Are You Making Your Stress Worse? Here’s How Leaders Can Take Control
- Brainz Magazine
- Sep 12
- 8 min read
Updated: Sep 15
Sharon Banfield, the founder of Ikonix Business Solutions, is an internationally accredited HR Consultant, Master NLP Practitioner, and coach. She partners with leaders to solve challenges and transform the way people work, with innovation and tailored coaching strategies to empower resilient growth.
Do you ever feel like stress takes over, no matter what you try to do? Perhaps you’ve paced the floor before a big meeting or felt the heavy responsibility that comes with leadership. Maybe stress has become so familiar it feels like an unavoidable part of life. If so, you’re not alone. This article offers more than just hope. It transforms how you respond to pressure with practical steps that restore your sense of control and help you build resilience. Discover how to shift from simply surviving stress to leveraging it. But first, we need to challenge a fundamental assumption about what stress actually is.
Redefining stress: The process, not the problem
Managing stress represents both a fundamental wellbeing challenge and a major obstacle to achieving our goals. We often talk about stress as if it's something that happens to us, a heavy weight, a condition, or a storm we have to weather. We blame our jobs, our deadlines, and our circumstances, feeling powerless to change them. We typically think of stress as our internal reaction to negative or worrying situations, something we simply have to endure.
But what if everything we've thought about stress is wrong? Most people don’t realise this, but stress isn’t a “thing” at all. Stress is a process we actively do. The real issue isn't the pressure itself, but the way we think about stress and our belief that it is something to fight against. This shift in understanding is more than just semantics. It is empowering. If stress is something we do, then it is also something we can interrupt, reframe, and change. This is where our mindset matters most, while we can’t eliminate the pressures of life, we can transform how we respond to them. What if this is exactly what you need to achieve your goals?
How you build stress: A step-by-step breakdown
Much of the stress we experience doesn’t come from what's actually happening “in the moment.” It comes from the story we tell ourselves about what might happen. Our inner world, shaped by thoughts, beliefs, and past experiences, can create vivid negative scenarios that are unlikely to come true. When we do this, we trade our energy and wellbeing for imagined futures that rarely unfold as feared.
A leader lying awake at night may imagine the board rejecting a strategic proposal, a conversation with a team member turning confrontational, or a project falling apart, long before any of these scenarios actually occur. In reality, the stress isn’t in the event itself. It’s in the anticipation, the “what ifs.” This is why our thoughts have such a powerful influence on our physiological and emotional responses.
The good news is that if stress is often self-created, we can, to a large degree, control our response to it. By changing our perspective and thoughts, and learning specific skills, we change the story we tell ourselves. In doing so, we transform the way we experience stress. You're probably already beginning to see how this could work for you.
Fears and imagined threats
In business, we plan for uncertainty. Yet, often the most common and costly risks faced are the ones we invent. It's a process that begins with anxiety, a cognitive distortion that warps our perception of reality. Worrying can amplify the burden of these imagined threats. Many fears and worst-case scenarios never materialise. And on the rare occasion they do, the outcomes are far less severe than catastrophised.
The cost of this mental friction is immense. We waste focus, limit strategic decision-making, and spend our energy and wellbeing on a future that rarely arrives. This cognitive process doesn't just stay in our heads, it triggers a default reaction in our bodies.
The predictable sequence
Stress is a pattern you play out, often without realising it. The next time you feel pressure, notice how it unfolds in this predictable sequence:
Breathing becomes shortened and laboured,
Shoulders round inward as your posture crumples,
Eyes gaze downward,
Knots of tension form in your body (stomach, shoulders, jaw),
Negative, future-based thoughts (“what if”),
A concerned or alarmist inner voice, and
Restlessness or fidgeting.
Spotting this pattern in real time gives you back choice and an opportunity to intervene, before it turns into headaches, team conflict, or sleepless nights. Your body's stress signals become useful data for making better decisions. This approach matters, viewing stress as potentially helpful rather than purely destructive leads to more adaptive leadership.
Taking control: Your toolkit for resilience
Once you see the pattern, you will be surprised to find out how much easier it is to choose a more effective response. Keep in mind that stress-resilient leaders do not ignore pressure. Instead, they manage their reaction intentionally. This approach sets them apart because they think and act differently.
By viewing setbacks as temporary and manageable, you’ll gain significant benefits. Additionally, it is important to separate your results from your identity. When you view an issue as a problem to solve rather than a personal failing, you break the spiral of guilt or blame that can often lead to indecision and weakened confidence.
1. Move from blame to ownership
Picture this, you’re heading into a high-stakes meeting when traffic grinds to a halt. The clock ticks on. Do you grip the wheel, your stress rising, convinced the day is already lost? Or, do you take a slow breath, use the time to review your priorities, and mentally rehearse your opening points?
The most effective response is to own the situation, you take a slow breath, consider the implications of arriving late, call a teammate to give them a heads-up, and reassign a task so progress continues.
The traffic didn’t change. Your mindset and your response can. Your strength emerges when you shift from feeling powerless and asking “why me?” to asking “what now?”
