Veteran paramedic and trauma counsellor Paul Spinks delivers wellbeing presentations to workplaces and communities.
“I can recall the day I attended the house where a 14-year-old girl committed suicide in the bathroom while her parents sat on the balcony on their phones. The parents were heavily engaged in somebody else’s life while unaware of the dangers lurking in their own home. This is not an isolated case.”
Through his business, the Wake-Up Call, Paul Spinks helps provide employees with tools to spot cracks in their physical and mental health.
“Suicide statistics continue to rise in Australia with around 3500 deaths a year, 65,000 attempts and many more at any given time who are spiralling and don’t even realise. Chances are, I’m talking about someone in your family,” Spinks said.
“We’ve got to be mindful that suicide is the end of the line. It begins with ailing mental health, so we’ve got a huge opportunity to catch it and to do that we firstly need to consider how well we are received by those we are trying to reach.
“I think as human beings we should possess the very basic ability to know how to reach out and talk to others, but we are losing this skill at a frightening pace. Many people come up at the end of my conferences and say that they’ve lost the ability to communicate effectively with a friend, their parents or worst of all, their kids.
“Fun conversation starters over dinner like ‘best parts, worse parts, what did you learn today?’ or ‘best parts, worse parts, what worries you the most?’ are a great way to stimulate good discussion. Just make sure you don’t miss your turn and set the standard by digging deep.”
A common approach to reaching out to people in workplaces is wearing brightly coloured shirts with themes like “this is a conversation starter” emblazoned on the back. The idea being that people will take the opportunity to open up about their troubles.
“It’s a clever marketing idea and has been taken up widely in the workplace. My concern is: are the people wearing these shirts suitable candidates?” Spinks said. “Concepts like this can lose their credibility if the person donning the uniform is unfit for the job.
“Initiatives such as R U OK? Day have been great for increasing mental health awareness, but we shouldn’t be boxing all our mental health messages into one day given it’s a 365-day-a-year problem.
“The next level up from this is the employee assistance programs (EAP) that workplaces have in place. Trouble is, these programs are almost always reactive instead of proactive. It surprises me how often staff have no idea who their EAP provider is.
“Mental health first aid providers are another great initiative, but you need to make sure you’re right first before you try and help others.
“And then there is the gold standard to strive for, the people that can reach others naturally without any titles or bright coloured shirts. Those that we trust the most. These are the heroes among our work communities and what needs cultivating in the workplace.”
How worthy is your conversation?
Listen for one moment to people’s conversation. Everybody is critiquing somebody, which means that everybody is also critiquing you. Imagine if we had access to that information?
“The good news is we can just give somebody the permission to tell it how it is. Ask them: how am I doing? What are my hang-ups? What behaviours are annoying?” Spinks said. “You can learn so much about yourself if you don’t get upset by somebody’s honesty. A great place to start is with your kids.
“To communicate this point in a seminar environment, I ask the audience if anybody knows a tosser in the room. Everybody laughs at this, of course, because everybody knows one. But what happens if the tosser is you? Wouldn’t you want to know?
“Having established the right relationship with yourself, we are now ready for the next step.”
The best way to do this, Spinks said, is to be vulnerable.
“How do you expect somebody to be vulnerable with you if you’re not vulnerable with them first?” Spinks said.
“To accomplish this with my audience, I share vulnerable stories of my life, like the time I went for a medical examination for my commercial pilot license when I was 16.
“The doctor tells me to take my clothes off. So I take off my pants and I’m standing there in front of him and then he says, ‘No, Paul, take your underwear off as well’. Now I’m standing there stark naked, concerned and somewhat afraid. Then he asks me a series of sexually explicit questions, which I reveal to the audience.
“I was only 16 – what was I supposed to do? Things only go south from there; I hop onto his consultation table and the rest is history. That doctor is now a convicted paedophile behind bars.
“And that’s what vulnerability looks like, I tell the audience. I don’t know any of you in this room and I’ve just revealed one of the most personal experiences in my life.
“You be the judge. If you think I’m the kind of fella you could talk to, share something personal with and trust, then add your version of this to your conversation starter profile. You won’t get there talking footy.”
Get in early
“It’s only after a major crisis or death where people stop and think about the warning signs that were ignored at the time,” Spinks said.
“If you had a crystal ball and knew a tragedy was looming, what would you do differently? Everything would probably be different. You would put down social media, eat better, get a mind coach, reach out to someone you care about. The reality is, we all have a crystal ball, it’s called a mirror. Just take a closer look and have a deeper conversation with the person staring back at you.”
Though Spinks’ message is universal, it has been particularly well received in the mining industry.
According to MATES in Mining, a suicide-prevention group, suicide rates are markedly higher in the mining, construction and energy sectors than in the general Australian population.
For the past 10 years, Spinks has done a series of presentations at mine sites across the country, most recently at Glencore’s Collinsville mine in Queensland.
When asked his thoughts on the presentations, Glencore health, safety and training manager Mark Sverdloff responded with a simple and emphatic “excellent”.
“I’ve seen Paul on several occasions at previous sites and every time he’s delivered, it’s been very well received by the masses,” Sverdloff said.
“Paul’s past and the way he goes about delivering his message certainly resonates with the workers. He prompts people to think about what’s important.
“A fortnight later and I’m still getting comments from workers like, ‘I’ve been here for 20 years and that was the best presentation I’ve seen’.
“We invest a lot of time and money into these things, and sometimes the speakers can be a bit hit and miss, but Paul is exceptional in that space.”
Spinks reflected on one final point from his aviation days.
“A South African Airways 747 plummeted into the sea killing all onboard in 1987, yet the investigation revealed multiple people along its path could have averted disaster. I learned this sitting in an aviation conference listening to the former head of safety of Qantas tell this chilling story. His takeaway message was ‘use your family as a measure for everything that you do’. That statement alone has paid massive dividends throughout my career.”
Visit thewakeupcall.me for more information.
This feature appeared in the December 2023 issue of Australian Mining.
