Dr. Marie-Helene Pelletier
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Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier

Leadership Resilience and Burnout Expert

Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier is an award-winning workplace mental health expert, psychologist, and advisor. Fluently bilingual in both English and French, she’s one of only a handful of work psychologists holding both a PhD and MBA and expertly blends business acumen with the latest psychology research. Through her signature mix of business and clinical expertise, Pelletier provides audiences with actionable strategies to prevent burnout, embrace transformational change, and improve performance through resiliency.

Pelletier brings both a national and international perspective on mental health and resiliency as a key pillar of overall health. She is a member of the Global Clinical Practice Network of the World Health Organization, and a past director on the boards of the Canadian Psychological Association and International Association of Applied Psychology. Pelletier also previously led mental healthy strategy in senior leadership roles at several companies, including Sun Life Financial.

Pelletier’s work has been featured in publications like Forbes and Thrive Global and her work has been published in academic journals such as Behaviour Research and Therapy, Journal of Anxiety Disorders, and Organizational Dynamics. Pelletier is currently working on a new book to redefine and guide new strategies for workplace resilience and mental health.

With a Ph.D. in counselling psychology from the University of British Columbia (UBC) and an MBA from the UBC Sauder School of Business, Pelletier has won numerous academic and industry awards, including the Industry Leadership Award from Benefits Canada.

Tout au long de sa carrière en gestion et en psychologie, la Dre Marie-Hélène Pelletier a mené une conversation au niveau national quant à la résilience de leadership et à la santé au travail.

Utilisant sa vaste expérience en milieu corporatif, en assurances, gouvernance et secteur public, elle contribue ses perspectives aux niveaux national et international sur la santé mentale et la résilience en tant que pilier critique de la santé globale. Elle est une psychologue bilingue avec plus de 20 ans d’expérience en psychologie clinique, de même qu’en psychologie du travail. Elle est titulaire d’un doctorat ainsi qu’une maîtrise en administration des affaires de l’Université de la Colombie-Britannique.

Marie-Hélène est membre du réseau global de pratique clinique de l’Organisation Mondiale de la Santé, et a été directrice au conseil d’administration de la société canadienne de psychologie et de l’association internationale de psychologie appliquée. Elle est auteur et co-auteur de plusieurs publications scientifiques et destinées à l’industrie. Le travail de la Dre Pelletier a été reconnu par plusieurs organismes académiques et par l’industrie, incluant le Industry Leadership Award de Benefits Canada.

Change, Meaning, and Renewed Energy: Your Opportunity Now and Beyond

In an era of transformational change, workers and the workplace are impacted in multiple ways.

While some impacts are an acceleration of pre-existing trends, and some are new, one thing is clear: many of these changes are far-reaching.

In this presentation, workplace mental health expert Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier brings together her weekly work as a practicing work psychologist with current research in workplace psychology to challenge your assumptions. The goal is to help your organization understand and navigate change at the individual, team and organizational level.

Moreover, she highlights the ways in which organizations and individuals can both manage changes and turn them into an advantage. She helps us see that by approaching this moment in time with curiosity, agility and renewed energy and purpose, we can not only adapt to change, we can thrive.

Learning Objectives:

  • Identify key forces impacting the mental agility of individuals, teams, and organizations, along with warning signs.
  • Understand psychological implications and opportunities.
  • Provide practical, research-based approaches to improve how individuals, teams, and organizations can nourish renewed energy and purpose.

Beyond Positive Thinking: Creating Your Growth Mindset Through Self-Cognitive Coaching

Are your thoughts helping you or making things worse? For many of us, challenging times can bring thoughts that become our own worst enemy.

In this keynote, Dr. Marie- Hélène Pelletier challenges assumptions about how much you can influence your thoughts (and support those around you). The mental shortcuts, cognitive distortions, and biases that can often derail our plans and intentions can be influenced. If not, these can lead to bad feelings (for you and others), sub-optimal performance, costly mistakes, and missed opportunities.

Being able to pick-up cognitive biases and untangling unhelpful thoughts result in having more clarity, more creativity, more mental agility.

Learning objectives:

  • Understand what cognitive biases are and how they operate in your brain.
  • Identify the types of cognitive biases that you may experience most often.
  • Learn how to increase awareness of how cognitive biases influence behaviours and what you can do to change their impact towards mental agility.

Front Line Mental Agility: Preventing and Managing Compassion Fatigue and Burnout

Given your high-pressure role in a culture of always putting others first, it is not surprising that compassion fatigue and burnout represent prevalent occupational and mental health challenges for front line workers. Informed by her psychology, business, and workplace mental health practice, Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier shares both the contextual aspects and the individual opportunities you need to see, so you can set meaningful goals that align with your values and protect your health.

