How to Be An Engaging Leader : Use Positive Stress to Get the Most from Your Managers

How to Be An Engaging Leader

Use Positive Stress to Get the Most from Your Managers

Being a leader comes with responsibility, and responsibility can bring stress. If you know how to manage the stress of leadership, you can make terrific things happen. This goes double for the managers who work for you in the company hierarchy. A manager who manages both stress and employees may well be your best employee — one who can lead others to your vision. This is why you must approach stress in a way that helps your brain and pushes you to success.

The person at the top of the hierarchy experiences positive stress — the kind that drives you to accomplish things. Positive stress enhances memory and people skills, and it enables you to feel the emotions necessary to win and to achieve.

Positive stress is a tool for getting things done. A little rush of adrenaline that gets the heart beating faster and puts employees in action can go a long way to getting things done. Try some of the following strategies to increase and harness positive stress:

Set short-term goals. Time limits increase stress levels but only enough to create positive responses in those who are equipped to meet the goals.

Offer incentives. The promise of a reward gets those stress juices flowing.

Promise new learning. Some employees experience positive stress when they get excited about a doable challenge.

Most research shows that money is not the reason people work for an organization. The reason is they share the organization’s vision.


Source adapted and credited to Marilee B. Sprenger from The Leadership Brain For Dummies