Seriously, WTF? There’s CBT, DBT, ACT, ERP, EMDR, IFS, TFP, and every other form of SNAFU.

Now there are situations where the type of therapy really matters. I refer people with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder and anorexia nervosa to specialists at the top of their game. And for people with opioid problems, recommending therapy without offering a referral for medication assessment should be a slam-dunk malpractice case.

But most of the time, the skill of the clinician matters much more than the type of therapy they practice.

Think of therapy like a language. There is no best mother tongue. However, the ability to communicate clearly is not universal.

Likewise, there is no best management style. But you can tell when a leader has a principled, disciplined approach.

There is no simple way to know if a therapist is good. So approach the relationship as if it were a trial. Can they explain in plain English what you’ll do together? Are they a generalist, or do they specialize in the problems you experience? Can they tell you what they don’t treat? Do they respect your goals? Is it clear what you’re working towards, or are you spinning in circles?

Ask for excellence in the professionals you work with. And when things aren’t working, find someone who’s a better fit for you.

I believed that the knife would make cooking much more enjoyable. And it did.

But I didn’t initially appreciate the value of a great sharpener. I had tried a simpler product where you pull a knife through v-shaped grooves. (It didn’t work well.) I had scraped my knives against a honing rod. (It doesn’t do anything to a dull blade). I had watched countless Youtube videos describing “the right way” to sharpen a knife with a whetstone. But I know myself. And I’m the kind of person that would buy a whetstone and then let it gather dust.

A belt-driven electric sharpener just works for me. Once or twice a year, I run every plain-edge knife in the house through it. Even my cheap, 20-year old knives have a new lease on life after just 15 minutes of effort.

A newly sharpened kitchen knife is one of life’s great joys. Every time I use one, I wonder why I waited so long to pull out the sharpener.

This is really a post about mental health. Every brain needs proper care and maintenance. Some generally effective strategies won’t work for us, and some of our habits don’t work for anyone (who else is on social media right now 😜). But when we do find something that works, it’s worth doing again and again.

So find some small way to sharpen your mental health today. And if you’re struggling to make progress on your own, it might be time to ask a professional for help. You just might find yourself asking why you waited so long.

But there’s one aspect of authenticity that is always valuable: authentic integrity.

Leaders we trust get better outcomes. Their teams have lower turnover. They get more done with less. Their employees are more engaged. And the whole team tends to be happier and healthier.

Hiring for authentic integrity is difficult. Because the opposite of integrity is rarely frank dishonesty. It’s performative integrity: the practice of acting with integrity only when it places us in a positive light.

Performative integrity infects our media, our entertainment, and our politics. This is a tragedy. We cannot let it become normal in the domains we control.

The most pressing concern is performative integrity in our teams. Do your reports take responsibility for everything their team does, or do they push blame downward? Are they trusted by their employees? Do they make the right long-term decisions, even when it makes them look bad today? Is integrity rewarded, or do you allow people to get ahead despite their dishonesty?

And could the same be said of you and me? If not, it’s time to change.

The pursuit of authentic integrity is one of the highest-return investments an organization can make. The moment-to-moment cost may feel high. But the long-term benefits are sublime.

Don’t let anything get in the way of your team’s integrity.

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Leaders and individual contributors face different mental health challenges.

Loneliness, anger, sadness, and stress are more common among leaders. And although engagement and life-satisfaction may also be higher, leaders are less likely to experience a large amount of enjoyment or laughter on any given day.

Gallup summarized this finding in their 2026 State of the Global Workplace report with this phrase: “leaders have higher life evaluations but worse days than those they lead.”

That’s not to say that leaders are crushing it. 57% of leaders are not thriving. And a 26% engagement rate is a major cause for concern.

The question we’ve often asked is “what actions should leaders take to improve employee mental well-being?”

And while we desperately need to solve that problem, we also need to ask the sister question: “What can we do to improve mental health in leaders?”

In this twice-weekly series, I’ll be exploring mental health in leaders. I’ll examine the data that’s been collected, the gaps in our collective knowledge, and the insights I’ve gained from treating leaders as a psychiatrist.