What do you do if your team is experiencing high levels of stress and needs open dialogue?

There are specific moments in teamwork in which stress loads are high. If this is circumstantial or circumstantial, with well-led conversations, the well-being of the team can be recovered, mainly by understanding the purpose of why it is necessary at this time to carry these stressors. But if the stress is chronic, no open conversation will mitigate the damage to the health of the team members: burnout.

I big part of of creating an environment and culture of openness is to build trust. When stress is growing the last thing you want from your team is for them to hold it back from you as a leader. You should work to create an environment and atmosphere of openness and trust. A good way to do this is to show your vulnerability related to stress, even going as far as to show your stress management techniques that you use regularly (if you don't have your own it is probably a good time to start). This shows your team that talking about stress, where it is, what it is, and how to handle it is safe and accepted. When we give trust (being vulnerable) then others feel they can trust as well.

For an open dialogue to exist, you must have developed high levels of psychological safety in your team (Amy Edmonson). It is the perception that you can express divergent ideas without psychosocial risk of punishment or reprimand. Without psychological safety, team members are afraid to make their voices heard.

By discussing with the team, what needs to be done and how to get it done, making them comfortable in every/ any situation by guiding them and make them feeling you are with them. Definately by doing this they will perform beyond our expectations.

If there is a history of open, empathetic conversations focused on win-win strategies, people feel safe to express themselves. Some will use that safety well, others need to develop higher levels of maturity and seniority to be able to make good use of freedom of expression in the workplace. One of the main consequences of being able to express themselves is that team members feel emotionally supported by their leadership figures and this accelerates the communication process.

Listening to concerns about stress and creating openness on the team is a great start, but it's not enough. It's time to take the feedback and discussions and determine what changes can be made to improve the situation. Although some things might be beyond your control, challenge yourself to explore the conversations deeply to identify what could help alleviate the stress that the team is experiencing. Ask the team what changes they think would help reduce stress. It's also important to share the ideas for change with the team to ensure that everyone is on board. Making a change that misses the mark and causes more stress would be a bad direction to take.