Managing stress while leading change

Leading business transformation, whether its upgrading your back-end systems or innovating your customer experience, can be very stressful.

Firstsource recently commissioned research into how leaders can minimize stress and make their transformation programs more successful. Here a CFO shares his views on the personal toll of leading change.

The stress of making the right decision

When you are leading change and making the initial decision you have to get involved in the detail and really challenge the process. If I am putting a project forward, I would expect my colleagues to challenge it and ask pithy questions. If it is not my project, then my job is to challenge it by asking the questions that I am concerned about.

When the stakes are particularly high, the ‘challenge’ process becomes longer and more difficult (and more stressful). It is a lot harder to get people’s buy-in. Your approval processes become much longer and more torturous.

In high-stakes programs, you can get multiple ‘challenge’ stages. So, after year two, people ask: 'should we carry on, or should we stop?', which becomes really hard as you are already invested in something, and are thinking: “Should we throw this all away, abandon ship? Or should we carry on?” Those become tough conversations.

Embracing the positive side of stress

The ‘challenge process’ is all about being honest with your views and concerns. Yet, if you are on the delivery side, you do not want to be asked difficult questions as it is stressful. Remember – if people raise right questions early on, you are going to get a better outcome if the project goes forward. The initial stress is worth it in the long run.

Naturally, you should be nervous when you are doing something important because it matters to you. Are you nervous before you give a speech? You should be, otherwise you will not do a good job. Similarly, on a major transformation initiative, if you are not stressed or concerned it probably means you are not doing your job well enough, or have not taken enough risk. Nerves are a good thing when leading transformation.

Managing the stress of the implementation

During large initiatives, you are undoubtedly putting your and your team’s integrity on the line. If you spend millions and get nothing, people are going to look at you differently.

Of course, there is personal risk in managing change initiatives but this is true for everything. Yet, it is hard not to over-focus on the project and not to make it personal. As a leader, you eventually live and breathe the project. When it is going badly, you are doing badly. When it is going well, you are doing well. You even take on the personality of the stage of the project you are at. This is the hardest part – becoming wrapped up in something so large. You can get to a point where your colleagues are trying to help you, but you do not recognize the difference between help and hindrance which can be very tough.

You can take a lot of abuse during large change initiatives. Since what you are doing impacts a lot of people around you, they can have strong views. People can become very negative in dealing with you. So, you need resilience, stamina, and the ability to constantly remind yourself why you are doing this. You also have to continuously ‘sell’ things along the way. On one program, the first day we got real data that was consistent across organizations, which was a huge win. It was something we had never had before, being able to share that with people was just amazing.

Finally, I would love to say that I have never let stress get the better of me, but there are occasions when it does. If something goes wrong, it brings an immediate focus to the problem. The skill lies in quickly stepping back and finding solutions.

Leading transformation insights

While most of life’s lessons come from experience, you do not always have to go through the challenges yourself. This is where peer insights come in helpful. Our research into Five leadership lessons of leading transformation is based on personal experiences of 120 senior executives with significant transformation experience. Download the research to start making your transformation less stressful and more successful today.