How to Lead Through Stress Without Breaking Your Team

Hi leaders, we recently found a study on hospital teams that showed some interesting insights into the ways stress can bond or break any team. Stress is a catalyst that exposes our weakest faultlines, and when they are exposed, we either overcome to develop stronger bonds, or we fracture. These are some of the best practices for using stress to make (and not break) your team—pulled from past work with conflict mediation and helping teams through difficult seasons.

Team Huddles

If you’re in a stressful season, full team meetings can feel like a waste of time (though they often aren’t), so thinking of them more as huddles can be useful. Try making meetings shorter and tell each team member to prepare beforehand to talk for 2 minutes about what’s largest on their work-list and ways they may or may not need support.

Listen superbly

Stress makes our experience of the world more solipsistic, making it harder to see and empathize with others. Try to resist this. During meetings or brainstorming sessions, listen with all your might! Sway has specialized trainings to help build listening skills among your management team. But even slowing down to restate an important point said in the meeting can be immensely useful and will make everyone’s communication a whole lot clearer.

Support healthy habits

Encourage lunch breaks, five-minute walks, getting up from the computer and stretching. Sometimes employees try to “be impressive” and will resist these actions and limit their own productivity, so as a manager it’s your job to encourage healthy habits in your team and set a good example.

Set clear expectations

Our minds go into overdrive when we’re in stress mode, so make sure you are being exceptionally clear about what is (or isn’t) on your employees’ task lists. Try to spell out what’s most needed and explain why.

Show appreciation

Gratitude and generosity works wonders for team cohesion. And since humans are social creatures, the more one person does it, the practice grows and grows.

Acknowledge the stress

Maybe this point should go first, but if you aren’t naming and acknowledging the stressful thing, you are cutting off a vital source of story-building and cohesive energy for your team. Acknowledge the stress so that everyone feels brought into the same story.

If you need support through leading your team through stress, connect with Sway today.