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It's never ‘weak to speak’, Blackhall event told

The co-founder of the Elephant in the Room project, former rugby international Brent Pope, has told an event at the Law Society of his attempts to overcome what he described as a “too weak to speak” attitude to mental-health issues.

He was speaking at the Law Society’s Well Within the Law event, held at Blackhall Place yesterday evening (4 September).

Part of the Law Society Psychological Services’ new Culture First initiative, the festival explored and celebrated ways of making legal workplaces stronger and more connected.

‘Shift in culture’

The event included the unveiling of the Law Society’s elephant sculpture, as part of the organisation’s partnership with Elephant in the Room.

Law Society President Barry MacCarthy described the sculpture as symbolising “a shift in culture to a more open, accepting and responsive legal community”.

Pope said that an organisation’s elephant symbolised “a place of safety” and “permission to talk”. He added that the sculpture was just a first step for an organisation in building an open culture in the workplace.

The festival included two panel discussions: one on the value of being open, and a second focusing specifically on workplace culture in the legal profession.

As the evening grew chillier, attendees were also warmed by a series of personal stories from the legal world, while the festival also included yoga, music, and poetry.

Vulnerability

In the first panel discussion, Pope told attendees of his struggles with anxiety attacks and depression, and how a phone call to a Samaritans helpline had given him “hope and care” and begun his recovery process.

The care “starts with a simple conversation”, he told the audience, adding that he often advised leaders or managers to “be prepared to be vulnerable”.

“It's not ‘weak to speak’ after all; it's actually strong just to come out and share problems,” Pope stated.

During the discussion, Law Society past-president Stuart Gilhooly, who spoke openly about the loss of a close friend through suicide, said that we should not be afraid to talk about the issue.

“It's not a stigma; it's not something that people should be embarrassed about talking about,” he told the event.

Another past-president, Geraldine Clarke, spoke about her experiences as a solicitor, telling attendees that they needed to look after their colleagues, adding that stress was often caused more by colleagues than by clients.

“We must never make our clients’ disputes our own,” she said.

‘How are you making people feel?’

A second panel discussion focused on transforming the culture of the legal profession

Sinéad McSweeney (former managing director and VP of public policy EMEA, Twitter Ireland) told the event that examinations of workplace ‘culture’ should not focus on buzzwords, yoga, or dress-down Fridays.

“It’s actually about looking at your workplace and figuring out what are the elements that are causing stress; that are causing antagonism; that may be polluting the workplace,” she stated.

Paula McLoughlin (partner at EY Ireland and co-founder of mental-health charity A Lust for Life) said that the main question for a workplace should be: ‘How are you making people feel?’

“There's a danger in over-intellectualising this, because you take the humanity out of it,” she warned.

Values

Jamie Olden (managing partner of RDJ LLP) told the festival about his firm’s positive experience of partnering with the Law Society in a pilot programme that involved a series of open conversations about culture within the firm.

Jessica Lee (chartered business psychologist with SEVEN, Psychology at Work) described the culture of an organisation as “the sum of the behaviours of the people that work there”, adding that such behaviours and values had to come from somewhere.

“It's about how we articulate those values; how do we actually live by them on a practical basis, day to day, and how do we bring people, and their behaviours and our decision-making, back to that on a daily basis?” she added.