I’ve noticed a phrase that’s being used more and more, especially by younger colleagues and peers: “This is bad for my mental health.”

Sometimes it’s said when there's uncertainty. Sometimes it’s about a task that feels overwhelming. Sometimes it’s in a situation where someone decides they need to step back - for their mental health.

I always pause when I hear it. Not because I don’t take it seriously - I do; mental health matters, deeply. But I find myself wondering: what do we actually mean when we say that? Because sometimes, I think what’s really being felt is:

• “This is stressful.”
• “I’m feeling anxious.”
• “I’m overwhelmed.”
• “I’m afraid I’ll fail.”

These are all real, valid human emotions. But none of them are necessarily a sign of mental illness; and that distinction matters.

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Where We Are Now

There’s been a massive, necessary and long-overdue shift in the way we talk about mental health - especially among younger generations. Schools, campaigns and social media have helped to destigmatise things that were once hidden, taboo and silenced. Gen Z in particular have grown up being taught to pay attention to their emotions, to speak up and to advocate for their mental wellbeing. That’s a good thing. But like many good things, it comes with nuance.

We’ve raised awareness - but we haven’t always taught emotional literacy. We’ve told people not to ignore mental health - but haven’t always given them the tools to make sense of what they’re feeling.

Which means that in a culture where everyone has heard of “anxiety” and “mental health”, it’s easy to conflate having anxious feelings with having a diagnosed Anxiety disorder. Or to feel discomfort and assume it must mean something’s wrong with us.

Because in reality, sometimes discomfort is exactly the right emotional response to the situation.

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Making Sense of What We Feel

I wonder whether one of the most helpful questions we could ask ourselves, is: “Does what I’m feeling make sense in the context I’m in?”

If I’m worried about whether a lump on my body is something more sinister, of course I’m going to be concerned and start to feel anxious. That’s not a problem with my mental health - that’s a fully functional emotional system alerting me to a real-life challenge which I need to respond to.

Or when I’ve lost someone I love, I feel sad, withdrawn, even numb. Again, that's not a disorder. That's grief doing its work, painful as it is.

But sometimes emotions don’t align with the reality of a situation; and that’s where reflection becomes important.

Let’s say I’m going to meet some friends. They’ve never given me a reason to think they’ll laugh at me or humiliate me. But I feel dread. I don’t want to speak. I assume the worst. And part of me knows this fear isn’t rational, but I can’t shake it.

That might be a sign of something more. It might be Anxiety - not just a feeling, but a pattern. Not just a reaction to a hard situation, but an overreaction to a safe one. And that’s when support matters.

This isn’t about denying feelings. It’s about listening more closely to them - and asking what they’re trying to tell us.

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The Power of Naming Emotions

When we reach for catch-all phrases like “my mental health is suffering”, we can sometimes blur the edges of what’s really going on. We skip over the opportunity to identify the specific emotion beneath the discomfort. And that makes it harder to process and respond to, as well as to ask for the right kind of help.

Instead of saying:

• “This job is bad for my mental health,”
  we could try:
• “I’m feeling burned out because I’ve had no time to rest.”

Or instead of:

• “This project is causing me anxiety,”
  we could say:
• “I feel anxious because I’m not sure I have what I need to succeed - and I’m afraid of letting people down.”

There's such a difference between these two. The second examples don’t minimise the emotion - they actually make it clearer. And that clarity gives us choices about what we can do next to change the situation.

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What This Means for Workplaces

If you're a manager, founder or team member, you're in a position to support a healthier emotional culture at work. Here are some of the ways you could do that:

• Model emotional specificity. Be the one who says “I feel under pressure because X,” instead of just “I’m not doing well.”
• Treat emotions as information. Not something to be solved or silenced, but something to be understood.
• Listen without over-pathologising. Sometimes people do need support but sometimes they simply need to name what they’re feeling and feel heard.

Support can take many shapes and there are so many great resources and organisations out there that can help - whether that's finding ways to make adjustments to the way someone works so as to help them thrive or getting access to therapy.

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Final Thought

Mental health is real. Anxiety is real. And so is fear. So is self-doubt. So is sadness, shame and everything in between.

Let’s keep making space for those feelings. But let’s also get better at naming them, exploring them and understanding what they’re telling us.

Because not everything that's uncomfortable is a crisis. Sometimes it’s just life - and a well-functioning emotional system doing its job.

And that's a sign of good mental health, which is part of being healthy.

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I'd like to give a shout out to Brené Brown for her pioneering work around unpacking emotions. I've personally found her book, Atlas of the Heart to be an informative read.

