.

Mitch Wallis:

Ultimately, a healthier generation of children. Like that, selfishly, is what excites me most about partnering with the PPA is. I know for sure, and it gives me joy, that principals will walk out better leaders and better people. I know for sure that their staff, teachers, human beings, will benefit from that. Because we spend, you know, our manager at work has more influence to our mental health than a therapist, and on par with that of a romantic partner, as research published out of the uk and and talked about in forbes, uh, so so that's that's the second ripple, but the third is we're going to have a healthier ecosystem of children who will one day be in the roles that we are right now and ultimately that's legacy right, that's why we're here is to contribute positively. That's true purpose and impact.

Drew Janetzki:

So that really is the ripple effect so that that really is is the ripple effect.

Mitch Wallis:

Any last words of advice for people listening in the curiosity what's the call to action?

Mitch Wallis:

I think for some people listening to this, this has been enough to give them a bunch of little golden nuggets to go and apply today.

Mitch Wallis:

I need to be less of a magician, more of a listener, you know, um, and I need to even an awareness that a different technology is required in an emotional conversation than a practical one, like if that's success today, then this is an hour well spent and hopefully an hour well listened. I think for those, that is where it sparks something deeper, a hunger, a thirst to learn and grow, and that you see, the practical application for yourself or principles within your PPC is to get, rally your troops, get a cohort together and let's go and do this and walk the full journey so that you can experience the life-changing power of Elsa B firsthand. And you know, getting in touch with yourself, drew and and um, and allowing us to get you know as many people as possible. We want upwards of 30 people in in the workshop, um, going through this program together and uh, and I think that it's a good way to. If you're gonna do pl, this is a good way to spend it absolutely and testimony to you.

Drew Janetzki:

Thank you for everything you do in the mental health space. Mitch, it's been an absolute pleasure you coming on and talking to us today and, we hope, people listening. That's that call to action make 2025 your year of connecting and have a fantastic year. Mitch wallace, thank you for your time.

Mitch Wallis:

Thanks, Drew, and thanks everyone for listening. Thank you.

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