The document provides a 5-step process for leaders to manage stress and increase their leadership effectiveness. The steps are: 1) Identify specific stressors, 2) Determine if stress is helpful or harmful, 3) Shift focus from stress to progress, 4) Increase leadership capacity and impact, 5) Avoid passing stress to team and build momentum. It discusses how stress can be a useful signal if managed properly, but too much stress is unhealthy and can negatively impact leadership.
2. 2
Opportunity:
Extract the value from stress, but
experience and convey less of it.
1. Identify your specific stressors to
better manage them
2. Determine when stress is
sabotaging or beneficial
3. Shift your focus from stress to
progress more quickly
4. Increase your capacity to lead and
your impact
5. Avoid passing stress on to your
team and build their momentum
instead
3. Work can push all our buttons:
Need to achieve
Fear of failing
Pressure to perform
Reliance on others to perform
Other people’s styles and habits
Self doubt and recrimination
Overwhelm
Money anxiety
Obligations to others
But it also signals what needs
our attention… if we listen.
4. A little history on stress…
The term “stress” was coined by Hans Selye in 1936, who
defined it as “the non-specific response of the body to
any demand for change”.
Stress quickly became a buzzword. Some used it to refer to an overbearing
or bad boss or some other unpleasant situation. For others it referred to the
form of chest pain, heartburn, headache or palpitations people experienced
in reaction to hard situations. Others used stress to refer to what they
perceived as the end result of these repeated responses, such as an ulcer or
heart attack.
A 1951 issue of the British Medical Journal noted, “Stress in addition to
being itself, was also the cause of itself, and the result of
itself.”
Selye was not aware that stress had been used for centuries in physics to
explain elasticity, the property of a material that allows it to resume its
original size and shape after having been compressed or stretched by an
external force. As expressed in Hooke’s Law of 1658, the magnitude of an
external force, or stress, produces a proportional amount of deformation, or
strain, in a malleable metal.
This created even more confusion as research had to be translated into
foreign languages. There was no suitable word or phrase that could convey
Selve meant – which was really strain. In 1946, academicians responsible for
maintaining the purity of the French language decided that a new word
would have to be created. Le stress was born, quickly followed by el stress, il
stress, lo stress, der stress in other European languages, and similar
neologisms in Russian, Japanese, Chinese and Arabic.
Source of text and image: http://www.stress.org/what-is-stress/
5. I hate my job and I don’t
like you much either.
When stress talks for us,
we don’t operate at our best.
6. I just need your team goals??
to align to my goals.
This has nothing to do
with our work – he’s
clueless!
When stress drives our actions,
How was I supposed to
know these were our
we are less effective and observant leaders.
8. Stress Spectrum
Good Stress Distress
Stress Level
Performance
THE HUMP
Healthy
tension
Comfort
zone
Fatigue
Exhaustion
Health risk
Breakdown
http://www.stress.org/what-is-stress/
9. Stress can tell us what needs attention and work, what
needs to be resolved or improved. When viewed as a tool,
it can amplify our leadership effectiveness.
10. While too much stress
can make us unhealthy,
our response
to stress is often the
bigger problem.
(Thinking stress is a problem can
create a problem.)
12. Stress Response Escalation
What do you feel?
• Hot flush
• Clenched jaw
• Tense shoulders
• Shallow breathing
or holding breath
• Sweat
• Exasperation
• Sadness or crying
• Fatigue
What is your
immediate
response?
• Anger
• Rage
• Blame transfer
• Recrimination
• Rejection
• Aversion
• Frustration
What are your
reactive
behaviors?
• Impatience
• Lash out
• Raised voice
• Visible frustration
• Unkindness
• Cut people off or
out
• Berate or belittle
• Convey blame
What is the
consequence of
your reactive
behaviors?
• Mistrust
• Hurt feelings
• Missed facts
• Culture corrosion
• Misunderstanding
• Attrition
• Disengagement
• Recovery cycles
Sensation
Reaction
Behavior
Impact
13. Know Your Work Stressors
What triggers or amplifies your stress?
Stressors at work can be compounded by stressors from home.
Physical
¨ Lack of sleep
¨ Hunger
¨ Lack of exercise
¨ Poor health
Personal
¨ Kid challenges
¨ Partner issues
¨ Family member health scare
¨ Financial challenges
Work
¨ Lack of control or facts
¨ Being blindsided or surprised
¨ Ever-changing priorities and constant shifting
¨ Lack of accomplishment
¨ Misalignment or resistance on the team
¨ Pressure to deliver without the capacity
¨ Sense of impending failure with no obvious path
to recover
¨ Coworkers or team members that exacerbate or
amplify our stressors
14. Stress Awareness Can Bring Insights & Enable
Thoughtful Action & Communication
Sensation
OBSERVE
1. Without reacting to
the sensation,
observe your physical
response to stress.
