How to Navigate the Pressure of Delivering Results Without Sacrificing Your Well-Being

Episode 79: How to Navigate the Pressure of Delivering Results Without Sacrificing Your Well-Being

In this episode, Holly Hibbard - Executive Leadership Coach & Corporate Relationship Consultant - shares with you...

• actionable techniques to navigate the pressures of goal-setting, enhancing both your professional productivity and personal well-being. (Effective Strategies for Stress Management)
• how establishing transparent roles and expectations can alleviate team stress, improve collaboration, and foster a positive workplace culture. (The Power of Clear Communication)
• the importance of breaking down ambitious goals into manageable tasks, allowing you to celebrate progress and maintain motivation without succumbing to overwhelm. (Goal-Setting Made Simple)

If you like what you've read so far, I’d love it if you’d SUBSCRIBE to the show, and TURN ON your notifications so you don’t miss a future episode.

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• Ready to elevate your impact? Hire Holly to be your coach and mentor! Book a quick call with me here: https://tidycal.com/thehollyhibbard/quick

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#Leadership #MindsetMatters #GrowthMindset #SelfLeadership #PersonalGrowth #LeadershipDevelopment #OvercomingFear #GrowthJourney #EmotionalIntelligence #LeadershipSkills #ConfidenceBuilding #MindsetShift

