Help Your Team Manage Stress and Build Resilience: 10 Tips for Leaders

Stress is inevitable, the world is full of change and uncertainty, and it’s a challenge we all face - at work and at home. As leaders your people’s wellbeing and helping them to manage stress and build resilience, or inner strength, is no longer a tick box exercise, it’s essential.

With the right tools and support, stress can be managed effectively, leading not only to healthier individuals but also to a stronger, more resilient team.

1. Understanding Pressure vs. Stress

It’s essential to recognise the difference between pressure and stress. Like Goldilocks, the goal is to find “just right” pressure—not too little and not too much.

• Productive Pressure: When managed well, pressure can keep us focused and motivated. In the right amount, it enhances performance.

• Excessive Pressure: If it becomes overwhelming, however, pressure crosses into stress, leading to fatigue, irritability, and decreased performance.

Actionable Tips: 

Encourage team members to recognise when they feel engaged and focused rather than tense or overwhelmed. Set Short, Manageable Goals to maintain a sense of progress and keep pressure in check. Smaller goals can keep productivity high without overwhelming the team. Remind your team to take short, refreshing breaks to recalibrate during peak pressure periods. Simple actions like stepping outside or taking a few deep breaths can prevent the shift from pressure into stress.

2. Acknowledge and Accept Your Emotions

When you feel stress building, could you take a moment to acknowledge it. Awareness of how you feel physically and emotionally helps you address stress before it becomes overwhelming.

• Recognise the Signs: Pay attention to physical cues like a racing heartbeat or shallow breathing. These are your body’s “check engine” lights.

• Pause for Perspective: Rather than reacting instantly, pause and reflect. Ask yourself, “Will this matter a month from now? What would my wisest friend advise?” This bird’s-eye view can provide much-needed clarity.

Actionable Tips:

Encourage team members to identify and name their emotions (e.g., “I feel anxious” or “I’m frustrated”). Research shows that labelling emotions reduces intensity, helping you feel more in control. Use Reflective Questions: Teach your team to ask themselves reflective questions when stressed. For instance, “What’s in my control here?” or “What would help me feel calmer?” This promotes a more balanced response rather than an immediate reaction.

3. Lead with Empathy

Being an empathetic leader is one of the most powerful ways to build resilience. When leaders take the time to understand each team member's unique challenges and stressors, it can make a significant difference in how they approach their work. Empathy builds trust and shows your team that they’re valued beyond their productivity.

Actionable Tip:

Use empathy in your day-to-day interactions by actively listening and offering tailored support when challenges arise. Sometimes, a quick conversation or a kind word can make all the difference.

4. Foster Open Communication

One of the best ways to help your team manage stress is to create a culture of open, honest communication. This starts with you, the leader, being transparent and approachable. Encourage your team to share their concerns, listen actively, and respond with empathy. When employees feel they can talk openly about challenges without judgment, they are more likely to address issues proactively, reducing stress in the long run.

Actionable Tips:

Start meetings with a brief personal update to set an example. When leaders share openly, team members feel more comfortable doing the same. Implement “Psychological Safety” Rules by establishing norms where everyone feels they can voice concerns without fear of judgment. One simple rule is, “All questions are good questions.” Reinforce that it’s okay to ask for help or say, “I don’t understand.”

Schedule informal one-on-one check-ins every few weeks to provide a safe space for team members to share any stressors or workload concerns. Actively listen, empathize, and brainstorm ways to address any challenges they bring up.

5. Encourage Work-Life Balance

While productivity is essential, balance is key to long-term success. Constant work without adequate rest can lead to burnout, so it's important to encourage breaks, time off, and healthy boundaries between work and personal life.

Actionable Tip:

Model work-life balance yourself by setting boundaries. For example, avoid sending emails after work hours, and use your vacation days. When your team sees you prioritise balance, they are more likely to do the same.

6. Give Your Team with Stress Management Tools

Resilience isn’t just about bouncing back; it’s about having the right tools to cope with challenges in real-time. Offering workshops or providing resources on stress management techniques like mindfulness, time management, and exercise can help your team develop skills to handle stress effectively.

