When Leaders Become the Stressor

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When Leaders Become the Stressor

Lauren explores how regulation, repair, and awareness help leaders reduce stress and strengthen trust in high pressure environments.

In this episode, Lauren explores how leadership stress can quickly spread through a team and shape trust, communication, and performance. She reflects on how awareness of your own regulation is a core leadership skill and why noticing tension early can change the entire direction of a meeting or organization.

Lauren also shares practical guidance on repair as a leadership strength. By naming impact, taking responsibility, and restoring clarity and predictability, leaders can rebuild trust without losing authority and create steadier, healthier teams even under pressure.

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Transcript:

Lauren Spigelmyer: We, today are talking about, oh boy, when leaders become the stressor. Like the work may be stressful, but leaders adding to the stress. So, we're gonna talk about if you are in a leadership position or if you are looking to move into a leadership position, how to help you recognize when your stress impacts others and teach you how to repair on more of like a relational rupture without losing authority or credibility. I think I know that one. There's stress. What follows stress is typically ruptures with a team and we tend to either avoid or don't know to enter into repair work because we feel like that is a vulnerable move. And when we do so and we act more relational and, like, personal on personal level, we feel like we're losing authority or even credibility. which is not actually true. And most leaders don't, I mean, no one, no one wants to the source of stress, but what we're finding, especially based on research too, is that leadership style and how leaders are showing up in terms of just even regulation alone, regulated or dysregulated state, really the impact of it is amplified when we're doing work under pressure. And that's most organizations. Jessica and I usually work with primarily stress-facing, high stress-facing, high trauma-facing fields, education, medical, behavioral health, policing, nonprofits. I mean, this applies to everybody and everyone because everybody's job right now, everybody's life and society around us is overly stressful for whatever reason. It could be the workload, could be family, it could be personal issues, it could be politics, could be whatever's going on in the world right now. It's just like a stressful time to exist. So, we're talking about how to normalize that this happens to good leaders. Like you can be a really good leader and still have a bit of a negative impact on your team because of your own dysregulation. We will talk about how awareness of this or becoming aware of this is a leadership strength, probably one of the most important strengths to have, and having the skill of repair builds trust more than trying to be perfect, never getting it wrong.

Lauren Spigelmyer: Okay, so first thing we need to know is that stress is incredibly contagious. Like, emotions are contagious, but stress especially. So we're seeing leadership stress spread really fast because it, the leadership stress, is a little bit more contagious than the rest of the organizational stress because they are in a position of power or you are in a position of power and power amplifies emotional cues, like your tone of voice, your facial expressions, even like height differentials or like how you are inviting someone to join you for a conversation, good or bad. So that those are all positions of power or can be positions of power. And that amplifies how we receive the emotional cues, whether we intend to send them poorly or not. Also, staff are watching leaders closely when they're under pressure or high stress or chronic stress because hypervigilance is in play, hypersensitivity might even be in play. And when there's a lot of stress or pressure, it means there's more uncertainty. And when there's uncertainty, we feel a little bit unsafe psychologically or physically. then we are looking to leaders to find stability.

Lauren Spigelmyer: Okay, so here are some signs that the stress is spreading and it might be spreading from you. You might feel increased tension in meetings. And here's the like cool thing about this. As much as emotions are contagious and regulation or dysregulation are contagious, if you feel tension in a meeting as a position of power, you can bring the tension back down. Like, you have the ability with self-awareness and your own existence to change the tension in meetings, but that is still a stressor. You'll see it when there's hesitation of subordinates to show up or to speak up or to communicate, share ideas. You will see it when leaders are getting defensive or over explaining. This is definitely mine. I feel like I'm not, I'm okay with defensiveness. I way over explain. That's what I know. I'm in a dysregulated state because I give way too much detail and way over explain. And then you might have people who enter into such deep states of dysregulation and stress that it becomes like emotional withdrawal. So, if people sense these things psychologically, psychologically, consciously or unconsciously, they are bracing whether they know it or not. And if you're bracing, that means you're acting from your emotional brain and if you're acting from your emotional brain, you're not acting from your thinking brain or at least not fully. And if that's the case, you've limited access to productivity, productivity, problem solving, collaborative efforts, all these kinds of things start to break down until you get back into your thinking brain.

