What are common stressors for leaders and how can you address them?

Notice the resonance from activities / interactions. You can tune into your body’s sensations, breathing and if any thoughts are coming up what are they . This can give insight into what makes you more or less stressed. You might find after tasty nutrition, sleep , tuning into your breathing stress reduces and there is space for solutions and action plans . Also practise acknowledging what is working it is not always about eliminating but by maintaining what works well .

Quality sleep, aligned with the circadian rhythm, is critical to manage stress (and anxiety). Continuous 6.5 to 8 hours of sleep between 10 pm to 630am (approx) helps in stress management, reduces anxiety and also manages emotional pain (For perspective, the Rapid Eye Movement stage helps in managing the emotions experienced through-out the day).

The stressors are the people that you work with, and for, who have stressful patterns that get leaked through to you, and the past people in your life whose patterns you are still copying. When I was studying for QTLS I had to take an extra position teaching in a second school, so as to have practice teaching age 14+. It was hard enough doing the studies for QTLS, and teaching in both schools, which have very different cultures and teaching styles, as well as a whole new subject matter to teach, but the most stressful thing (or maybe the tip of the icing!) was the students. I wrote down the names of each student, and did FasterEFT to let go of the stress I was feeling relative to the way they looked, or their stance. It helped enormously.

Leaders face unique stressors, including high expectations, decision-making pressure, work-life balance challenges, employee issues, and uncertainty. To effectively address these stressors, leaders can delegate responsibilities to capable team members, seek support through mentorship or coaching for improved decision-making, prioritize self-care to maintain work-life balance, foster open and empathetic communication to resolve employee matters, develop adaptability strategies to navigate change, efficiently manage their time, and integrate stress-reduction techniques into their routines. Connecting with peers for support and insights is also valuable.

An interesting tool when you have identified the situations in order to dig deeper to identify your internal stressors, to get to know yourself better is to get a coaching, I personally prefer the systemic constellation coaching. As you progress quite fast and and is always solution oriented as well as ist triggers always your blind spots. You definitly get to know yourself better and better.

Using curiosity to challenge and reframe stress provoking thoughts can also be an effective emotions management technique. While you can’t change a situation (exposure to a stressor), you can change your interpretation of the situation in a way that reduces the intensity of the unpleasant emotion.

Again, everything else being equal, the individual who can manage natural 6.5 to 8 hours of sleep (in line with the circadian rhythm) can leverage the Rapid Eye Movement sleep stage to address emotional imbalance! It is simple !

Delegation through work-processes can be of great help. Personally, I recommend the urgent-important matrix (Source: Dr. Stephen Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Successful People) methodology to prioritize.

Get support, outside of your organisation, not family or friends, so it’s objective, is a great strategy for handling the potential stresses of being a leader. It’s a space where as a leader, you can be candid and speak freely. Finding someone who can be a sounding board and offers you different perspectives as well as ways to deal with internal biases and stresses too, will give you immense value. I’d suggest not going for a ‘peer’, as it can become a stress mirror. Instead, pick someone who has mentoring skills and is able to provide you with personal development tools that will assist you in all areas of life. And, always remember it doesn’t matter what your position in your organisation is, you aren’t a superhero. Let support in!

Humming and breath-management can help in tough situations. The process creates a "pause" before the reaction and once the pause is leveraged to calm the mind, the reaction can be more effective.