Four Practical Ways to Support Mental Health in Your Team

If you're leading a team today, supporting mental health isn’t optional. It’s a core part of good management and an essential ingredient in creating a healthy, high-performing team culture.

You don’t need to become a therapist. You don’t need all the answers. But you do need to be present, aware, and willing to lead from a place of humanity.

In our mental health training for managers, we remind leaders that it’s often the simplest things that create the biggest ripple effects, especially when it comes to building trust, psychological safety, and emotional resilience across a team.

Here are four core strategies every manager can use to support mental health, starting today.

1. Show empathy

Empathy isn’t about fixing people or knowing the right thing to say. It’s about meeting someone where they are and making it safe for them to be human.

If someone on your team is struggling, ask yourself:

“If I were in their position, how would I want my manager to respond?”

This one reflection changes everything.

Empathy in leadership means listening with presence, not assumption. It means acknowledging that your team members have a life outside of work, and that life impacts how they show up.

Empathy builds connection. It creates safety. And it sends the message: You matter here, not just your output.

If you're looking to go deeper, emotional intelligence training for leaders helps strengthen this skill so it becomes second nature.

2. Do regular check-ins

When people don’t feel seen or supported, mental health challenges often escalate in silence.

One of the simplest ways to prevent this is to make regular check-ins part of your team culture. Not just when something seems “off”—but consistently.

This means:

• Asking how someone’s doing, not just how the project is going

• Creating space for personal updates, not just performance metrics

• Having human conversations that aren’t always work-related

It’s these moments of connection that build the kind of trust where someone feels able to say, “Actually, I’ve been struggling lately.”

In our mental health awareness training for managers, we teach micro-skills like asking open questions, reading non-verbal cues, and creating calm, grounded spaces for dialogue.

Because sometimes, just asking “How are you really?” can be the most powerful intervention of all.

3. Normalise mental health conversations

Despite growing awareness, mental health still carries stigma in many workplaces. And that stigma keeps people silent.

As a manager, one of the most powerful things you can do is normalise mental health conversations—so your team doesn’t feel like they have to hide what they’re going through.

That means:

• Talking openly about wellbeing in team meetings

• Sharing relevant resources or signposting support

• Being honest (and appropriate) about your own experiences when helpful

• Making mental health part of everyday culture—not just crisis response

The more we talk about it, the more we dismantle shame. And the more we do that, the more likely people are to reach out before they’re overwhelmed.

This is something we explore deeply in both our online mental health training and in-person mental health leadership training—how to foster a culture where people feel psychologically safe to speak up.

4. Be consistent, not reactive

Supporting mental health isn’t a one-off action. It’s not something you switch on in a crisis and forget about once things feel “back to normal.”

The best managers are consistent.

They follow through on what they say. They create regular space for check-ins. They don’t wait for problems to arise—they stay connected, present, and proactive.

Consistency builds trust. And trust builds safety.

Because your team isn’t just watching how you respond when someone’s in distress. They’re watching how you show up every day.

That’s why in our mental health training for managers, we help leaders build habits and systems that reinforce a consistent, human-centred leadership style—one that supports performance and wellbeing in equal measure.

Final thoughts

There is no perfect script for managing mental health in your team. But some principles work, grounded in presence, empathy, and emotional intelligence.

If you’re willing to lead with those, you’re already making a difference.

Because when people feel seen, heard, and valued, they don’t just survive at work—they thrive.