Premise:
I read an article with the same title, written by Theodore Kinni for strategy+business (a pwc publication) and it reminded me of an blog post I had written almost a decade back about the role of leaders in absorbing pressure, to allow their teams to perform at their best. (the original post here).
In the post, he shares the components of the Pressure Equation, originally attributed to Dane Jensen, CEO of performance consulting firm Third Factor and author of the new book The Power of Pressure.
Variables in the Pressure Equation
Jensen finds that pressure grows more intense across three elements:
- How much something matters
- How unclear the outcome is
- How many other demands there are on your time
This is an interesting view. I would also add another dimension to this equation.
4. How much of it can we control
The biggest contributor to stress (the unwarranted kind) that grounds us down is when we are not in a position to exert any control over the different variables in play. This is specially true when it comes to performing as a team rather than as an individual performer.
We cant control the actions of our team mates. We cant control the market variables.
When we are feeling pressure as a leader, we need to take a step back and take a pause (what Penny Zenker might call a Reset Moment) and do an awareness exercise (5 Kinds of awareness that I talk about here).
Delivering High Performance vs Delivering Results
We need to think how much of this pressure is self inflicted due to misaligned expectations and how much of it is to bring our A-Game to the situation and rethink the pressure.
The pressure to bring our A-Game to the situation is good pressure. This helps us achieve focus and brings forward all our training and experience to the fore and helps deliver our best performance.
The pressure to deliver a specific result is unwarranted and unhelpful. Delivering high performance is not about the results but is about the process.
While the results are important, it is the actions and the process that is more important than the results, as the results can be affected by many things that are not in our control at all.
So, our ability as leaders to separate the pressure to deliver results from delivering high performance is key in leading under high pressure situations.
In conclusion
In Conclusion, I would only reinforce that pressure to deliver high performance is good while the pressure to deliver results is not so good.
Leaders who can see the difference and use the pressure to deliver high performance continually improve upon what high performance means to them, will succeed in the long term and do so consistently.
They are also great leaders to work with because in this process they also help their teams learn to deal with pressure and become a high performing team.
