Bob Martel is a board-certified hypnotist and stress management consultant at Positive Results Hypnosis in Holden. You can reach him via email at bob@bobmartel.com.
April 6, 2020
How CEOs can manage their anxiety during the coronavirus pandemic
By Bob Martel
It’s lonely enough at the top, but CEOs and small business owners must be feeling lonelier than usual these days. In this pandemic, CEOs are facing increased anxiety, depression and stress, and must not let it roll downhill to top staff.
Employees and management are remanded to their home office environs, and the leadership team is working doubly hard to maintain business functions, engage with a suddenly or expanded distributed workforce, and, for some, client activity and sales have come to a halt. The phone may have stopped ringing, and depending on your industry, customers have already told you not to call on them for the foreseeable future. Everyone is dealing, to varying degrees of success, with a new background anxiousness due to the social distancing and other restraints. Revenue may be down, and U.S. Small Business Administration loans and grants are not yet showing up in your bank account.
So, why would those at the helm and their leadership team not be feeling the same fears and anxieties that employees, families and customers face? Employees at all levels have to pause and acknowledge their feelings so that they maintain emotional self-control. You see, business leaders have to show leadership skills and lead! That requires, for some, a stoic posture, and for all it requires more empathy, support, compassion, patience and (still) demonstrating sound business decisions. Aside from steering the ship on a steady course, you still can chart your destiny by focusing on what you can control. It starts with controlling your own emotions.
How does the saying go? It matters most how we react to what we are faced with… or words to that effect. So, in part, the level of calm or anxiety across your company is in large part based on how you react. Lose it, and it flows downhill. Demonstrate strong leadership, and the anxiety starts to diminish amongst the troops. There has never been a better time for practicing mindfulness at work, and mindful living in general. Words matter. Decisions and action (or inaction) all matter and will impact that destiny you were charting before this crisis.
This is about you for the moment. How well you master your emotional self-control and anxiety management will factor into your rising out of the phoenix on the other side of this. Here are some tips to manage your own anxiety levels as you step up to new situations as a magician balancing optimism and day to day reality:
- Practice increased mindfulness at work. Increase your present moment awareness as you boost morale and engagement. Go read Vice Admiral James Stockdale’s speech Courage Under Fire. Hint: Epictetus, Seneca and Aurelius have some insights.
- CEOs espouse the value of more sleep for employees. Your turn. A few deep breaths and say “I am sleeping now.” Works. Perfected by U.S. Army in World War II, learn to sleep hypnotically.
- Practice self-hypnosis and relaxation. This keeps you calm, relaxed, and in control of emotions. It is easy to learn as is the anti-anxiety self-hug. (I’ll teach you).
- Maintain healthy practices to keep you sharper mentally, physically, behaviorally, and spiritually.
- Fight self-sabotage and the doldrums? The glass is full, not half full. Think, act, be positive. Do not go down that slippery slope. Think resilience.
Finally, remember to smile often. Your employees and customers are counting on it, and the endorphins make you feel better.
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Anonymous
April 6, 2020
Good words to live and work by! Thanks Bob.
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