To be an effective leader, you should have some core capabilities. This can range from influencing and inspiring a team to know how to be decisive. These traits are essential in your day-to-day role as a leader but especially so in times of high stress. To learn more about what makes effective leadership, read on!
Effective Leaders Under Stress
If you are in a leadership role, the crises and demanding situations you face over the course of your career could define your success. They will define who you are as a leader. How you act in these situations will have a massive impact on co-workers and employees.
If a manager starts to break under pressure, their team will likely begin to disintegrate. This will lead to plummeting work performance and morale. Employees could start to miss deadlines, make critical mistakes and even lose customers. This is not what you need during a crisis.
Research shows that it’s very common for leaders to crumble under pressure. Studies show that 53% of leaders become more close-minded and controlling during a crisis, while 43% of leaders will become more angry and heated in their communication.
If you are somebody in a leadership position, learning some self-control during times of challenge will serve you really well in the course of your career. This can be easy to talk about and difficult to achieve. Let’s look at some techniques that will help you to effectively manage your team while staying calm and level-headed.
How To Stay Calm Under Pressure
1. Wait Before Acting
Effective leadership means responding calmly to most situations. Effective leaders will sit and reflect and come up with a well-thought-out plan. Before diving into problem-solving, they will sit and pause. Taking some deep breaths will help to clear and refresh your mind.
Abraham Lincoln was famously calm under pressure. In the heat of the moment, he would stop and do nothing. The higher the pressure, the more likely he would be to just stop. He also wrote angry letters to express his feelings and never sent them. This allowed him to process difficult feelings without creating conflict. Your communication is likely to be much more balanced after expressing your emotions in such a harmless way.
In a crisis, always breathe deeply. This sends a message to your brain and body to relax and calm down. Your heart rate will slow down, and your blood pressure will decrease. The more high-pressure the situation, the more important it is to pause.
Even taking a tiny moment of pause before making a phone call, sending a tweet, or speaking to a customer is likely to make you much calmer and more balanced. It allows you to gather your thoughts, and you are more likely to make the right move.
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2. Have a Strong Support System
The best leaders will surround themselves with good people. They don’t go it alone. Good leaders will have a board of advisors they know they can trust. Abraham Lincoln had a cabinet and two secretaries. He frequently asked for their input.
Surround yourself with other people who know to maintain a grounded presence. You need advisors who know how to stay calm. Make sure the people around you have a good strength of character. They should be confident in their views but also open-minded and able to communicate effectively.
You want to surround yourself with people who have a good diversity of experience and views. They should also have emotional intelligence. This will make them sensitive to the needs of difficult situations.
It’s important to utilize the best tools to manage your team more efficiently. For instance, if you work with a number of different tenders at once, look into the tender management options available to streamline things.
Having a healthy work culture and positive people around you will pave your way to a successful future.
Success doesn’t happen in a vacuum. If your management team is reliable, you will be able to stay grounded and balanced. This will help you to make good decisions and work through any crisis. Having a healthy work culture and positive people around you will pave your way to a successful future.
3. Understand the Reality
In any challenging situation, you must recognize your limitations and understand the reality. This may be very difficult and frustrating. At that moment, likely, you won’t be able to rectify the whole problem.
The problem may seem overwhelming. It is best to break it down step-by-step. This will help you to get a clear picture. Work closely with your team, think about the next steps, and make sure you delegate effectively.
Once you decide on a plan, try to stick to it. Rely on the skill set of you and your team. Take on the task in front of you and keep working towards a successful resolution.
Steer Into The Storm
In a crisis situation, you must make a deliberate choice to remain calm. Learn to become comfortable with the discomfort. Take a step back and choose to respond rather than acting from instinct. Fear can provide a lot of valuable information. Learn to reframe threats as opportunities for innovation and learning.
Cultivate an attitude of hope and positivity. Stress can be harnessed constructively. It can provide you with the energy needed to steer through the problem. Cultivate compassion for yourself and others. Self-care doesn’t just mean having healthy food, exercise, and good sleep. It also means being kind to yourself.
Your Impact As An Effective Leader
As a leader, your emotions will have a big impact on the whole team. When you are fearful, impatient, and frustrated, people will feel the same way. The sense of safety in the work environment is going to disappear.
Humans are inherently wired to share emotional cues. If you remain calm and hopeful, your whole team will be able to embrace the challenge and find creative solutions.
In Summary
Effective leadership takes work. You need to be constantly honing your leadership skills. You must also stay calm under pressure. You will need to adapt to many different kinds of high-pressure situations.
Following some of the advice outlined in this article will help you stay poised and balanced. This could help to define your success as a leader.