Lauren Spigelmyer: So, what are some common indicator that you as a leader have become the stressor? If you feel like or well, if you aren't self-aware, you wouldn't know this. If you are self-aware, you're such a serious or someone will point it out to you, hopefully. But if people avoid bringing concerns to you, if people aren't coming to you on the regular to voice their concerns, that means they don't fully trust you. And that means that they are no longer comfortable coming to you. So that is an indicator that you might be the stressor. If meetings are very quiet and no one's speaking up and you're leading the meeting, it might be a sign that you are the stressor. Feedback flowing downward but not upward. And this is really important. Anybody everywhere in anonymous or non-anonymous should have the opportunity to give feedback. Like, we can't improve if we don't know what's wrong. We can't improve if people don't speak up and share what's going on. And if we can't gracefully receive that, even if it's directed at us, that's saying a lot about us. And it can be hard. Like, even when I receive, still today I've been public speaking for 15 years, when I receive core feedback where it's like really personal about me, it definitely, it's a little bit hard to receive, but I receive it and then mentally talk myself down and share, like, this is good. If someone's saying this, it's an area where I can improve. And instead of being defensive, I, or making excuses, can think, okay, well, maybe this is a one-off thing, one-time thing, and I need to just tuck it away. But if multiple people are saying it multiple times, I really need to take it to heart and think about, can I make some shifts here? Because I'm not perfect and I can always improve. And even when I'm a leader who's been in a leadership position for a long time, I can still make improvements. when you see that staff or hear that staff are doing more, like, almost self-protecting rather than trying to solve problems and solve issues and you might not see this so much that's it's like a harder one to see but if you're paying attention to start to see it they're, they're afraid of problem solving so they just kind of again brace and move into self-protection mode and don't work together and that is a major issue and that's there's a sign that's coming from us. So, what we might fall into is thinking like, oh man, this is defiance. Like, these people aren't doing their jobs well enough, they're not doing their jobs right. But the reality is conscious or unconscious, these like self-protective bracings are the nervous system responding and trying to provide protection. Again, this isn't all conscious choosing. If people are dysregulated because leadership is dysregulated or because organizations dysregulated or because the world is dysregulated, the nervous system naturally goes into perfection protection. Like whether we want it to or not, that's biological. So, we have to become aware of our own impact so that we can impact the opposite. We can take us take the organization in the opposite direction. What if we don't? What if we don't step into self-awareness? What if we, we do, but we don't? What if we do step into self-awareness, but we don't actually do the repair work? What is the cost of unrepaired ruptures within your team or your organizational whole? Trust goes away real fast. You don't trust you don't really have anything. Like, if you think back to like hunter gatherers, we were in tribes and you had to trust your tribe members because if you did not rely on and trust your tribe members, biologically, you would not have survived all the elements and the things that were a danger to you. So, that is how our brains develop in that period of time and grew. So, naturally, we have to feel the sense of belonging. Like, we're safe and we can trust. And if we don't, that is one of the biggest biological barriers to doing our jobs well and to staying in our jobs. We also start to see that people go into assumptions and assumption making, and that starts to replace curiosity and questioning and communication. And we don't want that. We want people to not assume. And if they are assuming, we want them to kind of clarify their assumptions.

