The 10-minute strategy that’s transforming workplace mental health

August 14, 2025

"When you're trying to create change, and then try to convince everybody at the same time, it just doesn't work like that," clinical psychologist Dr. Julie Smith told an audience of HR and benefits leaders. Dr. Julie Smith spoke on how to move from workplace initiatives with limited adoption to those with organization-wide impact at Lyra’s Breakthrough 2025.

The bestselling author of “Open When…” and content creator had a different approach: forget about changing everyone all at once. Instead, focus on the internal influencers who can model small changes that have a big impact. This could be anything from leaders taking 10-minute recovery breaks between meetings to speaking openly about their mistakes in front of their team.

Dr. Smith shared these insights in a recent conversation with Lyra’s SVP of Customer Success Susan Wyatt, where she challenged how organizations think about workplace mental health initiatives and shared her secrets for reaching a younger audience, such as Gen Z employees. (Shocker: they don’t respond to lectures.)

The problem with the big shiny "roll out"

Too often, organizations roll out company-wide initiatives expecting universal adoption. But instead of widespread enthusiasm, they get resistance from a skeptical majority while the few willing participants get lost in the noise.

"When you plot a population of people," Dr. Smith explains, "you've got innovators, early adopters, and then this whole chunk of people who won't consider change until they see that most other people are doing it."

Her advice? Stop trying to convince the resistors and start with the willing few.

Why “word of mouth” beats company mandates

When Dr. Smith left the NHS in England and started her own practice, she was sure she'd have to learn to promote herself. Instead, her clientele grew entirely through word of mouth—even in mental health, where you might expect people to stay silent.

Dr. Smith has observed this same word-of-mouth principle in workplace settings. When organizations create mental health initiatives that have a genuine impact, employees naturally share their experiences with colleagues who might also be struggling.

"When someone finds it helpful and gets better, they can't wait to tell someone else," Dr. Smith explains. This is where leaders play a crucial role. By modeling healthy behaviors themselves, they can kickstart the culture shift they want to see across their organization.

The 10-minute revolution

Dr. Smith's solution centers on how leaders can use micro-modeling—initiating small, authentic actions that take ten minutes or less but create powerful ripple effects throughout their organizations. When a manager visibly takes breaks between meetings, publicly uses a mental health resource, or openly discusses a project failure, these brief moments of authenticity can encourage a culture of trust and open communication.

It also tackles a hidden drain on workplace well-being. "Technology has filled all our in-between moments with things that feel productive but are actually triggering stress responses," Dr. Smith notes. Each stress response creates a kind of debt that accumulates throughout the day. Small moments of authentic leadership are powerful, as they show people that there’s a better way to take breaks, and can help stop systemic cycles of stress and burnout.

But here's what makes this revolutionary: when one person consistently models this behavior and others notice their intentional actions and improved performance, it creates what Dr. Smith calls "healthy envy."

Micro-modeling in action

Begin by thinking about change as something that grows from within. People learn by watching their peers, not by hearing “what works” from senior leadership. “We’re social beings,” says Dr. Smith, “we learn by watching each other.” If a coworker is engaging in a behavior that’s creating clear positive results, it will have an impact. Those choices, says Dr. Smith, “become the campfire stories that shape your workplace culture.”

When leadership models healthy self-awareness and conflict-resolution, that behavior impacts their team—who may then go on to model those same skills for others.

Here are three key behaviors worth modeling: 

The Recovery Choice: Take breaks instead of checking emails between meetings. Sit on a park bench and just breathe. Mindfully eat a snack. Go to your car and listen to a guided meditation, or even a run to boost your endorphins. Any of these choices will lower your stress response and prepare you to enter your next meeting with a clear mind.

What this looks like in action:

• In a work-from-home culture, a manager changes their Slack status to “meditation break”. Why? This encourages a culture where team members take care of themselves, encourage taking breaks that improve mental health, and protect each other’s time.
• In an in-office culture, the manager intentionally leaves their phone at their desk during lunch. Why? This encourages a culture where employees can protect their personal time and avoid feeling like they’re taking a break when they’re actually still working and checking their messages.
• A trusted colleague consistently takes 10-minute walks between meetings, encouraging their peers to come along. Why? This demonstrates that recovery time leads to better performance and encourages others to do the same.

The Humanity Moment: Particularly important if you’re in a leadership role—when you make a mistake, acknowledge it. Model what it looks like to repair and then move forward. Because people on your team “won’t do what you say,” says Dr. Smith, “they’ll do what you do.”

