5 Reasons stress is making you less productive
Ruxandra-Laura Bosilca talks to Big Fish Training founder Emma Ewing about the types of stress most common to entrepreneurs and the consequences of failing to tackle it.
Emma Ewing and Tammy Barter from Big Fish Training were interviewed by Ruxandra-Laura Bosilca, Ph.D. for the Enterprise Europe Network's podcast The Business Wave. The Enterprise Europe Network supports small and medium-sized businesses, helping them to innovate, grow, and enter international markets. The full episode featuring Emma and Tammy is available here for free, or search for 'The Business Wave' on your podcatcher of choice!
In part one of this two-part summary, Ruxandra-Laura talks to Big Fish Training founder Emma Ewing about the types of stress most common to entrepreneurs and the consequences of failing to tackle it.
What's your experience with being an entrepreneur and managing stress?
Okay, so firstly, the experience is personal. I am a business owner and an entrepreneur, and in the very beginning when I set up my business, and it was just me, the stress came from trying to make it succeed and doing every single thing myself. I'm sure other entrepreneurs will recognise the stress that comes with suddenly learning how to be an accountant as well as delivering, how to read a profit sheet, how to pitch to clients and everything else in-between. It was important for me to be able to manage my own stress and identify my stressors.
When you've got people around you that are looking to your leadership, as well as managing your own stress you also need to show them it's okayThen, when I started to employ people and I had a bigger team, that made life easier in some ways, but it made it more stressful in other ways. I think one of the things that's really important is that you need to lead by example. If you are saying to people, "Please look after your well-being, please don't get too stressed about this," you need to show that you're not saying one thing and doing another. When you've got people around you that are looking to your leadership, as well as managing your own stress you also need to show them it's okay to get stressed. Stress is a natural response, and we're busy, passionate people. We love our businesses, but we need to be able to show that we got stressed and how we dealt with it, and show our team how they might be able to help themselves.
What are the most common stress triggers for small business owners?
Unfortunately, there are lots! There are many, many common triggers such as overworking and worrying about your approach to things, but the big root of a lot of the stress is money. For a business owner, that bottom line-when you're starting out, when you're scaling, when you're securing funding-if the resources aren't there or we're worrying about getting the resources, then everything else comes from that. If we're overworked, maybe we need to employ someone else, but we can't yet risk the investment. Maybe we're pitching for business, wanting to get new customers, and we know we have to invest in some marketing, but will it work out? These external factors can cause a lot of internal stress.
It feels like you've done all the networking, filled in all the applications in the world, but you are not succeeding.And equally, it's a confidence knock if you're doing a lot of work but not necessarily seeing the results yet. It might be that you're launching a programme, creating a project, or you've got a great idea, but you haven't been able to secure the funding yet. It feels like you've done all the networking, filled in all the applications in the world, but you are not succeeding.
There's one more thing, which is again about the internal stress we might create, which is comparing yourself to others. When you're thinking, "Everybody on LinkedIn is doing marvellously," or when you're networking and hear about all the wonderful successes everyone seems to be having, it can be really easy to tell yourself, "I'm not doing well in comparison.". That can be really stressful because it will lead to losing confidence. Maybe then you start overthinking all of your decisions. You will feel demotivated, thinking, "Should I be running this business? Should I actually have given up my lovely, safe, comfortable job to start this business? What was I thinking? Help!"
And I think many people have had that moment where they've just stopped. It felt too stressful, and they've thought, "How do I get out of this?" Of course, when we don't feel stressed, we love the challenge because a certain amount of stress is really good for us. It helps to motivate us and galvanise us into action. We love it! But too much stress, prolonged stress, is going to hurt our performance, our happiness, and our success.
How does stress affect our ability to make decisions and stay productive?