Lauren Spigelmyer: So, like a really good practice from Brene Brown that I love is, oh man, I love this one so much. But it's such vulnerable step. The story I'm telling myself is. So, when you make up an assumption, you're telling yourself a story and it may or may not be true, but you don't really know if it's true unless you ask. So, you communicate and tell the person, whether you're leader down or colleague or coworker up, you communicate and you say the story I am telling myself is, and then you give the person the opportunity to correct or... confirm or deny. If they confirm, well, least you know then. But that communication has to happen. If there's no trust, no safety, that communication is not going to happen because people aren't going to come to you. OK, if stress just becomes chronic, like in yourself, in your team, and you can just see it, you can just feel it, and the tension is there, and just never goes away. It's just like every day all the time. I know work can be stressful. I know a lot of high earning, high functioning jobs are stressful. But we should still be able to mitigate those effects. So, here's an important truth. Unrepaired moments, just because we don't deal with them, they do not disappear. They accumulate. And when they accumulate, they start to build a mountain, and a mountain that's really hard to move through. So, what we need to know is that repair work as a leader is a bit of a step into vulnerability, but it is not a weakness. It's actually a strength. It is a strength all leaders need. Repair does not mean that we are going into this and we're apologizing or we're over apologizing even, and sometimes an apology is necessary. We're not going into this shame spiral of self-blame. We're not moving into a place of authority loss. Those are not the things that come from repair. Those are the things that come from self-pity. So, what repair does do and what it does mean is you're naming the impact. Can see yourself aware not to see the impact, but then you name it. You take responsibility of it. You clarify the next direction. And then you restore predictability because we need predictability to build rhythm, to build routine, to build trust, to build nervous system regulation. Those are the steps we must take. I'm going say those again. Repair means naming the impact, taking responsibility, all of us. Clarifying the direction we're going next and then restoring predictability by creating maybe, like, clear steps and follow up If you are doing repair effectively, here are some examples of what it could sound like. Like here are some scripts you should probably write down. You could say something like, I was really abrupt earlier and that likely added stress to your plate, to mine, or whatever, whoever's. That's it. You're just owning the impact. I want to reset how we approach this. So, you might have started with taking responsibility, naming the impact, and then you move into clarifying the direction. I want to reset how we approach this, then name the direction, clarify the direction, and then restore predictability. You might even say like, OK, let's just slow it down a little bit. Let's bring it back, slow it down, let's get clear. Let's get really clear right now. And then we moved into predictability, which is probably like, what next steps do we need to take, and what kind of follow up do we need? Please know that when you are doing repair work and you are owning your negative impact and moving towards a positive impact, that does not erase your authority. Not at all. It actually strengthens it. But I think it's even especially more difficult with men in positions of leadership. And I say this as a woman. I don't know though. Now that I think about it, I'm like, ah, women that build up egos from working so hard to be in positions of power and then becoming addicted to the position of power because it's a more non-traditional role or I shouldn't say non-traditional, it's more non-biological. It doesn't mean that we can't do it. It just means biologically aren't quite built the same way in some ways we are in some ways we aren't. But that doesn't mean we can't override biology. doesn't mean can't learn the skills. It doesn't even mean that we can't do it better than others. But, ultimately, I do think it's natural for women, biologically, to be a bit more nurturing, not always, but sometimes. again, biology-wise, yes, but that all depends on your upbringing as well. So, it's maybe slightly easier to enter into a state of repair than it would be for a man. Again, there are nuances to all of this. If you're listening to this and you're that's not true, that's not me, all these things. I'm speaking from a place of biology. All of those things can be overwritten by childhood experiences, abuse, trauma, uh experience, all kinds of things. So, that doesn't mean we're boxing anybody in based on sex. Let me make that very clear.

Lauren Spigelmyer: Okay, let's like zoom out here for a second. What if we're talking about like systems level repair work? So individual repair, super important, individual repair impacts the system. Systemic repair really is what sustains that trust that we're trying to build or have already built or just broke. So, I you as a leader to think about some of these questions. Where does our system create unnecessary threat? And when I say threat, like it could be psychological, it could be physical. doesn't, when we hear threat, you might automatically think like, oh, someone's in physical danger. It could be psychological too. Or maybe even possibly replace threat with stress. Which patterns repeat under pressure or repeat under insert stress? Which or what maybe structures could reduce reactivity. Like, what can we put in place to reduce reactivity? So here are some examples. We could make or create clearer decision timelines, like put date stamps on things, check in and hold people accountable with grace, but also in growth orientation. Like, we don't create timelines, not hit them, but if we don't hit them, understanding why we don't hit them and having grace for that potentially. but still holding the expectation in moving people into growth as well. Jessica and I do a whole series on trauma-informed accountability with patients without progress trap and growth, with growth responses. That said, when you are working at the systems level to repair trust, that means we're not shifting and pivoting last minute all the time. We need to work away from that. Sometimes it's inevitable, but we're doing it all the time. That's a sign that there's high stress, high pressure, and things are eroding mostly trust. We also will see... more predictable communication rhythms and open communication rhythms. When I say rhythms, like regular rhythmic touch points, when I say rhythmic touch points, I mean like it's frequently happening at like the same time of day or in the same area, like meetings scheduled the same time every week or communication touch points at lunch on certain days of the week, whatever it is, but they're like rhythmic communication touch points.

