With the current NBA season underway, I thought I'd look at how stress affects all of us, even professional athletes.
When I coach business leaders as well as basketball players and coaches, I talk about how added stress causes us to either rise to the occasion or to fold and make mistakes.
An interesting article by Michael Rand of the Minneapolis Star Tribune discusses how the Minnesota Timberwolves, during their 2017-18 regular season, were near the top in shooting contested shots from 5-15 feet from the basket. In their playoff games against Houston, they shot them much worse.
Playoff sports are well known for being more competitive and stressful than in the regular season. There's more at stake. For the Timberwolves, not only did they shoot a poorer percentage from this range, but their top players weren't taking those shots.
In the 2018 NBA Finals, Game 1 showed in full relief how stress, coupled with the ability to cope, caused JR Smith to grab an offensive rebound and dribble the ball out to the half court line, even though the game was tied and they needed to score. As a result, the Cleveland Cavaliers lost the game, Lebron James punched a blackboard and broke his hand and they eventually got swept out of the series by the Golden State Warriors.
However, wouldn't professional athletes be 'immune' to being impacted by such stress? They are trained to perform in such situations; they are the best in the world. Aren't we, as leaders, professionally trained to perform on our court of play? Stress impacts all of us.
We all have innate abilities to handle stress which can be strengthened or weakened by practice, mental illness, philosophies, etc.
What is important to note is that how you manage stress has a great impact on the people you lead. Here are 5 ways stress changes performance:
- Stress will, generally, cause us to narrow our focus and key in on one or, maybe two, components of the situation. If there are more aspects to the situation than one or two and they come at you, you will make a quick, usually rash, decision in reaction to it. In my book, The Four Fundamental Forces of Leadership, I call this self-focus.
- Repeated stress will wear on us, causing decreases in our health, concentration levels, sociabliity, etc. Without recognizing and addressing the stress loads on us, we can do some real damage to ourselves.
- As noted in a previous blog, basketball teams are self organizing systems. Without specific forces acting upon the system, they will look to take advantage of opportunities as they flow. Stress, like resistors in electrical systems, choke off flow. Creativity, at least in the long-term, is hampered because of stress. In the short-term, it can help us focus on key points that bring insights, but it's been shown that chronic stress hampers free-flowing thought.
- Stress can make us think more internally. Decisions and behaviors made can become more selfish. Because we've narrowed our focus, the areas of concentration generally are keyed in on how we can, personally, handle what's in front of us. Team continuity is impacted.
- Along those lines, we become less tolerant of the actions of those around us. Because we are in a heightened state, we 'see' actions of others (whether we really see them is another matter) and, because we've narrowed our field, we may not have perceived what they did and question decisions. Resultant actions can damage trust and performance.
Perspective change and practice can help make you more adaptable and proficient at dealing with stress. It can raise the levels at which you start snapping and making rushed decisions. I'll get into that in other posts.
A post by my friend, Matt Norman, talks about confidence, stress and success. It's worth a read.
Do you have a story of how you've seen stressful scenarios play out or how you've progressed to become more capable under pressure?