Lets start with a bit of an experience: I was recently across the table from Emma, talented, experienced marketing manager at a fast growing tech start up based in Melbourne. Her hands did shake a bit as she continued to tell me how very overwhelmed she was by how much work she had. “I can’t breathe, Marcus,” she said. Each day adds another deadline, another meeting, another pressure. I can’t keep going on like this much longer.”
Sound familiar? If you’re nodding, then the following is no doubt going to feel very familiar. For 30 years I have worked with Australian businesses stretching from Perth to Brisbane and I have lost count of the number of times I have witnessed this story unfolding. But I’ve learnt something that might shock you: Stress doesn’t always have to be the enemy we perceive it to be.
What Is Really Behind Your Work Stress
Let me tell you something that made me completely rethink the way I feel. I was consulting to a manufacturing company in Adelaide about five years ago. Jake the floor supervisor seemed overwhelmed with whatever it was he was doing. But the more we looked into it, the more interesting it got. Jake was not merely stressed, he cared about his work and felt frustrated when he couldn’t perform it as well as he knew he could.
What I learnt, however, is that work related stress often emerges when what we are capable of doing and what we are able to accomplish become mismatched. It’s as if you were driving a sports car in stop start traffic , you have all that potential energy and nothing to do with it.
The point of this being that, the kind of stress triggers I see in Australian workplaces are:
Excess work and too tight deadlines can make you feel like you’re constantly playing catch up. It reminded me of tax season in a small accounting firm where people are working 80 hour weeks. It wasn’t just the hours that was the issue, it was that no one had told me what actually was an urgent task and what actually could wait.
Poor communication which have you trying to guess what they want. Recall your last email where someone asked you “Can you take care of this ASAP? with no context provided about what “this” specifically was, or why it was urgent.
Little control over your daily work. This cuts especially deep with talented people who know they could solve problems if the morons would just get out of the way and shut up.
The High Cost of Ignoring Stress
Here’s something that changed my mind. I was consulting to a logistics company in Brisbane and there were people churning like nobody’s business. The CEO, Michelle, was baffled. “We pay well, the work is not that hard, but people just keep leaving,” she told me.
I spent time with the team and the picture became clear. The pressure wasn’t crushing productivity at once , it was killing the little things that made the office fun. Folks were getting short with one another, creative problem solving had dried up and the best people were looking elsewhere.
The true cost of workplace stress isn’t just the obvious , sick days, mistakes. It’s the slow leak on everything that makes work meaningful. When stress eclipses, teamwork falls apart and the team becomes inactive and the most skilled people of your team starts updating their LinkedIn profile.
Simple Strategies That Actually Work
So now I would like to share some of the practicalities I have witnessed as life changing in workplaces all over Australia. These are not complex theoretical constructs , they are practical moves that actual people make every day.
Start with your thinking patterns. I discovered this while coaching Rebecca, a project manager in Sydney who was convinced that she was inept at her job. Each tiny roadblock looked like evidence that she was a failure. We focused on catching such thoughts and asking a simple question: “Is this thought helping me solve the problem, or is it just making me feel worse?”
Rather than “I’m not ever going to get this project done on time,” Rebecca learnt to manage her gut reaction and reframe it into: “This project has some fast turnaround times, so let me figure out what I need to prioritise first.” Same situation, but two totally different emotional reactions.
Control what you can control. This may seem obvious, but it is remarkably potent. I recall supporting David, a sales manager suffering stress due to his team not hitting their numbers. We put everything he was fretting over on a list and then split the list into two columns: those things he could control and those he couldn’t.
Guess what? Some 70% of his stress was coming from things that were so far above and beyond his ability to control , market conditions, competitor pricing, corporate offerings , that he only had so much power to steer his way out of there before bottoming out. And when he directed his energy to what he could actually affect , the skills of his team, their daily work, their motivation , his stress level plummeted and their results improved. So Stress Management Training does actually work.
Make smaller wins a part of your daily routine. The idea came after we saw great success from tradesmen on work sites in our own country, Australia. Not only do they set their sights on getting the house finished, they have a tiny party each time they complete a room, or a wall, or a day’s work.