Lauren Spigelmyer: So, there's so much more to this. I'm just giving you an overview today. But step one is like, what am I doing as a leader that's negatively impacting my team? Is my dysregulation causing everyone else more stress? And is that being contagious at the people level? And then beyond that, like how is my leadership, especially stressed out under pressure leadership, impacting the organizational whole or the system, systemic whole? And how do I start working at the individual level and the move to the systemic level? to stabilize all of that, to rebuild the trust and to help myself get a little bit more regulated. If you're looking for actual practices to get yourself as an individual leader more regulated, like how do I get more regulated? Because the thing is like all these things are great. I'm sharing all these things. All these things that I'm sharing are acts that we can only access from the thinking brain. But if you are dysregulated, if you are in the survival state, even high functioning survival, you have limited to no access to your thinking brain. I mean, I say no access, but less access. The emotional brain overrides your thinking brain. A lot of these actions, you must have access to your thinking brain. So, you've got to get regulated before you can do a lot of these things. If you try to do a lot of these things and you aren't regulated first, you're likely to just put yourself back in the same loop, the same cycle, which we don't want. We want to break the cycle and get out of it. So, that involves you getting regulated first. So, the first thing I would do is focus on my own regulation. And I just did a whole bunch of episodes on like micro practices to both reactively and preventively work on regulation. So, I go back and listen to some of the previous podcasts on that, but then move through and move into some of these, these steps into the repair work, into rebuilding trust, into the systems level things. The biggest thing you need to know, one of the biggest things you need to know is like, I think we always aim for perfectionism. One of our leaders might be more type A, but we think it's about like never doing it wrong, always getting it right, never being the stressor, becoming the stressor. The point isn't to never do or be that. We are going to be the stressor. Sometimes we have to deliver bad news. Sometimes we have to deliver unpleasant things. That's part of being a leader. But it's about noticing when you are entering into dysregulation and survival state and knowing how to restore regulation and safety for everyone else without losing the direction in which you're going. So, regulating first, then moving into guidance and back into leadership.

Lauren Spigelmyer: Okay, so I'm going ask you to kind of reflect through this. What's one moment this year that you didn't repair with someone that you wish you would've? And it's like still lingering in your mind. And then I'm gonna ask you to maybe think about if that issue is reoccurring or if you have a reoccurring issue where there's not repair, what's one repair conversation you could have this month if you know it's gonna come up this month or next month. And if you're like, I don't even know what that repair conversation is. Google it, chat, GPT, other AI systems, hey, explain the situation and ask it. I need to move through a repair conversation with this person or these people. Can you help give me some language for that? Can you help give me some steps for that? It's kind of like having a coach a little bit. And then, when you do those things, notice the shift in trust and the shift in engagement. Notice people's energies and how they move. Pay attention to that after you have that conversation. It’ll be a little uncomfortable at first, but it will typically shift back into trust. Okay. Again, I just gave you an overview. There's so much more to this. There's so much nuance to it. So, this is why Jessica and I created the Staff Sustainability Program is to be able to walk people through the trauma-informed accountability coaching and the grace with growth and the patients without progress traps and also how to get regulated and also how to do the repair work and the conversations for repair work and the structures, uh, that is the work that we do. We come into an organization, we work for leadership, we work with frontline staff, and we put these stabilizing pieces in place. that is a staff sustainability program. So, if you want to learn more about that, go to fiveives.com, F-I-V-E, I-V-E-S, and go to our services page. It's the very first thing on our services page. And if you're wanting to learn more about some of these things in relationship to like a classroom structure and leading a classroom, especially a classroom in today's world where behaviors seem to be in play and like kids seem really rude and ignorant, talk back, or aggressive, we got you. We created a course in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania called Behavior Breakthrough. That's also on our website. If you go to the main page and scroll all the way to the bottom, there should be an on-demand tab and the course is in there. We run that with Penn every semester. So, we're about to start that in a week or two. You can always join that or during the summer course or during the fall course, because we are now in the spring course and you can find out all that information and learn more about that through the website. Okay. Don't forget to lock in what you learned today by applying it, actually answering the reflection questions, sharing it to somebody else, talking about this with somebody else, entering into in Calibility text thread with somebody else, just do something that actually takes into application. And until next episode, I'm Lauren Spigelmyer and thank you for joining me.


Categories: : Emotional Regulation

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