Why do we treat stress as such an evil? Why is the reaction to a co-worker who is stressed always one of sympathy and advice how to get out of it?
No one who’s ever led anything of significance has ever got there without stress.
None of us would walk today if we didn’t open our bodies to some level of stress – the challenge of standing that first time. None of us would communicate – you wouldn’t be reading this now – without some level of intellectual stress back when you were learning to read.
Yet when it comes to growth through stress at work, the common refrain is that it’s bad. That your manager is evil if they place you in any stressful situation.
Even though teams often put their manager or CEO in stressful situations without flinching.
Stress is important. We need to seek it. We need to grow the resilience to be stressed by bigger things over time.
If we avoid it, or if we delegate it to technology, or if we tell people to stop working when faced by it, we avoid growth.
I’m not talking here about asking your intern to present your P&L to the board – though I know some who would relish and grow through it. I’m not asking you the first time you run to do a marathon.
But you’ll never get to run a marathon if you don’t run a mile first. And 500 yards before that.
So stop looking for sympathy and excuse to stop in stress. Embrace it and grow it in parallel with your resilience. You might just end up doing a triathlon at the end of it.
#culture #leadership
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