Organisational therapist works with companies

Name: Sharon Darmody
The profession: Organisational therapist
The organisation: Strive Occupational Rehabilitation
The job title: Principal consultant and clinical director
The pay: $80,000 to $135,000

9am: After an early start at home with some meditation, journaling, then coffee and the daily Wordle, I’m ready for my first client. I support people in staying engaged and healthy at work. We spend a lot of time at work, so if you can change someone’s working life, it’s a good day’s work.

My clients are usually large organisations, both private and government. I’ve been doing this type of work 28 years, and my company is 20 years old. My sessions are guided by what my clients need, so today I’m in a debriefing with a leadership team, talking about their ground rules around communication, meetings and emails.

The group set these rules at the start of working with me, but things haven’t been working, so we’re revisiting them – it’s an ongoing conversation. Together, we decide they are going to trial a new way of running their meetings to make these as efficient as possible.

When I started this kind of work, people had to fall over, and then you would pick them up. Now, they don’t have to fall over – we are going upstream more frequently [to stop issues before they happen].

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10am: Next is a mindfulness group. Research tells us that 47 per cent of the time we’re not paying attention. It’s a core issue.

Mindfulness has become a bit of a buzzword, so I like to do something different each session, so people can see there is something for everything – you’re just training your brain to be in charge of your thoughts. It’s not sitting in the corner navel-gazing.

11am: Life happens for people, so it’s good to be accessible when things come up. Today I’m in a 1-1 with a client who needs to have a difficult work conversation. Together, we develop some strategies to help them do this.