Headspace for the Workplace with Dr. Sally: Helping Leaders Build Human-Centered Workplaces

Beyond Narcan: How to Build Overdose Prevention Into Your Workplace Safety Culture

In this episode of Headspace for the Workplace, I sit down with Dr. Virna Little, co-founder and CEO of Zero Overdose, a national initiative bringing overdose safety planning into workplaces, healthcare systems, schools, and communities. Dr. Little and I share a long history through the Zero Suicide Initiative, which aspires to eliminate suicide deaths in healthcare systems. This episode brings that same upstream, systems-level thinking to one of the most urgent and underaddressed safety crises in high-risk industries: overdose. The statistics I share in the opening of this episode stopped my construction clients in their tracks, and they stop me every time: for every 1,000 people who die on a construction job site from physical injuries, approximately 5,000 to 6,000 are dying by suicide, and over 11,000 are dying from overdose. Overdose deaths are outpacing suicide deaths in the construction industry, and yet most workplace safety cultures still treat overdose as a reactive crisis, equipping job sites with Narcan but doing little to prevent the event that requires it. Dr. Little's work with Zero Overdose begins where Narcan ends. Working in rural community health centers, she saw firsthand how workplace injuries, particularly in construction, fishing, and law enforcement, created pathways into opioid dependence that were never adequately planned for at the point of injury. The episode delivers two concrete, immediately actionable takeaways: an overdose safety planning framework that can be integrated into any existing workplace safety culture, and a clear articulation of what leadership must do to make that planning real rather than aspirational. For more information on this episode go to Beyond Narcan: How to Build Overdose Prevention Into Your Workplace Safety Culture — Dr. Sally [https://www.sallyspencerthomas.com/headspace/101]

Systems, Not Slogans: What It Actually Takes to Build a Veteran-Friendly Workplace

In this episode of Headspace for the Workplace, I sit down with Alicia Scovill, President of Scovill Construction & Contracting Services, a veteran herself, and a construction workplace mental health expert. We open with a sobering reality: veterans in the United States die by suicide at rates higher than the general population, and most are working at the time of their death, or have immediate family members who are working. That makes the workplace one of the most cross-cutting systems available for veteran suicide prevention, and yet most organizations have no real strategy beyond hiring veterans and calling it a day.Alicia and I connected through the Construction Mental Health and Wellbeing Summit, where we co-chaired a leadership roundtable on construction mental health. In this episode, Alicia brings a unique combination of perspectives to the table: her own military background, her experience building and running a construction business, and the firsthand vantage point of having seen, from inside multiple organizations, the well-intentioned ways companies unintentionally cause harm to their veteran employees.The core argument of the episode is that veteran mental health at work is rarely about trauma or transition in the way most people assume. More often, it is about systems failures: unclear accountability, mismatched authority and responsibility, inconsistent communication, and the absence of the structure that helped many veterans survive and thrive in the military. Alicia and I walk through concrete examples, including a construction-specific scenario involving an estimator and a project manager, to illustrate exactly how these systems gaps create burnout and isolation for veteran employees, even when those employees appear to be high performers on the surface. For more information on this episode go to Systems, Not Slogans: What It Actually Takes to Build a Veteran-Friendly Workplace — Dr. Sally [https://www.sallyspencerthomas.com/headspace/100]

Stop Fixing, Start Leading: How to Show Up in Your Team's Hardest Moments

In this episode of Headspace for the Workplace, I sit down with Mitch Wallis, the founder of Heart on My Sleeve and one of the world's leading experts on connection capability in the workplace. Mitch has worked with over 200 companies, most of them Fortune 500, across four continents, including Microsoft, KPMG, Lend Lease, and American Express, training more than 10,000 leaders on how to navigate emotional conversations without crossing into therapy territory. His work is rooted in a simple but radical thesis: connection is a capability (not a personality trait) and organizations that build it systematically will outperform those that don't. Mitch brings deep personal credibility to the work. First diagnosed with complex OCD at age seven, he later experienced depersonalization, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and nearly lost his life to mental ill health. His description of depersonalization - a condition he lived with undiagnosed for nearly 15 years - is one of the most clear and compassionate explanations of the experience available in a leadership context. It is also a reminder that the people sitting in your meetings may be navigating experiences far more complex and disabling than "stress and burnout."The episode delivers two concrete frameworks: the five-step ELSA-B model (Engage, Listen, Safety, Action, Boundaries) for navigating high-stakes emotional conversations at work, and the concept of "crossing the chasm" - the single mindset shift that separates managers who resent the people side of their role from leaders who understand it is the role. Mitch's core argument lands hard: 80% of a people manager's job is the relationship. The technical work is the other 20%. Until leaders internalize that ratio, they will keep doing the wrong things when their people need them most. For more information on this episode go to Stop Fixing, Start Leading: How to Show Up in Your Team's Hardest Moments — Dr. Sally [https://www.sallyspencerthomas.com/headspace/99]

Get Real With Your Why: What Leaders Need to Know About Rethinking Their Relationship With Alcohol

In this episode of Headspace for the Workplace, I sat down with psychologist, author, and organizational consultant Dr. Abby Medcalf who spent years working with executives in mergers and acquisitions to address substance use at the leadership level. The conversation centers on one of the most common and least-discussed dynamics in high-performance workplaces: leaders who are quietly reconsidering their relationship with alcohol and don't know why their efforts to change keep failing.Dr. Abby's own story adds weight to the conversation. She came into this work through recovery from heroin addiction in her early years, which led her from a planned legal career into counseling psychology, and ultimately into a PhD in organizational psychology. That combination of lived experience with addiction plus deep expertise in how organizations and leaders function, gives her a uniquely practical and compassionate lens on the culture of high-performance drinking and why it so often goes unaddressed.The centerpiece of the episode is the Motivational Wheel - a research-backed framework developed by Prochaska and DiClemente that maps how humans actually move through habit change. Dr. Abby walks through each phase (pre-contemplation, contemplation, determination, action, maintenance, and relapse) and identifies the single most common mistake leaders make when they slip back: jumping straight back to the action phase instead of returning to their why. The episode closes with a reframe that is both simple and profound: take action from inspiration, not from negative motivation. for more information on this episdoe go to https://www.sallyspencerthomas.com/headspace/98

There's No Panacea for Human: The Power of Connection During Life's Transitions at Work with Nick Freud

In this episode of Headspace for the Workplace, I sit down with Nick Freud, founder of Fellow Humans - a platform built on a simple but radical idea: the most powerful support a person can receive during a difficult transition isn't clinical expertise. It's lived experience wisdom from someone who has already walked the same path.Nick's journey into this work began when he hit clinical depression while running a successful education business and discovered firsthand how hard it is to reach out for help, even for someone who considers themselves open and authentic. What emerged from that experience was a recognition that most of us are navigating our hardest moments in unnecessary isolation, surrounded by colleagues and communities full of people who have already been through exactly what we're facing and are waiting to be asked.The conversation moves between the personal and the practical: why corporate culture systematically mutes the humanity in our working relationships, what it actually means to make someone feel seen (and why it's different from sympathy), and how leaders who model vulnerability create permission structures that ripple through entire organizations. Dr. Sally and Nick address the three objections leaders most commonly raise - "this isn't a therapy setting," "we'll be held liable," and "people will use it against me" - and offer concrete, low-barrier ways to introduce more human connection into even the most performance-driven workplace cultures. For more information on this episode go to There's No Panacea for Human: The Power of Connection During Life's Transitions at Work — Dr. Sally [https://www.sallyspencerthomas.com/headspace/97]