Got Stress? Here’s How You Manage It

Under pressure, even the most well-intentioned manager can become the boss nobody wants to work for. Hello, I'm Chester Elton and this is my co-author and dear friend, Adrian Gostick. Well, hello to you, Ches. Yeah, today we're going to talk about how managers can manage pressure with grace and intelligence, which we all want to learn about. So as always, we hope the time you spend with us will help reduce the stigma of anxiety at work and in your personal life. And with us is our new friend, Sabina Nawaz, author of You're the Boss, Become the Manager You Want to Be and Others Need, published in March with Simon & Schuster. Sabina taps into her experience as a Microsoft executive, backs it up with 12,000 pages. The book isnít 12,000 pages long. Itís 12,000 pages of proprietary data drawn from thousands of 360-degree interviews and distills insights from over 20 years of coaching CEOs and executives at organizations around the world. Welcome to the show, Sabina. We are delighted to have you on our podcast. Thank you so much, Chester and Adrian. Well Sabina, there's several counterintuitive concepts, I can call them that, that you introduce in your book and having published ourselves with some issues, we know they love the counterintuitive that get people talking. So one of the biggest one you say is that it's not power that corrupts, it's pressure. So help us understand this idea of pressure, especially in a management role that can cause anxiety for you as the manager and those who report to you. Absolutely. Let me ask you this, Adrian, are you under any pressure these days? No, not at all. Everything's smooth sailing. You're gonna make my job hard, aren't you? No, no. And of course, of being facetious, yeah, no. Absolutely. There's pressure in our businesses, there's pressure politically, economically, there's pressure all over. Exactly. And then other times when you wake up or in the middle of your day where you're feeling really pressured that you do things you're not quite proud of? Well, you know, I... You're perfect, I know. I don't admit some of the things that, yeah. But no, absolutely you do. Yeah, well, because you want to be in control. So, you know, people overeat or they do they drink or they do whatever because you want to get in control. And so you end up doing things. Yeah, you kind of regret. Yes. And and we lash out at other people. Sometimes we we get snippy. We we lose our patience. We raise our voice. Maybe we even curse. And that is the essence of what happens often when we're under pressure, is we stop paying attention to our behavior. Now, this is especially a challenge when we are in management positions, because the higher up we go, the more pressure we have. And the more pressure we have, the more it's going to leak out in these unvented fashions and have a bigger impact because there's a lot of people, depending on us. Our mood is a contagion in the workplace. We show anxiety under pressure, we show snippiness under pressure, it's going to transmit downward. So that's why pressure corrupts our actions. You know, it is interesting, isn't it? Taking that beat, taking that breath, trying to put things in perspective. When you're under pressure, you just don't find that time, do you? You don't, or you tell yourself you don't have time. You always have time because you can fix it now or you can fix it later with a lot more time when you've left a trail of collateral damage in your wake. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, we're also executive coaches and we know it's hard delivering bad news to managers that maybe they're not as beloved, you know, as they think they are. How do managers typically react when you tell them that they've got some work to do and how do you get them to then change? Well, basically they react with every color of the rainbow. First of all, before I even deliver the news, I scare the bejesus out of them. I tell them this is gonna be hard, this is gonna be tough. In fact, if you're going through a major life event, don't go through a 360 interview process where you're gonna get feedback from your coworkers. And here I am back with the report and you're gonna go into two weeks of a spiral, all of this stuff. And their face gets kind of small and they go, do you say this to everybody or are you just saying this to me? And I say, I say this to everybody. This is my standard patter. You are not special. You're not particularly one way or the other. And then I give them the overarching feedback, the broad themes. And there's relief. There's relief at the end of that first meeting where they go, oh, you scared me unnecessarily. Some of these themes are familiar. I'm good. This is fine. And I say, wait till you read the verbatims. Because in my reports, I provide verbatim data. And that, so if I interview, say, 12 people, they're getting a 40, 50 page report, not because I like to write, I do, but it's because it's real words in the words of their real co-workers about how these people are perceived. They read the verbatims and it sure enough hits them really hard. Their reaction at that point is the stages of grief, anger, denial, I should just quit, this is unfair, they've got it out for me, don't they appreciate what I'm doing, I've sacrificed so much, a big F you many times. And I tell them, do not talk to anybody else about your feedback in those two weeks. Feel free to call me. When we get together, though, after stewing in their own juices for a while, they realize they're the last ones to find out. This is what people are truly saying about them when it's come through an objective third party, that even if they were to leave in a huff, they're likely to be dogged by the same feedback wherever they go. So they might as well get on board and start working on it. So there is this turnaround that happens at that point. Tell us, one of the ones I wanted to get into, which is great, because