Why I do what I do?

My name is Christine Spencer and I am the director of C & D Learning Solutions Ltd ta Mental Strength and Well-Being.

At a very young age I experienced the suicide of a young school friend and observed relationship problems around me that impacted the well-being of the people concerned.

I have also struggled with my own Mental Health and have family members who have poor Mental Health too.

From that young age I realised that I enjoyed being around people and supporting them when I could and in ways that were appropriate.

I have worked in recruitment, developed leaders and helped organisation with their change management programmes in the civil service, banking and high street retail.

It has always interested me how people think, feel and behave and I used to sit for hours and work out what my triggers were to certain situations and if I could have done anything differently to avoid conflict. There certainly were times I know I could have been more resilient at the time and could have approached things differently.

I would also ask people why they reacted the way they did and understand more about this.

I later went on to understand that this was all about Cognitive behaviour, Emotional Intelligence and communication. I fell in love with the work of Dr Eric Bearne (Transactional Analysis); Ken Blanchard (the One Minute Manager and Situational Leadership) along with Steven Covey (7 Habits of Highly Effective people) and many more.

More recently I have reading books from Matthew Syed who is really focused on Equality and Diversity in the workplace and who positions Diversity from a different angle of allowing everyone a voice – which if we think about where we are with Mental Health issues is very important for us to allow the voices of others, their thoughts and feelings while we listen with good intent and interest.

So how does all this bring me to where I am today, teaching learners about Mental Health and supporting them to become Mental Health First Aiders?

My background has been in High Street banking and retail and when I left banking back in 2003, I went on to gain a qualification in coaching and loved being able to elicit an individual’s solution from their own way of thinking. I enjoyed listening to their responses and successes from these sessions. This proved very beneficial in people understanding the problem and working through it until they find the solution – I suppose I was a sounding board for others?

I also studied Cognitive Behaviour and Psychology which created a more in-depth interest in how people think, feel and behave and how this can impact their wellbeing.

I decided to work for myself and take on interim roles to support people and organisations to develop personally and professionally.

As time went on and I was doing more leadership development I noticed a link between how the leader led and how the colleague responded. I observed a lot of good leadership, understanding your team and knowing where their strengths are and what they enjoy doing to maintain a great performance output. There was also poor leadership which had a massive effect on people, their mind set and overall wellbeing.

I started to look more into the correlation between leadership and Mental wellbeing in organisations and started my journey into Mental Health First Aid, Awareness and Emotional Resilience.

If I were to sum up what I now do and love doing it would be -