Dr Megan Woods (Founder)

Hi, I'm Dr Megan Woods. I'm the founder and heart of Flourishing Phoenixes. 

I created Flourishing Phoenixes to help individuals and organisations create more positive and mentally-healthy workplace experiences. 

Workplaces are incredibly powerful social environments.  When our work environments and work experiences are negative, and depleting, and damaging we create physical, mental and emotional suffering. And when those negative, depleting and damaging experiences arise from the way that people interact with and influence each other, we create social suffering as well.  But the flip side of that is that we can listen and heal social suffering any time - and every time - we do something that makes people's experiences of their work and workplace positive, energising, invigorating, and even healing.  

And that's the bit that excites me. The things we can do as people. As colleagues. As teammates. As team leaders. As human beings. To help the people we work with feel seen. And heard. Feel understood and supported. Feel like somebody knows what they're carrying through the world right now. What they struggling with. What they are coping with. What they're finding it hard to cope with. What’s its taking out of them. And also, what lights them up. What are they passionate about. What energises them. What makes them feel proud of the work they do, and proud that they do it here.    

I founded Flourishing Phoenixes to bring together what I know from my professional expertise, and my personal experience, about  

• how lonely and hard it can feel when you feel stuck, or lost, in a bad work situation, and how powerful it is to have someone work with  you to find a way forward.  
  
• how many people experience - and then have to recover from - toxic and damaging work environments, and how much difference it makes when they feel like people around them understand and empathise with what they were going through.  
  
• how often our inner voices hold us back rather than help us go after the things that we want for ourselves in the ways that feel right for us  
  
• how amazing, and joyous, and energising and powerful it can feel when we have the support, and confidence, and space to hear ourselves think, listen to what we are trying to tell ourselves about what we really want, and how we want to achieve it, and feel secure and supported to go after it!  
  

 For over 20 years now I've worked as an academic in the human resource management space. I've spent half my life researching, teaching and writing about work, work environments, and the various ways we can make work environments and work experiences better for ourselves and the people around us. And while qualifications aren't everything, I have a PhD in Management, I'm a certified life coach and provider of Mental Health First Aid, and I'm a member of Australia and New Zealand Mental Health Association. 

My particular passion is work-related mental health, psychological safety, and various ways that work-related experiences impact people’s feelings of hope, optimism, resilience and self-efficacy (aka their psychological capital). Over the last few years, I’ve been 

• exploring factors that contribute to - and help people deal with and recover from - burnout, imposter phenomenon, and psychological injury.    
• helping managers, supervisors and executive leaders develop their capabilities in supporting psychological safety, dealing with psychosocial hazards, and deepening their place-based leadership.  

I’ve co-authored articles in leading academic journals, educated countless managers about supporting workplace mental health, and developed a range of learning resources to help individuals and managers more effectively understand and support workplaces mental health.  

If you'd like to, you can learn more about my academic work at  https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Megan-Woods-4 

Over the last decade, with funding support from the Work Cover Tasmania Board, WorkSafe Tasmania and the Australian New Zealand Academy of Management I’ve explored the lived experiences of people who are experiencing, recovering, and returning to work, from mental ill-health. And the experiences of managers who are supporting them. 

Their stories moved me deeply. I was inspired and amazed by what they told me about their  

 experiences of depression and anxiety, of dealing with the worker's compensation system, and how those experiences have been enhanced (or worsened) by their work environment. What was challenging. What was helpful. What could have been so much easier, and less stressful. How people wished they had been treated differently by the people around them. What managers wished they had known or been able to differently, to better support their staff and themselves.  

These stories - and my own experiences supporting and receiving support for mental ill-health - have made me passionate about supporting safer and more successful experiences of returning to work. 

About building understanding and empathy about what people feel, need and want when returning to work, and what their managers also need and want to be able to support them in the workplace, and to do that in ways that feel safe and supportive for everyone involved. About helping people develop new skills and capabilities about engaging in return to work processes, and particularly about developing RTW plans which will safely and support them to re-engage with working. 

In my academic work, I've recently led the development of two suites of research-informed and evidence-based resources specifically designed to support Tasmanian workers, and their managers, through the process of preparing for, developing and implementing a return to work plan for people returning to work after time off due to depression or anxiety. Those resources will soon be made publicly available by WorkSafe Tasmania to help workers and workplaces statewide successfully engage with RTW processes, and I am both excited and humbled to think how many people they will help. 

And now, through Flourishing Phoenixes, I use my passion, expertise and experience to help individuals, managers and organisations on their own journey to safely and successfully support mental health, psychological safety and return to work.  

 I know what it can be like when you HAVE to move forward but you don't necessarily know how, or where you're going.  

Recently, I left an occupation, an employer and a career that have been a HUGE part of my self-image and my public identity for my entire adult life. For many years I literally could not imagine doing anything else. But although it has been my world, I came to the realisation that it was now holding me back, and stifling so many parts of me that I feel like a root-bound plant in a too-small pot being choked both by its environment and its own attempts to still grow in that context. And while I was working out what to do about that, I developed full blown stage 4 burnout. Ultimately, my doctor told me the only way my physical and mental health would improve was to get out of the stress which was causing the burnout. 

So I know how it can feel to know that you can’t stay where you are, and keep doing what you’re doing, but also have no idea what else you could do or where else you could do it. 

But I now also know what it’s like to find the thing you’re so drawn to, and so lit up by, that everything else now seems possible to deal with, and overcome. When you want to go after it, and do it, so much that you don't care whether anyone else thinks this is ‘less’ than you were doing before. When you feel that peaceful, grounded certainty that you just will deal with ever comes up, and do whatever you have to do, to make it work. And to realise that in order to go after it you may have to do things you never thought possible, and do things that may turn your life and other people’s lives upside down. And have to ‘come out’ about the fact that this is what you want, and you are going for it, even though you don’t know if it will work. Or whether the people around you will support you, or ostracise you, or both. Or whether you will ultimately get what you want. Or ‘fail’. 

For me, it was coaching. The day I found the Beautiful You Coaching Academy, and first read about what I could learn and become through their training, I felt intrigued and excited and surprised and delighted all at the same time. It was like a ray of sunlight suddenly shone into my life. But most of all I felt a pull I couldn't ignore. The more I learned, and imagined that for myself, and thought about moving my life in that direction, the stronger that pull became and the brighter that light got.   

Going after that for myself has been literally transformative for me. And now I want that experience for you!