Chester and I, we do 360s with our clients as well, and we deliver the news, and you're right. I mean, sometimes it can be quite sobering. It's a slap upside the head, even though, look, I thought I was doing great. But you're right, most of the time they start to realize, okay, these are familiar themes, but I need to now work on them. I can't just let them lag. So really what you talk about in the new book, which of course is you're the boss, is you're the boss of yourself too, and you have to start with self-management. So talk a little bit about that, would you? Because a lot of people can't afford a Sabina to come in, and there's only one of you. So how do I manage myself if I don't have an executive coach on my shoulder telling me what to do? Well, if they can't come to me, they can come to you. Exactly. And of course, yes, not everybody can come with a coach, and nor should they, nor should they. I'm sure you all are very familiar with these concepts yourself as well, but it's first of all understanding what are your triggers, what sets you off. Maybe it's that person who gets you things at the last minute, or maybe it's the person who doesn't ask you enough questions, or the person who asks you too many questions. So what are your triggers? And once you recognize your triggers, proactively going in with a trigger management plan, in other words, buying time when you know that you're going to be in a high-trigger situation and you're likely to get triggered and you do get triggered. Now, the challenge, of course, as you know, with brain science is that in the moment that we're getting triggered, we lose our ability to think. So I encourage people to go armed with this, a simple sticky note. And in a sticky note, write down four or five ideas with which you are going to be able to buy yourself some time. And that's going to be different for different people. For one person, it might be taking a swig of water. For someone else, it might be doing slightly complex math, like counting down by sevens from 100 to 80. For another person, it might be paraphrasing back what they thought they heard without an edge of sarcasm in their voice. So write down a few choices so when your brain freezes, you can point to the sticky and just pick one of those and use that. So triggers is one piece about managing yourself. Another one that's, you know, but triggers are sort of episodic. There is something that is our constant companion. And those are our hungers. Just like when we go to the grocery store when we're hungry, we pick up, in my case, ketchup chips. Which we love. Yeah. Very Canadian. Yeah, no question. Our producer, Brant, not a fan. We couldn't get him converted, but we are big fans, yeah. Right, and I don't know, in New Jersey, what do you pick up for junk food? Chocolate. Chocolate, yeah. Chocolates might go too, yeah. Exactly, so pick your poison, but we pick up junk food when we're hungry. Similarly, when we go to work hungry, we indulge in junk behaviors. Now, what does it mean to go to work hungry? Well, firstly, in the very literal sense, you go to work hungry, you're gonna be hangry. And one of my clients, the only thing she's done to manage herself is basically carry a protein bar in her purse at all times. And the one time she had a blow up afterwards, she was like, I ran out of protein bars, and guess what, I blew up. So there is the literal sense of it. But our hungers as human beings are also our emotional hungers, our deep seated needs to be seen, to be validated, to be loved, to be seen as the smartest person in the room, or as a hero with a cape flying who's going to rescue everybody, or maybe to be seen as a martyr. So, we have all these deep-seated hungers are unmet outside of work, they come raging in into the conference room. And we end up in behaviors that divert us from our true objectives and purpose. I had a client who decided that she was, this is the meeting, I'm gonna go in, I'm gonna read them the riot act, they're completely off track. And her hunger was to be seen as the smartest person in the room. Comes back to the next coaching session, I go, how did the riot act go? Well, didn't quite go as a riot act, you know, because they presented the plan and of course it was off track. So I said, well, so then did you give them the feedback that we'd strategized on? No, I just gave them answers because I knew how to fix this and I knew how to do it quickly, I gave them answers, they wrote it all down, and they came back with this. And I said, yeah, and so in two weeks from now, you're going to repeat the same pattern. And you're complaining that you have a lot of pressure, you have to do it all. So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when we don't sate our hungers in other ways. Now in this person's case, she joined Trivia Nights once a week outside of work, got to be plenty smart, she crushed the competition, won her award, came to work with a full cup. Interesting. Yeah, those little releases, right? Which comes to my question about, you know, always this emphasis on productivity, high-performance people have a hard time sitting still, they always feel like they should be doing more and more and more. You advocate for something I think is fascinating called the blank space on your calendar. So I get, you know, after work you go to the trivia, you know, contest and all that. The blank space on your calendar, flesh that out, how does that work? When you are under pressure, when you're anxious, our tendency is to compartmentalize, home in on the thing that's causing us pressure and work extra hard, either that or play video games till we're completely numb. But if instead, when under pressure, you do nothing, you are much more likely to be successful. This nothingness that I call blank space is something many executives I coach have now done with life-changing or career-changing results. Here's what it is. It's two weeks back to back, sorry, two hours back to back once a week. That's a big difference. