A 5-minute read that will help you more than coffee after a bad night sleep
The World Health Organisation says mental health is about “coping with the normal stresses of life.”
But if you’re leading a business today, “coping” won’t cut it. Because nothing about the pace, complexity, or pressure your teams face is “normal.”
If you want high performance, you need more than “mental health”. You need mental fitness.
What is mental fitness?
There’s a few things that go into having a mental fitness, the main one being Psychological Capital which is built on four elements, captured in the HERO acronym:
- Hope – the belief that meaningful goals can be achieved, and multiple pathways exist to get there. It involves both the willpower to pursue goals and the “waypower” (pathways) to get there.
- Efficacy – confidence in one’s ability to take on challenges and succeed.
- Resilience – the ability to bounce back from problems or setbacks (and ideally bouncing forward and grow from them)
- Optimism– a positive outlook that sustains motivation, even when conditions are tough. It includes viewing positive events as lasting internal causes, and negative ones as temporary and external.
Put simply: HERO is what turns a good team into a high-performing team.
And right now, having a workforce with these four elements is one of the biggest competitive advantages any executive can create.
Why executives should care
Without Psychological Capital, you get teams that look busy but feel drained. You get people coping, but not creating. You get managers firefighting, but not leading.
With HERO, you get:
- Stronger execution: people stick with hard projects instead of giving up
- Higher margins: less wasted energy on rework and inefficiency
- Innovation: people with optimism and hope are the ones who generate new ideas
- Retention of high performers: the people you most need to keep are the ones most likely to leave when resilience runs dry
If you’ve ever asked yourself: “Why does it feel like we’re running so hard but not getting ahead?”, this is the missing link.
The critical foundation you need
You can’t build Psychological Capital without cognitive energy.
It’s like going to the gym. You need the energy to get there, and a base level of fitness before you can train at high intensity.
For teams, that means embedding beginner tools – small daily practices that build mental fitness. Things like:
- Mindful breathing
- Gratitude exercises
- Reflection on what went well
- Tah Dah lists instead of to do lists
- Shifting language from “I have to” → “I get to”
Individually, these practices look simple, but collectively, they create the foundation that lets people perform under pressure without breaking.
Just like an athlete doesn’t run a marathon every day, your people need consistent training at a sustainable level, so when the big challenge comes, they’re ready.
Athletes don’t wait until game day to start training, they build up their fitness and strength over time so that when they need to perform, they can.
You need to do the same with your people.
The problem with one-off interventions
This is where many executives miss the point.
I often get asked: “Jess, my team’s mindset isn’t in a great place – can you run a keynote to help shift it?”
Here’s my honest answer: I can talk about mindset. I can give people the tools. But I can’t change anyone’s mindset for them. They have to do the work (and they have to want to do the work).
It’s the same as the gym. You can’t watch your personal trainer work out and expect to get fit. Or hear someone speak about how to get fit and expect it to happen. You have to do the reps yourself.
Building mental fitness requires ongoing practice, not one inspirational hit.
A diagnostic for executives
Here are four questions to ask yourself:
- Do my managers create clarity every day, or are people wasting energy guessing what matters most?
- Do we have simple daily practices that build energy, or do we only react when burnout shows up?
- When we miss a target or make a mistake, how do we respond? Do we see obstacles or opportunities? Do we blame or do we take accountability? And through it all, does our culture remain strong?
- Do our systems and culture encourage optimism and hope, or do they quietly drain people?
If those questions make you uncomfortable, it’s not a strategy problem. It’s a performance mindset problem.
Why this matters now more than ever
The competitive advantage of 2025 isn’t tech, AI or headcount. It’s energy.
Companies that treat mental health as the finish line will be left behind.
But companies that cultivate mental fitness and build an advanced performance mindset – the ones that build Psychological Capital on HERO, powered by cognitive energy, and practiced daily as part of their culture – will outpace competitors on execution, innovation, retention, productivity, performance, revenue, profit…. basically on every margin of the bottom line, the ones that show up on your P&L and the ones that don’t.
The bottom line
If your goal is just to have a team that copes and a business that cruises, “mental health” is enough.
But if your goal is to build a sustainable high performing team that performs at its peak without burning out, and achieves results that you’re actually proud of, you need mental fitness as a way to cultivate an advanced performance mindset.
And just like fitness, this is not a one-time event. It’s a system of daily practices, built into the way managers lead and embedded into the very fabric of your culture.
Executives who understand this – and invest in it – don’t just build happier, healthier workplaces. They build the teams that consistently win.
What you need to do next
If you’re a CEO, COO, or senior exec and you’re serious about achieving better results by building mental fitness in your business, contact me now and let’s make it happen!
If you’re not the decision-maker, forward this to the person who is. They need to understand this is not a “nice-to-have” – it’s your next competitive advantage.
Ok, that’s all from me,
With hope, efficacy, resilience and optimism,
Jess
