What Do You Say to a Team Member Who Is Struggling?

8 min read · Work · Managers

Someone on your team is not okay. You can see it in the work, or in the camera that stays off, or in a reply that arrived at 2am and did not sound like them. You have been meaning to say something for two weeks. You have not, because you do not know what the sentence is, and you are fairly sure the wrong sentence makes it worse.

Say what you noticed, without interpreting it. Ask an open question and let the silence sit. Offer one concrete adjustment you can actually authorise. Then hand over to someone qualified rather than trying to help further yourself. The World Health Organization recommends manager training for mental health, and is explicit that it does not turn managers into clinicians.

That last part is the permission most managers are waiting for and nobody gives them.

What Does the WHO Actually Recommend?

Training managers, strongly, and with better evidence behind it than most workplace wellbeing measures have. The WHO guidelines on mental health at work, published in 2022, make this Recommendation 4: training managers to support their workers' mental health should be delivered, to improve managers' knowledge, attitudes and behaviours, and to improve workers' help seeking. It carries a strong recommendation with moderate certainty of evidence, which in guideline terms is a firm position.

The remarks attached to it matter more than the recommendation. WHO states plainly that this training is designed to help managers identify and respond to someone who needs support, and to adjust job stressors in working conditions. It then says the training is not designed to make managers into mental healthcare providers, and that managers cannot and should not end up in a position of diagnosing or treating anyone.

So the job has two halves. Notice and respond, then adjust what you control. Diagnosing, counselling and carrying it are not on the list.

One more finding worth knowing, because it complicates a popular idea. WHO looked separately at leadership oriented training, meaning general training in improving manager and worker interactions. It made no recommendation for it, on the basis that there were no demonstrated benefits on health outcomes and mixed results on work outcomes. We have written before about mindful leadership, and this is a genuine qualification of that picture: specific mental health training for managers has evidence behind it, and general leadership development, on WHO's read, does not yet.

What Do You Actually Say First?

Describe what you saw. Do not name what you think it means.

The difference is the whole conversation. "You have seemed off lately, is everything alright" invites a reflex "fine" and closes the door politely. Something closer to "I noticed you have been sending things late at night the last couple of weeks, and you said almost nothing in Tuesday's review, which is not like you. How are you doing" is harder to deflect, because it is specific and it is not a diagnosis.

Then stop talking. The silence after that question is the most useful part of the conversation and most managers fill it within four seconds. Let it run.

What not to say, in roughly the order people say it: that you know exactly how they feel, that they should try meditation, that everyone is under pressure right now, that they seem depressed, or that they should be grateful for the job. Also avoid promising confidentiality you cannot deliver. If something they tell you would oblige you to act, say so before they tell you rather than afterwards.

Your job is to make it easier for one person to get help than it was yesterday. Not to be the help. The distinction is the difference between a manager who is useful and a manager who is out of their depth and about to make it worse.

What Can You Actually Offer?

Only what you can authorise without asking anyone, and it is more than most managers assume.

WHO's guidance on accommodations for workers with mental health conditions groups them into four kinds, and the two most commonly used are also the cheapest. Communication accommodations, meaning things like a regular short check in with you, or agreeing to give instructions in writing rather than verbally. Scheduling accommodations, meaning more breaks, a later start, or extra time on a deliverable. The other two are changes to the job description, such as a phased return or task sharing, and changes to the physical environment.

In the evidence WHO reviewed, workers who received accommodations stayed in their jobs seven to twenty four months longer than workers who did not. It also recorded a real risk on the other side: in one qualitative study, workers described feeling overprotected, patronised and under challenged. So ask what would help rather than deciding for them.

Do not offer to reduce someone's responsibilities permanently in a moment of concern. It feels generous and it can read as a demotion, particularly in an Indian workplace where a visible change in scope gets noticed by everyone and interpreted quickly.

How Do You Hand Over Without Abandoning Them?

Know your route before the conversation, and make the handover a real one.

A real handover sounds like: here is what exists, here is what it costs, here is what your manager and HR do and do not see, and would it help if I sent you the link now while we are sitting here. A weak handover sounds like: there is an EAP, I think it is on the intranet somewhere.

If your company has an employee assistance programme, learn before you need it what it actually offers, how someone books, and precisely what gets reported back to the company. If it does not, know that a person can see a therapist privately with no connection to the employer at all, and that for many people this is the option they will trust most.

Have the crisis numbers written down somewhere you can find them in thirty seconds. In India, iCall is on 9152987821, Monday to Saturday, 8am to 10pm. Tele-MANAS is on 14416, twenty four hours. You will almost certainly never need these. Looking them up in front of a distressed person is not the moment to discover you do not have them.

What Happens After the Conversation?

Two things, and managers usually get the second one wrong.

Follow up once, briefly, about a week later. Not to check whether they booked anything, which is surveillance dressed as care. Something closer to a short message saying you have been thinking about the conversation and the offer stands. Then leave it.

And take the load off yourself somewhere. Managers absorb these conversations and carry them, often alone, sometimes for months. WHO's own guidance on training workers to respond to distressed colleagues notes that anyone in that position should ideally have support to manage boundaries, referral routes and the effect on their own mental health. The same applies to you. If your organisation has nowhere for a manager to take that weight, that is a gap in the design rather than a weakness in you.

Does Any of This Change the Underlying Problem?

Not on its own, and you should know that going in.

WHO found that the effects of one off manager training appear to fade after about six months, and suggests repeating it at least twice a year to hold the gains. It also notes that senior leadership commitment is needed for any of it to stick, because a trained manager inside an untrained organisation runs out of room quickly.

Which is the honest limit of this article. If the person on your team is struggling because the workload is unsurvivable, a well conducted conversation does not fix the workload. What it does is stop them being alone in it, and route them to someone who can actually help. That is not everything. On a Tuesday afternoon, with one person in front of you, it is a great deal more than saying nothing for another fortnight.

The broader question of whether people can speak up at all sits above any single conversation, and we have written about psychological safety at work separately.

What Else Do Managers Ask About This?