Being a leader at a startup can involve managing a team with a small budget, tight deadlines, and a lot of uncertainty. Startup leaders are usually responsible for maintaining the team’s mental and emotional well-being to sustain functional capacity and a good work environment.
However, leaders of fast-growing businesses feel the blowback and stress of these weighty responsibilities.
To manage this pressure, leaders today have become more aware and transparent when sharing insights into how they deal with stress and mental health. Here are a few tried-and-true stress management tips for effective leadership.
Table of contents
- Top Leadership tips for managing stress at a startup
- Top leadership tips for managers to handle stress
- 4 Tips for managing stress at a startup
- Final thoughts
Top leadership tips for managers to handle stress
1. Meditation and yoga
If exercise is not your thing, you can choose milder types of physical activity, such as yoga. These types of exercise are suitable for the body, mind, and spirit, increasing your productivity.
But neither yoga nor meditation is helpful if you try to perform them independently; you must work with a qualified yoga specialist.
We often mistake practising mindfulness as simply sitting in a Buddha pose and keeping silent, but that’s not it; there is an entire process to follow that only qualified meditation experts can help you with. Make an appointment with the local yoga and meditation specialist.
2. Choose a hobby you love
We neglect to do the things we enjoy because we are too busy working. Engaging in activities other than work and following tips on leadership skills can maintain their happiness and motivation.
Of course, you enjoy what you do, but if you had any interests as a youngster, such as music, gardening, sketching or painting, you might want to think about picking them back up and having fun.
Having a hobby you enjoy has been said to help people be creative and innovative and relieve the chronic stress that has taken over their lives.
3. Prioritise yourself
Most leaders are selfless in their quest for company objectives. They sacrifice personal time, rarely take vacations, and put in far more hours than are necessary.
Your mental and physical health must come first if you wish to lead effectively.
Spend time exercising, engaging in a hobby, spending time with the people you love, and doing anything else you can to maintain your mental and emotional well-being.
4. Stay physically fit and active
Having to sit for hours at a time with no activity level has caused us to become obese and unfit. Remember that your health directly impacts your mood, brain, ability to perform, and even connection with everyone around you because it makes your body more functional when you work out.
Multiple scientific studies have demonstrated the advantages of exercise, and you don’t even need to spend money to be fit. All you need is willpower and free exercise routines available.
Numerous leaders and business owners have said that leading a healthy lifestyle results in lower stress and irritation levels.
5. Start reading a book
Unlike new tech, books help us relax and relieve stress. You should read books that can help you escape your current environment, reduce stress, and provide fresh insights into life.
Reading a book instead of picking up your phone could cause you more stress. Reading stimulates your imagination and helps you escape the current world.
4 Tips for managing stress at a startup
1. Support employee development
Employees may experience severe anxiety and worry if they feel struggling at work and lack a clear professional path. Dealing with such conditions of uncertainty results in excessive turnover rates, particularly among the most skilled workers.
Ensure that everyone’s role fully utilises their abilities and talent and that a reward system is in place for outstanding performance.
Every team member needs to have a development plan. Have regular meetings with each person to discuss progress and give them specific instructions on going forward on that predetermined path.
As necessary, include HR in finding opportunities for workers to advance their careers.
2. Maintain transparency
Keep the team informed on what’s happening. Leaving the people out of the loop about matters of concern to their livelihood can rapidly lead to disconnection from the business and fears about the future which are severe stressors.
Hold regular meetings to update the team on management planning developments, underline shared values and goals, and dispel any feelings of isolation.
Highlight the team’s significance to the business mission, and express appreciation for the employees’ efforts. Let them know the status of their performance indicators and what those represent about their work.
3. Be respectful and friendly
Employees’ most frequent complaints are that their employers ignore them unless they assign a task. That sense of being treated as a nonperson in the place where a person must spend most of their waking hours every week is a severe stressor.
Great leaders tend not to be arrogant. They admire and respect the skills and intelligence of others. All employees deserve to be treated with respect in the workplace and feel welcomed, acknowledged and wanted where they work.
4. Have realistic expectations
Great leaders understand that enforcing unrealistic expectations or requirements inconsistent with the business’s stated values or out of line with workers’ skills adds undue stress for employees.
Such demands are likely to result in negative consequences in group disengagement, poor leadership, staff attrition and the rapidly increasing costs that come with excessive turnover.
The seeds of leadership excellence are big, challenging goals and the determination to achieve them. The secret is to lead so your staff can support your vision and feel secure in their jobs. Employees need to have confidence in their ability to meet expectations.
Final thoughts
Continuous extreme stress in the workplace can result in a decline in employee engagement, exhaustion, and unproductive team results.
Using leadership skills tips and the techniques from the list above can help you overcome team stress and maintain more consistent operations and outcomes, shift workplace culture towards a more positive working environment, boost employee morale and retention goals, and enhance your quality of career and personal life.
