Kirsty Muddle, the new CEO of Ogilvy, is the latest to share her story about mental health in the Keep Talking series, produced in a collaboration between B&T and Ian Perrin, managing partner of SPEED.
In the early days of my career people admired my work ethic.
I was always at my desk. First in, last out. I didn’t take lunch. I didn’t go home early. I didn’t complain. People would say things like, “She’s incredibly driven,” or “She just loves her job.”
The truth was simpler and harder.
I stayed at my desk because I really didn’t want to go home.
Home was where I was being abused by my then partner. Wardrobes pushed onto me, thrown down the stairs. Gaslit until I doubted my own reality.
Home was unpredictable and unsafe. Work, by contrast, was structured. Contained. Quiet. My desk wasn’t ambition, it was shelter.
I didn’t eat lunch because I didn’t want to eat at all. Anorexia became a side effect. It gave me something that felt like control when everything else was chaos. From the outside, I looked disciplined. Focused. High-performing. On the inside, I was disappearing. This went on for years.
This is the part we often miss when we talk about mental health at work: the behaviours we reward are sometimes coping mechanisms. Overwork can be survival. Silence can be fear. Perfectionism can be pain management.
Like many people living with domestic violence, I hid it well. Even from my parents. Those that heard something in the night, did nothing. I felt embarrassed.
Shame is a powerful silencer. So is fear. And so is the irritating belief especially for women, especially for leaders, that if you reveal the truth, you will lose credibility, opportunity, or safety.
I kept going. And from the outside, I kept succeeding.
Life didn’t suddenly become easier when I left that relationship. Trauma doesn’t work like that. Anorexia stuck around, later came the loss of unborn children. Grief that has no language and very little public permission. I also lost my mother. The person who made the world feel anchored and loving, was suddenly gone.
There are losses that break you. And there are losses that force you to find strength you didn’t know you had, because sadly sometimes the only alternative is not surviving.
Recovery isn’t a single moment or a neat arc. It was slow for me. Uneven. Sometimes invisible. It was learning to eat again. Learning to trust again. Learning that I didn’t need to earn my right to exist by being productive or perfect.
For me the greatest leaders I’ve encountered have great empathy. They’re not about being tougher. Not about being louder.
When you’ve lived through violence, illness, and grief, you stop assuming that everyone is fine. You start leading with the understanding that many people are carrying something heavy, often quietly, often brilliantly hidden.
That doesn’t mean lowering standards. It means widening awareness which is what the brilliant Ian Perrin has started and we are all supporting.
It means noticing the person who never leaves their desk when everyone else has and asking why, not applauding it by default. It means understanding that performance and wellbeing are not opposites and that ignoring the latter eventually erodes the former. It means creating cultures where asking for help doesn’t feel like career suicide.
It means knowing there is a way to get better, to get away from it, and passing on those tools so others can find their freedom.
We talk a lot about resilience in leadership. Too often, we confuse it with endurance. Real resilience is not how much pain you can absorb without flinching. It’s knowing when to speak, when to pause, when to reach out and when to let others do the same.
Mental health stigmas survive because so many people who are struggling look “successful.” I was one of them. High-functioning. Breaking quietly. I know I’m not the only one, but that’s the point.
We’re not writing about this because it’s easy, but because visibility matters. Because leaders go first. Because someone reading this may recognise themselves in the story of ‘the desk they never leave’ and realise they don’t have to keep hiding.
We don’t need to know everyone’s story to lead well. But we do need to assume there is a story. And to lead with humanity, empathy, and the courage to say: you don’t have to carry it alone.
I probably won’t speak about this part of my world again in public, not because of shame, but because I don’t really want to relive it. It’ll sit on the internet for democratic access forever. Importantly, whilst I might not talk about it, like so many of my peers, I will always ask if I notice you haven’t left your desk, and listen hard for the real reason why. It’s a way to turn that hard lesson of mine into a cushion for someone else that might just need it.
