5 areas of stress and anxiety in your life

Stress and anxiety. It can smack you in the head when you least expect it.

It can creep up on you and before you realize what has happened, your skin tingles, your heart is racing, your breathing shallow and you are ready to lash out at your nearest and dearest for minor offenses.

In previous oists, I have explained what happens in your brain and the different types of stress. Now lets look at the 5 areas in your life that are affected by stress. The more we know about our own peculiar stress response, the more readily we can deal with it effectively.

16 JourneyThe first area of life we’ll look at is the Journey.

Your journey is your path through life – it’s your story, your memories, your history, your beliefs,values, purpose and calling. Stress in this area is often caused by the lack of something or an imbalance in our journey in life and the choices we have made. For many, it is a lack of defined purpose – quaintly referred to as a “mid-life crisis” (should be) where we suddenly start asking ourselves “what’s the point of all of this?” (alone). Stress here can also be tied to our memories and history of fear and worry in the past and triggered in the present.

42 DoingThe second area of our life, we call “Doing”. This is the sphere of action and reaction – the practical aspects of our life. Stress and anxiety in this area can be caused through a feeling of overwhelm or overload because we believe we cannot do what is necessary (persistence) – or perhaps we have simply taken on too much. Perhaps we feel that the risk of action is too great and the alarm bells ring that perhaps our goal is too stretching (almost)?

68 Just BeThe third area we call “Just Be”. This is our emotional being and the way we flow through life. Stress in this area may be caused because we hold on to grievances and bitterness (forgiveness) about others and about ourselves. Perhaps you are being asked to compromise your values or authenticity in order to succeed in this fallen world. Our chosen attitude (gratitude) towards life has a major impact on how we respond to stressful situations.

DifficultyThe fourth area is “Difficulties”. This is the challenging aspects of our lives. As we journey through life we all face difficulties and challenges (failure) – how we approach these can determine the stress and anxiety we feel as we choose how we avoid or overcome our challenges. We may feel guilty about our failure or perhaps we just hold our own “pity party” (self-pity) as we make excuses for being stuck.

120 OpportunitiesThe fifth area we examine is “Opportunities”. How we go about enriching our daily lives, how open and ready we are to things that happen around us can have a significant impact on our levels of stress and anxiety. Perhaps a different point of view will enable us to align ourselves and innovate a way to succeed.

Our stress can be rooted in one or all areas. The way these life areas interplay in our thinking and emotions enable us to choose to cope with or overcome the stressors that life does, and will continue to, present. As we dig a little deeper into our personal response to life happening, we learn what triggers our own stress and anxiety. And once we know the enemy, we can prepare for every battle in our war on stress and anxiety.

Types and Causes of Stress

There are two main types of stress, Eustress and Distress. Eustress is a positive stress that we experience that enhances performance, some call this “being in the flow”. When we have Eustress, we feel energized, focused, and much of what we do seems effortless. Insufficient stress and we may be bored, lack energy and focus and everything seems effortful.

Distress is a negative type of stress. often cause by our perception of the external environment that overwhelms us causing fatigue, exhaustion, ill-health and even burnout.

It is critical to understand that something that you feel as being Eustress, could easily be Distressful for others.

For example, you may be energized and focused by the idea of doing a bungy jump. I, on the other hand would be feeling acute distress.But I get energized by the stress of being in front of thousands of people about to perform… this might cause you acute distress.

When we have no stress, we are in a period of calm. We may even be bored. For some people, being in this state of calm is a goal and lifelong endeavour, for others, the thought of doing very little or even nothing is, in itself, stressful.

How do I know that I am stressed?

Stress doesn’t always look the same as people often respond to stress overwhelem in three distinct ways:

Foot on the accelerator – You’re keyed up, agitated, overly emotional and unable to sit still.

Foot on the brake – You sit down and space out. You show little energy or emotion.

Foot on both – Under pressure, you freeze and cannot do anything. A state of paralysis seems to take over your body, but underneath the skin, you’re highly agitated.