Actionable Tip:

Organise a monthly wellness day or provide access to resources like meditation apps or fitness classes. Small investments in well-being can go a long way in helping employees manage stress.

7. Recognise and Reward Efforts

When people feel appreciated, they are more engaged and motivated. Recognition can be a powerful way to mitigate stress and build resilience. Celebrating successes, even small ones, helps create a positive work environment and reinforces a sense of purpose.

Actionable Tip:

Develop a simple system for celebrating achievements, such as a monthly shout-out in team meetings or a “thank you” board in the office. Positive reinforcement promotes a culture of support and resilience.

8. Build a Sense of Team Unity

Teams that support one another through tough times are more resilient. Fostering strong team bonds encourages employees to lean on one another for support, which can alleviate individual stress levels.

Actionable Tip:

Schedule team-building activities that align with your team’s interests, whether that’s a casual lunch, a team sports day, or a virtual trivia night. A unified team handles stress more effectively and comes together to support each other in times of need.

9. Encourage Flexibility

Allowing flexibility can reduce stress by giving employees some control over how and when they work best. This could mean flexible hours, remote work options, or allowing team members to switch tasks based on energy and focus levels.

Actionable Tip:

Consider implementing “focus hours” where employees can work uninterrupted or allow flexible start and end times for those who may be balancing work with other responsibilities.

10. Provide Learning and Development Opportunities

Learning opportunities can help employees feel empowered and equipped to handle challenges. When team members have room to grow and develop new skills, they’re more resilient in the face of change and better prepared to manage stress.

Actionable Tip: Start with my free online workshop How to Cope with Stress & Build Resilience.
Join this workshop to discover practical tools to strengthen your resilience and support your teams. We'll delve into:
🌿 What is Wellness
🌪️ Distinguishing Pressure from Stress
🚦 Establishing Healthy Boundaries and Habits
🌟 Overcoming Overwhelm
🌱 Cultivating Resilience
🧘 How to support your team

👇 BOOK A PLACE 👇

This workshop can also be tailored to run for teams and organisations in-person or virtually.

How to Cope with Stress

How to Cope with Stress

Christmas is inevitably one of the busiest and most stressful periods for people at work and at home. We have tasks to complete tasks, objectives to achieve or just a sense that we need to get things done before the end of the year.

How do you manage stress and build resilience for you and your team?

Pressure versus Stress

It’s important to remember that there is a difference between pressure and stress. Just like Goldilocks, we want ‘just right’ pressure - not too little and not too much.

When there’s no pressure and we aren’t busy enough feeling, we may feel bored, disengaged and undervalued. While we’re in our comfort zone we are just coasting and have the potential to feel apathetic. But when we experience the ‘just right’ level of pressure we feel focused, alert, stimulated, energetic, motivated and engaged.

There’s a fine line between too the ‘just right’ pressure and too much and that tipping point is going to be different for different people. Be aware of that when you’re thinking about your colleagues and staff.

When we feel stressed we start to make mistakes, feel out of control, become irritable, anxious and experience low morale. In time this can cumulate to cause exhaustion, needing time off and ultimately burnout and mental health issues.

As well as the impact on an individual, the business will suffer from increased staff absence and high turnover. The data is well reported elsewhere.

1. Put your own oxygen mask on first

It’s vital to start with yourself, just as on an airplane we are instructed to put our own oxygen mask on first.

We all need to keep an eye on our personal fuel gauge - just as running out of petrol is bad for your car, letting our own wellness tank run on empty is bad for us.

It is normal to feel pressure and even stress for short periods, but it’s important to recognise when it’s too much it and try to build resilience. Resilience is our ability to adapt and bounce back when things are difficult or don’t go as planned. Resilient people don’t dwell on failures; they acknowledge the situation, learn, and then move forward stronger.

2. Pause and accept how you feel

Be aware of how you feel, your emotions and energy levels and be aware of when you are tipping into the strain or stress zone. Recognise any physical symptoms that are your body’s own warning signs - fast heartbeat, short breathing, knotted stomach or poor sleep.