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is two hours back to back once a week where you are completely unplugged. You're not talking to anyone, you're not online, you're not researching and falling down the rabbit hole of TikTok, you are not reading, none of that, you're unplugged. And you sit and think through the big picture. Because research shows that our biggest insights come when? In the shower, running, commuting, and so on, when we give our brains a rest. And so this is about giving your brain a rest. Often you'll get big insights or you'll at least come back with a well-rested, less anxious brain. Somebody who did this ended up changing careers. They were a successful, very successful executive, but raged with imposter syndrome. And after six months of doing blank space work, guess what their career is now? Same as our day jobs. They've become an executive coach. Wow. Wow. So, tell us a little bit more about your work, Sabina, as an executive coach, as an author. How do people find you? Where would you send them? Best place is just to go to my website, sabinanoas.com, and all the usual stuff. They can follow me on LinkedIn, Instagram is Sabina Coaching, Blue Sky, and so on. So give us one, as we're getting near our time, but we have a few minutes left, you're the boss, give us a turnaround story, maybe the biggest turnaround you've seen in a manager, their behavior, their results, does this stuff work? Can I give you two? Of course, sure. Because I want to start with my own story. Look, I am not above all this. I've written the book and I am deeply human. I have my own hungers and my own stuff to work through. And when I was in charge of, ironically, management and leadership development at Microsoft and came back from parental leave, I became a nightmare of a boss. I was working on deliverables directly for Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, high pressure, high stakes, and a highly restless infant back at home who didn't sleep at night. Combine all of that, I became really short and snippy and micromanagey with my direct reports. Now, the interesting thing is I had gotten feedback that you're one of the best managers we've had before. So it's back to the same person under pressure can transmogrify, to use a technical term, and become an ogre. And the worst part is, it's not just pressure that corrupts, power then isolates you from the impact that you're having on other people. So I was completely clueless. I thought, oh, look at how productive we are. We're producing great results. We're killing it. Well, I was also killing my people. And fortunately, one of my colleagues then told me that people were crying in their offices because of how I was treating them. Gut punch. But that gut punch, the courage of a colleague to tell me that, then helped me turn things around and regain my humanity. Now, that's why I do what I do, because of this deeply personal transformative, visceral experience that I had. And one turnaround story is my client, Adam, who I write about in the book, who was also crushing it in business results, walked into his boss's office thinking, this is the day I'm getting promoted, and instead get slapped upside the head, not literally, but saying, people are complaining to me about what a jerk and a bully you are. You better fix this and fast. We do a 360. It was one of the worst, most brutal 360s I have done. People called him every name under the sun that I won't repeat on a polite show. Adam was crushed. Adam was clueless. He literally had no idea. He thought his sarcasm was motivating people, that his jokes were actually funny and were uplifting morale. And the opposite was happening. Now, Adam and I worked in small incremental micro habits at a time. And when people called him a thousand percent better. Wow. A thousand percent better. That's great. So our guest is Sabina Nawaz. She's got a wonderful book, You Are the Boss, Become the Manager You Want to Be and Others Need, published in March by Simon & Schuster, who we love. You know, Sabina, we're always interested in self-care. So you talk about pressure, and what are some of the things that you do to take care of yourself to stay in that good lane? Well, a lot of things, the usual suspects, I prioritize sleep, I'm training for a marathon so I exercise regularly, I meditate. By the way, when I say meditate, some days my meditation is exactly one mindful inhale and exhale. So I can check my box on my yes list, but it's not regular. My favorite though, is what I call the power of the shower. I do shower every day. And when I'm in the shower, see, I'm a fan of being efficient in things and not adding more time to our calendars as we do self care if possible, or at least stack it up. And so in the shower, I have a moment of gratitude. And today, in the shower, I was grateful to my calves for the run that I did. And yesterday, I was grateful to a friend of mine who is willing to look at a draft of my keynote and give me feedback. So it could be anything, anyone, but stepping out every morning from that shower, with my cup full recognizing I don't have to face this day, I get to face this day because of these amazing things that I'm finding myself surrounded by. Awesome, that's inspiring, that's awesome. Give us one last thought, something you learned writing this book, give us in 30 seconds, summarize something maybe new you learned Sabina, writing the new book, You're the Boss. The one thing I learned writing this book, and actually, I learned this after writing this book by talking about the book. Because what I'm recognizing is I'm learning more about my own book by speaking about it. I don't know if this happened to you all. Yeah, you're nodding your head. Yeah, you kind of go, yeah, absolutely. Put that in! Yeah. Right? Exactly, exactly. Hopefully there's a second edition somewhere along the future, a second