It’s important to understand the role stress plays in performance.
Look at the chart below:
In a low-stress environment, we grow lazy and begin to fall asleep.
In a high-stress environment, we become flustered.
We all have an optimum level of stress that leads to our best performance. Three truths:
- The appropriate level of stress is different for each person.
- The appropriate level of stress changes as we gain more experience.
- The appropriate level of stress changes when performing different tasks.
As a leader, your job is to make sure each member of your team is functioning somewhere between boredom and anxiety.
When a team member is bored, you can:
- Give them more responsibility.
- Give them coaching and feedback on skills they need to improve.
- Promote them.
- Challenge them.
When a team member is experiencing anxiety, you can:
- Give them coaching and feedback on skills they need to improve.
- Allocate additional resources to their area and rethink staffing.
- Evaluate processes that lead to anxiety.
There’s no one-size-fits-all formula. But that’s not an excuse to ignore it.
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