Learning objectives:

  • Distinguish what factors belong to the context and to you, and how these interact.
  • Understand how your professional beliefs are impacting your resilience.
  • Reconstruct your plan for mental agility.

The Creative Power of Resilience for Leaders and Managers: Your Own Resilience Strategic Plan

Dynamic events that create transformational changes, whether in the past, present, or future, impact business leaders and managers in unique ways. The potentially detrimental outcomes, whether it is exhaustion or professional errors, are numerous and significant, but the opportunity is even deeper. What’s your plan?

With her experience as both a business leader and workplace mental health expert, Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier shares proven strategies that can boost the resilience, creative power, and mental agility of leaders and managers.

Learning objectives:

  • Understand the links between your mindset, resilience, and mental health, and your professional and personal life satisfaction.
  • Distinguish what factors are contributing to mental agility and health, as well as to fatigue and burnout.
  • Reconstruct your strategic plan for the creative power of resilience based on strategies that work.

Mental Health Through Dynamic Events: Best Practices for Your Own, Your Team’s and Your Organization’s Mental Health

Mental health is everyone’s business — a statement that’s never been truer. Team members and team leaders who take an active role reap benefits that radiate in their work and beyond. When protective factors are activated and resources are utilized, great benefits can be achieved.

In this keynote, Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier shares how to balance day-to-day management and operational responsibilities while establishing a system of best practices that supports better resilience and mental health.

  • Identify key protective factors in workplace mental health.
  • Understand the multi-faceted, dynamic processes of resilience and workplace mental health.
  • Learn best practices to implement proactively, during adversity and after.

Dynamic Resilience: Harnessing the Opportunity of the Moment

Dynamic events that create transformational changes, whether in the past, present, and future, impact us in unique ways. The potential detrimental outcomes, whether it is exhaustion or professional errors, are numerous and significant, and the opportunity is even deeper. What’s your plan?

With her experience as both a psychologist and workplace mental health expert, Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier shares proven strategies that can boost your resilience, creative power, and mental agility.

Learning Objectives:

  • Understand the links between your mindset, resilience, and mental health.
  • Distinguish what factors are contributing to mental agility and health, as well as to fatigue and burnout.
  • Reconstruct your strategic plan for the power of resilience based on strategies that work.

The Way Forward Is Upstream: Turn Leaders, Managers, and Co-Workers into Advocates and Mentors for Mental Health Disability Management

If there was ever a time for mental health prevention, this is it. Everyone has a role to play, but one that’s not well ingrained and often overlooked particularly as it relates to the most challenging part of the mental health continuum, disability management, is the role of leaders, managers and co-workers. Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier will challenge your assumptions and share the latest research and practice experience on the key role that managers, leaders and co-workers can play in supporting workplace mental health. She’ll also explain why now is the time to “raise the stakes” on prevention, with short, targeted training sessions that can provide significant long-term benefits.

  • Understand why the role of managers, leaders and co-workers can be effective in supporting employee mental health
  • Identify the benefits of mental health training for managers/leaders and co-workers
  • Learn some key signs of employee distress beyond absence or job performance

Improving the Outcome: How to Support Someone on a Mental Health Disability Absence (Today, Regardless of Your Role)

Despite the best support efforts of colleagues, teams and organizations, some employees will need a mental health disability absence. That can raise questions. What actually happens during these leaves? What factors are linked to a better recovery? What influence do you have to improve the outcome? Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier shares the biggest myths as well as the latest psychology research and practice experience on how you can support someone on a mental health disability absence.

  • Understand what contributes to effective recovery when on a mental health disability absence
  • Identify the biggest myths associated with mental health disability absence
  • Learn how you can influence the outcome

Psychological Strategies to Support a Return to Work After a Mental Health-Related Absence

Imagine that you’re returning to work after a mental health related absence. How do you know if you’re ready to return – and that your employer is ready too? Research has uncovered several factors and best practices that can positively influence the outcome. In this presentation, Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier covers the key themes associated with a successful return to work, with an invitation for everyone to identify their next action to support themselves and others in this important transition.

Learning objectives:

  • When is the optimal time for a return to work following a mental health disability absence.
  • Which factors influence the outcome of a return to work.
  • Which actions from whom (yes, it includes you) contribute to an effective return to work.

New Research on Mental Health-Related Absences: Four Action Areas That Deserve Focus

If there’s an upside to the increase in mental health-related absences it’s the increased focus on research in this area. As studies are completed and results are published, we gain a greater understanding of actions we can take to support a successful recovery and return to work.

Dr. Marie-Hélène combines the latest research with her own work and experience to identify four critical areas to focus on:

  • Move from a culture of stigma to one of inclusion.
  • Shift “disclosures” to “conversations”.
  • Factor in the perceptions of others when accommodations are put in place.
  • Shape custom trajectories for individuals in the return-to-work process.