Leadership and Practicing Safe Stress

Guest post by: Sylvia Lafair
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The real meaning of leadership - By Sylvia Lafair

The holidays are always super stressful. Home responsibilities meld with end of year work requirements and there is no time to take a breath and just chill out for even a minute.

When stress hits the hot button something happens that it is vital for all leaders of businesses to be aware of; we all tend to revert to behavior patterns from childhood that we used to either get our way or get out of the way.

Some employees become short tempered and contentious. Others become robots and do what they are told without much thinking. Others get sick to stay home and hide under the covers. The tendency to fight, flight or freeze is down deep in the older parts of the brain. Stress and tension signal danger and we react just like in the days of our cave brothers and sisters.

So how do we practice "safe stress" and stay in the middle zone between zombieville and freakoutville and get some work done?

First is to be aware that this really does happen. Next is to monitor your own reactions so you don't let others push your buttons. Take a deep breath, that's right a deep breath, actually several deep breaths and cool down. Get a glass of water or stare out the window. You need to do something to stop yourself from falling into your old patterns of knee jerk responding.

Now you are in a better place to talk with whoever is driving you nuts. Some quick ways of responding are on the newscast I did in Indiana that will help you find the language to stay in that safe stress zone. (Go to Sylvia's YouTube channel to view this and other videos.)

If you really want to get to the heart of stress at work and at home give yourself the gift that keeps on giving and take the free pattern aware quiz at and then call or email for other ideas as well as getting a signed copy of the book from us or ordering one from Amazon.

Practicing safe stress will keep your blood pressure in the healthy zone and from reports we get, you should not only sleep better, you'll come up with new, creative ideas in the extra time you have cause you won't waste time being mad at anyone.

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The real meaning of leadership - By Sylvia Lafair

About the Author: Sylvia Lafair

RSS for Sylvia's articles - Visit Sylvia's website
Developing leaders and transforming teams is my speciality. As a clinical psychologist I know that we bring the behaviors we learned in our original organization, the family, into our present work organization. The key to leadership is understanding how individuals form a system and how that system impacts the bottom line. I have worked globally and find that the core of relationships is much the same whether in California, China,or Chile. My book "Don't Bring It to Work (Jossey Bass) offers tools and strategies for developing collaborative work cultures and important core techniques for entrepreneurs to have motivated and fast moving teams. I am a speaker at national conferences, radio, and television. You can follow my blogs at http://www.sylvialafair.com/blog/ . You may contact Sylvia Lafair, PhD, author of "Don't Bring It to Work" directly at, sylvia@ceoptions.com or 570-636-3858 for any questions or feedback you may have.
Click here to visit Sylvia's website.

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