Dearest readers

In my previous and current role, I get to interview a lot of candidates who often state they are perfectionists, which as an employer I love to hear because I feel this person won’t let me down until the job gets done. But as a person I worry about these people because they might put their mental health at risk to meet the objectives I set them, why?  Because I know very well the price to pay to be a perfectionist: Burn out and Depression.

No one and I repeat no one is perfect and no one should aspire to be. Having said that, we should all aspire to be the best we can be, do our absolute best to make our dreams come true, that should be it. According to Professor Steve Peters, the author of the groundbreaking mind model « The Chimp Paradox », our chimp ( the inherited part of our brain) gets agitated and disruptive whenever one sets an impossible goal to reach. I am aware of that now for having paid the ultimate price twice in a row.

The first time was during my time at RB ( the manufacturers of Nurofen, Durex, Gaviscon, Strepsils, Veet, Clearasil among other brands) when I was tasked  to build a customer service department to deal with over the counter medicines, medical devices as well as cosmetics. I was given a budget to hire 4 people to deliver an excellent customer service on over a thousand products and assist consumers via email, phone or letter. Besides,  I was provided with a brand new system to record and manage all customer contacts.Can you spot the error?  A brand new system, a brand new team and one experienced staff whose mission is to train and motivate staff, meet deadlines to answer all calls, reply all emails and letters within 48 hours and who needs to ensure that all information entered in the recording and managing system is 100% accurate as the pharmaceutical industry is heavily regulated and brand and marketing managers use this information to better tailor their advertising campaigns. Needless to say that as a recovering perfectionist I worked extremely hard for 11 months to build what I believe to be my dream customer service team who sailed through an internal audit to ensure all standard operating procedures were followed to the letter, which is incredibly  important because consumers put their lives in the manufacturers’ hands  every time they use a cosmetic product, a medical device or take some medication. I didn’t have a life for months due to the lack of support and lack of esources. I could only count on myself and 2 other colleagues who kept me focused on I what I do and I know best i.e to motivate staff and get the most out of them, to never deviate from approved standard operating procedures unless someone’s life is at risk. With limited resources, I had to find a survival mechanism to build my ideal customer service department consequently I developed  some coping mechanism to be more resilient, to be extremely organised, to be a creative thinker, to stay calm in difficult situation and to pick the battles worth fighting for, isn’t that great?  I am afraid not given that I put my well-being and mental health at risk due to the lack of sleep as I didn’t sleep properly  for 4 months,  due to exhaustion caused by long hours of driving and long working hours ( doing sometimes 60 hours a week, which exceeds the legal threshold of 48 hours),  due to emotional blackmail from my line manager who kept referring to the numbers of years she has worked there and how well they treated her and the worst was the apparent support from my HR business partner who accommodated my hours, increased my salary to be at the national average, paid hotels to allow me to rest from the long driving hours then as soon as the team became self efficient and passed a very tough internal audit, I became disposable. All my so called privileges i.e flexible working hours and one night at the hotel to rest from long driving hours were immediately removed invoking cost cuts. Before resigning, I fought for my team to get a 2%  salary increase because I found out that my team and I were duped in terms of salary for being one of the lowest salary grades but required to do a very high profile job to be RB ambassadors to protect their image and reputation. Moreover, I made sure all the higher management knew that I built a superb customer service alone against all odds and senior customer service managers were incompetent. Strangely enough there was a redistribution of those managers the day of my departure, bugger I should have stayed!!! Only kidding, I am happy with my current role given the power I have to make a real difference to my staff and to our customers. Besides, I don’t adhere to some of my former employer’s values i.e stretch their staff to the absolute limits because they believe the survival instinct will kick in to help them solve any problems, which is true but illegal!!! This is why HR  never officially communicate to all staff that they purposely hire fewer staff members than they need to make them more resilient and to force them to find different methods of survival to save money as a result it is up to them to know their limits and to stop when they can’t keep up, which is why I handed my notice. I never understood why people have been working there for so long with such a horrible method to get the best out of  their employees but after taking some distance and I had Eureka moment… The best method to get emotional buying in and loyalty from their staff is to incentivise psychologically. It is very efficient and I recommend this method to all companies and managers due to this following principle: people  work for people, not for money!  It is not accidental that RB offers free cold and hot drinks, fresh fruit on a weekly basis, cakes and champagne to celebrate every occasions ( birthdays, good website ratings etc.), amazing Christmas parties in glorious locations and the cherry on the cake is the annual convention taking in places in party-like destinations all expenses included. I used this method to create the very first incentive scheme in my current role to reward the top performer on a monthly basis taking into account all aspects of performance  i.e lateness, absence, sales, team contribution and presentation. The top performer gets to enjoy a spa day or a night at a 5 star hotel, VIP cinema tickets etc. It all depends on how creative I am each month….

