Stress is the body’s natural response to demands, pressures, and challenges, whether they come from real situations or perceived circumstances.
When feeling stressed, the brain releases hormones that both narrow focus and heighten anxiety.
Stress becomes harmful when it’s intense, frequent, or long-lasting. When leaders are in that state, it affects nearly every system in the body and mind, producing fatigue, worry, irritability, poor concentration, and an inability to make sharp decisions.
High stress lowers productivity and increases errors and mistakes. While a modest amount of stress can sometimes increase alertness and motivate people to act, it is never something people want too much of.
Everyone experiences the negative effects of stress. The question is: Why do some people feel so much more of it than others?
Some people are born with more reactive nervous systems and a brain chemistry that can make stress responses stronger and more long-lasting.
Experiences can also heighten or lessen stress. For example, trauma can train the nervous system to stay on high alert and produce stress.
Past exposure to unpredictable situations makes modest challenges more threatening. Stress worsens when people feel powerless or trapped. Lack of sleep and limited downtime also amplify stress.
Over time, stress wears people down.
For leaders, a high need for control increases stress. The need for control shifts the way leaders focus on potential risks and obstacles.
Because controlling leaders want everything to go perfectly, they overthink every choice and action that can produce a less favorable outcome. This magnifies any threat to high performance and makes normal challenges feel overwhelming.
So, what makes some leaders so much better at handling and feeling less stress?
Optimism is the magic bullet.
The disciplined belief that progress is always possible and opportunity exists in any challenge regulates feelings of stress.
And here’s the good news: Research has proven that optimism is a learned skill. How stress is experienced and managed can be changed with an optimistic mindset.
In the struggle between reality and stress, optimism prevails.
A Daily Dispatch from the Front Lines of Leadership.
