Stress-Less Leadership

Nadine Greiner

• Publisher: Entrepreneur Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781947308794
• eBook ISBN: 9781613084113
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Emprendimiento

Take Control of Your Life
Say "goodbye" to stress-induced migraines, insomnia, and overall unhappiness. Stress is not a necessary evil. It is not a badge of honor. It is not a way of life. In fact, it's probably leading you to your death. Take control of the pressures at work and at home with actionable strategies and real-world solutions and unlock your potential with Stress-Less Leadership.
Combining her firsthand experience, countless case studies, and deep-dive research, executive coach and CEO Nadine Greiner, PhD will give you the tools you need to conquer the stress that's holding you back. You'll learn how to:

• Melt away your worry by finding the root cause
• Escape your vicious cycle with soothing habits and self-care routines
• Get out of your own way and kick stress out the door
• Maintain the stress level that best fits your lifestyle
• Build happier, healthier relationships in your business and personal life

chapter 1

let’s set the record straight

you’re no stranger to stress. It is a key part of your daily routine. You pride yourself on your ability to cope with it; you wouldn’t have gotten where you are today without that ability. But are you really coping? Are you really conquering stress?

Because stress has become such a big part of your life, it’s easy to dismiss it as normal. While it’s ubiquitous, stress isn’t inevitable. In this chapter, you’ll gain a better understanding of stress. You’ll learn about the common symptoms and causes of stress. You’ll learn how stress affects the workplace. You’ll learn not only how to combat stress but also how to prevent it from derailing your personal and professional life in the first place. Finally, you’ll learn about the benefits of stress (yes, there are some), and most importantly, you’ll learn how to use it to your advantage.

what is stress?

Let’s start with the basics. Stress can be defined as any stimulus that produces a marked and negative stress response in the body. Imagine you awaken from sleep in the middle of the night to the smell of smoke. Your heart pounding and adrenaline pumping, you investigate the source of the smell. If you find a fire that’s small enough to be contained, you’re ready to fight it. If it is too large to tackle, you’re ready to wake your family and flee the house. The stress you experience in these situations depends wholly on external factors.

Stress comes in different flavors. In his 1979 book Stress and the Manager (Touchstone), stress-reduction expert Karl Albrecht defined four common flavors of stress: time stress, anticipatory stress, situational stress, and encounter stress. Let’s unpack each one.

Time stress occurs when people worry about time, or (more likely) the lack thereof. Time-strapped supervisors, managers, and executives are no stranger to this type of stress. They worry about the piles of tasks and activities on their plates. They fear they won’t live up to their potential. Impending deadlines only fuel the time-stress fire.

Anticipatory stress relates to one’s thoughts of the future. Leaders experience anticipatory stress when they voice a concern about a future event (e.g., an upcoming presentation or board meeting), or about the future in general. Remember Murphy’s Law? “If anything can go wrong, it will.”

Situational stress occurs when individuals find themselves in a scary or dangerous situation where they feel they lack control. A house fire is a prime example. In the case of leaders, situational stress often occurs when executives lose face. Their status drops (as the result of a layoff or termination) or they fall out of favor (as the result of a failed presentation or pitch), for example.

Finally, encounter stress occurs when interactions with co-workers, business partners, or other professionals cause feelings of uneasiness. Interacting with a toxic and demeaning boss or with a highly judgmental co-worker can create a ripe breeding ground for encounter stress.

Human reactions to stress are quite remarkable. The stress response is a pattern of bodily reactions that triggers a fight-or-flight response. As Marshall noted earlier, many researchers call the response a “Stone Age” reaction and for good reason. As you probably learned in history class, the fight-or-flight response originated as a survival mechanism that allowed our hunter-gatherer ancestors to respond quickly to life-threatening situations, like a tiger or a pack of wolves. Today, people don’t just experience the fight-or-flight response when their lives are in danger. They experience it constantly. An unexpected late-night email from a boss or customer can easily activate it.

The stress response is created in your brain. When you perceive a threat such as a potential house fire, your amygdala—a group of neurons in your brain—sends an SOS-type distress signal to the hypothalamus, your brain’s command center. This causes you to immediately sense the potential for danger. The hypothalamus then activates the sympathetic nervous system by transmitting signals to the adrenal glands. Adrenaline, cortisol, and norepinephrine (the so-called “stress hormones”) are released. As they flush and circulate throughout your body, they trigger a tsunami of sorts. Your heartbeat escalates, and your blood pressure rises. To fight the perceived threat, a flood of oxygen is transmitted to your brain and your five senses become more discriminating. Sugars and fats are released into your bloodstream for added energy, and the strength of your muscles is enhanced.

While these responses are physical, their cause is subjective. Stress can be real or imagined. It is not based on objective reality. Instead, it’s based on your perceptions and how stress is processed by the brain. A stressor for you may not be a stressor for your co-worker. This means that to some extent, you can choose your stress response by choosing your beliefs about the stressor.

I will always remember the time a client called to tell me he was laid off from his job. I immediately said I was sorry to hear that. He replied that he was in fact delighted because he was thinking about leaving anyway and just needed a push. So to some extent, events are neutral. It is your own beliefs about the event that bring on a positive response or a negative stress response. In other words, it’s your belief system that codes you to respond as an optimist or a pessimist.

are you an optimist or a pessimist?

