If you’re in a position where you’re making critical decisions, carrying responsibility for people, performance, and direction, it comes with the territory. But when constant pressure tips into stress, it becomes a threat – not just personally but commercially.
Rather than simply pushing through, successful leaders recognise that stress is detrimental to individual and organisational performance. They learn to manage it by noticing the signs and taking action such as setting boundaries, leaning on support networks, and practising self-care. Executive coaching can play a big role in adopting healthy behaviours.
April is Stress Awareness Month. Yes, another one, but this one actually earns its place. Backed by organisations such as the Stress Management Society and supported by research from the HSE and WHO, it aims to raise awareness of how stress affects both health and commercial performance. Given that it’s been running since 1992, it goes to show how endemic stress really is – we still have a long way to go.
In this article, we’ll look at how stress impacts organisational success and some of the most effective stress management techniques for senior leaders that you can put into practice today.
Leadership stress is a commercial issue, not just a personal one. GYST’s leadership coaching and stress management training addresses this head-on, with a structured, scientific, no-nonsense approach. Contact us to find out more.
How does stress affect organisations?
In other words, why is any of this important?
Deloitte tells us that poor mental health costs UK employers around £51 billion annually when you factor in absence, presenteeism, and turnover. While these types of stats are hard to deny, they are so dramatic that they are almost easy to dismiss.
So let’s strip it back and look at the real cost of stress in organisations day to day: poor decisions, reduced productivity, a lack of communication, low energy, avoidable mistakes and zero engagement.
I’m sure you recognise some of these in yourself, your teams and your wider workforce.
Rather than thinking about the cost of this, turn it on its head and consider what your company could achieve if these issues were better managed. The opportunities that you could jump on without the constant firefighting and spiralling cost of recruitment.
Viewed through that lens, stress management has the potential to become one of your biggest performance drivers. Which is why it’s not an HR issue, it’s a strategic priority.
How leadership mental health affects organisational success
Research shows that stress at the senior level affects not just individual performance but that of entire teams. Gallup, for example, suggests that management accounts for 70% of the variance in team engagement (source: Gallup).
People mirror what they see. If leadership looks overwhelmed, panicked and erratic, that goes straight down to the shop floor via management teams. That’s why addressing stress at the leadership level is imperative.
I must confess that this article has a secondary agenda.
I absolutely want to talk about how successful leaders manage stress, but I also want to hammer home how your role is pivotal in managing stress in your organisation. Not by ‘fixing’ it. That’s impossible. But not by throwing more HR initiatives at it either.
But exploring your own stress responses and walking the talk.
Key strategies for leadership stress management
Let’s get on with the ‘how’. Here are some practical ways for stressed leaders to help bring it under control.
1. Recognise the signs of stress
In my experience, senior leaders are very good at masking and ignoring stress. I did it myself for years. But don’t make the mistakes that I did.
We’re not talking mid-office meltdowns here; it’s much more subtle. Stress has a way of slowly chipping away at you, but the signs soon start to show.
- Erratic decision-making
- Shorter, sharper communication
- Withdrawal from conversations
- Over-controlling behaviour
- Physical symptoms like low energy, headaches and disrupted sleep
If you continue to ignore these signs, prolonged stress turns into chronic stress, and then it’s a slippery slope to burnout. Complete mental and physical shutdown, which takes you out of the picture altogether.
Even reading this article and acknowledging the signs of stress is a positive first step. The next stop is action.
Want to spot the signs early? Read this article 👉 The 8 early warning signs of burnout.
2. Practice self-care
I’ve deliberately put this towards the top of the list as it’s one most people are likely to avoid.
The reason we baulk at the idea of self-care and wellbeing advice is that it’s often naff and surface-level: take a bath, meditate, do some yoga… Not everyone enjoys that stuff, and who has time?
But get real – you cannot adopt any of the following strategies if your body and mind are running on empty. At a leadership level, self-care is about maintaining the physical and mental capacity to perform.
If you don’t already, make these things a part of your day, every day:
- Regular breaks
- Reasonable working hours (especially if you’re working from home)
- A balanced diet that gives you energy and focus
- Movement and exercise
- Simple techniques for moments of stress, like deep breathing
- Phone and laptop-free time before bed
- A decent amount of sleep
These are not luxuries; they are the only way our bodies and minds can survive the realities of corporate culture. Without them, you’re not only doing yourself a serious disservice, but also your business.
