6.5 Tips On Managing Leadership Stress

Stress has been taking it’s toll on us. How are you going to fight back? How are you going to manage the leadership stress and love Life at Work and love Life at Home?

Stress, anxiety, insecurity, lack of stability … have plagued our productivity.

You are feeling the stress. The number one request this summer has been for trainings to help teams practice emotional intelligence. You know: manage emotions, be healthy and be able to keep working.

Quite frankly - I was feeling the stress. I was pushing through, but it was catching up. It had been too long since I checked out and reset. During the past few weeks, I found time to take a mini trip with my wife, with my family and with some friends (so, a total of 3 trips). I reset and recharged.

How do I stay recharged? Here are some top tips:

6.5 Tips on Managing Leadership Stress

Tip 1 | Plan

• Take 20 minutes on Sunday nights to plan as a family. (Read our story here)

• Take 20 minutes every Friday to plan out your work for Monday. Planning for Monday creates a stop on Friday and helps Monday start with instant productivity and engagement.

• Be sure your plan includes the activities you need to do to make sure you are the parent, spouse, leader and friend you want to be.

Tip 2 | Eat

• More specifically. Eat well. Enjoy breakfast, enjoy lunch and enjoy dinner. Enjoy how you feel in-between meals.

• Plan who you want to eat meals with at work and at home. Intentionally connect with family and friends.

Tip 3 | Move

• Stand up and stretch. Touch your toes (or try to!). Bring exercise bands into the office.

• Take a walk around the block or ride a bike to your next meeting.

Tip 4 | Enjoy

• Do what you love to do (as long as it’s not binge watching TV … )

• Find something that brings enjoyment and fulfillment.

  • kick the ball in the yard with your kids even when you are tired

  • go biking (mountain or road)

  • go fishing

  • play golf

  • sit on the porch and read a book with paper or just sit and reset

  • garden

Tip 5 | Consistency

• Know your values and consistently lead by them. Stress and the unknown can lead to pragmatic justification. Stay focused on your core values and consistently go from there.

Tip 6 | Be Honest

• Leaders fill in the blanks with assumptions and those assumptions are usually worse than what is real. Be honest with your team about expectations, opportunities, and challenges. Fill the unknown in with clear communication about what you do know.

Tip 6.5 | Be Hopeful

• Communicate with honesty and hope. Hope keeps leaders moving towards tomorrow. Hope pushes through the uncertainty with the idea that it will get better. It’s your job to share hope.

Bonus Tip

Take your vacation days even if you are vacationing near home. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to recharge with your family.

If you and your family are struggling to reset and recharge, join our Life At Home Event in November or send a key leader who could benefit. Here’s the link. https://insightlg.com/life-at-home

Rest and Reset

We all want to rest, but many times we forget how. Taking a day off doesn’t change our heart rate. Delegating a task doesn’t always decrease our anxiety. How can we find rest, real rest and actually reset?

At Insight Leadership Group we talk about “Finding the Eddy”. An eddy is a section of the river where the current shifts, forming a small pool of water in which you can “rest”. While on the river you can either find the eddy or start slamming into the rocks when you are tired. It’s the same at work. We can let the hustle and grind lead to exhaustion and frustration or pull into eddy to reset. We reset by remembering who we are, where we are going, how we are going to get there, and who we are going with.

This Insight Guide is not meant to be completed in a day. It’s a process and it should challenge you. Work the process and share it with your close friends or coach and get back on track to being the leader you want to be.

As always - if you need anything, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Find the Eddy

Rest

I was a cocky 15 year old about to experience the cold Colorado River for the first time after convincing a half-way sober guide to let me go it alone in a kayak. We are heading down the river and he said, “you need to know how to find an eddy in case you need to rest in the rapids”. After learning what an eddy was the hard way, I found myself heaving for air from the cold river.

We’ve all been there. The painful feeling of nothing going right when you are simply trying to rest.

We focus on helping leaders learn to find the eddy so that we can navigate the rapids rather than letting the rapids control us.

If you need to learn how to rest to get back to being you, then give us a call.