Key Mental Health Lessons Every Leader Should Know

[0:00]  all right guys welcome to a brand new episode of the heart and hustle podcast I'm incredibly excited to give an amazing introduction to Kyle Carter now Kyle Carter is the CEO of Nami Philly now if you've never heard of Nami it is the National Alliance on Mental Illness now Kyle's going to be talking today in episode about the challenges that we face and not only serving his community to be able to educate the Next Generation and serve the generation with mental health services but also the challenges that come along with the distraction that comes along with this little device and everything else that we deal with in the pressures of life let's get into the episode and one of the biggest opportunities that I see in front of us is to leverage technology to create more leverage so that when we pull on the string we can impact more people I think all those things any integration of any technology and we can

[0:49]  even throw social media back into it um whether it's AI social media all those things can be incredibly useful if done responsibly um and what it is it is incredibly dangerous as long as we understand that and we couple that by understanding that we can't just use it in an isolated basis and we have have the people to drive the work um there is absolute Poli for technology in the space you know coming in Nami working with tremendous volunteers and staff and understanding that our folks are operating from a space of lived experience they've gone through a lot of these challenges that they're helping community members with one of the things we had to focus on is balance and boundaries um for them and for me so you know not answering calls past a certain time not engaging on the weekends being okay with passing along and doing a warm

[1:37]  handoff to a partner that could also allows some support because you can't pour from an empty C and more often than that we love utilizing folks that live The Experience until we use them up all right guys welcome back to another episode of the podcast now I'm incredibly excited because I have an amazing guest with me here today named Kyle Carter now Kyle is the executive director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Philadelphia Nami Philly Kyle welcome to the show man thank you much pleasure to be here Kyle I want to ask you a simple question man to kind of get started what's going on

[2:24]  with the mental health in our communities what's happening out there oh that is a broad question what is going on from my perspective I think we're existing in a generation right now where there is a lot of awareness or a that I think has ever been present in any previous generation a lot of empathy present but more education needs to be coupled with that a lot of self- diagnosis um but not a lot of I think comfort with actually doing the due diligence doing the education and trusting folks that have put in work for hundreds of years to to understand the way that the mind and the body works so you know there's some positive things but there needs to be some education coupled with things but we're in a much better place than we used to be I think we are in a better place than we used to be the one thing that I truly worry about is the confusion for popularity versus Authority now when you talk about

[3:14]  self- diagnosis as an example I know that there's a lot of people in younger generations and in all generations in common that often looked at things like social media to get information about their mental health maybe somebody shares a story talks about how they're anxious talks about how they're depressed and they create a relability with people how do you think that the digital age is kind of affecting that self diagnosis if you will I more often than not and this is Kyle's personal opinion so I I like to always make sure that that's clear that sometimes we we look to social media and not having an actual person present in front of us real affirmation of what we already wanted to believe so not necessarily having to do that work of a really on that deep dive talking with someone again that's educated and and is a thought leader in the space but you know

[4:02]  looking to someone that has no real connection um to affirm what we already want to believe so we want to believe that we have X Y and Z we look for a in space as opposed to you know sometimes doing a bit of a deeper dive and being more intentional um about doing the work with the the prevailance of social media being accessible to so many how does an organization like Nami try and produce education that helps people go to a trusted Source rather than just looking to somebody who they're following on social media have you guys thought about that strategy absolutely and that's one of the things you know I'm a months in and one of the most proud of is our expansion into social media space really using LinkedIn Facebook Instagram to promote what we do what our mission is why we do it um and then try to be as

[4:50]  inclusive and Equitable as possible to get the information out to everyone um that need it so I think the intentionality behind that and just just trying to educate as many people as possible um and hopefully Point people in the right direction we you know we do articles we we partner with folks we partner with uh educational institutions that are again doing the work and have information that's empirically and data driven um just try to just do the connections whenever we can but I think we meet people where we are we utilize social media to its highest capacity you know we try to align it and ensure that it's with our mission that's the best as we can do at this point let's let's rewind a little bit and let everybody kind of get a better understanding about the National Alliance against mental illness so let's talk about kind of what Nami is and talk about your involvement

[5:38]  how you got involved in the organization in the first place so Nami National Alliance of mental illness um I've been in the role for about a year and five months as a chief executive officer for Nami Philly um previous to that the city of Philadelphia and Leadership I've been a clinician a professor of psychology I've run a number of Youth serving intellectual disability programs I've always kind of been in the mental health behavior health space um but Nami itself um largest Grassroots nonprofit in the country 600 Affiliates and we're one of which we have multiple other Affiliates in area such as Nami Mainline Montgomery County uh Chester County um Bucks County as well um and really our work is rooted in removing the stigma around mental illness um there's so many stigmas that are culturally based gender based all those things so Riv removing it and

