Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier

Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier- Resilience & Mental Health Expert and Speaker

Throughout her career in business management and psychology, Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier has spearheaded a national dialogue on the crucial issues of leadership resilience and workplace health.

Drawing on her extensive background in corporate, insurance, governance and public sectors, she brings national and international perspectives and expertise on mental health and resilience as a key pillar of overall health.

She is a bilingual practicing psychologist with over 20 years of experience in clinical psychology and advisory workplace psychology and holds a Ph.D. and an MBA from the University of British Columbia. Marie-Helene is a Member of the Global Clinical Practice Network of the World Health Organization, and past Director on the boards of the Canadian Psychological Association and the International Association of Applied Psychology.

She has presented and authored and co-authored a number of industry and academic publications and was won numerous academic and industry awards, including the Industry Leadership Award from Benefits Canada.

SPEAKING KEYNOTES

Change, meaning, and renewed energy – Your opportunity now and beyond

In an era of transformational change, workers and the workplace are experiencing the impacts in multiple ways. Some impacts are an acceleration of pre-existing trends. And some are new. But one thing is clear – many of these changes are far-reaching.

In this presentation, workplace mental health expert Dr. Pelletier brings together her weekly work as a practicing work psychologist with current research in workplace psychology to challenge your assumptions and help your organization understand these changes at individual, team and organizational levels.

More importantly, she highlights the ways that organizations and individuals can both manage these changes and turn them to an advantage. By approaching this moment in time with curiosity, agility and renewed energy and purpose, we can not only adapt to change, we can thrive.

• Identify key forces impacting the mental agility of individuals, teams and organizations and warning signs
• Understand psychological implications and opportunities
• Learn practical, research-based ways to improve how individuals, teams and organizations can nourish renewed energy and purpose

Beyond positive thinking: Creating your growth mindset through self-cognitive coaching

Are your thoughts helping you or making things worse? For many of us, challenging times can bring thoughts that become our own worst enemy.

In this keynote Dr. Marie-Helene challenges assumptions about how much you can influence your thoughts (and support those around you). The mental short-cuts, cognitive distortions and biases that can often derail our plans and intentions can be influenced. If not, these can lead to bad feelings (for you and others), sub-optimal performance, costly mistakes and missed opportunities.

Being able to pick-up cognitive biases and untangling unhelpful thoughts result in having more clarity, more creativity, more mental agility.

• Understand what cognitive biases are and how they operate in your brain
• Identify the types of cognitive biases that you may experience most often
• Learn how to increase awareness of how cognitive biases influence behaviours and what you can do to change their impact towards mental agility.

Front line mental agility: Preventing and managing compassion fatigue and burnout

Given your high-pressure role in a culture of always putting others first, it is not surprising that compassion fatigue and burnout represent prevalent occupational and mental health challenges for front line workers. Informed by her psychology, business, and her workplace mental health practice, Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier shares both the contextual aspects and the individual opportunities you need to see, so you can set meaningful goals that align with your values and protect your health.

• Distinguish what factors belong to the context, to you, and how these interact
• Understand how your professional beliefs are impacting your resilience
• Reconstruct your plan for mental agility

The creative power of resilience for leaders and managers: Your own resilience strategic plan

Dynamic events that create transformational changes, whether in the past, present and future, impact business leaders and managers in unique ways. The potential detrimental outcomes, whether it is exhaustion or professional errors, are numerous and significant, and the opportunity is even deeper. What’s your plan?

With her experience as both a business leader and workplace mental health expert, Dr. Marie-Helene shares proven strategies that can boost the resilience, creative power, and mental agility of leaders and managers.

• Understand the links between your mindset, resilience and mental health, and your professional and personal life satisfaction
• Distinguish what factors are contributing to mental agility and health, as well as to fatigue and burnout
• Reconstruct your strategic plan for the creative power of resilience based on strategies that work

Mental health through dynamic events: Best practices for your own, your team’s and your organization’s mental health

Mental health is everyone’s business – a statement that’s never been truer. Team members and team leaders who take an active role reap benefits that radiate in their work and beyond. When protective factors are activated and resources are utilized, great benefits can be achieved.

In this keynote, Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier shares how to balance the day-to-day management and operational responsibilities while establishing a system of best practices that supports better resilience and mental health.

• Identify key protective factors in workplace mental health
• Understand the multi-faceted, dynamic processes of resilience and workplace mental health
• Learn best practices to implement proactively, during adversity and after

Specialized Workshops

The way forward is upstream: Turn leaders, managers, and co-workers into advocates and mentors for mental health disability management.

If there was ever a time for mental health prevention, this is it. Everyone has a role to play, but one that’s not well ingrained and often overlooked particularly as it relates to the most challenging part of the mental health continuum, disability management, is the role of leaders, managers and co-workers. Dr. Marie-Helene will challenge your assumptions and share the latest research and practice experience on the key role that managers, leaders and co-workers can play in supporting workplace mental health. She’ll also explain why now is the time to “raise the stakes” on prevention, with short, targeted training sessions that can provide significant long-term benefits.

• Understand why the role of managers, leaders and co-workers can be effective in supporting employee mental health
• Identify the benefits of mental health training for managers/leaders and co-workers
• Learn some key signs of employee distress beyond absence or job performance

Improving the outcome: how to support someone on a mental health disability absence (today, regardless of your role)

Despite the best support efforts of colleagues, teams and organizations, some employees will need a mental health disability absence. That can raise questions. What actually happens during these leaves? What factors are linked to a better recovery? What influence do you have to improve the outcome? Dr. Marie-Helene shares the biggest myths as well as the latest psychology research and practice experience on how you can support someone on a mental health disability absence.

• Understand what contributes to effective recovery when on a mental health disability absence
• Identify the biggest myths associated with mental health disability absence
• Learn how you can influence the outcome