Decision-making and productivity are both quite different things, but they also feed into each other. There's been a lot of research around the effect of stress on decision-making, and there are five key things that will impact us and our teams that we need to be aware of. They are:
1. Impaired cognitive function.
High levels of stress, according to Amy Aaron's research, actually make us less clever! Our ability to pay attention goes down, our memory starts to suffer, and our problem-solving ability decreases. If we can't problem-solve, we slow ourselves down. We're also very poor at risk assessment when we're under stress. We might make riskier decisions because we are looking to solve the problem immediately rather than creatively, narrowing our focus to look for the easy win. In business, you don't always want the easy win. Sometimes the harder win is what's going to make your business more successful.
2. Emotional influence.
Stress can really affect us emotionally. We might not all turn into the Incredible Hulk or burst into tears at our desk; but we could be more short-tempered and less tolerant of mistakes in our team or for ourselves. Our emotional responses could be heightened — maybe we take not getting a contract with a new customer much more personally, and then it knocks our confidence. That heightened emotional response is huge, and I think we can play a part in recognizing that for ourselves as well as looking out for it in our teams. Are people behaving differently? What is actually influencing their emotional responses?
3. Information processing.
It's much harder to process and weigh up information, and we can't necessarily compare between options because the stress is driving us to make poorer, quicker decisions. In nature, when we're stressed, the way through-if you're a lion or a tiger—is to do something. If a lion, a tiger, or any animal is stressed, they normally have to go harder, faster, or longer. But for business owners, we need to be able to take a step back and work smarter. Instead of pushing through, working harder, or pushing ourselves, we need to work smarter to help our brains.
4. Decision avoidance.
Sometimes, stress leads to procrastination. There's a decision, and because everything is filling your head, you can't make that decision. It feels too hard, so you put it off until tomorrow, and then until tomorrow, and then until tomorrow. That's really poor in business.
it's better to make a poor decision than no decision at all- because at least you have momentum.I've heard it said many times: it's better to make a poor decision than no decision at all- because at least you have momentum. That leads into productivity because if you've got decisions that are less than optimal and they're being delayed, that then leads to a loss of productivity for you and your team. You will have decreased focus at work, and maybe you'll notice in yourself or your team that there's a bit more scrolling of social media than is strictly necessary. People might start working longer hours because they're not able to pay attention.
5. Increased errors.
Studies by Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a neuroscientist whose research focuses on neuroendocrinology and stress, shows that decreased accuracy and increased errors are very likely when we're under stress. We know that if someone is saying, "Hurry up, hurry up, find your keys, hurry up," in an everyday household situation, that's when we drop the keys on the floor, drop our bag, and start to panic. That added pressure of stress makes us behave less effectively, and things take longer.
That leads back into poor decision-making and causes us to prioritize wrongly. If we have a big list of things to do, instead of tackling a small chunk of something important, we might unconsciously choose to do the things that are shorter or easier, but don't actually move our business forward.
These things, I think, lead hugely into productivity and decision-making - two separate areas of the brain, but they really work together.
The Surge Response
The effect of stress on productivity is that when you've got a lot to do, you can move into what's been identified as "The Surge Response." The Surge Response helps us get through periods when we're very, very busy. That response comes from survival. The Surge Response is really helpful in natural disasters, for example- if there was an earthquake, you couldn't take a step back and say, "Let me reflect on this." You would have to survive. The Surge Response is fantastic for that.
In fact, the term was named by Dr. Ann Masten, a psychologist and professor of child development at the University of Minnesota. She did a lot of research on this around the time the pandemic hit. In nature, if there was a crisis that's a short duration, it is an acute phase and that's what the surge response is designed to deal with. But unfortunately, if that stress is prolonged, as if we were having earthquake after earthquake, then the surge response burns out. We have a lack of resilience, and the surge response becomes chronic, and we simply cannot be productive. I think we are all familiar with a situation where we've tried to work for too long on something and come back the next day to find it's full of errors we never noticed.
Hopefully, this article has given you some insight into why stress can seem to control our decisions and freeze productivity. It can be hard to manage when you're overwhelmed with stress from your business, but there is hope!
In part 2, Tammy Barter will take you through how to stop stress before it becomes overwhelming, and what to do when it all feels like too much. Alternatively, you can listen to the full podcast episode here.
Further Reading
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