book. But I talk about and a lot of people talk about you talk about this amplifying effect of power. When somebody in a manager position speaks, there's a megaphone strapped to their mouth and a two becomes a 10. But what I realized is that when power is in the room, there is a two-way volume control in effect. Power down amplifies and the voice up mutes. And it's a dual tango. I amplify, and the more I amplify, the bigger impact it has on those people below me. And the people below are so under pressure with that amplified voice that they're going to mute up their response. So the two-way microphone is especially dangerous in the workplace. Excellent, excellent. Well, thank you so much. Listen, love the title of the book, You're the Boss, Become the Manager You Wanna Be and Others Need. Sell a million. We encourage our listeners to go and buy a copy for themselves and a copy for their friends. Anybody can buy just one book, right? And you know what, buy a copy for your boss. Oh, there you go. Thanks so much for your time, Sabina. You've been wonderful. Thanks, Sabina. Thank you so much. So Adrian, really interesting. Be the boss that you want to be and others need. I love the title of the book. I'm interested in what are some of your key takeaways? Such good sort of slap upside the head there with, look, how do we behave when we're under pressure? Such a great reminder that, yeah, we become snippy, we go to our go-to habits, it corrupts our actions. The first thing is, look, let's be aware when we're under pressure, which everybody is right now, and how are we, you know, how are we presenting ourselves and the energy we're giving to others? Yeah, I loved her idea about the sticky note. Three to five things that can buy you a little more time so you're less reactive and more responsive. I have to say, though, that my favorite one is the power of the shower. She showers every day. I shower once a month, so I'm not getting as much. Like a monk from the Middle Ages? I know, yeah. You don't want to get too clean. Well, and it's usually in the creek. It's not actually a shower. But yeah, isn't it interesting where she says a lot of our best ideas are when we're relaxed, we're in the shower, and thoughts come to us and so on. And I find that very true. And it is so funny. I mean, I joke, but my wife laughs at me. If I've got a really busy day and stuff, you know, you go work out, you shower, you do this, you shower, we got all the snow, you shovel away. I remember one day I took like four showers. I probably should have had enough ideas to write another book on that day. But that quiet time, and she called it what, the blank space. Because now we want to fill that time, don't we? You're in the shower, well, I'll put on a podcast, I'll listen to that in the shower. I'm going for a walk, I'm going to listen to this. We fill everything nowadays. And quiet, she's right, that's where ideas come. So. Nothingness, yeah. Nothingness, yeah. I loved a couple of other thoughts that Sabina brought up was one is know your triggers, which is really good as a manager. What's gonna set you off? It's like, and also helping people understand that. Like, I'm sorry, one of my frustrations is I hate when things come late. Make sure that, which is great, but I'm about to coach somebody after doing a 360 and he's really great. His people love him, but he doesn't know his boss's triggers. And so that's where I'm gonna go and I'm gonna say, look, you don't know your boss's triggers. This is what's setting off your boss. And so it's a really powerful concept. Yeah, yeah. I really enjoyed it. Those were the key takeaways for me. Anything else on your list? Just the last one was the hungers. I thought that was good too because we all have hungers in work. You've admitted, look, I like to be recognized for my work. When you're in a place where you don't feel like anybody's telling you you're doing a good job, I like to do creative work. If I don't feel like I'm getting to be creative, that's my hunger. If they're not being met at work, well, meet them elsewhere because you're going to be pushing and if I'm in a place that's not allowing me to be creative, I'm gonna push and people are gonna get annoyed with me. And so be aware of our own hungers too. I thought that was a really powerful concept. Yeah, it was funny when she said, when she was coaching, yeah, I blew up because I ran out of protein. But you know what, we never run out of great guests thanks to Christy Lawrence or great production with our favorite producer, Brent Klank. If there were an award for great producers, like the Olympics, like bronze, silver, gold, I think Brent would have a clean sweep. I mean, he'd have the bronze, silver, and of course the gold. The podcasties. I'm going to start those right now, the podcasties. I'm nominating you for, you know, host of the year. Brent Klein for producer of the year and Christy Lourith for booker of the year. Absolutely. And we want to nominate all of you who listened in for audience of the year. If you like this podcast, share it. We'd also love you to visit thecultureworks.com for some free resources to help you and your team thrive. Yeah, and we love to speak virtually and in person to audiences all around the world on topics of culture, teamwork, resilience, and mental health in the workplace. Give us a call. We'd love to talk to you about your event. And as Adrian said, visit our website. There's all kinds of great stuff there. Well Adrian, always good to spend time with you. Thank you, my friend. And as always, I'll give you the last word. Well, we want to thank Chester for joining us from the airport as he jets off to another exotic location. Could be Peoria, Pomona, there's lots of places he could be on the way to. We wanna thank him and thank you again for joining us. Don't forget to pick up a copy of Anxiety at Work, our book. And until next time, we wish you the best of mental health. ♪♪ Bye.