(Then use it at the office.) Feel great whenever you don’t just knock off a gigantic project, but when you knock out a hard report, have a terrific meeting or figure out a big problem. ”The collective messy change can lead to the biggest player of them all: momentum.” What happens? The incremental recognition builds momentum and grit.
Designing a Workplace for (Almost) Everyone
And if you’re in a leadership position, you have a remarkable opportunity to influence the way stress plays out among your team members. I’ve watched managers turn their workplace culture around with change that is surprisingly simple.
To make flexibility a reality, not just policy. I took a position at a consulting firm in Perth that had the words “flexible hours” in its official policy, yet everyone seemed to race into the office by 8 a.m. on the dot. The manager, Tony, initiated a small change: Rather than emphasising when people got to work, he highlighted what they achieved.
The change was remarkable. People began managing their energy more skilfully, showing up at times when they were able to do their best work and actually getting more done in fewer hours.
Invest in real communication. I don’t mean more meetings , I mean better communication. I went to a factory in Newcastle and there were guys on the floor who had good ideas for how to run the factory better, but there wasn’t any way for that to be communicated to management in a structured way.
We put in place a straightforward weekly check in where team leaders spent 15 minutes with their team members discussing what they were finding easy, what they were struggling with and what we would like to see them improve. In six months, they had instituted dozens of small changes that lowered stress and increased productivity.
Provide tools, not just support. “It’s nice to tell people, ‘Let me know if you need help,'” he said, “but it’s better to teach them some specific stress management techniques.” The most successful companies I partner with provide out of the gates training in time management, communication and stress reduction.
Your Personal Stress Management Toolkit
Here are the three things that everyone tells me work for them, and work for me, when it comes to books.
The “Two Minute Rule” for overwhelm. If everything feels urgent, pick the smallest item you can do that will only take two minutes and just do it. It gives you momentum and tells your brain that you really can be productive. I learnt this from observing how E.R. doctors deal with chaos , they begin with what they can control.
The “Energy Audit” that it could do to prioritise better? Pay attention to when during the day you are most energised and capable of doing things, and guard that time for your most important work. I learnt this when I worked for a creative agency in Melbourne where it was a given that everyone needed to ‘do their best work in the morning’. Half the team, it turns out, was creative later in the day, but had been fighting to work against their own biology for years.
The “Good Enough” model of perfectionism. This is tough for us high achievers, but it is key. Ask the question: “What’s the lowest level of quality this task can afford?” Nothing has to be perfect. Some emails can be short, some reports can be functional instead of beautiful, and some meetings can be 15 minutes instead of an hour.
Making Stress Work for You
Here’s the mindset shift that changes everything: Stress often means you care a lot about what you’re doing. Emma, the marketing manager I mentioned earlier, wasn’t just overwhelmed , she was frustrated and anxious, because she had high standards and wanted to outperform!
When we reinterpreted her stress as a sign of her perfectionism, she was better able to put the energy where she wanted it to go. Rather than blame herself for being stressed, she’d say it was just information about what she loved most.
The point isn’t to never feel stressed , that’s impossible, given that you and your body are evolved to cope with stress. Many of the most successful people I know in Australian business have honed the habit of thriving under pressure because they’ve learnt to view challenges as opportunities to build skill, rather than threats to avoid.
Concluding Remarks
While it’d be nice if managing workplace stress was all about striking a perfect balance, or even about trying to eliminate all stress and pressure in your work life, that’s not actually the case. It’s about developing resilience, constructing systems that serve you, and recognising that stress often means you’re pushing yourself to expand.
No matter whether you’re facing impossible workloads, toxic office dynamics or an uncertain future, there is more in your control than you think. Begin with small adjustments and be kind to yourself, and don’t hesitate to seek support when you need it.
I have otherwise learnt something fresh about resilience, creativity and how people can help one another through challenges at every Australian workplace from which I have had the privilege of serving. Your work stress doesn’t need to define your experience, it can be the impetus to create something better.
Take care of yourselves, and don’t forget: You’re even stronger than you think you are.”
