Managing and Rethinking Stress for Yourself and Your Team

Six Deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan and a Few Years in Tulsa – Lessons on Stress from the Front Lines

Stress comes at us every day from many angles but can be categorized in two ways: malignant stress and motivational stress. One impedes our ability to communicate effectively. The other helps us grow and expand our skills, our capacity, and our impact. We are headed into uncertain economic times, compounded by an ever-shifting political landscape. As a business leader, how can you help your team manage both types of stress effectively?

While serving for 20 years in the Army, including twelve years as a Green Beret trained in combat medicine, Dr. Ethan Allison also managed to earn his medical degree at the University of Oklahoma School of Community Medicine. In the military, and now back in his hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, he has led teams and cared for patients under circumstances more stressful than most of us can imagine.

He frames “malignant stress” as the kind of pervasive stress that wears us down over time. It’s the stress that makes us feel overwhelmed in the moment and ultimately undermines our confidence that we will be able to cope long term. Think of the endless days when we are working as fast as we can but end each day feeling further behind. Many of us felt this during the height of the pandemic. Every parent of a newborn or toddler knows this feeling all too well. To relieve this type of stress, Allison makes sure his team takes time to take care of themselves. That focus on personal wellness may seem like a luxury in chaotic times, but instead, it’s essential.

What does self-care look like? It comes down to reminding ourselves we are human and not a gerbil on a wheel in a cage. In crisis situations, those moments when we are under the most stress, the steps are straightforward.

1. Take a deep breath. Whether you are meeting with a frustrated employee, confronting an angry client, or at wits end with a three-year old who just flushed their sibling’s toy down the toilet, you have enough time to breathe.

2. Focus on the task at hand. When you are stressed, you aren’t playing chess. You’re playing Whack a Mole. You don’t have time to think five steps ahead. Deal with the immediate and give yourself the grace to deal with the next step in a bit. (An additional breath will give you time to visualize where you go from here.)

3. Maintain healthy social interactions. When we’re facing a lot of big decisions or feeling overwhelmed, we need to remember why we do what we do as a leader. It’s for the people we care about on our teams. You’re already late for the next meeting, so it doesn’t matter if you’re three minutes late or four. Take a few seconds and instead of rushing to log on or get in your seat, don’t worry about taking a moment to offer someone a kind word, or the smile that says, “I know you’re dealing with a lot as well.” It’s amazing how an act of kindness humanizes us both to the other person and to ourselves.

Motivational stress, on the other hand, is the necessary challenge to our complacency that helps us expand our skill set. Most of us try to minimize the amount of stress in our lives, but that can undermine our ability to grow, Dr. Allison says. He considers himself a life-long learner. “Stress that forces me out of my comfort zone forces me to learn new things or to improve in skill sets that I otherwise would never develop.” Dealing with stress is a skill. You can’t hone a skill unless you practice it. If you aren’t exposed to moments of stress regularly, you can’t build the muscle memory to deal with stressful platforms and broad business issues as you advance in your career.

But how do we get motivated to tackle stress when our instinct is to avoid it?

In the book, The Motivation Myth, Jeff Haden builds the case that motivation isn’t what gets us off the proverbial couch to face the day or tackle a new challenge. Instead, the success we experience when we get moving is what motivates us to keep going and do it again. Action prompts motivation, not the other way around. Dr. Allison found his motivation in his early life experience.

“I grew up in severe poverty,” he shares. He joined the Army at 19. “A lot of people helped my family survive. I knew I could honor that support by serving my country.” Success in the early years in the military prompted him to become a combat medic, giving him the first taste of the world of health care and the ability to help others heal. When he learned the Green Berets’ motto of De Oppresso Liber, “to free the oppressed,” it drew him in as the natural next step. While most of us think of the Green Berets as aggressors, their mission is articulated differently and inspires their members from a more humanistic perspective. It’s odd to think of someone learning compassion while executing a Special Forces operation, but that’s what Dr. Allison experienced.

“Over the course of six deployments, I met and cared for a lot of people that were otherwise forgotten, people who had zero power to affect change in their own life. I think I found – maybe selfishly – a kind of self-actualization in being able to empower others to better themselves. I just really fell in love with that concept. It was a natural transition into medicine, which I had always wanted to do before I joined the military.”

(Similarly, the motto of the Navy Seals, “The only easy day was yesterday,” signifies that each new day presents new and increasingly difficult challenges, encouraging members to always seek growth. Apparently, our Special Forces teams are less Hoo-Rah! and more “Who am I?”)

Now, in community medicine, Dr. Allison wants to help people deal with what he calls “upstream” medical issues. When people arrive in the emergency room, he treats their immediate needs. Knowing that chronic visitors to the ER often also suffer from mental illness or addictions, he knows that many of the prescriptions he writes will never be filled. He says, “You can’t treat people if you don’t communicate with them. You can’t communicate with them if you don’t build trust.” Allison learned when interacting with communities while in the army to “work through artificial hierarchies and treat people at every level with respect in order to build trust and provide better care.”

Once he is able to communicate with his patients, he can build a relationship. That allows him to help them address their underlying issues of diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and the like.

How do we as business professionals encourage our teams to take on challenges, even when it causes them anxiety? All the same steps apply. If we’re going to ask our colleagues to embrace a certain level of stress, we need to create an environment of trust.

Dealing with stress is a learned skill so it requires practice and discipline. Dr. Allison approaches all of his experiences very thoughtfully and intentionally. We can all do the same. Every client call is a job interview. Your younger colleague is nervous about each conversation. That’s motivational stress. Help them prepare beforehand and then debrief afterward about what they learned, making the experience a teaching moment.

For many people, every presentation they deliver causes anxiety. Set them up for success by giving them the support and practice they need, and debrief afterward to, again, ask them what they learned and how they might improve the next time.

Every new promotion or added task creates a moment for learning and achievement, whether approached with trepidation or excitement. If you have created the right spirit of opportunity and learning, you’ll help your team see stress not as a threat, but as a moment for growth.

In short, managing stress doesn’t mean eliminating it. It means engaging with it, to quell it when necessary, and to embrace it when possible. Channel your inner Green Beret or Navy Seal – the only easy day was yesterday!

Originally published on Forbes.com.