The goal is to win from the start
“I have always felt excited about working at Tulix because of the psychological safety. Fear and illness were never a liability, just an opportunity for leadership to encourage me so I only grew stronger and smarter over time.”
Wairimu Ndung’u
In this edition:
Employee recognition unlocks higher performance
Tracking mood symptoms just got easier
STORY
When leaders work with your strengths
In our last edition, my former COO, Alistair Gould, shared three considerations he made when mapping out my learner journey.
Here’s how I benefitted from the first tactic, transferable skills & strengths.
“Showing you where your skills would be useful to the company would allow you to quickly see your skills applied & your contributions appreciated.”
Start strong
I had a very unique interviewing experience that I would say kicked off onboarding (if I got the role). The writing assignment was a 300-word summary of the company and I focused on the mission and customer in my submission.
At the time, they needed someone to scale their content. This was second nature to me after 2 years of writing 100+ articles for multiple businesses while hiring and training other writers.
Initially, I missed the email that contained the next steps of the interview and only had about 24 hours to submit after a courtesy call from Alistair — an opportunity to demonstrate critical thinking.
In the interview, he applauded my interpretation of their mission which is central to establishing employee alignment and a long-term strategy. It also left me feeling confident about my career choices regardless of the outcome.
Onboarding and beyond
I joined the team while they were part of an accelerator program so we built the go-to-market strategy alongside experts. Alistair also supported me as I collaborated with another organisation on a bipolar advocacy campaign.
The effect? He earned my trust so I chose to go beyond my scope of work understanding the larger business while strengthening relationships within the team.
One year later it led to talks at other companies on how to build team synergy which has since evolved into consultancy work in business development.
I have always felt excited about working at Tulix because of the psychological safety. Fear and illness were never a liability, just an opportunity for him to encourage me so I only grew stronger and smarter over time.
SPOTLIGHT
New solutions to old problems
Scientists are closer to designing medications that support the brain’s self-cleaning system to prevent disorders [Read]
Schizoaffective disorder patient shares life off psychiatric medication thanks to medical ketogenic diet [Watch]
Forget talking, Marline’s advocacy involves singing about female genital mutilation and teenage pregnancy [Read]
TRIAGE
Patient data is the future of psychiatric treatment
One of the best ways to improve psychiatric treatments is to learn directly from patients. So we need to teach them how to document symptoms to contribute to research and innovation.
Here are the four metrics I used to understand my symptoms and treatment after my bipolar diagnosis:
Disruptive symptoms
Why: Learn what medication works for what set of symptoms and non-medication tools that can tackle the rest to design your personalised recovery plan.
How: Dump the DSM-V symptoms in a document and under each symptom that applies to you write:
Your experiences
Natural personality outside of symptoms
Management tools before medication
Mood
Why: Moments of sadness don’t always mean a depressive episode. It’s good for you to see yourself navigating regular highs and lows.
How: Use Bipolar UK’s mood app [download] to understand levels of hypomanic and depressive symptoms. Track life events happening at the same time to identify your changing triggers.
Medication side effects
Why: Side effects can worsen depression as you may think it’s your fault you’re not getting better and end up on higher doses.
How: Research common medication side effects online and other patient experiences then document anything that concerns you.
Gratitude
Why: Recovery is a long journey and competing with yourself is the best way to keep building a meaningful life.
How: Write a win related to managing a symptom or a goal you’re working towards. Start small but try to always highlight something, it’ll add up.
Adjust this for your needs and track for at least 30 days (I did it for five months). Use your records to ask your medical team questions — they may have years of experience but you know more about your body.
I’ve spent years running experiments on myself so I can share frameworks that help you along your journey. Let me know what stood out for you this week.