3. Keep a strategic perspective
We all like to think of ourselves as rational human beings, but when it comes down to it, we’re slaves to our biology. When faced with threat, logic comes second to instinct. What needs fixing now? What’s urgent? What’s LOUD?
The risk is that you lose sight of the bigger picture.
To maintain a strategic perspective, try these techniques:
- Ask yourself: will this still matter in six months or 12 months?
- Recognise what’s just noise: Literally label what’s coming at you as urgent, important, or distraction.
- Zoom out: Get out from behind your desk and go somewhere else. No laptop, no phone. Your brain needs time to shift out of reactive mode.
4. Develop a structured decision-making process
Stress and decision-making are closely linked. When the pressure is on, decisions are often rushed, botched or avoided.
By having a structured decision-making process, you can remove some of the cognitive load. Even when your stress levels are high, it allows you to be more consistent.
What this might look like in practice:
- Define what a “good decision” looks like, e.g., logic over impulse, aligned with long-term strategy.
- Separating facts from assumptions: Being evidence-led helps avoid emotional or stress-driven thinking.
- Setting clear timeframes for action: And sticking to them.
- Consulting the right people: You are not an island, but too many or the wrong voices in the room are not helpful.
- Sleeping on it: For non-catastrophic “emergencies,” commit to a 24-hour waiting period before making a decision.
This not only improves the quality of your decisions but also sends a clear signal that the leadership team is consistent and in control.
5. Building strong support networks
Leadership can be isolating. If it feels like you’re holding up the world, stress is inevitable.
Building a strong support network counteracts that, including:
- One or two trusted peers you can speak to candidly. The kind of person you can call and say, “Did I handle that badly?” and get a straight answer.
- A business coach who will challenge your thinking when necessary and help you reflect on how you handle pressure.
- Professional help when it’s needed – and not just as a last resort. Discussing mental health challenges at a senior level still carries stigma in a lot of organisations. But at the end of the day, it’s just another tool in your locker to help strengthen your performance.
6. Set boundaries
I’ll conclude this list with the elusive ‘healthy work-life balance’.
We have so many non-negotiable boundaries in life, but we seem somewhat incapable of setting them at work. The lines are so blurred we can’t even see them anymore. Work spills into evenings and weekends. We miss out on life events, cancel holidays. Not only is it unsustainable, but it also affects your personal life and everyone in it.
The solution is not just old-fashioned time-management skills; it’s about protecting your time and saying ‘no’ more often. If you commit to it properly, setting boundaries shouldn’t reduce your output. The wins for your mental health should help you perform consistently better.
Be strict with your time by:
- Blocking out your diary for focused work
- Avoiding unnecessary meetings (and hosting them)
- Prioritising what actually moves the business forward
- Switching off when you get home – literally and figuratively
Leaders set the tone when it comes to healthy boundaries. If you are always available, firing off emails at midnight and treat paid leave as optional, your team will follow suit. The potential consequence is a culture of stress and burnout that your company can’t afford.
Why leaders must model effective stress management
One more truth bomb before we wrap up: while stress is a commercial risk, it’s not just a workplace phenomenon (despite what the WHO tells us about burnout). People will always have outside stress and bring it to work with them. Knowing that is essential to how we approach stress management and combat burnout.
When we realise that stress and burnout aren’t something we can ‘fix’, it shifts the focus to how they are managed.
Leaders play a critical role in shaping an environment of psychological safety. That means prioritising mental health issues and putting stress management permanently on the agenda.
By modelling a healthy stress response and keeping the dialogue open, leaders can have the biggest influence. Healthy behaviours become ingrained in the culture. And from there, stress management can become a valuable competitive advantage.
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How leadership coaching can support stress management
At GYST, we bring leadership, culture, and performance together. We work with senior leaders to explore how their response to pressure affects leadership style, personal performance and organisational performance as a whole.
We currently have availability for stress management training, and leadership coaching. We currently have availability for stress management training, and leadership coaching. To kick things off, perhaps consider our 1-hour Meltdown workshop: an escape-room style exercise that highlights how your teams really behave under pressure.
Any questions, just get in touch. Thanks for reading.
