A businessman dressed in suit and wearing glasses is not responding well to business pressure. The c clamp on his head is causing him to grimace under lots of pressure.
The Pressure Vs Performance graph I showed in a previous post implies that we all get to a point of overload – but reality is more subtle. Ian Robertson’s book* about his research expands the story from Yerkes and Dodson’s 1908 publication.
1. The Olympic model – pressure management in action
Not everyone crumples as the pressure increases: Gold Medallists achieve outstanding performance and personal bests. Some athletes have extreme physical talent but for most the difference between gold and silver or a medal and no medal is psychological, a question of State of Mind. A sports psychologist interviewed on Radio 4 during the Rio Olympics stated that the psychological element amounted to 85%.
Similarly in business, some perform under pressure because their State of Mind is excellent.
2. The context [our thinking about the situation] changes things
Robertson explains that our response to pressure depends on our thinking about ‘what the situation means to us”; i.e. its context. If we see pressure as a threatening situation right brain ‘avoidance’ mechanisms switch on; if we see the situation as a challenge to meet and overcome then left-brain ’approach’ mechanisms dominate. Either left-right balance or left brain predominance sustains the will to ‘keep on going’ and overcome, right-brain
dominance leads to overload.
So our thinking changes the outcome under pressure, by influencing basic mechanisms.
3. What else impacts our performance?
Our Mindset is a key player: i.e. our overall approach to life in terms of beliefs and values. Robertson cites the work of Dwek**. Those of us with a ‘fixed’ mindset believe that we have inbuilt talents and that is why we succeed. When we struggle or fail that is self destructive and dispiriting as it threatens our self-belief; right-brain effects kick in. However, those with a ‘growth’ mindset see each situation as a learning challenge; so the left side of their brain is activated and a struggle or failure merely becomes the basis for an improved approach next time.
You will notice that mindset is just a complex thought-structure, more persistent than the
more transient context.
4. Is there such a thing as ‘good stress’?
We need to be careful about language here. I regard ‘work pressure’ as a reality and ‘stress’ as an adverse reaction to the pressure. Therefore it follows that stress, per se, cannot be ‘good’. However, an individual’s response to pressure can be productive. The 3 requirements for survival and productivity described by Robertson are arousal [left-brain activation for approach mechanisms]; some – even small – degree of autonomy/ ability to control thepressure; a positive view of the context [this is a challenge]. With these three in place, the brain is adaptive and creative rather than stressed and overloaded.
So there is a mechanism that can lead to good results under pressure
5. How do we achieve a good response under pressure for our workforce?
A good pressure-capability resides in appropriate frontal lobe processing. There are 4 elements that trigger positive cerebral adrenaline pulses and fire up positive neural networks: Arousal/ Alertness; Novelty; Attention and Self-awareness.
6. The critical impact of self awareness – our thinking
Of the 4 elements, the most important is the last: self-awareness. Robertson emphasises that noticing how you are thinking about a situation is a critical step in managing pressure without becoming stressed. If you believe that the problem is external and outside your control you experience helplessness, whereas if you know that the problem is inside your head, you can learn that the negative thinking will go away automatically, as all thought does, good or bad. This understanding introduces an element of control and autonomy that changes the neurochemistry of the brain in a positive way.
7. Real life transformation for stressed workers
We use this ‘understanding’ approach to raise performance in business and to show people how to survive pressure. The truth is we can always choose which of the 30-40000 thoughts we have each day we hold onto, thus making them unnecessarily significant, and which thoughts we let go of. Learning that our feelings about a work situation come from what we think about it opens a route to surviving and succeeding under pressure through awareness of that fact. One hundred and eight years from Yerkes-Dodson’s first exploration of the issue of stress and performance, there is now greater understanding of how the system actually works and a route to pressure-proofing a workforce.
* The Stress Test: Ian Robertson; Bloomsbury 2016
** Mindset: Carol S Dwek; Constable & Robinson UK 2012
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/pressure-work-new-understanding-solution-nicksiddle?published=t
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