Seven Simple Stress-Busters for Leaders

A business school professor once told me that, "the job of a leader is to remove stress from his or her employees." I disagreed by saying, "I think one of the jobs of a leader is to help his or her employees manage stress for optimal performance." How well do you help your team manage stress throughout the day? PepsiCo's former CEO, Steve Reinemund made it his mission to "light a fire in every individual to grow as a person." (1) During his tenure, company sales increased by more than $9 billion, net profits climbed more than 70%, and earnings per share increased by 80%. Steve understood that personal growth leads to professional growth, which creates organizational growth, which in turn yields financial growth. However, growth creates stress. Too much stress creates panic. Too little stress generates apathy. The key is to find the optimal amount of stress without going over the edge. One way to do this is to look at stress on the stress performance curve seen below:

1. The Entitled - when leaders allow their team to perform at this level, there is very little stress and minimal performance. People who perform at this level over a long period begin to feel this is their comfort zone and seldom achieve peak performance.
2. The Performer - when leaders provided the right kind of stress and the proper amount, they achieve optimal performance.
3. The ‘soon-to-be burned out’ Performer - when leaders allow their team members to experience the wrong kind of stress or too much of it, the people will perform, but soon they'll be over the edge.
4. The Anxious - if a leader allows the team to experience too much stress for too long, people become entrenched and performance inevitably declines.

The stress performance curve illustrates what you need to do on a daily basis - keep people in performance zone B or get them to zone B. Here are several tips to do just that, especially when your teams are going through the stress of change:

1. Involve your team in decisions so they feel they have some control.
2. Communicate what is changing, why it’s changing, and what's NOT changing.
3. Encourage team members to perform stress-relieving activities every day such as walking, meditating, stretching, laughing...
4. Keep the big picture and long-term in mind as you take small steps on projects.
5. Explain where each person fits into the new change.
6. Ask your team to create norms to help them manage the stress.
7. If there is a sudden or unexpected change at work that pulls your emotional trigger, try the following, evidence-based, instant stress busters (2):
   • Take a mental time out so you can temporarily disengage.
   • Imagine you’re breathing through an area around your heart.
   • Create a positive feeling by imagining a positive event.
   • Ask yourself what effective attitude or action could you consider now.

These are just a few of the leadership stress busters that help leaders manage the day-to-day stress of change. What tools have you found useful? Keep on stretching when you're pulled, Dave

1. Robert Rosen, Just Enough Anxiety, American Management Association’s MWorld, Summer 2008, page 44 -- 47.
2. Bruce Cryer, Rollin MCraty, and Doc Childre, Pull the Plug on Stress, Harvard Business Review, July 2003, page 102 -- 107.