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Resource Links

CEO Best Practice: Stress Management

Executive Tools

  • Executive Summary
  • Self Assessment Checklist

Expert Practices Articles

  • How Stress Affects You
  • Resisting Change: The Allure of the Status Quo
  • A "Stress-Busting" Attitude
  • Accountability: A Key to Defusing Stress
  • Managing Yourself for Stress Reduction
  • Rx: Relaxation
  • Change Your Focus
  • Change Your Life

Tools & Analysis

  • Stress Management Action Plan
  • Master To-Do List
  • The Six Most Important Things I Have to Do Today
  • Is Your Management Style Causing You Stress?

Book List: Stress Management

Request the Entire Best Practice Module: Stress Management

CEO Best Practice: Stress Management

Executive Summary

  • How Stress Affects You
  • Resisting Change: The Allure of the Status Quo
  • A "Stress-Busting" Attitude
  • Accountability: A Key to Defusing Stress
  • Managing Yourself for Stress Reduction
  • Rx: Relaxation
  • Change Your Focus
  • Change Your Life

How Stress Affects You

Stress is a stealthy and sometimes perplexing influence in our lives. It can motivate us to great accomplishments. Or it can nearly paralyze us.

The good news is that, while we often can't control the "in" box of external pressures that weigh on us, we can always control how we think about them and how we choose to deal with them.

The bad news is that, if we have not been taking care of ourselves physically and mentally, our ability to handle inevitable stressors may be severely limited -- and our health compromised.

Four Vistage speakers, whose goal is to enlighten members about how they can manage their stress, adjust their thinking and conquer change, share their expertise in this module.

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Resisting Change: The Allure of the Status Quo

Many people know that the way they are handling stress is debilitating, yet they refuse to change. No wonder: undertaking change, in itself, creates stress.

So they may engage in denial, or avoid it by relying on their "proven" methods to reduce their stress, such as having several drinks of alcohol every night.

Our bodies and minds sometimes are in conflict; but the pain of change in fact may be less than the pain of the status quo.

Vistage speaker Bowen F. White, M.D. says to go to the source: yourself. "Adopt the mindset that the other person in your relationships is not the problem, you are the problem. In fact, you are the central problem in your life," he says. "From that perspective, you also become the solution."

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A "Stress-Busting'" Attitude

Vistage speaker Mike McCaffrey points out that executives have chosen the lives they lead -- with their money issues, people issues and time commitment. "If you look at it as a series of have-tos, imprisonment, bondage, you'll enjoy it less well than if you recognize it's your choice," he says.

One technique to thwart stress, recommended by Dr. Hans Selye, an authority on stress in life, involves doing a "gross impact activity" -- pounding something -- to release tension in a productive way. Opportunities to fight stress range from hitting a punching bag to running or jogging (pounding the pavement), or hacking at weeds.

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Accountability: A Key to Defusing Stress

Can some of your stress be traced to the fact that your organization is not operating from a position of accountability?

Vistage Speaker Mike Scott recommends these steps to building accountability:

  1. Adopt the right attitude.
  2. Be accountable yourself.
  3. Hold others accountable.
  4. Write down your priorities.
  5. Make and expect commitments.
  6. Get and give support.

It's also important to be able to delegate effectively, and let go. Steps he recommends to do this are:

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Managing Yourself for Stress Reduction

In order to manage yourself, Scott recommends creating two types of lists:

  • A "Master To Do List", and
  • A "Six Most Important Things to Do List."

These simple self-imposed activities can help you accomplish everything from remembering where the keys are to accomplishing a major project.

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Rx: Relaxation

To manage tomorrow's stress, you must begin today.

Vistage experts agree that techniques like learning the "Relaxation Response," meditating, and doing aerobic exercise will all benefit executives interested in managing their stress.

The catch is: you can't expect to begin these activities when you're stressed and expect results.

Dr. Blacker says that, for meditation or practicing the relaxation response, you need to devote 10 to 20 minutes daily. For aerobic exercise to offer optimum benefit, you need to do at least 20 to 30 minutes of exercise daily, and be sure to warm up at least five minutes before doing any exercise that will put stress on your heart.

Regularly following stress-immunization activities gives us the ability to bounce back and take charge of stressful circumstances as they arise.

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Change Your Focus

Many stress management techniques focus inward -- on what you can do to relax and reduce tension. Another way to diminish stress, Vistage experts agree, is by focusing on others, and pursuing balance.

"The best leader is the best servant, so executives ought to be serving everybody they lead," says Dr. White.

To attain balance, you may need to learn how to play non-competitively. Think about any fun you had as a child that didn't involve winning. What was it? How could you revive that interest today, or take up something similar?

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Change Your Life

Meditating or working out may help you cope with trouble in your marriage, but it won't help you change the status quo, Dr. White says.

  • Tough but important questions are:
  • How can I have a better marriage?
  • What can I do to have a better relationship with my children?
  • How can I work on my relationship with my business partner?