The focus of the most recent of our MXO Leadership forums centred around leadership wellness and the impact of stress on personal performance in a session led by Track Record.
They offered an alternative perspective on stress and resilience, grounded in science and data, and evidenced from the world of Olympic sport and business.
Pressure vs Performance
- There is a positive relationship between rising performance and increasing pressure
- High stress can cause a negative impact on an individual known as the tipping point
- Understanding and recognizing that it should be a trigger for action, not suffering.
- Vital is the identification of whether you are in a positive ‘challenge’ state or slipping into a more negative ‘threat’ environment.Are your employees past the tipping point?
- What stress levels are your employees currently experiencing?
- Which internal drivers could be impacting them?
- Learn to identify the warning signs (within yourself or your team members) that are associated with being in a negative (and often destructive) threat state
- ‘Action, not agitation’
- There is a level of healthy pressure which can help individuals reach their optimum performance
Using stress as a performance advantage
- “Resilience is the capacity to prepare for, recover from and adapt in the face of stress, challenge or adversity.”
- How can you change your perception of stress to create a performance advantage?
- What practical tools can you implement to influence your state?
- Build long term habits alongside real time bespoke responses in order to manage stress.
- Everyone has the ability to train higher resilience.
- Understand the triggers that drive you over the tipping point and the choices that you have to bring yourself back from threat into the challenge state.
- The ability to recharge yourself and to manage your ‘drains and gains’ effectively is vital.
Resilience Capacity
- Four domains impact resilience capacity: physical, mental, identity and emotional.
- Find your aspiration values
- Know how to recharge yourself at the right times and in the correct way
- Look for self-improvement to upgrade your long-term performance and resilience capacity
- “Which domain do you currently need to target (and therefore improve) to give you a performance advantage?”
MXO Member Summary
- Drive yourself in concentrated sprints of 1-2 hours, not days
- We can control how we perceive stress to our advantage
- Communicate your emotional state to others & encourage them to for the same
- Know how to recharge your battery and take the time to do so