Signs that you may be stressed:

Cognitive Signs

  • Memory problems
  • Inability to concentrate
  • Poor judgment
  • Seeing only the negative side of things
  • Anxious or racing thoughts
  • Constant worrying
Emotional Signs

  • Moodiness
  • Irritability or short temper
  • Agitation, unable to relax
  • Feeling overwhelmed
  • Sense of loneliness and isolation
  • Depression or general unhappiness
Physical Signs

  • Aches and pains
  • Diarrhea or constipation
  • Nausea, dizziness
  • Chest pain, rapid heartbeat
  • Loss of sex drive
  • Frequent colds or flu
Behavioural Signs

  • Easting more or less than normal
  • Sleeping longer or much less than normal
  • Isolating yourself from other people
  • Procrastinating or neglecting responsibilities
  • Using alcohol, cigarettes or drugs to relax
  • Nervous habits such as nail biting, pacing

REMEMBER – other psychological or medical conditions could cause any or all of the signs.

Some people tolerate stress more easily than others and there are some things that influence your ability to tolerate it:

Support network – supportive friends and family can be a wonderful buffer against life’s stressors. The more isolated and lonely you are, the more vulnerable you may be to stress,

Sense of control – If you believe that you are able to influence events and persevere through challenges, you will have greater confidence in yourself and your ability to overcome stress. But when you feel as though you have little or no control, you may be more vulnerable.

AttitudeStress resistant people have a positive attitude on life. They embrace challenges and accept that change happens and often believe in a higher power or purpose. A predominantly negative outlook on life adds to the feeling of stress and your inability to do anything about it.

Emotional control – Knowing how to calm or soothe yourself when you are feeling sad, angry or fearful will enable you to bounce back from adversity. Lacking emotional control will make you extremely vulnerable to stress.

Knowledge – Factual information about how long a stressful situation will last can enable you to tolerate the stress more easily, knowing that this too shall pass. When we have little or no knowledge about the situation, we don;t know how long we will have to keep this up, and thus may give in too soon.

What cause stress?

If you perceive something to be stressful. It is, for you. It might not be perceived as stressful by someone else. I remember all to well, being dismissed by my father when I was young and complaining that I couldn’t cope with something – only to be told that it was “good for me”. Apparently I would thank him one day for it. Did his ‘wisdom’ help me? Not at all. In fact I got to a point where I genuinely thought that there was something seriously wrong with me. Some may argue that there still is 😉 The point is, if it feels stressful for you, it is stressful for you.

Some causes of stress are relatively easy to spot as they are external: Major life changes; Work; Relationship problems; Financial difficulties; Being too busy; Children and family.

But not all stress is caused by external factors. Stress can also be self-generated:

  • Inability to accept uncertainty
  • Pessimism
  • Unrealistic expectations
  • Perfectionism
  • Lack of assertiveness
  • Negative self-talk

If the cause is external you may be able to do nothing about it, but you can choose how you deal with it.

5 Components of an effective team

Teamwork Matters

The Synergy Illusion ProgramOrganizations accomplish what they do because of teamwork. Whether you are in business, sport, education, the church and even marriage – teamwork is what paves the way to success. What a leader can do with a great team far surpasses anything they can accomplish alone. As a leader learns how to unite the right people around a shared vision, their influence truly begins to take off.

According to Dr. John C. Maxwell in his book, The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork, the 1st Law of Teamwork is The Law of Significance:

One is too small a number to achieve greatness. Leaders who fail to promote teamwork undermine their own potential and erode the best efforts of the people with whom they work. To accomplish anything significant, leaders must learn to link up with others.

Recently I began working with a very successful businessman. In our first session he proudly informed me that he was a “self-made man”. He was rather taken aback when I appeared unimpressed. After all, this man is successful and rich. I responded, “That’s too bad. Imagine just how much you could have achieved with a great team.”

The reality of course, is that no-one is truly self-made. We may not have been gifted our businesses by our parents but they have played a part in making you. Your education may have been cut short or even, not especially good, but your teachers did impart something. For a few of my clients what they perceive as being negative in their lives is actually the turning point for their success.