My second burned out and depression happened when I joined CDK straight after my  11 eventful months at RB. I was exhausted but it was a new start and as a recovering perfectionist my mind wanted to give my new employer my all but my body just stalled twice in October 2014  and second time in June 2016. Working in a small company gives me freedom to get involved in different areas of the business such as HR ( hiring, training and firing), managing all aspects of sales, I didn’t even like sales but apparently I am pretty good at it! I am also involved in traditional and digital marketing, logistics, customer support, IT support,accounts, budgeting for profit anyway you get the picture! It is fun, extremely rewarding, enriching and stimulating but god it is mentally and physically tiring. I  put myself under a lot of pressure to take  care of all of these areas and to complete all tasks attached to them perfectly even when I don’t have experience in a lot of them. Any « normal »human being would have rested before taking on such a big role and would know that it was impossible to build a top performing and consistent sales team as well as creating a HR function as well as exporting our brands as well as being the perfect wife who cleans, cooks and looks stunning every day. It still hurts me to say that I burned out and I suffered a serious depression.

Some people are going to be shock to find this out here but I am sharing my experience in order to first and foremost to urge you to look after yourselves and to put your needs before anyone’s whether it is a friend’s, a family member’s, a work colleague’s, an employee’s or even an employer’s. I was seriously in danger of harming myself for 6 months because I thought I was not good enough for anyone, not beautiful enough, not caring enough, not intelligent enough and I felt that I have let everybody around me down my parents, my partner, my staff, my friends, my brother Abdou who looks up to me so much and I was ashamed to speak to anyone other than my partner about my internal battles. Bless him, there was very little he could do other than advising me to see a therapist, which I did for 6 weeks. I was ashamed to completely be honest with a professional therefore I felt guilty to spend a lot of money to see him once a week this is why I stopped seeing him.  As I am writing this article, I admit that it did me some good to share some of my problems with a hypnotherapist as he spotted my unhealthy pattern to always want to be good at everything and told me not to be so hard on myself when things don’t go to plan because that’s life. During a role play with him,  I identified  who my real enemy and my best friend are… Myself! I also established what my refuge is  i.e the place I feel safe regardless of what is going on, my girls Moitsou and Chariffa. I immediately booked a ticket to pay  them a visit in Montpellier.  I spent the first 3 weeks of January crying, laughing, reading self help books, meditating, writing my inner thoughts in my Carpe Diem note book,  dancing,eating, shopping, remembering and analysing the dreams I had when I was young in other words healing. I went to see my 14 year GP  who diagnosed that my mental state was bad to enough to prescribe me some anti-depressants, which I took religiously for 3 months.  3 months down the line, I feel re-born and  I feel well enough to share my unsettled time in details  with more friends who as caring friends offer me support and have some thoughtful an motivating words such as : You are a determined, strong, ambitious,beautiful, dynamic, funny, generous, level-headed woman in other words ‘un vrai petit bout de femme ». I now know and accept that I am enough just the way I am and the only person who can take care of me the best and who will make my dreams come true is myself.  I have now reclaimed my inner power to do my utmost best to make myself and my dreams a priority.

One of my dreams is to live long enough to see my island prosper and stand on its own feet and to make my unborn children and my grand-children proud to have me as a mum and grand-mother. This summer’s Festival is just a start and I hope my friends, family and all citizens of the world will help me make that dream come true.

Here are some examples of events we will be organising to teach children a sport to develop discipline or drive or teach them how to play an instrument to develop their artistic side.