Featured Leader: Melo Calarco on building resilience through workplace wellbeing

Workplace wellbeing has become a growing concern in today’s world, and the supply chain industry is no exception. With intense pressures of meeting tight deadlines, managing inventories, and reducing costs, those within the industry often experience high levels of stress and burnout.  

As it has become important for companies in the supply chain to invest in initiatives that promote employee wellbeing, Supply Chain Channel has reached out to Melo Calarco for his thoughts on improving resiliency. 

Melo Calarco is a renowned mindfulness and performance coach who teaches others how to stay energised, perform their best, and conquer burnout. With over three decades experience, his results-based work is grounded in neuroscience, mindfulness, human behaviour, leadership training and other unique tools to help his clients find self-awareness, clarity, focus and ultimately success.  

Melo’s lessons also uniquely draw on his life of cycling and trekking more than 30 000 kilometres across five continents. He now shares that deep experience working with many global Fortune 500 companies, CEO’s, managers and directors, as well as elite athletes, entrepreneurs, and individuals that want to be the absolute best at their craft. 

In this interview, Melo talks about the importance of workplace wellbeing and building resilience in highly stressful industries such as the supply chain sector.  

What was the turning point that led you to start Mindfulmooves? 

I’ve always been passionate about helping people all of my life. I’ve always wanted to help people realise their full potential and this is what led me to starting Mindfulmooves and my coaching business where I run a multitude of workshops and programs as well as private coaching.  

Whether it’s somebody suffering mental health issues to regain their wellbeing, or a corporate executive to improve performance and find balance, or an elite athlete to improve mindset, or a CEO to lead better or just anybody wanting to live their best life.  

After I cycled around the world on my mountain-bike it was crystal clear to me that I wanted to help more on the planet in any way that I could. I am now inspired every single day when I hear the success stories of many of my clients when they achieve things they never thought were possible! 

What is future-fit resilience and how does it tie in with creating space for wellbeing in the workplace? 

Future-fit resilience is the ability for a community or organisation to adapt and thrive in the face of rapidly changing and uncertain future challenges and opportunities. It encompasses both resilience to potential shocks and stressors, as well as the capacity to proactively shape and create a positive future.  

It is important for workplace wellbeing because it helps individuals to adapt and respond effectively to change, uncertainty, and adversity, thereby promoting mental and emotional health, job satisfaction, and overall well-being. 

A resilient workplace culture can foster a positive work environment, increase productivity, and reduce stress, burnout, and turnover. By preparing for and managing change, future-fit resilience can support long-term sustainable success and create space for well-being in the workplace. 

You’ve worked with clients across numerous industries including the supply chain sector, where change and disruption is arguably the most felt. Can you share some insights and significant transformations you’ve seen? 

Change and disruption is inevitable in any industry and the supply chain sector knows this very well. Two other industries that I have recently worked with who were very hard hit by the recent pandemic was the travel sector, and the construction industry. 

I personally coached the CEO of a medium sized travel agency. His business had 45 employees and literally overnight all travel, global and domestic, was halted. He asked me to help design a wellbeing program to support the team and we formulated a strategy for himself and his team to remain pliable, stay present and positive to whatever happened day-by-day.  

With some mindfulness training and other techniques to deal with the uncertainty and anxiety we were able to adopt a positive growth mindset and, apart from the loss of a couple of employees through natural attrition, his business is now thriving even stronger than they were before. Their increased resilience and improved team dynamics has transformed their company and enhanced their performance.  

Another person I coached through the challenging environment affected by supply chain issues of building materials was the director of a large construction company. Our strategy was to employ patience with the team and train them to deal with difficult conversations from clients and suppliers.  

We learnt mechanisms to ‘control the controllables’ and not get negatively impacted by matters out of their control. This proved to be a great strategy and we were able to weather the storm through all of their projects and manage to come out the other end with a positive outlook and with happy clients. 

In your new book, Beating Burnout, Finding Balance, you talk about how to build resilience and manage stress so you can perform in high-stakes or unpredictable situations. What are the top tips for readers? 

The book takes the reader step-by-step through ways to build resilience, thrive under pressure and prevent burnout. There are nine chapters in total and each chapter has a main theme to explore, for example: Self Awareness, Self-Regulation, Resilience, Purpose and Perseverance and so on. There are stories of the lessons I learnt from cycling around the world on my mountain-bike along with advice and insights from other top CEO’s and leaders of large organisations. 

The three top tips I’ll share here are to build self-awareness first by taking time to pause occasionally and reflect, then develop the ability to self-regulate in challenging times through some mindfulness techniques, and finally to be diligent with your self-care practices no matter how busy you get at work.  

In other words, make sure you continue to look after yourself physically by exercising regularly, eating well and getting adequate sleep. While also looking after yourself mentally by taking regular renewal breaks, doing things that stimulate you outside of work and make sure to get some downtime in your day.  

We are not machines, we can not keep going 24/7 without any consequences and that consequence is poor mental health and potentially burnout which can all be avoided if we are more mindful.