
How Well-Being Multipliers Create a Mental Health Tipping Point at Work with Laura Putnam
From Hope Illuminated Podcast: Helping the Helpers Bring Light to Life’s Darkest Moments by Dr. Sally Spencer-Thomas
May 5, 2026 · 30 min
About this episode
Laura Putnam discusses how well-being multipliers at the team level can create a mental health tipping point in workplaces.
In this episode of Hope Illuminated, I welcome Laura Putnam, author, speaker, and founder of Motion Infusion, for a rich conversation about what it actually takes to change mental health culture at scale. The central argument: one-off awareness campaigns and individual-focused interventions, while valuable, are not sufficient to create lasting change. What's needed is a tipping point and the key to reaching it lies with well-being multipliers at the team level.Laura draws on nearly two decades of experience training over 50,000 managers across 500+ organizations to make the case that team leaders, not HR departments, not C-suites, not awareness months, are the most leveraged point of intervention in any system. Gallup research shows that managers alone may account for up to 70% of the variance in team members' engagement and well-being, yet more than 50% of managers report receiving zero training to support mental health.The conversation expands outward: from workplaces to households, from gym communities to faith groups, with both guests drawing parallels to the anti-smoking movement as a model for how collective accountability and systems-level change can create permanent…
People in this episode
Host: Dr. Sally Spencer-Thomas
Guest: Laura Putnam
Topics covered
- mental health
- workplace culture
- well-being
- team leadership
- system change
Keywords
- mental health culture
- well-being multipliers
- team leaders
- engagement
- workplace psychological safety
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Motion Infusion, Gallup
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