A leader’s job is to develop the team so that the team is effective?

But what is an effective team?

There are probably as many definitions of an effective team as there are teams. But there does seem to be commonality and this, I believe, distils to:

An effective team has unity of cohesion and effort towards a common goal.

The Five components of an effective team

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team integration

Fig. 1 The 5 Components of Team Unity of Cohesion and Effort

These five components stem from research undertaken largely by the US Military (in particular, post-Gulf War I, when the number of “friendly fire” incidents became unacceptable).

Only when all five components are present in a team is there the potential for true unity of cohesion and effort. (Figure 1)

Shared Values

Shared values define the team. Without common values, everyone on the team has a different opinion about what’s important. Values put people on the same page. Just as personal values influence and guide an individual’s behaviour, organizational values set the standard for a team’s performance.

Too often, the values of a team are prepared by a marketing consultant, discussed and pasted on walls. Yet these are not the underlying true values of the individual’s within the team. Rarely does one see a team’s values statement include payment for their contribution, nor do we often see values pertaining to providing a safe and secure home for our families.

When we ask our clients why they work, the number 1 response is unsurprisingly, money. Joint second is providing for a family home and education for children, third is God.
iceburgI liken shared values to the image of an iceberg. The 10% above the water is what we see of the values that a person or the team holds – it represents the behaviours that are manifest.

The 90% below the water is the character of the individual or team – which is defined by the values that the team members hold.

It’s the 90% below the surface that sinks the ship.

The leader who neglects the real shared values of the team may find that the team:

  • Stagnates or fails to grow
  • Avoids obstacles
  • Loses achievement-oriented employees
  • Encourages team members to focus on their own careers and individual goals
  • Is easily distracted

Clear Command Instruction

Clear command instruction gives team members direction and confidence. If you lead your team, then you are responsible for identifying a worthy and compelling vision and articulating it to the team. People continually need to be shown the team’s compass clearly and creatively so that their actions align and they stay motivated by a captivating picture of the future.

Each team member should be able to make decisions readily and rapidly based on the clarity of the command instruction.
thiswayClarity is critical. Often we see the use of delightful, yet nebulous words used to describe the goal and provide the direction. The word excellence (or excellent) is one example. Like values statements, the intentions are good, but what does excellence mean? We each have our own definition, all perfectly valid, of what excellence means.

In “Made to Stick“, the Heath Brothers refer to this as ‘Commanders Intent’ and recommend that leaders strip down the goal to the core message. The Combat Maneuver Training Centre, the unit in charge of military simulations in the US recommends that officers arrive at the Commander’s Intent by asking themselves two questions:

  1. If we do nothing else during tomorrow’s mission we must __________________.
  2. The single most important thing that we do tomorrow is __________________.

In this way, any team member who faces a decision can make that decision in line with the command instruction.

Establishing this takes time. Sometimes it is easy – when there are specific standards laid down by an industry body such as a Ministry of Health, the Inland Revenue or a professional body – then the goal of achieving those standards makes command instruction comparatively straightforward:

Achieve these standards.

But what happens once those standards are achieved? The leader then needs to create the new standards and articulate these to the team. And like any goal you want to achieve it has to be SMART, sensory and compelling, and of course, it must satisfy the values.

Leaders who are unable to articulate clarity of command instruction often find that the team fails to commit and:

  • This creates ambiguity among the team about direction and priorities
  • Team member’s watch windows of opportunity close due to excessive analysis and unnecessary delay
  • It also breeds lack of confidence and fear of failure
  • Team’s revisit discussions and decisions again and again
  • And also encourages second-guessing among team members

Shared Experience

Having clarity of direction that will satisfy shared values is only the beginning of effectiveness for the team. Shared experienced is the ‘how the team will do this’. What skills and knowledge are needed to achieve this?

Teams are of course, filled with individuals. And each individual brings with them their own set of skills, knowledge and abilities. And all players in a team have a place where they add the most value. Winning teams require more than the right people. You may have a group of talented individuals, but if each person is out of position, then the team won’t reach its potential.
chessLeading a successful team involves putting people in spots where they can excel.

