When we're under extreme stress, our creative problem solving is blocked and we depend too much on our fight or flight instincts instead. To be effective as a leader, you need to take back control of your mind by distinguishing work pressure from unhealthy stress and managing challenges before they get out of hand.

Read on: blog.WednesdayWin.com​

Read time: 5 minutes

As you build a new organization or rise through the ranks as an employee, the demands on your attention, capabilities, decision-making, and time can feel overwhelming. How you keep those pressures from boiling over into unhealthy stress is one of the most important and least discussed essential skills for any effective manager to develop.

Let's dive in:

1. Pressure vs stress

I separate the external and internal drivers that add to our overall professional anxiety by splitting them into pressure or stress.

Pressure comes from external demands like delivery deadlines, commitments we have made to customers or colleagues, available work hours, and any number of requests or assignments we are obligated to address. Pressure can also include family expectations, volunteer requests, and more.

Stress is instead internally-generated. These are the deadlines we impose on ourselves, expectations for career advancement, milestones for our business, health and fitness expectations, worries over future income or expenses, negative comparisons with others, personal and family committments we want to make, and other elements that add to our anxiety based on what expectations we are setting for ourselves or feel obligated to accept.

Understanding the difference and becoming more aware of when the anxiety is caused by elements we cannot control and those where we have flexibility to adjust is an important first step to improve our mental state.

• Which obligations have been set by others and which are self-imposed?
• What external priorities can be released or changed?
• Don't confuse someone's external ask with an internal commitment.
• Your time is your most precious resource; don't let others claim it without careful consideration

2. Reduce your stress

Any worthwhile endeavor is going to challenge leaders with moments of pressure-induced stress: unexpected challenges, accelerated timelines, errors and omissions, or even just some bad luck. The key to weathering those storms successfully start with reducing your baseline stress to be ready to handle those exceptional events.

One of the healthiest ways: take command of your schedule. Choose the pain of tackling the toughest tasks when you are at your most resilient. For most, that means first thing in the morning, but adjust to fit your best hours of the day and days of the week or month. Be ruthless in addressing those biggest challenges at those best times and then enjoy the benefits for most of your schedule.

Be ready to say "no" to requests you can't or won't be able to address. Delegate wherever possible and develop the kind of team that can take on more of the work that's keeping you from a reasonable schedule. All challenges are better handled when they first emerge instead of once they're already late and neglected. Learn to deliver disappointment early instead of high drama disaster later.

Your key actions:

• Embrace a simple prioritization of your time. What must you do? What's hardest for you? Prioritize it and close it out as fast as you can. Choose your pain upfront and enjoy the relief over time
• Learn to delegate effectively. That may be to your team, but often that can also include re-distributing off-target asks to other teams or colleagues. Just don't let it fester; move it on quickly
• Prioritize your health: sleep, exercise, and healthy eating all help maintain a good baseline for fending off stress
• Spend time away from work. Don't skip out on vacation, family and friends time, and social engagements

3. Reduce your team's stress

Remember what a team expects from their leader: set clear vision, direction, and expectations while clearing blockers that can impede progress. Provide those primary elements along with a genuine appreciation for good work when delivered.

Honor the golden keys of team management: praise in public and correction in private. Regularly celebrate standout work and show that you both expect and appreciate exceeding a high bar.

In all of that, don't forget that your team also has desires and priorities outside of the workplace. Be relentless in your standards but kind in your humanity. Help your team when they need to care for family members, respond to challenges, or address personal crises that may not fall neatly into non-working hours.

• Clearly communicate priorities and expectations, but allow for the individual creativity of your team to identify the best ways to deliver
• As a manager, be flexible in work styles and logistics without lowering standards and expectations
• Maintain a healthy work environment & support resources like Employee Assistance Programs where possible
• Be a leader first and a manager second

4. Building a long-term healthy culture

Beyond not overextending your team day to day, if you keep a long-term focus, you can build a team that can maintain high level performance over the long term.

Much as you hire a team to complete a job for the company, each team member is hiring the job to help them advance in some ways in their career, too. Income, knowledge, and experience are all important elements of a particular role.

Make your team and your organization a favored place by encouraging each person's professional development through training, access to opportunities, and recognition for successful project completion.

One of the greatest challenges for many new managers is the acceptance that some team members--often the strongest contributors--may graduate out of the available roles and need to move to a new team or even a new company to continue to their professional journey. Trying to hold back those staff sends a destructive message to the rest of the team. Celebrate personal successes and you see more of your team pushing for high results.

• Support professional development and encourage opportunities to showcase achievements
• Reward successes that align with the mission
• Celebrate those who excel even when that means a short term loss for the team
• Acknowledge that not every employee is on the same path that you would choose for them
• Your goal as a leader should be to keep creating more effective leaders

Action Summary

Finding peace in a challenging workplace starts with taking command of your own priorities and being careful with makes the cut. Delegate where you can. Say "no" to non-priorities. And, find time to reflect and recharge.

Empower your team to create a healthy workplace for themselves and celebrate their wins to reinforce that positive environment. Be a strong leader, but don't lose your compassion.

Think about the long-term so that you are developing a self-sustaining culture of healthy operations focused on high standards.

• Take command of your time to reduce external pressures
• Be an active manager of your own stress by finding healthy outlets and keeping your focus positive
• Help your team by preventing needless stress and focusing energy on the core mission instead
• Reinforce healthy habits over time to build a positive culture that creates more leaders to help you scale out what you've learned.

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What do you think? Is stress the inevitable result from pressure or do you believe in another way? Reply to this email and let me know.

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To your success,

Christopher

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P.S. Like this one? You'll probably want to check out this earlier Wednesday Win essay on how to decide when to quit or when to push through resistance, too.

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