Written by guest author Amanda Caldeira, Founder of Caldeira Consulting

The heavy burden of stress on high level executives is often overlooked, under-recognised and unsupported. Despite leaving an intense board meeting or after working through the night, others still expect to see those heading an organisation as confident, calm and in control. The pressure of high expectations to achieve success for an organisation can and does take its toll.

Much is known of the effects of mental wellbeing for the workforce, and the costs of stress in the workplace are obvious and well reported on. However, society’s attitude and approach towards the performance of those at the top of an organisation can be less gracious and even unsupportive. When decisions are made the resulting condemnation can be brutal. For some, this can appear in the media and is reported on at a national level.

The truth is that today’s board not only has to deal with unrelenting stress for their workforce and the resulting enormous cost to their organisations in lost productivity, absenteeism and turnover but also the tremendous effect stress has at the executive level on their own lives. However, the stigma attached to getting assistance at this level may cause some senior leaders to continue without the support they need. In addition to this, recent research from the Oxford University Industrial Relations Journal indicates that traditional individual-led mental health interventions are not as effective as needed. Measures such as wellbeing apps, mindfulness sessions and resilience training are focused on the person rather than the environment and relies on the individual to cope instead of addressing the causes within the organisation that increase stress. As all of us who have used these methods know, following a mindfulness session, the workload is still there.

What can leaders do about this?

The future of stress management is to take a pragmatic approach towards the problem by taking steps to address the causes of stress within the working environment instead of adjusting the person to cope with them. This can be an attractive option for those in leadership positions as this problem-based approach works to remove or reduce the issues within the organisation that exacerbate stress and can also have a side effect of improving productivity and processes without blaming the issues on the resilience levels of an individual.

A win win scenario

Taking a practical and pragmatic approach towards the problem of stress and starting from the top can build a robust approach to resolving or reducing many issues relating to stress in the workplace. As all executives know, organisations perform well when its people are at their best. And people at their best results in setting the organisation up for success.

Author Profile

Amanda Caldeira is the Founder of Caldeira Consulting. Amanda’s passion for creating impactful and effective solutions led to the development of stress management programmes which deal with the underlying causes of stress rather than the symptoms.