Stress spreads like a contagion. Just one person needs to have it — especially the boss — and soon, everybody around will feel it.
Once the boss is snappy and angry, team members get scared and are on the defensive. Everybody’s fight-or-flight system kicks in, which makes you hypervigilant and degrades your prefrontal cortex (the thinking brain).
That is why, when stressed, you make silly mistakes. And even small mistakes create a fear of backlash, sending you into a panic. And the more the panic, the more the mistakes, creating a vicious spiral.
That is how stress flows down the hierarchy.
Here are the telltale sign of stress contagion in an office:
- Everybody is quiet, but not calm — they are on the edge.
- People are second-guessing what their boss wants, rather than what they think is right.
- Everybody is focused on avoiding mistakes, rather than taking risks and doing something big.
The burden of leadership is to be like a dam that stops the flow of stress, not a floodgate that lets it all flow down.
A lot of leadership is about absorbing incoming shocks and only passing down a thoughtful response. It is easy to articulate but very hard to do (I know from my own past failures).
That is why leadership is hard — not because we don’t have enough IIMs or leadership coaching programs.
– Rajan