The leader can think of team members as resources and fill the spots like playing checkers, or the leader can recognize the particular strengths and abilities of each individual. Using their strengths work together as a team – like a chess player.

When the leader fails to use the right strengths and abilities…

  • This creates resentment among team members who have different standards of performance
  • Encourages mediocrity
  • The team misses deadlines and key deliverables
  • And places an undue burden on the team leader as the sole source of discipline

Shared Situational Awareness

The most neglected component of developing effective teams is shared situational awareness.

Shared Situational Awareness is when all team members’ continuous perceptions of themselves and their peers in relation to the dynamic environment of business, competition, goals and the ability to predict, and then execute based on shared perception.

This is often neglected because it is so difficult to pin down. And the moment that you do pin down that you are fully aware of the current situation, the situation has already changed. Further, in circumstances where an individual’s situational awareness is well developed, much of the processing is unconscious.

ssaTake, for example, driving a vehicle:

When you first learned to drive you were acutely aware of the very many things that required your attention. All of which had an impact or potential impact on your response. You have to steer, change gear, accelerate, break, and watch what is behind you, beside you, in front of you. You have to predict the behaviour of every other road user and make decisions based on a common set of rules. All on the basis of trust. Trust that the other road users will obey the rules, trust that the brake pedal will work, and trust in your own judgment call about what each other road user will or will not do.

Now imagine attempting to instruct another person remotely how to do that, in real time.

You would need to know that person’s knowledge and experience, where they were, what vehicle they were driving and all the other information. Impossible.

To enable this to work, the leader and each team member needs to be sure that every team member will perform their role effectively and how each will respond to given, known (and unknown) situations (following the command instruction based on known shared values using their known abilities and experience). It also means that team members look out for each other in the interests of the team.

When shared situational awareness is poor, teams:

  • Conceal their weaknesses and mistakes from one another
  • Hesitate to ask for help or provide constructive feedback
  • Hesitate to offer help outside their own areas of responsibility
  • Jump to conclusions about the intentions and aptitudes of others without attempting to clarify them
  • Fail to recognize and tap into one another’s skills and experiences
  • Waste time and energy managing their behaviours for effect
  • Hold grudges
  • Dread meetings and find reasons to avoid spending time together

Communication

The fifth component of an effective team is in their communications. Communication brings to light disagreements so that teammates can hammer out their differences and move forward in unison. Communication also spreads information, which eliminates redundancies and prevents teammates from working at cross‐purposes.

Communication within the team must continuously reinforce and support each of the other four components. Openly and candidly.

And critically, communication is the response you get. If a team member does not understand what their teammate is saying, the teammate is responsible for getting their message across.
commsThe culture within the team is created, reinforced or undermined by the communication within the team. Consider communication as a family virus. The virus spreads rapidly and easily because the family stays close together and has members who are similar. The more virulent the virus, the quicker it spreads… and for communication, nothing spreads faster than gossip, cynicism and untruths. A wise leader ensures that they inoculate every team member with their chosen contagion that supports the desired team culture and prevents the spread of any malicious or damaging chatter.

Teams that have poor communication:

  • Have boring meetings
  • Create environments where back-channel politics and personal attacks thrive
  • Ignore controversial topics that are critical to team success
  • Fail to tap into all the opinions and perspectives of team members
  • Waste time and energy with posturing and interpersonal risk management

Team dysfunctions and issues


In our work with hundreds of work teams, we have found that the lack of Shared Situational Awareness is always the number one cause of

Number of teams showing symptoms of dysfunction

issues in teams. Even in teams that are high performing. It is most often manifest in the apparent lack of trust in the team. Lack of trust is the fruit of behaviours that good SSA would overcome.

The second dysfunction of teams is communication – often brought about because of a lack of shared situational awareness or, as most people think of it, trust.

Clarity of command instruction is most often the third issue teams face, though in competitive business organizations the third issue is frequently shared values.

