The importance of stress reduction for CEOs

Posted on 11th November 2022

This week is national stress awareness week and we have seen a lot of articles on how to help ease and remove stress for employees within a business but very little on how CEOs can manage their stress and ultimately reduce it.

A recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper called "CEO Stress, Aging and Death." has reported that being a CEO in an industry-wide downturn can potentially reduce your lifespan by 1.5 years.  

Being a CEO is not easy. Whether it’s your own business, or you’ve worked your way up to the top in someone else’s, it can be full of stress. Your work-life balance having no dividing line through extended work hours, sleeping less and keeping the business healthy all contribute negatively. However, you can do something about this before it all gets out of hand and becomes unnaturally and unintentionally normal.

Why reducing stress is vital for CEOs

When CEOs are over-stressed, it shows. Management skills and dealing with staff slip, tempers flare, responsibilities slide and even their own self-care slides downhill. Efficiency and effectiveness take a total nosedive.

However, there are steps that can be taken to reduce stress, help get both the business and staff morale back on track where CEOs can:

·        Cultivate their own positive work-life balance

·        Develop methods of coping healthily

·        Effectively manage the team

·        Equip themselves to care for others

·        Learn to face challenges directly

·        Relish the role of CEO

·        Take care of their own health

Some methods of managing stress.

·        Time out

If you are a CEO, you must recognise your own stress triggers. You can then evaluate and act before things get out of hand. If you can recognise those triggers and early warning signs and you’ll be able to take action more quickly.

The advice to ‘slow down’ is nearly always taken with a pinch of salt. With all the work to do, phone calls to make, emails to write or reply to, the CEO will claim ‘slowing down’ is an impossibility. However, we all need to take a break to be at our best and it has been proven irrefutably that taking regular breaks does actually increase productivity.

However, the need for CEOs to take time out has never been greater. Taking a break has been proven to increase workplace productivity by up to 80%. As humans, we need to rest in order to perform at our best and this has been proven time and time again in the modern workplace. For CEOs, this rest time clears the mind and can dramatically reduce stress. Therefore, make it your business in business to take regular breaks.

·        Some triggers

A good first step is to try to understand what your own personal triggers are. This can be as simple as a spam email or as complex as facing adversity, with the likes of running late or even thinking about making a presentation. You may not even realise fully what your triggers are. So, self-examine and try to rationalise.

·        Regular breaks

As already mention, it is so important to take regular breaks during the day. Get away from the computer and phone, and that includes your mobile phone. And when you do take your break, don’t think about the technology you’ve left in your office.

Stop being first in and last out of the office. Make sure you take lunch away form your desk. When at a meeting, is it one you can honestly answer “yes” to the question “do I need to be here”. If you haven’t already, can you delegate someone to sift your emails and delete the spurious ones? Take a newspaper daily and read it somewhere out of your office, even if only in the reception area.

All it takes is to stop what you are doing and simply take a break! It really is as easy as that, and you will get used to it and it will make a huge difference to your well-being and productivity.

·        A good night’s sleep

It doesn’t apply not to CEOs, but getting a good night’s sleep can dramatically reduce stress. And that doesn’t mean ‘cat-napping’ during the day. Remember, the more tired you are, the more susceptible to stress you become. It may seem impossible to achieve, but the world and your business won’t stop if you spend an extra hour, or even two, in bed.

To help you gain a good night’s sleep, it’s important you get away from all forms of technology half an hour before you go to bed. You may think it looks like you are disinterested in a client if you don’t reply immediately to an email they send you at 10:45 at night. But that’s their problem having to send it at that time of night. Whey aren’t they in bed or with their family? It can actually look unprofessional to answer emails or business phone calls so far outside working hours (unless you have a 24-hour policy such as that of a doctor or emergency lawyer).

Worse case scenario, keep a notepad and pencil by your bed for that odd thought you may have – but just don’t make a habit of it.

While work is very important. After all, your own salary and that of your employees depends on it. However, quality family time, eating together at meal times, taking holidays, shopping with your partner are all just as important. It’s all about work-life balance. So, start to schedule and prioritise at the office. Include those little domestic things during the working day – pay a bill, query a professional membership, call your kids to see they got home OK and had a good day at school, check your partner got that new tyre fitted to the car. Let that list of what’s equally, if not more important than work get onto your daily schedule. Write them down as a to-do list and you’ll have greater difficulty in avoiding them and more likely to complete them, which will be loved by your family.

It’s all about developing healthy habits, and healthy habits can reduce stress dramatically.

If you want to reduce the stress in your life, you need to develop healthy habits and scheduling the important things is a great way to achieve this.

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