An apt summary of what leadership entails, can be found on the INSEAD website: “Leadership is a lifelong journey that begins with self-awareness”. This journey includes looking at the prerequisites for the ability to lead, including authenticity, clear values and focused and deliberate action. Leading requires access to the ‘rational brain’. This is the part of the brain that is responsible for reasoning, thinking, decision-making, empathy and planning. It is critical to understand that access to our rational brain is blocked when our physiological stress responses are triggered and that, as a result, leading – yourself and others – becomes physically impossible. This is a very important fact, because it implies that there is no room to develop personal and team leadership in an environment where people regularly experience stress, fear and/or anxiety.
Everyone is familiar with the human response to what the brain identifies as a threat or danger. The amygdala, part of the limbic system in our brain, is responsible for this automatic physiological stress response. The direct trigger that the brain associates with danger or threat is an emotion: feeling stressed or afraid. Emotions that trigger this response include fear, anger, anxiety and aggression. These seem big emotions and it may sound like this needs to regard extraordinary circumstances, but that is a misconception. These emotions are very common, also at work. In fact, in certain working environments, these triggers are constantly present. The anxiety and fear that can trigger our stress responses include feelings of not being (good) enough and fear of rejection, failure, disapproval, being vulnerable and loss of image.[1] This is omnipresent and it influences our lives every single day in a way that can also seriously affect our professional lives.
To understand why stress responses and leadership are mutually exclusive, it is important to take a look at what the stress responses do to our cognitive functions. Once our stress responses are triggered, we switch from (i) moderately paced, controlled and deliberate action, which originates from the rational brain and is a prerequisite for our ability to lead, to (ii) fast, automatic and emotional reactions, triggered by our limbic system, focused only on what activated the stress response. Our focus shifts from moving forward, from getting to where we want to go and what’s needed to get there, to a much narrower and reactive focus: getting away from the trigger, avoiding what’s immediately in front of us. This also includes us ‘armouring up’, protecting ourselves: we will do whatever our stressed brain sees as needed to keep out of harm’s way. We won’t do anything that feels ‘unsafe’: anything that may cause feelings of vulnerability, rejection, shame etc. It causes us to hand in our courage and authenticity, two of the core characteristics of great leaders. The outcome is that we shy away from engaging in difficult conversations and honest feedback and from connection, care and empathy, which in turn leads to low trust levels in the organisation.[2]
In many ways, our stress responses are the opposite of what our rational brain is designed to do. Where the rational brain has a broad scope and enables us to lead, i.e. to act deliberately, with empathy and in alignment with our values, goals and intentions, the stress response is narrowed, automatic, reactive and emotional and purely focused on survival, keeping us safe. The stress response is also referred to as a stress hijack, because your rational brain shuts down and the limbic system takes over as soon as the stress responses are triggered.
The fact that our limbic system responds automatically to stress and fear, does not mean that we have no control over how we deal with the negative circumstances that trigger our stress responses. This is crucial. It is the basis for being able to continue following your own path rather than losing yourself in a stress hijack. While you may not have control over your environment, you can control how you deal with what happens to you. Viktor E. Frankl, holocaust survivor, psychiatrist and author, formulated it beautifully: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
So, because of the way our brain functions, we can only lead – ourselves and others – when we have access to our rational brain. This means that we need to recognise and reverse stress hijacks if and when they occur, especially if they occur often. The next step is taking action to confront the situation that our brain sees as a threat. The key to staying in control is therefore self-awareness and interrupting the cycle that is triggered by the stress response. There will always be situations that will trigger this cycle. Therefore, the trick is not to prevent that from happening, that is impossible, but to recognise the stress hijack as soon as possible and then regain access to your rational self.
Before getting into the how of interrupting the cycle, let me give you an example of a common stress response, avoiding, so that you see how subtle it can be and how this impacts our daily lives. In the Mel Robbins podcast, Dr. Luana Marques[3] explains that avoidance can show up in three forms: REMAIN (e.g. staying in an awful job rather than confronting the fear of being rejected when trying to find another job), REACT (e.g. lashing out to someone rather than confronting the fear of being vulnerable when engaging in a honest conversation) and RETREAT (e.g. not having the difficult conversation rather than confronting the fear of conflict when addressing the issue that needs to be dealt with). As such it is a stress response (freeze / remain, fight / react, flight / retreat), triggered by fear. The work of Dr. Luana Marques shows how common and extremely relatable these situations are. In all cases, avoiding the real issue typically doesn’t feel right. It keeps us away from what we know we should be doing, it keeps us away from leading: doing what we know will help us and others grow.
There are various ways to interrupt the cycle and to regain access to our rational brain. Focusing on your breath and writing (writing down your thoughts or priorities) are the simplest ones. Controlled breathing enhances emotional regulation and writing activates the pre-frontal cortex. Both are antidotes to the stress response. After interrupting the cycle and having regained access to the pre-frontal cortex, the trigger needs to be neutralised. To do that, we need to deliberately engage with the situation that activated the stress response. This basically means approaching the situation with a calm and rational state of mind: taking action on the basis of the facts and the outcome you desire, rather than automatically responding to what feels like a threat in your gut. This results in creating a new experience that replaces the irrational feared outcome. It eliminates the perceived threat as it is overwritten with a new fact-based experience. Keep in mind that in its core the antidote to fear is reminding yourself that, whatever is out there, you can handle it. If you decide to and if you do the work, you are in control of your response to whatever life throws at you. Calm yourself down , look at the facts objectively and take action to deal with it on your own terms and in alignment with your own values.
It is up to you to define what good looks like as well as what is good enough. You set the bar. You are the only person that can decide which goals you want to pursue. You have one life, it’s yours to live.
[1] See Feel the Fear… and Do It Anyway, Susan Jeffers, Ph. D. (2007). Level 2 fears that are not situation oriented; they involve the ego. Level 3 is the underlying fear: I can’t handle it.
[2] See also the Dare to Lead podcast (Brené Brown) for an introduction in her amazing work in the field of courageous leadership.
[3] See Dr Luana Marques’ most recent book Bold Move (2023).