Author Melissa Doman On ‘Mental Well-being Non-Negotiables’ and Why Corporate America Must Rethink…

Authority Magazine: Author Melissa Doman On ‘Mental Well-being Non-Negotiables’ and Why Corporate America Must Rethink Stress -- Listen Share …Another one I would suggest is communicating capacity. A lot of leaders are discouraged from communicating their capacity. When they do communicate it, it doesn’t always go well, or they may be in environments where it isn’t safe to do so. I recommend focusing on a zero to 100 capacity scale and understanding what that means. If you are operating at 30%, you need to know what must be done, what can wait, why it is okay to be where you are, and how you will take care of yourself during that process.

Make sure you are clear on your own capacity management so you can clearly communicate it to others… …Another one I would suggest is communicating capacity. A lot of leaders are discouraged from communicating their capacity. When they do communicate it, it doesn’t always go well, or they may be in environments where it isn’t safe to do so. I recommend focusing on a zero to 100 capacity scale and understanding what that means. If you are operating at 30%, you need to know what must be done, what can wait, why it is okay to be where you are, and how you will take care of yourself during that process.

Make sure you are clear on your own capacity management so you can clearly communicate it to others… I had the pleasure of talking with Melissa Doman, MA. Long before she was training corporate giants like Google and Estée Lauder, she was simply the kid who refused to take things at face value. She describes her younger self as the perpetual “but why?” child, someone deeply attuned to the quiet frequencies of human behavior. “I have always been extraordinarily empathetic, sometimes to my own detriment, and just very aware of the human condition,” she recalls.

That intense observation naturally pulled her toward a Master’s degree in counseling psychology. For her, learning to help people navigate their inner lives felt like the only logical path. As she puts it, “I thought that would be a really good use of my time on this pale blue dot as we float around the universe.” Yet, the clinical world quickly revealed its limitations. Doman found that her clients were entirely compartmentalizing their pain, treating the therapy room as the only safe harbor for their struggles. The idea of discussing mental health at work or in public was strictly off-limits.

Frustrated by the boundaries of this dynamic, she realized, “I don’t think I’m really moving the needle if I’m treating clients in a broken system and a broken narrative.” She needed to attack the problem at its root. In 2013, she made the difficult leap from clinical practice to industrial-organizational psychology. Her goal was to rewrite the rules of corporate team dynamics and emotional intelligence, but the corporate world wasn’t quite ready. Whenever she brought up stress or mental health, people would proverbially hiss at her. “I said, these are not bad words,” she remembers.

“Why can’t we talk about this?” Her transition was anything but smooth. Early on, a manager bluntly told her that she lacked the traditional background for in-house roles and shouldn’t even pursue them. At the time, the critique stung bitterly, feeling like a direct attack on her competence. Looking back, however, Doman views it as a “poorly delivered favor” that pushed her out of the traditional corporate machinery. “I had to build my own path and do it my own way,” she says.

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The article addresses a significant and timely issue in corporate America, emphasizing the integration of mental well-being into brand strategies, which is increasingly relevant for brand strategy professionals.