Ensure your work gets the recognition it deserves by putting in place these simple ways to increase the robustness, reliability and accuracy of your impact reporting.

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#10 Success Scores

Success Scores enable you to understand your progress-over-time at a glance whenever you analyse an eligible metric or survey question. There are three scores and each one is automatically calculated for every Scale-based question set to Single Choice.

The Success Scores enable you to see the following:

• the % of contacts or survey respondents who have improved (in other words, Distance Travelled)
• the average amount of improvement across all contacts
• the % of the way there - a current snapshot of progress across all contacts

Now you can get an understanding of Distance Travelled without needing to review every respondent's answer on every survey they've completed.

Find out more about Success Scores

#9 Lenses

With Lenses you can slice your results demographically to sharpen your insights. Understand how attendance figures vary based on gender or compare responses to a survey question based on the respondent's nationality. Every relevant demographic characteristic that's saved in your Dropdowns becomes available as a Lens that you can use to analyse your results.

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This lets you see performance, attainment and any other KPI from a diversity perspective. You'll be able to spot which segments of your audience are doing well and identify the segments that need extra attention.

Get started with Lenses

#8 Outcome Rings

Outcome Rings turn individual survey responses into a clear visual story that makes it easy for everyone to understand the shape of the results. Outcome Rings display a person's answers to related survey questions on a 'spider plot' which reveals strengths, gaps, and overall patterns at a glance.

As a visual aide they help participants and practitioners make sense of progress. Rather than requiring them to interpret tables with words and numbers, you can instead empower them with visuals that highlight just how far a participant has come, while at the same time pinpointing areas for further growth. This makes Outcome Rings a dynamic and engaging diagnostic tool - now you can transform raw data into meaningful insights that drive personal development and honest group discussions.

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You're not limited to looking at individual participants on Outcome Rings. You can also see and overlay the following:

• the Mean Average response from an entire cohort of participants
• Observations recorded by your colleagues about participants
• Self-reflections submitted by participants themselves

Get started with Outcome Rings

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#7 Intervention Alerts

You can use Makerble's powerful and customisable Automations Engine to let you know when you need to intervene regarding specific participants based on criteria such as their survey responses, form submissions and engagement. For example - if a participant has failed to attend 5 out of 6 sessions, you can trigger an SMS message to them and send a notification to the manager of that initiative. In this way you can use real-time information about participants to automatically notify you of additional actions you need to take to get things back on track.

Get started with Intervention Alerts

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#6 Impact Scorecards

Impact Scorecards act as early-warning signals that let you know whether your initiative is at risk of failing to achieve the intended impact. The scorecards organise your metrics pragmatically so you can focus on putting your theory of change into practice.

Impact Scorecards turn your measurement framework into an interactive way to diagnose where along the process your project, service, programme or campaign needs to improve. You can even add open-ended targets and deadline-based milestones to every metric so that it's easy to monitor performance across every initiative you work on.

Get started with Impact Scorecards

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#5 Multi-version surveys

Adjust your survey questions without needing to duplicate them. Survey Versions on Makerble give you the freedom to adapt your survey questions as you go. Every survey contains Core Questions which you can choose to hide, reword or keep in subsequent versions of the survey. This means you can still compare responses - for longitudinal analysis, such as when you have a baseline, midpoint and endpoint - and you can aggregate responses to see the totals across different projects even though questions might be worded slightly differently.

Get started with Mult-version surveys

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#4 Triangulation (360° Surveys)

Make your results indisputable by broadening the sources you draw from. 360° Surveys enable you to supplement the views of practitioners and the self-refections of participants with third-party perspectives from other people who know or have experience of the participants. For example - you can gather the opinions of friends, family members or coworkers about a single participant.

Analysis of these additional perspectives is made manageable on Makerble through the use of filters and a dedicated mode within Outcome Rings that automatically summarises the responses from every 360° observer who has submitted a survey about a participant.

Get started with 360° Surveys

#3 Verdicts

Every survey response means something, but interpreting the meaning can take time. Verdicts on Makerble allow you to automatically classify every survey response based on the combination of answers chosen. This speeds up decision-making when it comes to deciding what to do next with a participant once they've completed a survey.

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Verdicts are typically used in medical scenarios where a particular set of answers indicates a specific diagnosis. But you can create your own decision-making formulas that enable you to intelligently classify each participant based on their answers to your questions.

Get started with Verdicts

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#2 Benchmark Comparisons

Understand how one cohort performed compared to another. Contrast contacts with one characteristic versus contacts of another. See how results from one year differ from results from another. You can do side-by-side comparisons like these and more using the Comparison features available on Makerble.

