How Stress Impacts Your Leadership and How Coaching Can Help

Does Your Stress Impact Others You Work With?

“What’s the status of this project? It was due yesterday.”

You blink at the email on your cell phone through your early morning, pre-coffee fog. It’s from one of your higher-ups in your organization. The project in question was offloaded to one of your direct reports. Your team is growing, and along with it, your responsibilities.

To be honest, it’s all been piling up. And, while you’re more than capable of performing your job duties, the stress has been following you around — at work, home, and even in your social circles.

This stress comes with a sudden, sullen mood. Heavy sighs. Or snapping at a coworker’s seemingly innocuous question.

The Trickle-Down Effect: When Your Stress Impacts Your Team

I’ve been coaching leaders as a professional stress coach for over 35 years. Over time, I’ve found these signs are what I call “dashboard warning lights” telling you it’s time to work on reducing your stress levels.

Dashboard Warning Lights:

• Waking up early with a “doom and gloom attitude.”

• Having the urge to smoke or drink more frequently.

• Feeling like you’ve made a lot of mistakes and can’t get out from under the situation you’re in.

Stress can take a toll on our bodies and minds, and if we hold a leadership position at work, it may also affect those we work with.

This is particularly important for those in leadership positions to address simply because their lives and attitudes have the ability to change their organization from the inside out — for better or worse.

Leadership requires more out of us. It calls us to have more energy, focus, clear communication, and an ability to inspire and motivate others. Stress chips away at these foundational building blocks of leadership and our ability to show up effectively.

If we don’t manage our stress, it can impact those we lead and may even have a broader impact on our workplace.

But There’s Hope

Through stress coaching, I’ve found many people know when they’re stressed but rarely know what to do about it. After all, stress is a fact of life and work, and it’s not all bad.

What people may not know, however, is there’s often a solution for some of the stress that plagues us. Sometimes, it requires someone trained to look at the habits surrounding our work and life routines to show us opportunities for growth.

And the solutions may be right under our noses.

How One Leader Transformed Their Stress With Coaching

One of my favorite stress coaching success stories to share involves a client in a high-ranking leadership position. He was not only feeling the internal effects of stress from his work life, but also receiving negative feedback from his team members about how he was performing externally.

Through a series of coaching sessions, we discovered he was feeling stressed about his own schedule and work habits. We pinpointed the issue: he was scheduling regular 55-minute one-on-one meetings with his employees. His day was packed with these back-to-back meetings and they were affecting him in more ways than he had realized.

He was going from meeting to meeting without any kind of break. He didn’t have time to get a drink of water, let alone take a deep breath or walk around the office.

So, together, we came up with a simple solution: this leader reduced his meeting times by just ten minutes. With this added time cushion between his commitments, my client was able to put into practice stress reduction tools and be more fully present in each meeting.

And It Made All the Difference

It wasn’t just that he felt more comfortable and less stressed in these situations, he also received feedback that this was the case.

This positive change paved the way for better communication and improved morale in my client’s organization. Coaching strengthened his leadership skills and helped him face his challenges with a trusted and reliable collaborator.

When we live, work, and lead in a culture where it’s not okay to let our stress show, it’s tempting to work through our challenges alone or hope they will disappear.

I see this all the time because leaders are “supposed” to be able to handle the challenges that come their way. After all, if you say you’re anxious or feeling overwhelmed, in many people’s minds, that’s an admission of being unable to do the job.

But, I’d argue that investing in a stress coach is an opportunity for a leader to do their job in a more successful way. In fact, I’ve found that the presence of a stress coach in a leader’s life is a stress reduction tool in and of itself.

How Coaches Provide Practical Stress Management Strategies for Leaders

Leaders can benefit from stress coaching in multiple ways because coaches are trained to help leaders:

• Identify and work toward meaningful goals.

• Discover habits that may help reduce stress, such as taking regular breaks or improving your exercise and sleep schedule.

• Practice breathing exercises and meditation.

• Apply communication techniques and talk through challenges with a “safe person.”

These benefits create a snowball effect in an organization, where those whom the leader interacts with regularly will also be less stressed.

Ready to Take Control? Finding the Right Coach for You

If you’re dealing with the impact of stress in your life as a leader now, my first rule of thumb is to try not to get discouraged. Don’t feel like you have to get rid of all your stress simultaneously, because it won’t happen.

Ironically, if we try to deal with too many stressors we’re experiencing at once, we’ll get stressed by our own stress reduction efforts!

Coaches are trained to help clients take small steps to practical changes. Over time, you’ll gain confidence in weaving more stress reduction tools into your work and personal life with each new change.

If you take time to figure out strategies that work for you, you’re building a foundation on which you can construct a really sturdy organization with an unwavering and confident leader.

No matter the curveballs — or early morning urgent emails — thrown your way.

Ready to experience how stress coaching can impact your role as a leader in your organization? Find your coach using the ICF Credentialed Coach Finder.