How Leaders Can De-Stress Their Teams

Leadership literature tends to look at workplace stress through the lens of the individual, the way personal and professional challenges erode a single worker’s engagement and well-being. However, stress is a collective experience as well. When teams are facing the same kinds of stressors at the same time, productivity takes a hit and resentment can fester, according to Sloan MIT Management Review

Business researchers Allen Morrison and David Forster noted how “most organizations still lack systemic approaches for managing stress across teams.” Their research suggests the main culprit isn’t so much the stress among team members as it is the stress in the team’s leader. They found leaders too often run teams in ways that exacerbate team stress, “undermining team cohesion and performance.” 

Morrison’s research also suggests that cases of disengagement and lack of trust are usually a function of a dysfunctional leader, “someone whose actions, inactions, or leadership style intensify rather than alleviate pressure.”

The authors’ first prescription is that leaders take a good look at themselves:

• What are their stressors, and what are the negative reactions that might affect others?
• How can they reduce stress?
• How can they find support?

None of which is meant to suggest that it’s a leader’s job to eliminate stress; that’s an impossible task. But leaders can acknowledge it and communicate it with the people they lead. Clarity about where people are and what their frustrations are can alleviate the anxiety and distrust that are adjacent to stress.

So it may be that your next team meeting should start with a temperature check for leaders and team members alike. It may be that a common challenge can lead to a common solution or at least give leaders some knowledge they can act on. The researchers found “Stress doesn’t have to corrode culture—it can forge it.”