One definition of impact is the difference you've made compared to what would have happened anyway. With Benchmark Comparisons on Makerble you can create your own benchmarks to compare results against and if you're running a control group or even a randomised controlled trial, you can manage your results on Makerble and see the differences between both groups easily.

Get started with Comparisons

#1 Financial Impact

Money talks. The Financial Value Calculator on Makerble enables you to calculate the Social Value or Social Return on Investment of your initiative. This gives you the evidence to defend your initiative against calls that it isn't sufficient value for money and arguments that it doesn't contribute to the economy. You can add pre-built calculations into Makerble that will automatically sum up the Financial Impact of your initiative based on the number of indicators that have been achieved. Your Financial Impact is updated in real-time.

Get started with Financial Impact

For us, learning is more than just acquiring knowledge - it's about changing the way we think. Every person who joins our team has already shown a willingness to learn and grow. That’s part of why they're here.

When you join our team, we believe in your potential and we're excited for you to contribute to our mission. Our customers rely on our platform to deliver work that often supports the most vulnerable people in society. That’s why we hold ourselves to high standards. We can't let them down.

Feedback as a Tool for Growth

In practice, this means you’ll receive feedback - not to pull you down, but to help you go further. If something isn’t up to standard, whether it's a missed instruction or a mistake (which we all make!), we’ll talk about it openly so you can improve. Likewise, if something isn’t working for you, we encourage you to share that with your manager.

At Makerble, feedback goes both ways. It’s how we grow - individually and together.

The Psychology Behind It

One of the most powerful concepts we draw on is the Growth Mindset - the belief that you can improve with effort and the right support.

By contrast, a Fixed Mindset assumes that your abilities are static. People operating from a fixed mindset often hear feedback as a personal attack: “I’m already doing my best - what more can I do?” This can lead to defensiveness or even giving up.

But when you adopt a growth mindset, feedback becomes like directions on a map - helpful guidance toward where you want to be.

And here’s something important: we’re all complex. You might have a growth mindset in one area (e.g. sports) and a fixed mindset in another (e.g. public speaking). But the good news is, you can always shift your mindset. You can change how you think.

Our CEO's Story

As CEO, I see feedback as fuel. I believe in iteration. I believe that if you keep learning, you can achieve anything.

Growing up, my parents encouraged me to keep trying. I used to struggle with maths. But my dad kept saying I could reach 80%. I didn’t hit that mark straight away - I missed it many times. But I believed I could improve. Eventually, I did. It taught me that I wasn’t limited by past performance - just by my willingness to learn.

Later in my career, I had ideas I wanted to share - but some managers responded defensively or dismissively. One even told me, “You’re not paid to think.” That stuck with me. At Makerble, we don’t want that kind of culture. We want everyone to feel safe offering ideas and feedback - no matter your role.

What It Means at Makerble

We believe that creating a culture of feedback isn’t just good for performance - it’s essential for impact. We work with organisations that are doing vital work in the world, and we owe it to them to keep growing, adapting and learning.

Whether you're a future team member or a potential customer, we want you to know: this is a place where people are encouraged to keep learning - because when we learn, everyone we serve benefits too.

When grassroots connection meets digital innovation

Hundreds of small, under-resourced grassroots organisations across London work tirelessly to support and advocate for marginalised communities. While united by purpose, these organisations are often isolated - stretched thin by limited resources and disconnected from others facing similar challenges.

HEAR Network, alongside partners Inclusion London, Consortium and the Refugee Council, launched NetEquality to change that. Funded by the National Lottery Community Fund, the programme set out to explore how digital tools could foster collaboration, solidarity and more effective campaigning across the equality sector.

To ensure this innovation was having the intended effect, HEAR partnered with Makerble to evaluate the initiative’s impact - and understand how to take it further.

Turning complexity into clarity

The first step was to define a shared vision. Makerble facilitated a Theory of Change workshop with the four partner organisations, crystallising NetEquality’s purpose into four clear goals:

• Helping organisations become more effective by being better resourced
• Designing services that meet the intersectional needs of marginalised people
• Strengthening collaboration between partners
• Creating new, independent ways for grassroots groups to work together

Armed with this clarity, the evaluation process included interviews and a focus group with frontline organisations, an ethnographic approach, and one-to-one conversations with partners. These insights formed a robust, evidence-based picture of where NetEquality was succeeding — and where it needed fine-tuning.