2. Master the reframe
When looking at stress as a transactional process, what matters is how you evaluate the demands you face with the resources you have. When you perceive that your resources are sufficient, you are more likely to view the situation as a challenge. When you see demands outweighing your resources, you are more likely to view it as a threat. It’s like having to meet quarterly targets when your team is understaffed and your best performer just quit. That’s a lot of pressure.
Ask yourself:
“What exactly am I dealing with?”
“What can I control?”
“What resources do I have available that I can draw on?” (skills, knowledge, time, supporters, prior success)
Then, identify one resource you can leverage and one small action that shifts this toward being a challenge to solve.
From stress to performance
Where appropriate, consciously reframing situations as opportunities can help put you in a better mindset for problem-solving, creativity, and enhancing your performance. Consider talent shortages as an example. While a stress frame might lead you to think, “We can’t find good people anywhere,” a challenge frame opens up possibilities by recognising that “This allows us to discover new talent pools, develop a talent pipeline, reskill existing talent, and develop better retention strategies.”
Turn conflict into coaching
Consider a tough feedback conversation with a key team member. With a threat frame, you might think, "This is going to be a conflict. They’ll get defensive, and it will damage our relationship." Your body tenses as you enter the conversation, ready for a battle and best practice HR processes are more likely to be forgotten.
However, adopting a coaching frame transforms your approach entirely. You stop and consider the positives, "This is an opportunity to clarify expectations and help them grow. How can I deliver this feedback constructively to strengthen our working relationship?" Then you enter the conversation as a coach, focused on a positive outcome. You follow best practice and remember to complete documentation for conducting informal feedback.
3. Practice proactive resilience
When pressure feels relentless, what are you relying on? Is it four cups of coffee and a dose of willpower? Or something more sustainable? Many leaders default to pushing through on fumes, treating our bodies like machines. But there's a cost to this approach that compounds over time.
True resilience isn't just a mental game. It's built through consistent habits that protect your physical and mental resources. While mindset matters, lasting strength comes from creating systems that support you when the pressure is on. The following strategies help you build that foundation.
Align your expectations with reality
Being hard on yourself without kindness can lead to self-criticism. Do you match your expectations to the day you actually have? After a rough night of sleep, it not only feels more of a struggle, your capacity for deep-focus work is lower. This is biology, not a character flaw. Adjust your day. Give yourself permission to re-plan when you're unwell. Protecting your wellbeing is a core duty of responsible leadership. Kindness isn't about lowering your standards. It’s about aligning your commitments with reality for sustainable progress.
Protect the fundamentals
Stress plays out in your body. If you’re running on too little sleep, skipping meals, and neglecting movement, your ability to handle pressure is already compromised. Prioritise the fundamentals, 7–9 hours of sleep, balanced nutrition, consistent movement, time with family, and planned downtime. Make small, sustainable swaps – replace late-night scrolling with a wind-down routine and add short walks to busy days. These habits improve your recovery and compound into a greater capacity for clear thinking.
Support your body's recovery capacity
Your body has a remarkable capacity to help you recover, but this is not limitless. Chronic stress without proper support can lead to lasting health consequences. The key is working with your body's natural systems. Slow, structured breathing (with a longer exhale than inhale) activates the parasympathetic nervous system. This is your body’s “rest and digest” response, which is the most direct way to reduce your fight-or-flight load and restore balance. Do you allow yourself to recover?
Beyond survival mode: Leading with intention under pressure
These skills are not just a personal toolkit. They are the essential foundation for effective leadership in high-pressure environments. By mastering your internal response, you gain the clarity, energy, and influence required to diagnose and address the root causes of stress within your team and your organisation. This moves you from coping reactively to leading transformative change.
It happens through deliberate practice. Each time you reframe your response to stress, you're not just solving a momentary problem. You are reshaping your neural pathways and strengthening your leadership identity. What was once overwhelming becomes leverageable.
Stress is a process you can influence rather than something that simply happens to you. When you recognise this, you become less reactive to deadlines, demands, or imagined futures. You discover that you have more control than you thought, and that's where real change becomes possible. Resilience grows when consistent habits and supportive systems protect your body and mind under pressure.
Are you willing to take ownership of your stress response?
Your answer determines everything that follows. By embracing this ownership, you don't just manage pressure, you transform it into fuel for greater clarity, resilience, and impact.
Read more from Sharon Banfield
Sharon Banfield, HR Consultant | Strategic Coach
Sharon Banfield, the founder of Ikonix Business Solutions, is an internationally accredited HR Consultant, Master NLP Practitioner, and coach. Drawing on over a decade as a business owner, her advisory work spans talent, workforce technology, business, and leadership development. She partners with leaders to solve complex challenges and transform the way people work, using innovation and tailored coaching strategies to empower resilient growth. Through her strategic coaching, Sharon helps founders and leaders move beyond improvising on the fly or reactive firefighting to a greater state of calm, clarity, and confidence, achieving results once considered out of reach.
