One of the Biggest Causes of Stress and Anxiety in Teams

One of the biggest causes of stress and anxiety I see in my business owner clients (and heck their teams) is this constant state of ‘reaction.’

You know where there's this underlying current of feeling like you have to respond the second a slack, email, text, etc comes in.?

Believe me when I say, I. Have. Been. There.?

And honestly, it burned me out and it almost caused me to burn down my business.?

I get it.? Wanting to deliver a stellar customer experience and get sh*t done, and feeling like you are letting people down if you are not available… but, and this is a big but, I think it is killing us, our teams, and frankly not as supportive as we think to our clients or customers.?

Here’s why I have this contrary view.?

First, let's talk about what it does to your team.??

If your team is constantly on a hair trigger response cadence it all but guarantees deep work is not getting done and here’s why.

If your team is instantly responding to all.the.things then the chances of them getting in the groove and getting into momentum are pretty low because every time they do they are going to get interrupted.?

A quick stat to drive this home:?

It has been scientifically proven that humans cannot multitask and for every distraction it takes ~25 minutes (23 minutes 15 seconds to be exact) to get refocused according to Gloria Mark, who studies digital distraction at the University of California, Irvine.??

Now more than deep work, their mental health is also going to take a toll.? Statistically speaking if someone is not able to complete things it creates all sorts of unideal emotional responses from guilt, shame, exhaustion, to the silent killer of teams, resentment.

Lastly, it actually can create a culture of complacency and codependency on you.??

I saw this a few times when I came in to do fractional COO work.??

Because the “boss” was always available they were less likely to try to solve things and critically think without him.??

They knew if they went to him, he would either solve it or do it (which is a whole other topic) but do you see how if you are not giving you team the space to ruminate and solve you are forgetting our #1 job as a leader which is to create other leaders?

Now let’s talk about what this kind of pants on fire approach does to you and your brain.??

First, it spikes your cortisol levels which actually make our thinking and cognitive function decline.?

Second, it can cause anxiety because you never know when someone is going to “need you.”

Third, it keeps you from being present with your friends, family, or even your deep work that will move the business forward.?

Lastly, it actually is keeping you stuck in the trenches and not giving your business, team, or clients a chance to thrive without you.?

Now for your clients.? This one was the hardest for me so hang in there.?

In my early years, I used to think that my clients would fire me if I wasn’t responding and solving ASAP.??

Here’s what I learned.? In addition to all the things I listed above, when I was always available, my clients were not learning how to fish, and here’s the real kicker.?

50% of the time when they needed me they really just needed to get whatever it was out of their brain.

I call this Voxer Vomit and once I tell you what it is, the lightbulb will go off.

I have found over my past 13+ years of doing this that better than 80% of my business owner clients are external processors.

So this means that a lot of times they just need me to be a brick wall they can vent to or talk things through.

It presents itself a lot like this.? I get a 6 minute voxer about all the things followed by a 10 second voxer that says something like “nevermind, I figured it out after I just shared all of that.”??

This also plays into what I talked about in a previous edition of this newsletter about how asking “do you want me to listen or support” can change everything. If you haven’t read that one, go do that next.? Here’s the link: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/one-question-forever-changed-my-relationships-lauren-goldstein/

I share this because with space comes perspective. And in almost every situation where something was on fire, they just needed a few minutes and the clarity came.

This is not to say that I am not responding to my clients, far from it. If I can in the moment, I will, but I now don’t lose any sleep over a little delay in my response if I am working on other things.?

What this hopefully is showing you is that you can be more effective when you let something marinate for a few minutes and come at it without the knee jerk emotions that are usually following when the flame sparks.??

This pause and space can create better solutions, leaders, and perspectives.? And the truth is that unless you are in emergency medicine (or maybe PR) there is rarely something that is a true 5 alarm fire emergency.?

Now I am sure you are asking yourself, okay so how do I solve this and put the flames of ‘right now’ out?

Well, I am glad you asked.? Here is my recommendation.?

I try to run my teams with the 48 hour rule.? What this means is in order to get out of the reactive fire fight of deadlines and to-dos, we start being more proactive with our asks.

Specially, asking for things at least 48 hours before they are needed by us to get something across the line.??

What this does for the team is allows us to do more deep work without having an urgent and unexpected deadline pop up.??

Now, I know that from time to time something will pop up and be urgent, those are a separate matter, however, 99.9% of what we do can be done with urgency and still create space to get it done.?

So give that a try and let me know how it goes.? Oh, and while you’re at it, maybe put your phone and slack on DND.? You can thank me later ??

Until next time.

Lauren

p.s. want more Golden Nuggets like this one, to save time and get you out from under your business? I got you. The Biz Doctor podcast is just a click away (available on all podcast platforms).

The Biz Doctor on Apple Podcasts

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