Pause, recognise and accept how you are feeling.
You can’t always choose the situation that is going on around you at home or work and you can’t choose your emotional response, but you can make choices about how you deal with it.

See the big picture
When we feel stressed our brains are hard-wired to overreact, our perceptions can be warped, we might feel that the world is against us and we might respond by going into fight, flight or freeze mode.

Take a bird's eye view - What do you see from up there? Does it look any different? What would your wisest and kindest friend advise you? How much will this matter a month from now? What about next year?

3. Focus on what you can control

Become aware of how much time and energy you spend worrying about things you can’t control or can’t change. This will help to reduce stress, frustration and overwhelm.

Start by writing a list of your worries and stress and then separate them between:

• Things you can directly control - your own actions or behaviours

• Things you can influence (in other words you can’t control other people or company-wide decisions but you might be able to influence them)

• Things that are completely out of your control

If you focus on what is within your control you can shift your attention, be more proactive and productive.

This concept of Circles of Control was popularised by Steven Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

4. Avoid, Alter, Accept Adapt

Once you’ve identified the causes of your stress, you have four options:

1. AVOID - Know your limits and try to stick to them. If you are asked to take on more than you can manage, or asked to do one too many things, can you learn to say no? It’s not easy to say no, especially if are short-staffed, but can you at least start the conversation and explore reprioritising tasks or reallocating them?

2. ALTER - if you can’t avoid the pressure or stressful situation, work out what you can do to change it. Sometimes this involves expressing your feelings instead of bottling them up. Be open about your limits. Remember to use "I" statements, as in, "I feel frustrated by being asked to take this on. Is there something we can do to balance things out?" Is there anything you can do to manage your time better? Block out time to focus on specific tasks and try and avoid interruptions, and group certain tasks together into chunks of time.

3. ADAPT - Can adapt to the pressures by reframing problems and trying to see the positives. What are you grateful for? Let go of perfectionism and recognise when good is good enough.

4. ACCEPT - Many sources of stress are unavoidable and you just have to accept them and deal with them. If you find that hard, is there someone you can talk to? Sometimes changing your surroundings just for a minute can help break out of a sense of powerlessness. Opening up to someone else can also reduce stress because it helps to distance ourselves from it and gain perspective.

5. Make time to decompress

Make sure you give yourself the time and the space to decompress. When we’re exhausted from work, it’s easy to stop looking after ourselves outside work, especially if you are getting home late at night or if you work from home and there aren't any boundaries.

Use your journey home from work to reflect, think about the good things that happened today, and let go of the difficult things while exploring what could be different next time. Writing stuff down can help to get it out of your head, even if you wake up in the middle of the night worrying about work, use the Notes or reminder function on your phone or carry a good old-fashioned notebook, to write down the things you need to do tomorrow, then let it go until tomorrow.

Make sure you try and make time to rest and relax, do something you enjoy every day whatever that may be for you - from walking your dog or meeting a friend for coffee. Make time to connect with friends and family outside work. Time spent outside and exercising is essential for our wellbeing as is eating well, staying hydrated and good sleep.

It’s not easy to switch off when we are constantly available via email or messages pop up on WhatsApp. Use your phone's “do not disturb functions’ to turn off notifications from work contacts when you’re not in work.

Any small steps you can take will help you to build resilience and cope with stress.

6. Supporting your staff’s wellness

When it comes to your staff, invest time in their wellbeing and create a supportive environment that considers the whole person and treats them as individuals.

On a day-to-day basis encourage positive relationships between colleagues and foster a supportive atmosphere where people are kind to each other and listen and support each other. Doing nice things for other people releases oxytocin which makes you feel good about yourself.

Foster a culture that promotes a good work-life balance. Encourage people to take breaks, leave on time and take their holiday allowance. Promote the importance of self-care: rest, relaxation, exercise, diet and sleep.

Proactively monitor everyone’s workload. Make sure that work is clearly defined, is well-matched to their abilities and that deadlines are acceptable.