[6:26]  really pushing people in the direction of getting help whatever that help might look like uh for you so our programming really is steeped in education training and advocacy so we have about probably about 15 plus programs at this point we have really taken off over the past year or so and as we have college-based programming with a number of colleges around the city that's take advantage of our composition and our supports and our thought leadership to help deliver uh behavioral health and mental health resources to colleges we have youth servant programming we have mentoring programming we have program we allow youth to navigate the behavior health space and we serve as Advocate and then we have our multiple support groups um and then we have our staple programming so our peerto peer family to family where we really uh help families and caregiv navigate through the behavior health space um and have you know provide a space where we understand what

[7:14]  you're going through here some skills that help you kind of get through Kyle when I was growing up I uh grew up in a biracial household my father is black my mom is white and I saw in which the ways that both of my family cultures approach the topic of Mental Health for my father's side the African-American side it was often stigmatized we use stories about like oh that's just how your uncle is or that's how your family member is and yeah they drink a lot but you know they've gone through a lot of stuff in the past seeing substance abuse and other type of I would say AIDs that we use to kind of treat some mental health illnesses and some other stressors that were in our lives how did you grow up when it came to mental health did your family culture accept mental health with the passion of going in and doing all the things that you just talked about was that part of your upbringing or is that something you had to explore on

[8:00]  your own well I would say growing up as a black male only child raised by a black woman um I think growing up initially it was kind of the same thing of kind of just like you know oh you'll be fine you'll be okay it's not that big a deal this kind of for men in the machismo even at a young ages oh just wipe it off off of dirt let's just keep it going until about 12 my mother was diagnosed with clinical depression and then you couldn't really do that anymore because it was upfront personal that my mother now had to move in with my grandmother and we had to live with her now and I had to see her have to go through the space of you know crying and being sad and not being able to interact with me um and having to see a therapist and all these different things so I got to see it up close and personal and as I'm talking it's how I realize how it manifested itself and my

[8:48]  line of work now you never realize how these things own path so you know I think it start of started off with kind of the stereotypical uh kind of stigmatizing type of thing when I was younger but then you got I got hit in the face with oh no this is the real um and then we had to adjust and I think even now you know I think my own wellness and mindfulness and all those things not as well as I should at time I I do a lot better preaching do I doing but that's why I have a coach that that helps me um uh I'm getting a little better at that but you know it's an ongoing B we this is not an exercise of perfection um you know none of us are going to survive this place all of us are going to go out of here so we do the best we can while we're here what are some of the key initiatives and I would say priorities that you've been focusing on since you took leadership of Nami Philly like what are some of the things

[9:36]  that you kind of focused on when you took the rain and said these are the type of things that I want to impact here are lwh hanging fruits what kind of stuff have you been talking about focusing on because over the last year and a half like you said you've had tremendous growth in the impact that you guys have been making so what have you been focusing on strategic Partnerships that are steeped in reciprocity that you know we know you we we want to make sure that we help you as well it's not just you know sometimes when you see nonprofits when it's time to raise money that's the only time you hear from them and then after that oh what are you guys doing with the money what are you guys doing throughout the year so being intentional with the way that we reach out to all of our stakeholders whether it's volunteers whether it's the community members we serve whether it's our partners being intentional about what that looks like so utilizing our platform utilizing a very strategic mailing lists and all these different things to make sure people know this is

[10:23]  exactly what we're doing um in addition I think taking a real uh Advanced approach that Health Equity what does that look like are we ensuring that we are consistently doing A needs assessment and surveying the entire community at large to find out what they need and then find an intentional ways to do that and expanding our youth serving programming um Philadelphia is very unique in that there is a lot of crime and Trauma and issues specifically related to youth how are we serving that Community how are we super serving that Community um intentional things are we doing so we managed to expand a lot of our youth-based programming um and I think those are the ways that we've really been able to expand and I Look to continue to build upon short term and long term one of the things that I um did yesterday was I participated in a podcast and one of the things that we do here at Francis is we

[11:11]  created a proactive mental health support service where we send our subscribers one daily text at a random time of positivity encouragement support or something helpful like a mental Wellness reframe or a resource that helps people deal with the stress that comes from real world scenarios every once in a while we could use a reminder of the great job that we're doing or a reminder of focusing on the positive things as a mental health reframe now the reason why we created our service was because when I went out into society I found that a lot of people were consistently spending time on their device and when we're spending time on our device one of the things that people don't recognize is that the behavior of coming back to social media all the time has been engineered by incredibly smart

