Is performance pressure making your team less productive?
As we move towards the end of the year (seemingly at the speed of light…), it’s common for leaders and their teams to come under more pressure to achieve targets and work to tight deadlines. We’ve all told ourselves, at one time or another, that we work well (or even better) under pressure. But too much pressure, far from motivating teams to become more productive, can actually harm performance. Sound familiar?
If you and your team don’t have effective strategies in place to respond to challenges, including performance pressure, you’re likely to find yourself dealing with fatigue, anxiety, burnout and reduced productivity.?
So, how do you help your team cope with pressure and sustain productivity while supporting wellbeing??
Identify the saboteurs affecting your team
When I say ‘saboteurs’, I’m not talking about external forces that want to derail your team. I’m talking about the negative voices in your and your team’s heads that represent self-sabotaging patterns of thoughts and behaviours.
When a challenge presents itself, how does your team react? Do they bury their heads in the sand and avoid the issue? Do they catastrophise? Do they become defensive? Or obsess over a problem while neglecting their other tasks or their wellbeing? All these responses are driven by internal saboteurs, preventing you or your team members from reaching peak performance.?
By supporting your team in identifying their negative internal voices and patterns of self-sabotage, you can take the first step towards forming more adaptive ways of responding to pressure and challenges.?
Why not ask your team to complete the Saboteur Assessment to get started? If you’d like to have a short debrief with me about the results, I’m happy to help.?
Develop mental fitness
As a leader, building your own mental fitness should be a priority as you take your leadership to the next level. While becoming more mentally fit yourself is essential to help you respond to the challenges that come with an executive position, you’ll find it difficult to ensure organisational success if you don’t also consider the mental fitness and resilience of the rest of your team.
Mentally fit teams are able to intercept self-sabotaging thought patterns with positive mental habits. They’re able to maintain clear and calm minds in response to pressure, helping them to better organise their thoughts and prioritise tasks to maximise performance.
Prioritise relationships
When we’re under pressure, one of the first things we stop paying close attention to is our relationships. I’m sure we can all think back to at least one occasion where pressure at work and the resulting stress caused us to snap at someone on our team or, perhaps a loved one.?
But findings from the Harvard Study of Adult Development show that relationships are actually one of the biggest predictors of happiness and wellbeing. So when we neglect our relationships during times of high pressure, we actually open ourselves up to greater levels of stress.?
As a leader, you set the standard of expected behaviours for the rest of your team. By demonstrating that you value relationships, particularly within the workplace, you’re helping to create a more positive culture that allows your team to do the same.?
When you’re facing peak performance pressure, make time and space to nurture and strengthen the relationships within your team to support wellbeing, resilience and performance.
Make wellbeing a part of your company culture
In 2024, I think most of us understand the importance of mental wellbeing in leading happy, healthy and productive lives. But if you need a business case too, the Mental Health Foundation has said that UK businesses could see a ￡5 return on investment for every ￡1 they spend on mental health support.
Supporting your employees’ mental health in general can help ensure they’re in a better position to face challenges and perform under pressure, and have the resilience to bounce back quickly in the face of setbacks.
You can create a company culture that prioritises wellbeing by:
Read more about prioritising your team’s mental wellbeing here.