Pressure is a fact of life in the modern workplace, especially in sectors like finance. But it’s often misunderstood. The issue is not pressure itself; it is what happens when pressure tips into stress, and how leaders and teams respond when it does.
GYST recently had the pleasure of partnering with NatWest to speak to their people about managing pressure. We delivered two practical, commercially focused webinars to help leaders and teams manage pressure, build resilience, and sustain performance.
At the time of writing, it’s Stress Awareness Month, but for GYST, tackling stress is a year-round priority. The cost of stress and burnout is real, not only to health, but to organisational culture, performance, and ultimately, the bottom line.
If stress is something your organisation is grappling with, carry on reading for some key insights and a summary of what we delivered to NatWest. If you’re ready to talk about what GYST can do for your business, get in touch.
Why pressure is actually a good thing
Pressure gets a bad rap, but it is essential, not just in business but in life.
Pressure is directly linked to our natural drive to achieve. Without it, there is no urgency, and no reason for the brain to prioritise action over comfort. We’d soon become a population of couch potatoes, and the economy would go bye-bye.
So let’s reposition pressure as a force for good. When applied in the right way, it motivates us, sharpens our focus and helps us make better decisions. It helps us achieve the lifestyle we aspire to.
Leaders and high performers, in particular, need a certain level of pressure to operate at their best. It creates direction, momentum and a sense of purpose.
The challenge is not removing pressure altogether. It is understanding where the line sits between healthy pressure and harmful stress. When that line is crossed, energy becomes depleted, brain fog sets in, and people become disengaged. Left unchecked, it leads to stress and eventually to burnout, which is estimated to cost $8.9 trillion globally each year (source: State of the Global Workplace, Gallup, 2025)
GYST’s role is to help organisations, leaders and teams handle pressure, keep stress in check and achieve sustainable performance.
How leaders respond to pressure is crucial
Pressure does not exist in isolation; it flows. When leaders become reactive or overwhelmed, it trickles down to senior managers and teams. When leaders are grounded and intentional, pressure becomes more productive.
So tackling stress starts at the top, with leaders maintaining their stress levels and modelling healthy behaviours. When that happens, conversations about mental health become the norm. People feel comfortable speaking openly and asking for support when they need it. They start to take more responsibility for their wellbeing and, as a result, manage their workload more effectively. Engagement picks up, attrition declines.
Over time, the impact can be seen in black-and-white on the bottom line.
Our recent webinars for NatWest
We ran two focused, 60-minute webinars for NatWest, one for leaders and one for teams.
For leaders – Leading under pressure
In this session, we addressed how leaders respond to pressure, what happens when that pressure tips into stress and how it affects leadership style.
Finance industry leaders are no strangers to pressure. We started by highlighting its importance as a motivator and performance driver, which was well recognised. Equally, the negative outcomes of pressure were all too familiar.
We explored the difference between healthy pressure and harmful stress and how it manifests itself, for example, reactive decisions, breakdowns in communication and physical symptoms like headaches and fatigue.
In response to this, we talked through GYST’s 5 Essentials for Sustainable Performance (see below). Our sessions are always actionable, and we left the team with practical ways to use these resources in 1:1s and conversations with teams.
Crucially, we also talked about how to role-model resilience and build it in the culture of the organisation.
For teams – Working well under pressure
This session was available to everyone at NatWest. Bravo to the leadership team for making it so accessible and putting stress management firmly on the agenda.
Our focus was on helping individuals understand pressure, recognise stress early, and build everyday resilience.
Once again, we started by reframing pressure as something necessary rather than negative. From there, we looked at how healthy pressure shifts into stress and the early warning signs that people should look out for in themselves and colleagues.
We talked through our 5 Essentials for Sustainable Performance, making them relatable and usable for managers and their teams.
The result is a practical approach that helps people stay well, perform consistently, and support each other when pressure builds.
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Overwhelmingly positive feedback from NatWest
We were delighted to receive some great feedback for the recent sessions.
Across both sessions:
- 70% said they found the session very helpful (29% said they found it quite helpful)
- A whopping 92% of all attendees said they now understand stress more clearly.
Attendees highlighted a mix of simple behavioural changes and people-focused leadership actions as their biggest takeaways, from reducing phone use first thing in the morning to protect focus, to using practical tools like 0–10 check-ins to better support their teams.
Many also highlighted GYST’s five resources for managing sustainable performance, which we’ll share with you now.
“Katie delivered two standout sessions for Stress Awareness Month. One for leaders and one open to everyone, and both were packed with practical takeaways.
She has a brilliant way of making stress feel understandable and manageable with the key takeaway from both that pressure isn’t the enemy, it’s unmanaged pressure that causes the issues. Most of all, Katie’s delivery is engaging and interactive; it feels like a conversation, not a lecture and people leave with actions they can genuinely try the same day.”
– Alan Mochrie, Wellbeing Consultant · NatWest Group
GYST’s 5 essentials for sustainable performance
We gave NatWest’s people a shared language and practical strategies they could use immediately.
- Maintain energy: Downtime, exercise, healthy eating, regular breaks, sleep – repeat. It sounds basic, but it is crucial for consistent performance. We all need to take responsibility for maintaining our own wellbeing.
- Set boundaries: Protect teams, colleagues, and yourself from unrealistic deadlines, back-to-back meetings, and blurred life/work boundaries. These feed stress and are a shortcut to burnout.
- Build capability: Make sure people have the skills to do the job well, and the opportunity to keep developing. When capability and challenge are misaligned, pressure quickly turns into stress or disengagement.
- Strengthen support: Normalise asking for help. Ensure people know where to go for support and that they feel comfortable accessing it. Without it, pressure becomes isolating and much harder to manage.
- Make recognition visible: It’s not all about pay: build micro moments of reward and recognition into each day. When people feel seen and valued, it strengthens motivation, connection, and resilience under pressure.
Talk to GYST about stress management support for your organisation
At GYST, we do not see pressure as the enemy. We treat it cautiously, as something to understand, structure, and use effectively.
What we do sits at the intersection of leadership, culture, and performance. We work with organisations like NatWest to build leadership capabilities that stand up under pressure. Not just in theory, but in the reality of day-to-day decision making, team dynamics, and commercial delivery.
If pressure is starting to impact performance in your organisation, let’s address it. We currently have availability for webinars, stress management training, and leadership coaching programmes.
To kick things off, consider our full-day Meltdown workshop: an escape-room style exercise that highlights how your teams really behave under pressure.
Get in touch to start the conversation.