 

Diagnosing the Issues in the team

In our work and research with organization teams across industries and across the globe we have identified the symptoms of team dysfunction and how frequently each occur within a team. By surveying team members we have been able to identify the frequency of dysfunction symptoms and thereby identify the key component issue.

Identifying the symptoms of dysfunction

Figure 2: Data from 582 teams, showing number of symptoms in each team for each component

 

What does the leader need to do?

Law 4 in John Maxwell’s 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork is the Law of Mount Everest

As the challenge escalates, the need for teamwork elevates. As the journey grows in difficulty, you can no longer cruise along with ordinary talent and average cooperation. To climb past the obstacles to your dream, you need to have a team of peak performers working in unison and clicking on all cylinders.

Synptoms of dystfunction in teams and what this means If your team is facing challenges or you want it to perform better, then the first task is to recognize that it is your responsibility as the leader. It is not the team members’ responsibility nor is it an external consultant’s responsibility to “fix” the team. It starts with you.

In each area, there are common key symptoms. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, just an overview of the top and most frequently uncovered issues in our work with teams:

Observe the symptoms of dysfunction that may be present and raise each issue with the whole team. Now is the time you can ask the team to help you fix the issues.

Knowing your goals, having the right experience and resources and working together towards satisfying shared values are well known to be important in effective team performance. Shared Situational Awareness and clear communication though is the glue for teams: How you understand my context and situation and we adapt to each new situation as it arises – collaborating to gain those synergies everyone promises. And the key to SSA is open and candid communication. It’s the leader’s job to inoculate all team members with the positive communication virus.

 

Stop Stress and Anxiety

Anxiety or stress versus Fear

Fear and anxiety and stress are close cousins yet distinct from each other.

Fear, evolutionary speaking, is a useful, protective trait critical for survival. It sharpens our senses and prepares our body to face sudden danger. Critically, fear is our response to a real threat and imminent danger. Fear has a cause that is both tangible and present and is usually something specific.

Anxiety is usually a fear of an indefinite something that we cannot always explain or even locate in space and time.

Stress is the way our bodies and minds react to something which upsets our normal balance in life. Stress is how we feel and how our bodies react when we are fearful or anxious. Some level of stress has some upside to mind and body function to enable us to react in a positive way. Too much stress though, is both harmful to the body and our performance. How much is too much? Well, that depends… on you and how you respond.

As fear is a critical survival mechanism in response to a real threat, stress from fear is something to be tolerated in order to survive. Anxiety, on the other hand, is fear looking for a reason.

Anxiety is fear looking for a reason.

In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) there is a category for “General Anxiety Disorder” (GAD). Diagnostic criteria for GAD are: Excessive and difficult-to-tame anxiety and worry occurring more days than not for at least 6 months about a number of events or activities. And you have 3 or more of the following symptoms:

  • Restlessness or feeling keyed up or on edge
  • Being easily fatigued
  • Difficulty concentrating or mind going blank
  • Irritability
  • Muscle tension
  • Sleep disturbance

Also, the worry should not be about something specific.

Manifest symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of functioning in life.

As you read through the clinical diagnosis, if you think, “yeap, that’s me”, you need to stop right now and book an appointment to visit your doctor. So, just check the details again, is your anxiety occurring more days than not? At least 3 of the symptoms? IS your anxiety causing you significant distress? Again, if your answers are yes, you need to seek professional advice.

Anxiety is the tacit awareness that something is missing or wrong in our lives or that our values an aspirations are out of focus or under threat.

Active versus passive fear

Taking action in response to threatening stimuli enables us to engage in active oping strategies instead of a fearful response. The central nucleus of the amygdala plays a critical role here. Specifically, “Type 1” cells in the Central Nucleus (CeA) that, when activated, inhibit transmission activity. When inhibited, the CeA is selectively silenced. This silencing is linked to activity in the frontal region of the brain (the Cholinergenic basal forebrain) which is known for its arousing influence on parts of the brain cortex. In short, silence the CeA and you more actively seek a way out of a threatening situation.

