Prof Swaran Singh Blog

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Today's business leaders are under significant pressure due to financial strain, rapid staff turnover, intense media scrutiny and global economic uncertainty. Post-pandemic, the world appears more brittle, less stable and more turbulent. 

It was always thus - some might argue, as work-related stress is neither a new phenomenon nor one that has not been researched, but there is emerging evidence that it is worsening, across professions and occupations globally. A large body of academic research has confirmed a relationship between different leadership styles, job performance and perceived stress, with leadership interventions having been tested in randomised trials to some success. I do not intend to review this evidence here. Rather, I present a personal view on an important but less researched area - how leaders and senior managers can look after their own wellbeing.

Global Studies

A survey of 3,400 people in 10 countries conducted by The Workforce Institute explored stress at work and its impact on employees.

Work stress had a negative impact on several aspects of employees' lives: 

• home (71% of respondents), 
• general wellbeing (64%) and 
• personal relationships (62%) being most affected. 

Over 80% of employees would rather have good mental health than a well-paid job. Two-thirds were willing to take a pay cut for a job that better supported their mental health, as were 70% of managers (details here). 

The Workforce Institute had an unusual and rather remarkable finding: 69% of respondents felt that managers impacted their mental health more than their doctors (51%) or therapists (41%); the figure for managers the same as for spouses or partners (69%). Senior leaders and managers are therefore not just experiencing stress, they also hugely influence levels of stress experienced by their teams and employees.

Managing the Myths

One of the biggest hurdles in achieving and maintaining good mental health is the stigma of mental illness and myths that pervade the topic. Good mental health and illness are not on a single continuum, the absence of one does not confirm the presence of the other. These are rather orthogonal dimensions, i.e. overlapping but distinct. 

Discussing mental health and wellbeing need not be about whether someone has a mental illness, just as being physically fit is not the opposite of having a physical illness. But someone can be distressed, mentally fragile or struggling emotionally without being mentally ill. 

A Robust Response?

Senior leaders are much more likely to experience the impact of sustained pressure, leading to feelings of being overwhelmed and inability to cope. The underlying mechanism of causes and consequences is best understood as part of the body’s threat response system.

The bodily system that modulates this response is known as the autonomic nervous system and in response to perceived threats it prepares us to flee or fight until safety is achieved. Our bodies then enter a rest and recovery mode. 

In the modern world, we are not surrounded by animal predators, but the cumulative pressure of work demands chronically stimulates our threat response system without adequate periods of recovery. When we feel stressed and wonder why, even when everything else seems fine, we miss the unconscious nature of our bodily responses developed over millions of years of evolution. 

Everyone has an upper limit of coping ability. Just as we can run at different speeds or lift different amounts of weight, we also have different upper limits for coping with stress and pressure. When our emotional regulation system is overwhelmed, our response depends on a range of factors, including our personality, coping styles, and level of social support. 

Successful individuals can sometimes underestimate their ‘tipping point’ and either take on more than they can handle or persist in efforts when a break would be better. It is therefore vital to recognize when one’s threat response system has gone into overdrive, and make sure we create enough time and space in our busy lives for the rest and recovery system to replenish us.

Recognition and Seeking Support

Two major hurdles in looking after our mental well-being are delayed recognition and delayed help-seeking. Myths and misinformation about mental health contribute to both. 

There is a widespread perception that admitting to mental health problems is proof of personal inadequacy. A core belief most of us hold strongly is that our minds are directed by us. A mind outside of our control is seen as a failure. We wouldn’t accept personal blame for diabetes or knee arthritis, but we do for mental health. When a doctor hits our knee with a hammer, it jerks involuntarily; many bodily phenomena are not under our conscious control or will. The same applies to the mind.

Many senior leaders have personal coaches or mentors with whom they feel they can voice such concerns and receive help. But coaching is not therapy and should not become so. Coaching can certainly involve resilience building, enhanced coping, and improved mental fitness, but those on the verge of mental illness (or experiencing it) and many who are ‘not ill, but not well either’ require more than coaching.

Recognising patterns and making changes

Everyone experiences stress differently, but there are common patterns. Mental symptoms manifest as changes in emotions, thinking, and memory. Mood changes may include irritability, low frustration tolerance, inappropriate anger, feeling low, a sense of dread, anxiety, and feeling overwhelmed. Thinking can become negative with self-blame, doubt, guilt, shame, constant worrying, and racing thoughts (ruminations). Memory problems include difficulties in attention, concentration, and forgetfulness. 

Physical symptoms of stress may involve sleep and appetite disturbances, headaches and other muscle aches, feeling sick or dizzy, and undue fatigue. Behaviourally, individuals may become socially withdrawn, less communicative than before, use alcohol or drugs to relax or cope, and experience a decline in performance.

If symptoms of stress are severe enough to impair functioning, it is best to seek professional help. Many people can recognize that they are stressed well before they become ill, and if this happens early enough, several effective self-help and self-management techniques are easily available. 

Effective stress-management techniques 

Many of these techniques require no expert input and can be practiced by anyone. Getting physically active, following a nutritionally dense, wholesome diet low in processed food and sugars, spending time in nature, with friends, family or with a pet, cultivating social support, and ensuring adequate rest and sleep are surprisingly effective. Simple as these sound, one still needs discipline to ensure that these become embedded in everyday routine.

Effective stress-management techniques that require practice and sometimes external help include breathing exercises, yoga, mindfulness practices, and journaling. 

Breathing comes naturally to us, and no one ever teaches us how to breathe. Yet, as many elite sportspeople know, and free divers must master, deliberately controlling the pace and depth of breathing has numerous positive effects on the autonomic nervous system, reducing stress and improving well-being. Many websites and books (including audiobooks) are available, and no specific equipment is required to practice breathwork.

In medicine, mindfulness practice initially started as a way of managing chronic pain. Many mindfulness-based courses are available online and in person. Scientific evidence for the effectiveness of mindfulness is robust (see a review here), and YouTube has a plethora of high-quality programs to help practitioners (including one of my lectures on the foundations of mindfulness). The positive effects of yoga have been similarly confirmed in scientific studies, including for work-related stress (see here).

Gratitude Journaling

A new development in the science of mental well-being and stress reduction is the practice of gratitude, especially gratitude journaling, in which individuals record in a journal their appreciation of what they have and express gratitude for things, big or small, for which they are thankful. Gratitude is an ancient wisdom, and its value has been extolled in most religious traditions. Science is beginning to catch up with what our ancestors intuitively knew (see here).

Summary

So in summary, stress is inevitable in life. Some amount of stress is necessary to improve performance. Like any other obstacle in life, periods of emotional stress can be turned into opportunities for personal growth. Senior leaders, who invariably experience significant amounts of stress at work, can use stress as a learning tool, a chance to understand themselves better, practicing compassion both for themselves and for colleagues facing similar pressures, and turn what seems an obstacle into an opportunity for self reflection.