Episode #541: The Exorbitant Cost of Leader Stress

 
I am putting this content together for me to remind myself that psychosomatic illness is a real thing and there are plenty of graveyards with ambitious thrusting leaders pushing up daisies, because the stress killed them. Being an Aussie male is a health hazard. We are taught from a young age to harden up, soldier on, keep going no matter what. “She’ll be right” is our approach to health issues, which is why we don’t bother going to the doctor or taking good care of ourselves.

Male leaders in general, I would say, are not good at taking care of their health. Too many fags, too much grog, not enough exercise and bad eating habits piling up one on top of the other. We add extra kilos and can’t figure out why we can’t shake that tummy roll as well down an excellent red. We keep working late rather than get to the gym or we are permanently tired in the morning and can’t muster the energy to get out of bed to jog or walk, to get our aerobic exercise quotient.

This is during normal times and then we get hit by additional stress from insufficient results, staff issues or any number of things in business which can drive you nuts. Before you know it, your blood pressure is very high and this is the problem, you don't recognise it is high, because you have been functioning like this for so long, you don’t recognise anything has changed. Annual health checks are good, because they flag things that are going sideways, but there is a long break between results and a lot can kill us in that one year interval.

My recent health check flagged high blood pressure and in typical Aussie male fashion I just dismissed it, because I didn't believe it. It was just a one off, I said to myself, a small blip, nothing to worry about. My wife being a lot smarter than me, bought one of those home blood pressure readers and now I realise this was not a blip. By the way, I know exactly where the stress is coming from and I thought I was on top of it. I didn’t feel anything was particularly wrong, nothing felt different, but that is when we get ambushed.

There are a range of medical solutions I will be discovering very shortly no doubt, but what else can we do to self-manage our stress. One little four-point formula I like is the following:

1. What is the problem? This sounds easy, but it isn’t. Often there are multiple problems and we are wandering through the day assaulted on all sides by various problems like a swarm of bees buzzing around inside our head all struggling for individual attention. We have to decide which is the Queen Bee of problems, the biggie, the one we have to face down first?

2. What are the causes of the problem? Again, sounds simple, but it isn’t. There can be so many causes and inter-related causes and we are struggling to sort out where we should start. We have to decide which is the most egregious cause of our main concern? Which cause should we prioritise above the turmoil we are facing?

3. What are the possible solutions? This is an important step because we move from the back foot to the front foot and we start to engage the positive part of our brain. When we get to this stage, we need to suspend judgement and just go for as many ideas as we can manage. Some will be stupid, unrealistic, unworkable and some great, but we want to get them all out. That stupid, crazy, dopey idea may trigger another thought. “We can’t get that idea to work, but if we tweaked it like this, we could get this better result”, type of conversation with ourselves. The better idea may not have emerged, without the help of the stupid idea.

4. What is the best possible solution? It may be the best of a bad bunch of alternatives and far from perfect, but at least we have arrived at a possible way forward. We now have a possible map to navigate the future and to get to the best possible results, given where we find ourselves.