Stress is a hot topic in every business these days, with one in three Australians suffering burnout and almost half of Aussie business owners suffering with mental health challenges. But what if there was a way to reframe stressful situations to be a motivator rather than a source of anxiety? Renata Sguario, founder and CEO of Maxme, says it’s entirely possible.

There’s a saying some managers and leaders fall back on when their teams are stressed: pressure makes diamonds.

The implication is that when we are subjected to some added pressure, it can lead to personal and professional growth. Not all stress is negative and there’s an upside to experiencing a level of stress.

When we consider stress at work, what we typically think about is being under mental tension or strain as the result of a particular situation or set of circumstances. That can be anything from an unsupportive colleague through to an unrealistic workload or high expectations. But, high levels of stress can have a negative impact.

Psychologists that study flow – our ability to engage in a task so fully that we completely lose track of time – note that we can achieve this state of productivity nirvana when the task we are engaged in is neither too easy nor too hard. It has to be sufficiently challenging, or stressful, so that we are challenged. And, we also know that being pushed just outside our known limits can foster growth in skills, confidence and resilience.

Turning stress around

As a business, how do you monitor the varying degrees of stress tolerance and triggers within teams to ensure that stress is a motivator and not a source of anxiety? The key is to find a balance between stress that leads to growth and improvement, and an unhealthy stress level that demotivates and is unproductive.

The ‘Reframe, Reconnect, Reflect’ approach can turn stress into a powerful tool that enables people to grow and build resilience without negatively impacting team health and performance.

Reframe:

Leaders can guide teams and help them reframe emerging situations. For example, rather than telling the team that an upcoming presentation is a big deal, they present it as an exciting new opportunity.

Reconnect:

Leaders also recognise that everyone brings different strengths to their work. Often, stress comes from forgetting individual strengths and what we can contribute as a whole. Engage in exercises to help teams identify and reconnect to their strengths, and identify new ways they can leverage them in their work. When people play to their strengths, they usually achieve good results.

Reflect:

Help your team to see and celebrate the wins rather than focusing only on what went wrong, so they can balance the negative impacts of stress.

Psychologists often say that people under stress ‘revert to type’. Many of us have natural tendencies to behave in certain ways when we are under stress. We often refer to this as the flight, flight or freeze behaviour.

By reflecting on a stressful situation, we can look at how we reacted and determine if our reaction helped or exacerbated things. Provide your teams with the time to do this. Ask them if they felt overloaded with too much to do, or if there was an unrealistic deadline. This not only gives your people time to reflect, you may gain insights into how you can minimise the risk of your team’s stress levels reaching an unhealthy level.

Stress vs distress

Positive stress needs to be harnessed for personal and professional growth as it motivates and focuses energy, feels exciting, boosts engagement and performance, and critically, feels as though people can cope with it.

Distress, on the other hand, feels outside our coping abilities, is unpleasant, may cause anxiety and lead to a range of mental and physical problems.

The trick for business and leaders is to help their teams find an optimal zone, where stress is neither too high or two low, and becomes an enabler of growth, achievement and success along with work enjoyment and satisfaction.

This post first appeared on Business Builders in April 2022 and was updated March 2025.

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