[11:59]  behavioral health or behavioral scientists that use things like gamification to get you and your mind coming back to this engagement platform time and time again but one thing that we haven't recognized is that the feed on Instagram or Tik Tok is based on an algorithm to keep us coming back and one of the things that we've noticed is that we're being seen or being shown more and more negative things in life today so how do you think about the impact of social media on the youth's mental health spefic specifically when we're kind of being tricked into coming back to these platforms that everybody seems to be engaging with today what's your two cents on how these platforms are being used and what's the impact on everybody well you talk you know speaking to the The Sciences of things I completely agree with you that they very

[12:47]  very brilliant people um have you know kind of created these Platforms in us to keep us engaged however if you're asking my honest opinion I that the integration of social media if we look at from a macro level perspective has probably done a little bit more harm than good um I think it's kind of taken away a lot of socialization natural socialization in person with folks um which you know can lead to a whole bunch of other things that we'll be here till about four o'clock and we start going through all those things I would say probably more har than good unfortunately but there's always a way to kind of reverse the curve um and I think that's limiting your you know you taking ownership by you I mean all the you in audience the millions of folks that will view this um you taking ownership of um you know your own mental health knowing that maybe I should only be on Instagram or Facebook

[13:34]  maybe an hour a day because I know if I'm want as too much it might lead to me seeing content that's negative I might see crime I might see divisiveness I has something to do with politics or religion or anything other and what what how does that trigger me what what effect does it have on me um and I think that self-inventory and taking ownership of that can help you navigate social media use in a way that maybe is a bit more healthy um but when you don't do that and you just sit there and then Eng with it all day it can do more harm than good in 2022 the Surgeon General came onto a national broadcast and said the biggest threat to our society today is not another viral outbreak or a pandemic but rather an epidemic of isolation and loneliness now one of the things that I think about is that at the previous time that the Surgeon General came onto a

[14:21]  national broadcast he was talking about the dangers of cigarette smoke so we've seen how time has progressed in society has progressed by knowing more about the things that we engage with and understanding the dangers that they provide in our lives the one thing that I truly worry about is so many people in our society today are feeling isolated and lonely because we continue to go and look at this device as an example for social connection one of the things that I've personally been doing over the last couple weeks is I eliminated Tik Tok I eliminated Instagram from my phone and so I don't even have those tools accessible to me anymore now something that's really interesting that kind of triggered this was the amount of screen time that the average person is spending on their device the average 18-year-old today is spending nine hours

[15:08]  a day on their device behind their screen now if you extrapolate that out for the rest of their life there's a tool called lifetime screen time calculator you put in your age you put in your average screen time and extrapolates it out for the rest of your life that 18-year-old who spends nine hours a day on their device will spend 24 years of their lifetime behind the screen what do you think about that statistic I think the Surgeon General probably had it right that you know that is a very CH again it just it it it laps in a face of socialization traditional socialization again the isolation um which can lead to this negative things we understand that depression all those different things which can lead to self harm all those things so when I hear that I'm like oh

[15:57]  my Lord that is so much time that could be utilized and and again I am not I utilize social media myself in my personal life I am on Instagram often um but there has to be a way in which you can find balance everything in life in my opinion is balance find balance in eating find balance in exercising indulging and social media is just another space in which you should find some degree of balance otherwise you'll be in there for 24 years like you just you know one of the things that I think about um sitting across the table from an amazing leader like you you is in order to inspire others to find themselves in the mission of educating people about their mental health of the mission of Nami you have to be able to inspire the people who are coming into the organization build ownership a sense

[16:45]  of accountability towards serving the community so let's kind of talk about your Innovative thought if you will when it comes to leadership one of the things that I shared in our previous conversation you and I kind of got pumped about this was Gary vaynerchuk's book 12 and a half which is all about the soft skills right let's talk a little bit about the soft skills why you think there's so much awareness Ed that word intentionally a little bit earlier around the soft skills and why do you think they're so important from a leader perspective in today's world um I mean when I think about soft skills and Leadership and Leadership Effectiveness leadership where it's not really complex but the application of it can be perceived as complex um you know having emotional intelligence is something that to me by the grace of God comes naturally uh being able to understand my staff understand the

[17:33]  stakeholders and understand you know what maybe this is a Friday where you need to take a couple hours early um or maybe we need to have this conversation or maybe we don't need to have this conversation today all those little you know anecdotal things that may not come naturally but then those things may not come naturally to some folks so it's just those the gray area I think is is how folks are really effective leaders that I've seen really perform at the high level those are the areas in which they can be really successful just nav those great areas so you know coming in Nami working with tremendous volunteers and staff and understanding that our folks are operating from a space of lived experience they've gone through a lot of these challenges that they're helping community members with one of the things they had to focus on is balance and boundaries um for them and for me so you know not answering calls past a certain time not engaging on the

