Stress in High-Pressure Situations
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In the same way, I\u2019ve always found stress before exams\u2014this includes job interviews or conference talks\u2014to be a good thing. That shot of adrenaline makes sure I stay calm and laser-focused in the moment. I know this doesn\u2019t work for everyone, but for me, it always means that once I\u2019m in the thick of it, I\u2019m hyper-focused and able to perform better than what anyone might expect based on my generally poor preparation.
Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone
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Of course, there are countless other reasons why the right amount of stress can be seen as a good thing. For example, whenever we step out of our comfort zone, stress naturally comes with it. So, whenever we learn something new or make progress, we experience stress. How we perceive and handle it depends on how far out of that comfort zone we\u2019re pushed. Let\u2019s take a realistic scenario: Imagine getting lost in an unfamiliar wilderness in a country with a moderately lethal fauna (venomous spiders and snakes, wolves, coyotes), the night is falling, and you\u2019ve got no phone reception, no food or water. You\u2019re way beyond your comfort zone, and you\u2019re definitely feeling the stress\u2014at least, that\u2019s how I felt in this exact situation I found myself in a couple of years ago.
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When Stress Becomes Positive However, I\u2019ve realized when I find stress to be positive. It\u2019s always when there\u2019s a reward at the end. Whether it\u2019s the intimate exploration of sights away from the crowds, hitting a project deadline, or solving a critical problem that has caused headaches before. Without that reward, stress feels negative to me. Managing Stress: Focus on the Reward This also leads to a great strategy for managing stress: when you\u2019re feeling stressed, picture what reward is waiting for you at the end. If something good is coming, you\u2019ll find you can handle much more pressure. Leadership: Creating Healthy Stress in Teams This brings me to the leadership angle. Here\u2019s how I see it: as leaders, we have a responsibility to create stress in our teams, but only the healthy, positive kind I\u2019ve described above. We also have a responsibility to avoid negative, unhealthy stress, and that\u2019s definitely a tricky task. Everyone handles pressure differently. Everyone responds differently to stress, and every good leader has to develop a sense of how much \u201cchallenge\u201d is good for the team and how much is too much. We should be careful not to use ourselves as the standard. The longer you\u2019ve been in academia\u2014or any other field\u2014the better you\u2019ve learned to deal with stress and build resilience. But most of our teams consist of people who aren\u2019t as \u201cstress-trained.\u201d Junior team members, especially, need to learn to see stress as something positive and figure out how to use it. Our job as leaders is to help train them. I want to emphasize again: we\u2019re not responsible for shielding the team from all stress, and doing so can even be counterproductive. On the contrary, we need to stay mindful and share our strategies for stress management and avoidance, so that our team members can become as resilient as we are. While I\u2019m writing these lines, I just realized another thing: imposing positive stress is actually a leadership technique. It\u2019s tricky, sure, but the payoff is huge if you learn to master it. It\u2019s not about pushing people just for the sake of it, but about finding that sweet spot where they\u2019re challenged enough to grow and reach their full potential, without feeling overwhelmed. You want to push your team members to be their best, but in a way that keeps things healthy. When you strike that balance, you\u2019re helping them build resilience, confidence, and success, and that\u2019s where the real progress happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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In short: stress needs to lead to something positive, or it becomes negative. With this mindset, even my experience in the forest ended up being positive stress because I survived the situation, and now I have an epic story to tell, of which I\u2019ve only shared a small piece here.
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Stress triggers another response in me: it makes me think about how I can avoid it. This often pushes me into a continuous improvement mode where I ask myself how I can make my life easier and avoid this stress next time.
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