Optimists focus on finding the positive in life. They are future-oriented and see each day as a new opportunity. They tend to thrive in adversity and look at obstacles as challenges. This doesn’t mean that optimists never have a bad day. It just means their first impulse is to find the positives that surround them.

Pessimists, on the other hand, are prone to see the negatives in life. They often don’t feel like they are in control of their fate. They tend to focus on past events and often see themselves at the mercy of their environment. Unlike optimists, who are usually looking for possibilities, pessimists often look for problems. They tend to take situations personally. Take the quiz in Figure 1.1 on page 5 to see how you fare.

when does stress become harmful?

People often associate stress with its harmful effects. This type of stress is called distress, and it triggers negative cognitive, behavioral, and physical consequences. Stress can also have a stimulating effect. This type of stress is called eustress. Eustress can be triggered when a person encounters a new experience, like working with a new team or starting a new job. The desire to succeed at something often triggers stress. While the stress you experience when encountering new opportunities and challenges can make you anxious, the positive aspects of the situation often outweigh the ill effects.

FIGURE 1.1 quiz: are you an optimist or a pessimist?

Think about a time when you felt on top of the world. Perhaps you were given a standing ovation after delivering a keynote speech. Perhaps someone complimented you on making a presentation or for your contributions in a meeting. Perhaps you won first prize in a triathlon or completed your first 5K run. How did you feel before the event? You probably felt invigorating butterflies in your gut. This is eustress.

What determines whether stress results in distress or eustress? At what point does a challenge, opportunity, or event morph into a stressful situation? It turns out there is an important inflection point. According to the Yerkes-Dodson law, an individual’s performance increases with some level of stress but only up to a point. After stress reaches a point of optimal arousal, performance decreases, as you can see in Figure 1.2 on page 6.

The exact shape of the curve may be slightly different than the one shown here. As you can see in Figure 1.2, your position on the curve varies based on the complexity and familiarity of the task. Difficult or unfamiliar tasks demand higher levels of arousal and result in taller peaks.

FIGURE 1.2 yerkes-dodson law¹

How do you know when you’ve hit the inflection point? This requires some work on your part. Pin down the exact moment when you first felt unable to meet a challenge—that’s when you reached the top of the stress mountain.

For example, imagine that your boss has just assigned you to a new project. Shortly afterward, you realize you don’t have the resources to execute it properly. Perhaps you haven’t been given enough funding or enough manpower. What’s certain is that you’re destined for failure, and despite your valiant attempts to secure additional resources, you’re given the cold shoulder. This type of environment is the perfect breeding ground for stress. You feel hopeless and the problem seems beyond your control. These two characteristics are common to almost all stressful situations: fear of an unsuccessful outcome and a sense that the situation is beyond your control.

chronic vs. acute stress

In many cases, stress is short-lived and lasts only as long as the stress-inducing project or event. Once you’ve completed the project or the event has concluded, your stress levels return to normal. You breathe a sigh of relief as your body recuperates. This is an example of acute or short-term stress. Delivering a presentation at work, for example, is a source of acute stress.

Your body is built to handle short bursts of high stress during emergencies. It’s not meant to cope with stress over long periods of time. When stressful conditions endure, your body begins to break down. When stress hormones are released consistently over the span of days, weeks, or even months, they begin to upset the delicate balance of bodily processes. If your company is getting squashed by the competition or experiencing a nosedive in revenue, this may create a constant source of ongoing stress. This type of stress is no longer acute. It is considered chronic or long-term stress. Take the quiz in Figure 1.3 below to see what kind of stress you have.

FIGURE 1.3 quiz: is your stress chronic or acute?

The effects of acute and chronic stress can be vast. Stress has been shown to play a role in everything from the common cold to cancer. As sophisticated as our cognitive processes are, humans are still mammals with mammalian bodies. Cortisol is a key contributor to many stress effects, suppressing the functions that your body considers unnecessary in an emergency, while it shifts all its resources toward dealing with the life-threatening event. Stress impacts many bodily systems, including the respiratory system, the cardiovascular system, the nervous system, and even the reproductive system.

Like the types of stress, the effects of stress come in many different flavors. They can be grouped into four primary buckets: cognitive, emotional, physical, and behavioral effects.

cognitive effects of stress

I chose to label this section “cognitive” rather than “thinking” because, although it can sound quite clinical, cognition encompasses much more than thought. It encompasses all the mental processes you are not aware of. It’s kind of like your heart beating whether or not you are thinking about it.

Stress can tak...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Introduction: Challenge Accepted
• Chapter 1: Let’s Set the Record Straight
• Chapter 2: Your Stress Self-Assessment
• Chapter 3: A Holistic Approach to Stress Management
• Chapter 4: Introducing Your Five-Finger Action Plan to Wave Away Stress
• Chapter 5: The Cognitive Finger
• Chapter 6: The Emotional Finger
• Chapter 7: The Interpersonal Finger
• Chapter 8: The Physical Finger
• Chapter 9: The Spiritual Finger
• Chapter 10: A Call for Action Beyond You and Me
• Chapter 11: Your Path to Recovery
• Chapter 12: Your Iron Fortress Against Stress
• Chapter 13: Build Resilience: Become the Bendable Bamboo
• Chapter 14: Mission Accomplished With the Four “I”s
• Endnotes
• About the Author
• Index
• Entrepreneur. Voices on Effective Leadership