How Can Managers Deal With Pressure?

So just exactly how much pressure are you currently under? If you are like most managers, the answer is “a lot”. The arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic just made things a lot harder for managers. In order to be successful managers, we need to understand that we pretty much live with a great deal of pressure. This means that we have to be able to find ways to deal with the pressure. It is only by being able to do this that we will be able to be successful.

How To Deal With Pressure

I think that all managers can agree: pressure and stress are inevitable parts of any manager’s journey. The big question is not necessarily what kinds of pressures you will face, but rather how you’ll respond to them and move forward. Every manager will find their own unique strategies for succeeding under pressure; however, it never hurts to hear from managers who have mastered the art. What we all need are the best practical tactics for combating the stress of management and coming out stronger on the other side.

How Managers Can Deal With Pressure

To start things off, what we all need to be doing is to take the time to identify what we can control. During a stressful situation, it can help to ask yourself what you are in control of. We will find ourselves most stressed out when we feel pressure and feel that it’s all outside of our control. If we can take a step back and think about what part of a stressful situation is within our control, it can help us to focus on action rather than worrying.

We also have to be able to be able to follow our core values. If we can follow our core values as a leader, then this will help us persevere through difficult times. These values will define you and your team in the long haul. You need to make decisions about just exactly how you want your team to operate – what does giving your word on something really mean? Will you allow your team to be successful at the expense of another team? This is the foundation that can carry you through stressful times.

You are good at what you do and you need to be able to trust in your own competence. Believing that you are competent and then having enough knowledge about making the right decisions can help managers succeed under pressure. When managers are competent, more often than not, they will make a well-thought-out decision. However, if you are not well equipped to make a decision and it’s a time-sensitive one, that’s when you are going to lose all calmness and clarity, leading you to making a poor rash decision.

You can’t deal with pressure if you are not up to it. This means that you need to focus on your physical health. We have to understand that health is often holistic and interconnected, which means physical health and strength can encourage strong mental health and resilience against stress. Our physical health is something that works in tandem with our mental health, so it makes sense that building up your body’s stamina and perseverance at the gym can also fortify your mind. By setting fitness goals and working hard to achieve them, you’ll find that your mind will also become equipped to handle the pressure that comes from being a manager.

When you see a high-pressure situation starting to develop, you need to learn to distance yourself from the panic. When a panic situation starts to set in, it’s important to be able to cultivate an ability to distance yourself from it within your own mind. Everyone agrees this is an important skill to have. One technique that can work really well when someone is screaming at you is to be careful to control your own tone of voice. It’s hard for someone to keep yelling at you if you don’t match their energy.

Managing pressure can be as simple as taking the time to practice some deep breathing. Managers can use simple breathing exercises to calm down quickly. Taking a few seconds to inhale deeply and exhale deeply will calm your heart rate down and will allows you to focus on how to present information to others in the most simple and effective way.

When we are under pressure, we need to be determining what happens next. You need to ask yourself what the next ‘right move’ is. A good question to ask yourself when you feel overwhelmed is, “What’s my next right move?” The reason that you want to do this instead of trying to see the bigger picture in the moment, is because you really want to be able to focus on what you need to immediately do next. Breaking work down into segments in this way makes any task feel more manageable Manager need to understand that we can’t avoid feeling pressured, but we can change our perspective.”

What All Of This Means For You

Every manager is going to experience pressure at some point in time. Many of us experience a lot of pressure for what seems like all of the time. A key part to being a successful manager is finding ways to deal with the pressure that we find ourselves under. In order to make sure that our teams are able to be as successful as possible, we need to find ways to deal with the stress that is in our lives.

Managers can often feel stress when we feel that conditions are out of our control. We always have to be aware of what our core values are and make sure that we continue to follow them. Every manager has skills and we have to believe that we are competent and are able make good decisions. Our physical health is a key part of how we can deal with the stress that we may be experiencing. Managers have to be able to detect when a pressure situation is developing and they need to be able to distance themselves from it. When we encounter a pressure situation, we need to take the time to manage our breathing and we need to determine what needs to happen next.

Managers need to remember that the pressure that we are experiencing is temporary. No matter whether you’re trying to solve an issue with another team or are dealing with software issues. While feeling pressure is uncomfortable, we don’t want to add to it by wanting the pressure to just magically disappear. Managers need to just try to stay in the moment and work as best as we can.

– Dr. Jim Anderson Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Management Skills™

Question For You: How can managers determine if they are under too much pressure?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Attend just about any manager training seminar and you’ll be told that in order to be a more effective manager, you have to get good at delegating tasks. Since your time is so valuable, you need to get good at handing your work off to those people who work for you while still making sure that it gets done. This is actually good advice, most of the time. However, there are times when you should not delegate your work. Can you determine when you should or should not delegate a task?