[18:21]  weekends being okay with passing it along and doing a warm hand off to a partner that could also allows some support because can't pour from an empty cup and more often than that we love utilizing folks a Liv experience until we use them up and then what's for them um when they when they've told their story 10,000 times and they're ex what you have next for them to do um so one of the things I've you know I've integrated in is understand what are you outside of this isolated experience you've had mental health challenges but where do you want to be in five years how can I help you get there um those things so think macr Lev perspective that's what leaders should really be looking at is ensuring that they are truly there to serve their staff they're there to make sure that their staff is successful and that's the way I look at

[19:08]  it and I approach it every day I mean isn't that kind of the dark side of working for an organization that has such an amazing mission is we recognize the challenges in our community and we feel like we have to show up 247 365 to be able to combat some of the macro issues that we see and one of the things I love which you used is my personal analogy I like to say you can't pour from the m cup and this is the biggest problem that I see is often when we are serving others it's so easy to grind it down to the bone that we have nothing left to give and the only Mission realist realistically in our communities is to continue to serve and to show up every single day but we have to be able to establish boundaries why did you guys start focusing on that boundary element so much I'm really interested in that uh from past experience so I you know um I previously worked in another capacity

[19:57]  where we had folks uh certified peer specialist and certified recovery specialist they did phenomenal work um but unfortunately I don't think we had necessarily thought everything out from an entire perspective so several of them ended up having some challenges and unfortunately one of them lost their life so when I looked at something and such something so grave happened at the end of that I said if I have anything to do with it never again so what can I do to change that and they that this Ro on me so when I came in culture setting is my thing um I like to you know hopefully be just transformative by Nature as positive and I saw people working so hard so hard they were exhausted and I said wait a minute the whole work smarter not harder thing and again this you know when your people serving you gonna work hard but it's you know it's something that can be incredibly

[20:43]  engaging and enriching for you but you got to be able to get some sleep and eat and serve your family and have some degree to be able to pull away from the work and I have the work B your entire life so once I identified some challenges when I first started culture setting was my first thing the work will be there mental health challenges always be there but we need you to be okay you to be you to be able to leave here at 5:00 and serve your family um and and be okay how are you thinking about things like artificial intelligence and technology and Innovation because when it comes to serving our community we only have so many hours in the day and one of the biggest opportunities that I see in front of us is to leverage technology to create more leverage so that when we pull on the string we can impact more people how are you kind of thinking about the role of Technology Innovation AI in the space of mental

[21:32]  health support and engagement I think all those things any integration of any technology and we can even throw social media back into it um whether it's AI social media all those things can be incredibly useful if done responsibly um and what it is not it is incredibly dangerous um so I think as long as we're able to utilize artificial intelligence in a way that's responsible and understand that people are Dynamic the brain is dynamic and unfortunately more often than not AR artificial intelligence cannot necessarily contextually break down all those Dynamic things that happen with us as human beings so as long as we understand that and we couple that by understanding that we can't just use it in an isolated basis and we have to have the people to drive the work um there is

[22:19]  absolute place for technology in the space Kyle what what should we be talking about that we're not talking about so far on the podcast what are the burning ISS issues that are on the front of your mind the things that your team's dealing with the macro things you're seeing in society what's going on in your mind right now youth you engaging the youth hearing the youth meeting them where they are um less talking at them more listening from them and then building you know whether that you want to call that A needs assessment or not but just truly understanding this is how I feel this is what I need this is what I see and then framing resources programs macro micro perspective based on the feedback you get from them and not just talking at them and telling them what they need um but then also fostering a culture of

[23:07]  accountability um I hear a lot of excuses for actions and activity and things like well I did it because of this and I think it's important especially with our to integrate a culture of accountability and I think we're able to instill that along with also having a cical engagement of conversation and dialogue with them U will be much more successful in a long time how fulfilling is it when you have someone an adult that you look up to that will come across the table and say how are you feeling in this instance instead of talking at them you know I've had so many experiences in my younger life where adults would come into an environment and talk at us rather than talk with us I feel like in society today people want to be seen they want to be heard they want to be validated so how are we supposed to change up what