What we found

For grassroots organisations, NetEquality was overwhelmingly positive. Participants felt genuinely listened to and connected with like-minded peers. While the flagship NetMapping tool had teething issues — especially around usability and accessibility — the idea itself struck a chord. Participants appreciated the vision of a central hub where they could find partners, share opportunities, amplify their campaigns and better serve their communities.

For partners, the journey was more complex. Initial enthusiasm gave way to frustration, largely due to a lack of shared direction and uneven communication. But things changed when a project coordinator was hired and Makerble introduced the Theory of Change. From that point, momentum built, and collaboration became more constructive.

The impact

While some features (like the NetMapping tool) are still evolving, the programme left a lasting mark:

• A stronger sense of solidarity among grassroots organisations
• New technical and advocacy skills among participants
• Cross-organisational conversations that sparked fresh ideas and collaborations
• A clearer, shared vision of what digital campaigning and solidarity could look like

Participants left feeling seen, heard and empowered. Many said their involvement gave them the confidence to advocate more strongly for accessibility and inclusion in their own work.

Looking ahead

NetEquality has huge potential — and the evaluation showed there’s a strong appetite for its continuation. Makerble’s report outlined a clear set of next steps: refining the tool with specialist digital support, aligning expectations across partners, and building on the goodwill that now exists within the network.

Above all, the project revealed this: true collaboration across the equality sector doesn’t begin with technology. It begins with trust, shared purpose and a belief that we are stronger together. NetEquality, with the right investment and direction, is poised to be the platform that brings that belief to life.

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What do you do when the programme you’ve built - designed with good intentions, solid funding and motivated mentors - is barely getting 30% of the attendance you hoped for?

At Vital Regeneration, a North West London charity, that was the situation we faced. They were running a programme called Studio+, aimed at getting young people aged 14–19 back into education, employment or training. The hook? Music production. The reality? Young people weren’t turning up.

And those who did, weren’t sticking around.

I was given the project to manage. Here’s how we turned it around - and what you can apply from that transformation for your own organisation.

🎯 The Wake-Up Call

Studio+ had a promising formula on paper: a 10-week music production course paired with literacy, numeracy, and career development. But we quickly realised something was off. Despite the music studio setup and access to industry mentors, young people were voting with their feet.

So, we did what anyone designing for people should do: we asked them.

🔍 What We Learned

We spoke with previous participants - in cafés, on the street, over the phone. What emerged was a disconnect between the promise and the experience. They had signed up to make music. Instead, they felt like they’d ended up back in school - with subjects and structures they’d deliberately left behind.

What they were being taught might have been useful - but it didn’t feel relevant or exciting.

🚀 The Shift: From Programme to Platform

So, we made a bold move.

We repositioned Studio+ from a programme to a platform - from "Come learn" to "Come create".

Instead of being just another course, it became “The Showcase” - a 10-week accelerator to build your own record label and drop your first album.

Every educational element remained - but was reframed:

• Literacy: became interviewing the artists you wanted on your album
• Numeracy: became creating a business plan for your record label
• Career advice: became private sessions with music industry insiders

We stopped trying to get young people to adapt to the programme - and instead, adapted the programme to match what inspired them.

📈 The Results

• The programme became oversubscribed
• Word-of-mouth reached young people outside our borough
• Every participant passed their academic qualification
• The majority moved on to education, employment, or further training

It was the most successful run the Studio+ programme had ever had.

🧠 Playbook Principles: Lessons You Can Use

1. Don’t just communicate value - design for it
If your audience doesn't instinctively see the appeal, you're making them work too hard. Reframe your offer so it feels native to their aspirations—not yours.

2. Ask the people you’re trying to serve
Your programme’s “failure” might not be in the content, but in the context. Talk to participants past and present. Go where they are. Ask real questions.

3. Package learning as purpose-driven
We didn’t remove literacy or numeracy. We wove them into a meaningful mission. When learning feels like a tool for a bigger goal, it stops feeling like school.

4. Make it feel earned, not handed out
Position your programme as aspirational. Young people didn’t want another remedial class - they wanted something that felt like an opportunity worth striving for.

5. Lead with the why, not the what
We stopped saying, “We’ll teach you music production.” We started saying, “You’ll launch your record label.” That shift in narrative made all the difference.

Questions to ask yourself
Think of a programme or service your organisation offers.
🧠 What would happen if you described it as an opportunity rather than an offer?
🎯 How would you reframe it to spark ambition - not obligation?

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If you’re curious about how these kinds of shifts could work in your own organisation, we’d love to chat. Our Impact Evaluation service goes beyond measuring impact - we care about helping you accelerate it.