If you work on a shift/rota basis: Strive to get staffing levels and rotas right, try to ensure rotas are fair and considerate to everyone, especially during the busy and sometimes unpredictable Christmas season - it’s the key to maintaining a happy and motivated workforce.

Provide rotas as far ahead as possible so that people can plan and enjoy their days off. Be as flexible as you can be allowing people to swap shifts within reason, and make it acceptable to take sick leave for mental health challenges.

Keep communicating – make time to talk to your staff and regularly check-in with them individually and privately. Be transparent with staff about what is going on in the business and be honest with them - for example about reasons why you may need them to take on more work. Mutual trust is the number one factor in creating a positive culture and relationship between manager and staff.

Foster a culture where people can come and talk to you and share their problems inside or outside work. Ask open questions, listen and be respectful and ask them what they need from you, whether that’s more support or training, time-off (for mental or physical health) or sign-posting to professional advice.

Finally, look out for staff who are struggling and ask them what they need. You can’t force them to change or seek help, but be aware that there are lots of resources and sources of support out there for people who are struggling.

If you would like to talk to someone about how to deal with stress, manage your workload, build resilience, and support your team, please get in touch. I offer a free 30 minute coaching session to explore how I can support you. You can email me polly@pollyrobinson.co.uk

Lead with Resilience

Happy staff create happy customers and that starts with a happy you.

Today we’re all under so much pressure at work and at home. Many teams I work with are short-staffed and those who are there are having to work harder and longer. But there’s only so long we can keep this up and eventually we start to run on empty, like a car running out of petrol - it doesn’t do us any good in the short or long term.

As a leader, it’s down to you to create an environment that fosters a positive attitude towards managing stress, prioritising our wellbeing and encourages a healthy work-life balance (or LIFE-WORK in that order).
Start by focussing on your own wellbeing, and then support your team.

It’s vital to start with yourself

Just as on an airplane we’re instructed to put our own oxygen mask on first. If you are starting to feel resentful, find yourself starting to complain to friends or family and keep coming back to the same issues, and if it’s starting to affect you out of work, it’s time to pause, shift your perspective and set some boundaries.

1. Firstly pause, recognise and accept how you are feeling. You can’t choose your emotions but you can choose how to respond to them. Try shifting your perspective, in moments of stress our perceptions can be warped and it’s easy to feel like the world is turning against you. Our brains are hard-wired to overreact in stressful situations.

2. Ask yourself in a month from now how much will this matter - and what about in a year?

3. Imagine you are a fly on the wall or a bird in the sky, what do you see from up there? Is anything clearer?

4. Focus on what you can control and influence and try not to get stuck on things that are out of your control, this reduces your feeling of overwhelm and frustration and enables you to be more proactive and effective. These steps will help you to build resilience and the ability to cope with and bounce back from adversity.

Your team’s wellbeing

When it comes to your staff, invest time in their wellbeing and create a supportive environment that considers the whole person and treats them as individuals. What are the things that make them want to come to work, or what might be the obstacles to them wanting to come in, is there anything you can do to make work more of fun and fulfilling for people?

1. On a day-to-day basis encourage positive relationships between colleagues and foster a supportive atmosphere where people are kind to each other. Doing nice things for other people releases oxytocin which makes you feel good about yourself. Encourage people to take their breaks and to get outside if they can, and to leave on time.

2. Proactively monitor people’s workload. Make sure that work is clearly defined, is well-matched to their abilities and that deadlines are acceptable. There’s a sweet spot where we are experiencing a moderate or higher level of pressure (this will be different for different people) and we are alert, stimulated, energetic, focused, and decisive. Not enough pressure we feel bored, apathetic, and frustrated and this can lead to low morale and underperforming. Too much pressure causes stress, and anxiety, can make us irritable and exhausted and eventually lead to burnout.

3. Strive for flexibility and forward planning - providing rotas as far ahead as possible, allowing people to swap shifts within reason, and make it acceptable to take sick leave for mental health challenges.

4. Finally, foster a culture where people can come and talk to you and share their problems inside or outside work. Listen and be respectful and ask them what they need from you, whether that’s more support or training, time-off (for mental or physical health) or sign-posting to professional advice.