The Paradox of Stress: Finding Your Balance for Optimal Outcomes

When you reflect on your most recent working week, what part did stress play? Did it help or hinder your performance and progress?

Stress is often seen as the enemy of well-being, productivity, and creativity. It’s associated with burnout, disengagement, and feelings of overwhelm.

Yet, research suggests that not all stress is harmful. Indeed, stress can be good for us under the right conditions and when managed correctly. It can motivate, be a catalyst for growth, and a factor that contributes to your success.

For example, I’ve learned that if I am too relaxed before a public speaking event, then I should worry. Why? Because it means I am not invested enough in the outcome. Stress in those moments motivates and inspires me to do my best.

So, the challenge for leaders is not to eliminate stress but to find the sweet spot where stress enhances performance and builds a positive work environment without overwhelming themselves, their team, or their colleagues.

The Paradox of Stress

We all experience stress at times; it’s a natural reaction.

Your brain detects what it sees as a threat, and your body’s natural defence mechanisms kick in – your heart rate elevates, and hormones like adrenaline and cortisol are released. These mechanisms are all designed to prepare you to confront that threat. In that context, stress is helping you be alert to the danger.

As Stanford University Professor Robert Sapolsky discusses in his brilliant book ‘Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers,’ the physiological changes that occur when you confront a threat can feel uncomfortable, but they can also enhance alertness and improve performance in situations requiring quick thinking and problem-solving.

The issue is how you respond, and that depends on the cause of the stress and your ability to respond.

Read: What to Do When Stress Puts You In Survival Mode

Consequently, there are different types of stress. Researchers and psychologists distinguish between positive stress (‘eustress’) and negative stress (‘distress’).

Eustress is the type of stress that arises when you face challenges that push you beyond what feels comfortable, but still within your ability to manage. In this context, stress can improve focus and alertness, increase motivation, and elevate creativity.

In contrast, distress occurs when the demands placed on you exceed your ability to cope, leading to feelings of helplessness, despair, and even anxiety and burnout. In this context, stress can impair cognitive performance and lead to emotional exhaustion and physical health issues.

Find Your Goldilocks Zone

It’s all about balance.

The emerging perspective is that mild stress (i.e., manageable stress) can facilitate cognitive functions associated with memory, cognitive flexibility, or information processing.

However, chronic stress or stress that is beyond a person’s coping mechanism impairs. Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School Dr Kerry Ressler explains how chronic or persistent stress may rewire the brain over time. In this article, he describes how, with prolonged stress, there is less activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with higher-level cognitive processing, and more activity in the amygdala, which is focused on survival.

So, with stress, it’s about finding the optimal level, what some people call the ‘Goldilocks zone’ where your stress level is ‘just right’.

Too little stress, and we get bored and apathetic. Too much stress, and it’s overwhelming. The zone of optimal performance is where our stress levels are at the right level to improve our performance. This is known as the Yerkes-Dodson Law. It’s based on the premise that performance improves with increasing levels of stress, but only up to a point. Beyond that point, performance deteriorates as stress becomes overwhelming.

Therefore, it’s crucial to focus on your ability to manage and regulate stress so you can maximise its positive impacts. For leaders, this means creating environments where stress is neither too scarce (which can lead to complacency) nor excessive (which can lead to burnout and anxiety).

Know the Warning Signs

You want to be alert to the warning signs because there is a fine line between productive and destructive stress.

Be alert to how your team feels and create open communication channels where they feel comfortable sharing their fears and feelings. Regularly check in with them and spend quality time with them.

Early recognition and helpful conversations allow for timely interventions. As a leader, this is you tapping into your emotional intelligence at work.

Cultivating the Optimal Environment

As a leader, your goal is not to eliminate stress but to create conditions in which stress can serve as a performance accelerator for yourself and your team.

Here are seven tips to apply.

Tip One – Set Challenging Yet Achievable Goals

Having goals can motivate people, but only when they feel achievable. You want the goal to be specific and clear. Remember the acronym SMART goals? They are particularly relevant in this context.

Tip Two – Promote a Growth Mindset

Challenges that stretch your team members’ capabilities, such as new projects, can serve as opportunities for growth, skill development, and achievement. Frame the tasks with a focus on opportunities to learn and emphasise the support you will provide.

To do this, you will want to foster a growth mindset in your team. When employees view challenges as chances to grow rather than threats to their competence and performance, they are more likely to embrace the opportunity.

Tip Three – Lead by Example

You will want to lead by example and role model healthy stress management techniques, such as practising self-care, setting boundaries, and seeking help when needed.

Also, by celebrating efforts, focusing on learning rather than just outcomes, and providing constructive feedback that encourages development, you are role-modelling your growth mindset.

Tip Four – Build the Structure

Flexible work schedules and remote work options can help your team better manage their stress by allowing them to balance work with personal responsibilities more effectively.

Build in reflection and check-in practices. That way, you regularly check in with your team members, and you know what’s going on. Take the time to celebrate both small and large wins. You want to celebrate progress because that motivates people (as I’ve written about before).

Tip Five – Foster Autonomy

One key factor distinguishing eustress from distress is a sense of control.

When people feel like they have more control over what they do and how they do it, stress is less likely to feel overwhelming.

Consider how you can frame your team’s work and where there are opportunities for autonomy. You can get your team members to set their own priorities, expand their decision-making authority, and give them greater freedom in how they work.

Tip Six – Provide Resources and Support

Offer resources such as coaching, stress management workshops, access to mental health professionals, and employee assistance programs.

One of the most effective support mechanisms is connection. My article on ‘Why You Need to Focus on Belonging at Work’ is helpful.

Tip Seven – Encourage Rest and Recovery

You will want to ensure that your team take regular breaks and have time to rest and recover.

Once again, this is where your role modelling matters. If you work long hours, never take a break, and are always ‘on’, your team will find it more challenging to find their ‘off’ switch.

Stress is not a one-dimensional story. It has an upside and a downside. The key is to recognise its motivation potential while actively managing how it unfolds at work to create a culture of resilience, happiness, health and progress with your team.

If you want more on this topic, this article from the Mayo Clinic is worth reading.

Republished with courtesy from michellegibbings.com