How Can Leaders Help Their Teams To Better Manage Stress?
Stress is both a good and a bad thing. Some level of stress in the workplace is almost unavoidable and – in fact – helps to drive performance. Yet prolonged levels of intense stress can have damaging long-term physical and mental consequences for employees.
Leaders can play a key role in managing the stress levels of their team. So, what should they be doing to alleviate stress, especially given the increasingly dispersed nature of the workforce?
For International Stress Awareness Day, five experts share their top tips for managing stress in teams:
1. Encourage a culture of collaboration
Collaboration is key for managing workplace stress, argues Adam Strong, entrepreneur and author of Play the Game. “To get the best out of people, you have to create a culture that makes your team feel part of something, that they are making a difference in the world,” he says. “They need to feel a sense of belonging.”
A large part of this is leading by example, making sure you’re collaborating with others, and asking for help yourself when you need it. “You have to learn to let go and empower others, let your team take some of the responsibilities and burden of running a business,” Strong explains.
Encouraging interdependence from the top down encourages people to feel comfortable about flagging when they’re stressed, asking for help when they need it, holding each other accountable for unhealthy working behaviors, and working together on stress management techniques.
2. Use technology to help – but be aware of its impact
“The last year has taught organizations across the board that technology can help them overcome challenges, but it’s important that they couple this with integrating digital health to prevent ‘technostress’ from taking hold,” argues Oliver Grig, operations director at Gallery Partnership, an IT service provider for charities.
Instant chat and productivity tools are useful to keep people connected, which helps to manage team stress. But Grig highlights that increased reliance on technology in the workplace can reinforce an ‘always on’ mentality if instant messaging services are constantly accessible and leaders are active at all hours, thereby exacerbating the stress of their team.
Grig encourages leaders to provide staff with separate work devices to aid work-life balance. “If an organization is not able to purchase work laptops and phones for everyone, implementing remote desktops that require a login draws a more physical distinction and keeps work-related documents, messages and systems in a separate area after hours.”
3. Be trusting
Do not underestimate how much your team values the level of trust you place in them, says Margo Manning, a leadership and management consultant and author of The Step-Up Mindset for Senior Managers. “Continuing to hold on to previous responsibilities after a promotion suggests that you do not trust your new team,” she warns. “This invariably leads to resentment, frustration, a breakdown of confidence and ultimately elevated stress levels.”
Manning advises managers to question exactly why they are not passing responsibilities on. “It may be that they actually don’t trust their team to carry out the responsibilities. They may consider them inferior in terms of skillset, or maybe their attitude isn’t up to scratch. Maybe their standards aren’t the same, or they won’t do it the same way as the manager would. For the most part though, these are just excuses to hold on to a task that comforts and is reassuring.”
To tackle this problem, Manning suggests that managers should take steps to compare existing abilities with required capabilities. “An exploratory exercise that is based on facts and explores what a team is capable of carrying out often leads to the manager noting that their perception of the team’s capabilities was incorrect.”
4. Recognize the impact of the external factors
“The most effective leaders at managing stress will be those who actively recognize what has happened to their people while they’ve been away from the office over the past year,” observes John McLachlan, organizational psychologist and co-founder of Monkey Puzzle Training and Consultancy. “You cannot expect everyone to return to the office invigorated when stress levels have been so high.”
He continues: “Leaders should be aware of the language they use. Some employees might be excited to return to the office, others more anxious, so leaders need to not push their own emotions onto the situation. To manage ongoing stress issues and prevent them from getting worse, it is important to have open discussions, allow time to adjust to any changes, be vigilant on the physical and behavioral signs of burnout, and offer wellbeing coaching and support.”
5. Take time to understand team members
Everyone thinks in different ways, notes Teresa Boughey, founder of consultancy Inclusion 247 and author of the Accelerating Inclusion Research report. In the same way, what is a trigger for one person’s stress response will not be a trigger for someone else’s. This is why leaders need to understand themselves and also the personality preferences of team members.
Insights Discovery, a psychometric tool that uses four color energies, can be really helpful for spotting signs of stress, according to Boughey. She says: “Those who identify as Fiery Red may become stressed when pace of activity becomes too slow and may start to micromanage, whereas Sunshine Yellow might take on too much as they like to be involved and become frantic and unfocused. Cool Blue could become stressed if they are pressed to make decisions too quickly as they like to be more reflective and thorough. Earth Green individuals are values-driven and prefer harmony so can become stressed if they feel that their values are becoming impinged.”
If leaders and their teams understand each other, they are more likely to spot signs of stress and tension early. “Where there is a culture of psychological safety, employees feel safe to share concerns,” Boughey concludes.
Under pressure
Ultimately, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to managing stress as we all react to it differently. Nevertheless, the five tips above are a useful starting point for leaders who want to help their teams keep their cool when workplace life starts to heat up.
Sally Percy