2. Be curious about it
without trying to
escape or reject it.
3. Don’t rush into
reaction mode;
intercept the
emotional reaction.
Breathe….
Reaction Behavior Impact
DISTILL
1. Separate the
sensation from the
facts.
2. What is the trigger?
Is it an authentic
business problem?
What are the facts or
are you missing
facts? Clinically look
at the facts and
triggers for their
business value.
3. If you need fresh air
or a night’s sleep,
give yourself the time
– before acting.
PLAN
1. Rather than react to
your discomfort,
consider the best
course of action for
the business.
2. What action is
appropriate for the
facts (including the
fact that you don’t
have the facts)?
3. Decide what course
correction is needed
to address the root
business issue.
ACT
1. Making institutional
change is often less
work than the cycle of
reaction/recovery – for
you and the team.
2. Communicate the
change needed to
address the root
business issue.
3. Incorporate methods
to sustain the change
if the root issue or
stressor is chronic.
Pause
Pause
15. Choose Where Your Attention & Energy Go
OBJECT ACTION
Spin cycle Resolution path
16. Practice Helps
Build physical awareness to detect the stress response faster
(before reacting to it)
1. Several times a week, begin your day with mindfulness practice.
Sit comfortably and quietly for 2 to 5 minutes; observe the feelings and sensations that
arise. Identify them and let them go; notice that they arise and dissipate without any
effort on your part. Getting more familiar with this cycle
2. Prevent stress magnifiers such as lack of sleep, hunger or lack of exercise.
Recognize how these conditions amplify anxieties – so be more vigilant about when they
exist. Schedule meetings or work stressor activities when you are most likely to be
successful; moving a meeting to after lunch or after getting a briefing on key facts may
be more efficient that recovering when the meeting goes badly!
17. Practice Helps
3. Notice your physical response day to day.
Next time you trip, you’re running late, you’re startled or other purely physical stressor,
observe what happens immediately – it’s a great opportunity to observe the rise in
blood pressure, flush, faster breathing and other physical stress changes. This
observation will help you detect the same response to work stressors and intercept your
automatic reaction.
4. When you sense stress rising beyond your comfort zone, stop and step out of the
environment.
A short walk and fresh air create space to process the sensation without acting on it
impulsively. Pre-empt stress breakdowns in situations you know will be challenging, by
taking the walk before the meeting or trigger event.
5. Remember you can choose what you give attention and energy to.
Make a conscious effort to shift your attention from the stress object to thoughtful, fact-based
action. Rather than viewing stress as a problem, view it as a tool. Sometimes
this simple shift in perception produces great relief!
18. Over time, the stress sensation shrinks and the
time from stress to best action gets shorter
OBJECT
ACTION
Spin cycle Resolution path
19. Know What Makes You Happy
What aspects of work do you enjoy most?
¨ Clarity on the purpose for your efforts
¨ Sense of accomplishment
¨ Succeeding as a team
¨ Overcoming obstacles
¨ Coaching and mentoring
¨ Sense of camaraderie
¨ Balanced challenges
¨ Knowing you make a difference for customers or the organization
¨ __________________________________________________________
¨ __________________________________________________________
20. Take responsibility for your experience:
Create or cultivate the conditions for
enjoyment and satisfaction.
21. With a more clinical view of the root business issue,
evaluate whether the entire team experiences the
same triggers and stress.
22. To reduce stressors for the entire
team, institutionalize these:
ü Clear goals and
expectations
ü Transparency culture
ü Alignment practices
ü Individual accountability
ü Shared commitments
ü Discipline to prioritize
ü Consistent, constructive
feedback
23. Changing habitual and instinctive
responses takes willpower.
It won’t happen
overnight; you won’t
get it right every time.
But you can do better over time!
1. Recognize the business and career
benefits of higher awareness
2. Commit to changing your pattern
3. Build skill catching yourself at the
physical change and lengthening
the pause before acting.
4. Value your progress and awareness.
24. Want More Alignment & Transparency to Reduce
Stress across The Team?
My Individual
To Do List
Progress
Transparency
Team’s Goals &
Priorities
Get Workboard, a free app for teams that:
1. Links the ubiquitous “to do” list with team goals and priorities
2. Simplifies prioritization and calibration
3. Automates status reports and provides team transparency
4. Enables consistent, constructive feedback
… less mystery and drama, more achievement.
25. 25
The Zen of Achievement
…or Zen and Achievement!
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