Good morning!

This week's featured article helps make sense of why it can be difficult to be flexible in our decision making during high stress situations, a time when ‘thinking outside the box’ can be most critical.

The findings

😟 Stress enhances our reliance on habitual behaviours, even if the value of
those behaviours has changed.

🔗 Stress erodes our ability to think of (and consider) new action-outcome
possibilities, even when the situation has changed.

Why it matters for you

• As leaders, cognitive flexibility is a foundational trait of strong decision making. The ability to consider multiple perspectives, to update beliefs based on changing information, and to try new ways of doing things yields adaptive, creative, and resilient leadership. Stress threatens this flexibility.

• Stress is an inevitable part of life. Mindfully managing it will heighten your chances of achieving strategic objectives amidst a future that is increasingly difficult to forecast.

What you can do about it—and unlike other editions, here we are taking a particular focus on you:

• Simply acknowledging stress shifts activation from the automatic and reactive regions of your brain to those that are more conscious and deliberate¹ . When you start to feel the familiar signs, do yourself a favour and acknowledge its presence. You’ll be more resilient against it’s impact as a result.

• Re-frame your beliefs about stress to be that it enhances your life, rather than detracts from it. Doing so reduces the actual impact of stress on the body and mind.^2,3,4 Next time you’re in the thick of it, take a breath and explore how the situation is serving your growth. Your ability to thrive amidst the inevitable stress of leadership will make you an effective leader for longer.

Explore how stress influences decision making using these prompts on your favourite generative AI platform

• How can I tell that I am stressed? Give me a detailed breakdown of common symptoms of stress, how to recognize the symptoms in myself, and tips for how to overcome symptoms in the moment.

• Investigate how stress can significantly influence strategic decision making, including detailed case studies of companies that have deployed successful strategies to mitigate the impact of stress on strategic decision and execution of large scale programs.

• What are effective strategies for maintaining cognitive flexibility while under stress? Provide examples that are appropriate for the workplace and practical tips for how to successfully implement them.

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Have a great week!

M

👋🏻 for those of you who are new here, you can find our previous posts in the Behavioural Strategy Briefing Archive here.

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1  Lieberman, M. D., Eisenberger, N. I., Crockett, M. J., Tom, S. M., Pfeifer, J. H., & Way, B. M. (2007). Putting feelings into words. Psychological science, 18(5), 421-428.

2  Liu, J. J. W., Reed, M., & Vickers, K. (2019). Reframing the individual stress response: Balancing our knowledge of stress to improve responsivity to stressors. Stress and Health, 35(5), 607-616.

3  Crum, A. J., Salovey, P., & Achor, S. (2013). Rethinking stress: the role of mindsets in determining the stress response. Journal of personality and social psychology, 104(4), 716.

4  Crum, A. J., Akinola, M., Martin, A., & Fath, S. (2017). The role of stress mindset in shaping cognitive, emotional, and physiological responses to challenging and threatening stress. Anxiety, stress, & coping, 30(4), 379-395.