What this looks like in action:

• A marketing leader openly shares insight into why a particular project or campaign they led failed. Why? This encourages a culture of acceptance, owning your actions, and learning by way of experimentation.
• A team lead shares during their one-to-one meetings and with their team at large that there’s an issue in how they collaborate and communicate. They then share what they’re putting into practice to help resolve the issue, and they ask their team for feedback. Why? This encourages a culture of humility, leaders learning from their teams, and taking action on team feedback.
• A senior employee admits in a team meeting that they made an error on a client deliverable. They explain what they learned and the steps they are taking to prevent it from happening again. Why? This shows that mistakes are learning opportunities rather than failures and encourages personal responsibility at all levels.

The Curiosity Response: One of the primary goals of therapy, Dr. Smith says, is to create some distance between a patient’s feelings and their response to those feelings. The goal is to get a wider view, and this same technique can be used in any moment of stress. Instead of immediately judging a challenging situation, try to view it from a place of curiosity. "Help me understand" can be your mantra.

What this looks like in action:

• A manager receives an email from a team member voicing their frustration. The manager responds with “I can see you’re concerned about this project. Help me understand what’s behind those concerns so we can address them together.” Why? This defuses tension and creates open, productive dialogue.
• A project leader, when facing unexpected pushback from a client, asks their team, “What might we be missing from the client’s perspective?” Why? This reframes pushback as valuable information and encourages collaborative problem-solving.
• When a colleague misses a deadline, instead of assuming they’re disorganized, a team member asks, “What challenges came up that we didn’t anticipate?” Why? This approach uncovers operational issues and builds trust rather than blame.

The compound effect

It will come as no surprise to any human being that stress accumulates throughout our day. Scrolling between meetings, checking emails during transitions, or responding to constant notifications isn’t good for our well-being. In fact, the more we try to seek productivity in every moment, the more stress we feel.

Recovery works in reverse. “You’re not suddenly going to feel all zen because you took 10 minutes out,” says Dr. Smith, “but if you take that 10 minutes every day, you’re going to feel different over time.” The same compound effect applies when leaders consistently show vulnerability after they make mistakes or approach conflicts with curiosity rather than judgment. These small, repeated actions gradually shift how teams communicate and support each other.

Small positive changes build an arsenal of tools that make it more likely that you'll pull yourself out of negativity during stressful periods, rather than succumb to them. When your team sees you consistently bounce back from challenges using these techniques, they begin to believe they can do the same.

Finding influencers on the inside

Influencers are everywhere. Anyone who can showcase impact through their example behavior is an ideal internal influencer for your organization. It could be a team lead, a longtime employee, or an early career worker.

When considering who to approach about micro-modeling and spreading the word on a new mental health initiative, focus on those who are naturally open-minded, welcoming, and “willing to give it a try".

As an HR and benefits leader, you can also serve as an influencer. In addition to practicing recovery behaviors yourself, you can model genuine human behavior at work by:

• Showing appropriate vulnerability
• Demonstrating sustainable performance (and not glorifying burnout)
• Creating spaces of psychological safety where others feel comfortable sharing their struggles

Above all, people want to feel seen in their daily human experiences. Dr. Smith has seen this as a therapist and content creator. The videos that spark the most reaction, especially from younger audiences, are the ones that illustrate a shared experience—being truthful about common mental health struggles, rather than trying to “educate.”

As you’re communicating new initiatives to employees, focus on true-to-life moments, rather than clinical mental health language. “Younger groups want to feel that they’re not alone experiencing things for the first time,” says Dr. Smith, “but it’s actually true of multiple generations.”

How to make long-lasting change, 10 minutes at a time

If you’re an HR or Benefits leader remember: you don’t have to tackle everything at once. In fact, starting small with influential early-adopters will generate the kind of “healthy envy” that will spread to your entire organization.

Here’s how:

1. Start with the willing: Identify early adopters, don't try to convince everyone simultaneously
2. Model the behavior yourself: Take recovery breaks, show authentic humanity, respond with curiosity
3. Focus on relatable experiences: Frame support around universal human moments rather than diagnoses
4. Create space for authentic connection: Enable those "campfire" moments where people share common experiences

When Dr. Smith talks to her patients about how small changes accumulate, she doesn’t explain—she demonstrates:

Little by little, she takes a dropper full of red dye and drips it into a container of water. One drop barely makes a difference. By ten drops, the water has taken on a pinkish hue. By the time she’s emptied the dropper, the water is bright red.

Small positive changes accumulate. When you model that being human at work is acceptable and beneficial, you create the kind of psychological safety that makes it possible for others to do the same.

The compound effect works in both directions, Dr. Smith says. “Choose which way you want your water to change color.”