Stress: a friend or a foe?

Today’s newsletter is discussing the subject of stress. We’ve all been there: our work environments and tasks have led us sooner or later to feeling stressed and anxious. If used in moderation, stress can be a powerful tool.

However, too many work environments are built around the idea that if’s not making you feel anxious and question your skills, it’s not real work (shoutout any Big 4 company).

I’m happy to start the conversation around stress management today.

And I left a small surprise for you all in the Quality Content Section.

Razmatazz without the matazz

Introduction

All of my past experiences carved how I lead today. I am not regretting the fact that I developed horizontally, trying out different things and deciding what I want to pursue. We are complex and complete individuals, with a chance to redefine who we are every day. Going through tougher moments taught me lessons that helped me grow.

On the road of development, I am happy that I have now built strong stress management techniques that can ensure there are no downfalls for the sake of delivering something. Everything is done remembering that we are more than our work or productivity.

As leaders, we have the unique opportunity to help others grow naturally, and in a healthy environment. One that does not lead us to burnout. Every day, you can consciously choose to shape a better environment for your team. Allow them to go beyond what they think they are capable of, while staying on the fine line between comfort and discomfort. Facilitate growth driven by vision and strategy, rather than stress and urgency.

Objectives

Subject

Unhealthy work environments consider stress an expected part of the workplace. Being able to soar through very intense situations is worn as a medal of honour. Some stress at work is to be expected; but prolonged periods of intensity are a problem that leaders need to address. Such stress is harmful to employees’ health and to business performance.

Our upbringings have taught all of us how to handle acute stress, the temporary stress that comes with a major event, and using it to our advantage. However, we do not have the same mechanism formed for chronic stress, which comes from working in a continuously stressful environment.

How? A range of costly consequences for workers and employers often result from issues engendered by long-term coping in high-stress work environments, such as, but not limited to:

Framework

Learning how to manage stress and how to use it in favour of your team development is a core leadership skill. The approach should be two fold: managing the stress of our teams, and our own stress as leaders. In the rush of creating deliverables, handling stress can fall on the second plan for unaware leaders. It’s never a problem of time, but rather of prioritisation. Allowing your teams to work in highly stressful environments for the sake of delivering is unsustainable and damaging.

I have compiled a framework on the most effective options for handling stress by putting together the recommended options from multiple experts, together with my own expertise on the topic. The majority of culture failures I have seen in leadership have all been due to prioritising delivering products over correctly managing stress for the long run. I will emphasise again: investing time and space into stress management ripples over all the responsibilities of your team.

Leadership can take a toll on the best of us. I personally struggled with stress the most when my managers were not handling their stress properly. Instead of handling their own emotional intelligence and reactivity to difficult situations, they instead transmitted all their stress to ourselves, the team members. No matter how strategically or how effectively you manage your business, at the end of the day, if you don’t learn to take care of yourself, you could be accelerating the stress levels of yourself and everyone around you.

Final thoughts

Business leaders of small businesses or startups often face the brunt of leadership as they struggle to keep their company profitable and the team motivated. It requires quite a strong mind to juggle multiple demands in a day’s time and pretty soon, before they know it, these leaders work over 50 hours a week to get things rolling. Without stopping and understanding how intense their days are, they may reframe stress filled working hours as the normal.

Avoiding the stress trap is surely not an easy task for someone who takes their leadership role seriously. However, being able to prioritise mental well-being and physical health over other tasks is an important step that leaders must take if they want to remain effective and positive. It takes conscious effort, practice, and the willingness to improve your life to deal with stress and to prevent it from disrupting your life and your business.

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Quality content

Our minds tend to become very busy and scattered during stressful situations. Having access to a platform such as Headspace, with guided meditations, tools for better sleep and managing difficult situations, alongside general help for our minds is a priviledge.

By engaging in meditation, we can maintain our groundedness, cultivate self-awareness, and learn to skillfully navigate the pressures and anxieties that life presents in a healthy manner.

And hey, if you feel like you’re not ready to harness your mind to yet, using Headspace for their “The Wake Up” section will 100% change your relationship with your device in the morning.

That’s all for today! See you next week!