The bed nucleus of the stria terminals (BNST) mediates slower-onset, longer-lasting responses that frequently accompany sustained threats, and that may persist even after threat termination. Continuing the feeling of anxiety.

It is possible to bypass, or at least significantly reduce, the anxiety experience by training ourselves to use alternate pathways.

We can avoid being gripped by anxiety. Not by withdrawing from life, but by actively choosing to negotiate ourselves away from negative thinking and engaging in more pleasurable activities and constructive behaviour.

So why do we persist in ever being anxious?

We worry because we think that worrying is the most useful, and sometimes the only apparently useful, strategy and keeps us preoccupied and safe. I.e. it keeps us from taking action to deal with the situation.

If we want to beat anxiety, we must be disciplined to exercise our incredible capacity to conquer it with calm and positivity. Every time we purposefully take action towards change, we contribute to the creation and consolidation of new behavioural responses and the underlying neural circuits that can bypass our anxious response.

Your Brain on Stress and Anxiety – Infographic

6 Top Reasons Leaders Seek Coaching

Why do leaders seek coaching? Over the past twenty years of coaching, I have found that leaders seek to a coach for six main reasons, and more urgently when two or more of these reasons combine:

So just what can a coach do for you?

A coach can help you:
  • Gain insight – particularly about how current behaviour is PERCEIVED by others through providing feedback and assessment.
  • Get Clarity of Purpose – Extroverted people who are outer directed (and rewarded behaviours in this world) tend to get their self-esteem from satisfying others’ expectations of them. This may cause them to lose touch with what is truly important for themselves. Without clarity of purpose, you may tend to rush through days not knowing what you want to achieve. Often asking what others want rather than seeming to have opinions of their own. Reflection and review through coaching can help here.
  • Help you improve relationships – changing behaviours in relationships changes their perception of the other party and you’ll get more open and honest feedback. Coaching that helps you conduct planned conversations with colleagues is especially useful here.
  • Broaden your perspectives – we all play a role and have a preference of the way we process…. increasing the diversity of opinions we consider in decisions broadens our perspective leading to improved and more acceptable decisions.
  • Develop your leadership skills – developing the skills each individual needs for their new position or a future role.
  • Help you Identify and overcome barriers to change – change occurs over time, unlearning is often resisted, especially deeply rooted habits, and stress causes us to revert to preference. Self-righteousness is often the biggest barrier. Coaching can identify and discuss the roadblocks developing strategies and new ways of thinking to overcome them.
  • Improve your ability to learn – dependence on your coach for feedback is a disservice. Internalizing the ability to learn and continuously grow, sustaining behaviour and results. Coaching uses a cyclical process, making this process explicit, the coachee becomes more skilled at using the same process on their own.

When is Coaching needed?

There are times in life and work when we would benefit from the experience, wisdom and knowledge of people who have been in similar situations. If you are looking for one such person, then you are looking for a coach. Most coaches are professionals, people with considerable experience in one or more sectors, more often than not trained in coaching skills. They choose to become coaches as they are willing to help others by sharing their experience and by helping their coachees to find solutions to their issues, following them through a plan of action.

According to a report published by CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel Development), one in five chief executives claim that having had a coach was critical for their success.

Young graduates report to have found their feet in the organisation thanks to the help of their most experienced colleagues. Even people coming up to retirement have been eased through this difficult stage of their life through people who have “been there before”. Within a work environment there are many situations where the help of a coach would be appropriate.
Typical Situations when having a coach will really help you
  • Starting in a new job/position when you are expected to hit the ground running.
  • Taking on a new role or responsibility, or starting in a new industry where you have little experience, but need to gain the skills and experience quickly.
  • When needing a personal assessment to determine your strengths and weaknesses, and consider what you should be doing in order to maximize your potential.
  • When striving for promotion or a new position.
  • When needing to talk through your thought processes, strategies, and plans in order to move forward.
  • When struggling with certain skills and performance areas and you wish to improve.
  • When feeling you have reached a plateau in your career and want to explore options.