[23:56]  we're doing we've got other leaders who who are in the mental and Behavioral Health space here who are listening to the podcast and watching the podcast how are we supposed to do things differently what are some of the changes that we need to make in order to accomplish that understanding the Brilliance that you know that that that sits inside of our youth I have had the opportunity to work with you from the early intervention age of two up to adults of 36 and one of the things that I started to do when I was working with two to five year olds is just have conversations with them even when you think that maybe their you know their their ability to to grow and develop and have these conversations may not be there yes they can express themselves just as brilliant as me and you can if you just listen if you just turn it down you know dial it back and just listen to them so there's Brilliance in our youth from the the moment they are born and I think if we

[24:44]  just just pull it back a bit and just listen and not do so much talking um and again kind of you know and I love social media again we're going back to that conversation but just traditional conversations of you to you know parents to children children you know stakeholders to to mentees whatever it might be you'll learn so much and then you'll be able to give them what they need based on what they they give you one of the biggest opportunities I think we have in the day of leadership today is the transference of knowledge right I think over the last years as especially if I've been growing up I was born in 1990 I grew up a millennial I saw a lot of judgment being cast from generation to generation right you're an eighth place trophy generation you guys are soft you guys don't know how to communicate you guys are boomers you don't understand technology it's very easy for us to cast Judgment at

[25:32]  different Generations but one of the biggest opportunities that we have is to come together and have a transference of knowledge by having conversations right each of Our Generations each of us has different skill sets and when we put ourselves on a Level Playing Field we have the ability to have open conversations we can share ideas and we can make a bigger impact and when it comes to combating something as important as mental health and destigmatizing the conver ations like we're having right now it is so important for us to be able to sit in the same room together and with an open and honest heart look to understand rather than judge and I feel like that's one of the biggest opportunities and that's why I look up to leaders like you Kyle because you're really speaking what you do you're preaching what you actually you walking the walk if that

[26:20]  makes sense how are you kind of thinking about your bigger impact with the people who you engage with in the generations of Philly specifically where you ever thinking that you were going to be this leader or did you come kind of come into this space and now you're just kind of dealing with it as it kind of comes to you no I think I you know I've been in leadership most of my career so we're going on about 16 years um so I got my first job when I was 25 kind of out of uh out of Temple um and I've been you know I was a teen program manager then with the Boys and Girls Club of Philadelphia and I've kind of went up to I always thought I I serve in leadership with some capacity I think being a CEO at this point it definitely is something that has only kind of framed itself over the last couple of years um so I think you know I I definitely to embrace the grave one of the things I enjoy doing

[27:09]  you know is somewhat mentoring I guess so to speak and that's not and saying that is not saying oh I'm so brilliant I'm so this but my experiences have shaped where I am and I like to share those experiences and then you take them as you do you frame them as you know are most appropriate for you so whatever space I'm in in which I can just share my experience um education is the key and I consider that some degree of Education it's education of Kyle um and I think educating um in all spaces is the key for us to bridge the gap whether it's generational gaps which oh I a boomer might not be understand why a millennial was doing XY and Z but a lot of times if contextually you understand with framed why Boomer might have done with a millennial like like a little Uzi as opposed to maybe back in the 90s when it was Onyx and all and you know and

[27:57]  allbody nature and more traditional hipop um and they're different they both brilliant and both Generations all these Generations equally as brilliant and talented and skilled but in order for them to be able to bridge the gap they have to have conversations Kyle let's paint a picture for the next let's say two years of what Nami Philly is trying to accomplish what are we trying to do in our community what are some of our big audacious goals oh now I gotta refer back to my strategic plan we created a strategic plan this past year um I think continuing to expand um our partnership base um cre more intentional high level Partnerships with with with folks that have inine Mission and values um continue to grow out our um our Nami walks and you know we might be branding that in the future but U I'll more of

[28:44]  that later um but just growing that out continuing just to engage with the community continue to do intentional needs assessment find out what folks need and to meet them where they are and provide that so again just expanding through this intentionality um adding support groups that we need to adding programs we need to based on uh some of the anecdotal and feedback we get from the community Kyle we uh as we kind of land the plane here with the episode we'd like to be able to bring a question from our previous guest and their question for you was why do you do what you do because I think that it is something I'm naturally skilled to do I think it's my purpose I think it will make my mother proud well I know that your mother is proud of all the impact that you've had man I

[29:32]  mean you showing up as a leader who's helping people establish those boundaries advocating for the generations that continue to come behind us and making an impact and being able to share in this space together where we can have an honest and open conversation about the things that we're prioritizing the importance of mental health the you know the duality of this little device that everybody carries around with them I feel like it's been an amazing conversation today and I just want to say for everybody who's tuning in watching and listening man I really really appreciate you joining the show seriously thank you thank you thank you for the opportunity God bless you for what you do absolutely guys that's a wrap