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The life of a CEO is increasingly more demanding and complicated. They are busier than ever, managing competing priorities, find themselves without the talent they need, volunteer, have families and want to spend leisure time.   All of this can be stressful, and ultimately CEO coaching includes discussions on stress and stress management.

Executives want CEO coaching primarily for business reasons. Their organization is going through substantial change, they need to develop key leaders, teams are dysfunctional, communication strategies don’t exist or they need a sounding board for ideas. Yet at some point in our coaching relationship, the discussions turn to managing stress. WebMD provides a description of stress and stress management techniques. Not new ideas, but good reminders.

The problem is, often it doesn’t address the root problem(s) causing the stress, and without addressing those stress will rear its ugly head again and again. Often a factor in stress is a values question. For example: A CEO is working long hours and missing family time. Guilt exists because family is a value. Perhaps she has a value of honesty or integrity and has becomes aware of information she can’t share that will impact many people within the company.  Consider if one or more of your values are being tested or called into question, it causes stress.

Another issue is around decision-making, whether it’s not knowing what decisions to make, how to make them or not making them at all. We assume that the guy at the top got there because he knew how to make decisions, and made them. You’d be surprised how often the question of decision-making arises during the CEO coaching process. Their decisions carry a lot of responsibility that can be weighty for many executives.

With stress management we often treat the symptoms. We delegate some of our workload to others, reprioritize our projects, take more time for vacations…all of which help for a while yet the problem continues to recur. Consider if your stress might be coming from not being in alignment with your values, or if something around decision-making is a factor.

 

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