Building Resilient Leadership at Flatiron Health

Summary

Since Q1 of 2022, we’ve been honored to partner with Flatiron Health, a subsidiary of Roche Pharma, in creating a more resilient workplace. This work has included leadership programming for their managers and leaders; stress reduction programming for their entire employee population; and dedicated programming for their BIPOC employees.

Context

Flatiron Health was interested in deepening their employee engagement, hoping to create a workplace environment that had a proactive strategy to attract, develop and retain their people. They wanted a solution that could bridge the work of burnout and belonging, seeing just how linked the two concepts were in the workplace. 

Our work began by conducting a deep dive into the needs of employees in the workplace. We surveyed employees and observed three core needs that people at work are looking to have met: psychological safety, connection and professional actualization. And so, our goal was to enable services that could meet those needs.

What We Did

We’ve offered, and are continuing to offer, our three programs: Resilient Leadership, Resilience Circle, and Resilience Community, to Flatiron Health employees.

1. Our partnership with Flatiron Health began with a “Resilience Circle,” designed to improve the emotional well-being and belonging of BIPOC leaders. Listen here to what the members of the inaugural Mandala cohort had to say about our work together.

Here’s the data we observed from our time with them:

• 100% of surveyed participants said they Strongly Agreed or Agreed with the statement that Mandala had improved their sense of resilience, belonging and well-being.
• When surveyed before and after the program, the average member saw improvements in resilience of 5.5%, and psychological safety of 5.2%.
• We observed an NPS Of 85, with 100% of participants saying that would strongly recommend this program to a friend or family member.
• Employees indicated that they would be more likely to use existing mental health services. 

"Mandala felt like food for the soul. It became a safe place for me that I could go to every week. Before Mandala, there would be many days where I would’ve been a stress ball getting off to work. But now as I go through my day I’m decompressing, at the end of the day, I’m not this ball of negative energy. I’ll go grab my guitar off the wall, I’m smiling and energetic." -- Dwana Agosto, Compliance Manager at Flatiron Health

2. Inspired by our capacity to serve BIPOC, Flatiron then invited us to help train their managers across levels – focusing, at first, on Senior Directors, Vice Presidents and the C-Suite level. And so, we organized a live-workshop followed by a series of breakout groups over the course of 2023.

Through storytelling, role-plays, psycho-education, and a number of other targeted services, we created a space for leaders to introspect, learn and connect with one another. Here’s a photo from our day together:

"Mandala’s Resilient Leadership program has been one of the most powerful interventions I’ve been exposed to in the workplace, changing how I work with my team and the people around me. One of the challenges I’ve had in my career is learning how to have difficult conversations. I find that now, I’ve been able to understand how to communicate in a way that’s both direct, and empathetic of people’s experiences. Every manager or leader in the workplace would benefit from what Mandala has to offer." -- Irene Nunes, VP of Regulatory at Flatiron Health

The biggest blocker to both problem solving, and innovation, is being able to work together. And our capacity to work together is shaped significantly by how well we understand each other, and our lived experiences. Mandala has helped me better connect with and understand people on my team, many of whom have very different perspectives and lived experiences.

"What makes Mandala special is that it’s given us very practical, easy-to-integrate tools that are informed by values that we hold. It has helped make us a stronger and better community that attracts and retains talent, and in doing so, it helps us create stronger and better business outcomes." -- Bruce Gottlieb, Chief Operating Officer at Flatiron Health

3. Finally, Flatiron invited us to help their employees at-scale cultivate resilience. Our objective here is to create a space for them to take care of their well-being, and not just assume that an off-the-shelf service will do it for them.

Our programming focuses on how they can better understand and manage stress; followed by developing their own practices for their well-being; and concluded by finding and honing in on practices to help them find joy.