Transcript

Welcome back to the show.
This is your host, Holly Hibbard.
I am so thankful for you being here, especially if you are a first timer.
Thanks for checking out the show.
I wanna give you, hopefully, today a lot of value both in your professional life and in your personal life.
If recently you've found yourself setting goals and then recognizing that there is so much pressure on your shoulders to get these goals done.
Or maybe, as I'm recording this now, it's the beginning of 2025, maybe you rounded out 2024 and started 2025 feeling positive and motivated and driven to have those goals accomplished.
But you know the stress is starting to pile on again.
Maybe that little bit of time off you might have had at the end of the last year has suddenly worn off.
That stress went away and now it's slowly coming back.
So I wanna give you some help today on how to navigate the pressure of delivering results both professionally and personally without sacrificing your well-being.
And if you're in a position in your professional life where you are managing, leading other people, or something very similar in that nature, running a business, I want you to know that this type of pressure that you're putting on yourself or if the pressure is coming from the folks who are managing you, this pressure is very normal.
We have the ability with our mindset to frame this pressure or look at this type of pressure that we feel.
We can use it as something that can drive us forward.
But if we are not in control of the way that we look at how we put this pressure on ourselves or these expectations we set for ourselves, the pressure can control us instead.
So I wanna use this opportunity and this episode to teach you how you can make sure that the results continue to move forward even when you're noticing that you are putting pressure on yourself to get these goals and the results happening and done and or if somebody else is adding to that pressure and stress.
Before I go into today's topic, I wanna quickly remind you that if you are someone who listens to the show on YouTube, thank you.
First of all, thank you.
Thank you for subscribing.
It really helps the channel.
And I am so committed in 2025 to please finally getting to a 1000 subscribers.
And I have a little bit of a ways to go, so thank you for subscribing to the show on YouTube.
Typically, my episodes on YouTube are filmed and, you get to watch me talk.
And for about the next month or so, my family is moving.
There's a lot of things happening.
So the we're just gonna have a still image for, about the next 8 to 10 episodes or so.
So thank you for bearing with me.
The video component will come back.
You will get to see my shining face again in the not so far off future, but it's more important to me to get this type of content out to you on the regular, than it is to always have, my studio looking great and me being on camera, every single time.
So without further ado, let's describe some of this pressure that you might be feeling.
As I mentioned, it could be pressure that you're putting on yourself to get a certain result in your life, to accomplish something that you have been striving for or you have been dreaming of in in your professional life or your personal life.
But this pressure can also come from somebody else, your supervisor, your manager, a business owner.
It can come from their expectation of you because of an agreement that you have with them, because of the role that you play in your organization and the importance of the role that you play because your role gives a certain result to the business.
And that also could lean to team dynamics.
So the pressure you might feel, it might not only come from people who are managing you or leading you or running a business or from yourself.
It also can come from colleagues who frankly have nothing to do with your end result because people have opinions, and unfortunately, they share them oftentimes very openly.
And when you have so many other folks' opinions and likely their pressures floating around to be mentioned around you, it can feel insurmountable, that pressure.
It can feel like, wow, if I don't get this done, I not only will disappoint my boss or the owner of the business or the person that I'm trying to prove myself to that I'm capable in this role, but I'm also going to be disappointing the peanut gallery and showing them that, that she really or he really doesn't have what it takes to have it happen.
So team dynamics are a part of this as well was where this pressure can come from.
And it can feel really difficult, I'm sure, for you to balance this results oriented, this focusing on the results type leadership with also keeping the environment around you a positive one, where people are speaking uplifting and supportive, giving constructive criticism and using terms that we know are there to build people up and not to add more pressure to it.
Yes, give feedback.
Yes, ask questions.
And there is a way to do that without, forcing the person who's hearing your opinion and receiving your feedback without forcing them to feel like their well-being and their mood is going to be squashed.
I'm not asking you to be soft with them and to not, say what you're actually feeling, but there's definitely something to be said with, okay, who is in on this project and this end result?
Whose opinion really matters?
Because not everybody's input is relative to is relative, is, connected to the end result.
That's what I mean to say.
So it's really important that we consider that, yeah, over here in one corner we have the goal that we're working on, but also you work with a team very likely and it's important to recognize that that team and its dynamic is also going to determine if you are sacrificing your own well-being in this project or in this season or if you are able to keep them to that corner in your perspective and say, alright, they can have their opinion and the opinion does not have to impact the end result.
So when you're noticing that your well-being is being sacrificed, here is what it can feel like.
I already mentioned it can feel like you have a lot of pressure on yourself.
So this could look like not only recognizing at work that, gosh, I'm really feeling tense or stressed out or I'm worrying about this a lot, but it also can look like you're taking it home with you.
You're taking that worry home and it's permeating into your personal life.
You're trying to have some downtime or spend time with your family or do one of your hobbies and you're finding that you're losing sleep or just unable to really be present and focus on the things in your personal life because this project or goal is weighing so heavily on you.
And it's taking up a mental bandwidth that we don't want it to.
When we're in in the office or when we are actively working, yes, our projects are going to take up our mental bandwidth because that's what we're focused on.
That's what we're supposed to be focused on in those moments.
But when we enter our personal life, our personal sanctuary, our personal relationships, we should be able to have a mental boundary where we can say, okay, I can leave my work at work.
I can set a time in the day if I work from home, for example, where as of, you know, 5:30 PM on a work day, I am not going to do anything else for work, including think about it.
And if I catch myself thinking about it, I'm going to remind myself that I am off the clock and that it'll still be there waiting for me when I go back tomorrow, right, to the next thing.
So you're sacrificing your well-being can be it taking up your mental bandwidth.
Sacrificing your well-being can also look like not having, as I just mentioned, a physical time boundary, allowing the amount of actual work and work actions that you're putting toward this goal enter your personal life.
You're putting in extra hours outside of the hours you are contracted or this could even look like, wow, you really want to go above and beyond, but you're going above and beyond during hours of the day that you could be committed to joy.
You could be committed to rest, you could be committed to family, you could be committed to your hobbies because that that is a result of sacrificing.
Now, if you decide, you know what, this is so important to me, I am going to set aside some of my personal stuff to make time for this other thing because this goal is so important to me.
That is a choice.
That is a boundary that you've created for yourself, where you push your timeline longer of working, but you are making that decision for yourself.
It's not being imparted on you that you must force and work harder and do more outside of your agreed upon responsibility, just for the sake of doing it.
If you are the one choosing it, then you are the one choosing it.
But if you feel forced or pressured into going above and beyond, that is an example of sacrificing your well-being.
Or if you're noticing the people that you are colleagues with or people you are leading also do not have those personal and professional timeline boundaries where their work day ends and their, personal life begins, this is a way that you can support them.
It's just simply point it out and make sure that they feel that they have chosen to have that boundary there or not there.
Because again, if the people you are leading feel like the only way they can accomplish this goal is to break their boundaries in their personal life and sacrifice their personal life in some way, that makes for a very bitter workforce dynamic and corporate culture.
And if one person feels that way, it's just a matter of time before a number of people feel that way.
So it's very important that we empower the people that we are leading, that they may choose that or we empower them to set the boundary because they know for themselves, for example, wow, I really am the most creative, the most focused, the most productive during these hours of the day, and it doesn't support anyone if I push the limit and go overboard.
And you you wanna be educated yourself as a leader on what sacrificing the well-being for that goal looks like so that you can highlight what it looks like for the people that you work with alongside of, so that we're setting them up to make those empowered choices also.
Because when our people on our team feel empowered, it increases retention and it increases peace in the office and, like I said, productivity, focus, all the things that we are after.
So if you're noticing that you have this personal pressure that you've placed on yourself to get this result or outside circumstances have put this on you.
A simple tip, a way to begin to work around this, in addition to what I've described with boundaries, is to look at the project and focus on progress over perfection.
Now you may have heard this term before and in a world where many projects are managed and a lot of project management comes with a very strict timeline, it can be difficult to say, okay, the timeline says the progress will be complete by this day and at this time.
That would be defined as perfection.
If you hit that on time, you know, you hit that on the head.
And that is the goal because we want productivity and we also want efficiency.
We want to follow the timeline to the best of our ability.
We don't wanna see the timeline as a suggestion, but stuff happens.
Stuff happens because everyone is living a life outside of these projects as well.
And so when when stuff goes wrong and things are not going as we wanted them to go, we can take a step back and instead of spending too much time being flustered or frustrated or feeling blindsided because why did this project not go the way it was supposed to go, take a look at okay, where have we made progress or where you have made progress and then look at how can you take the next step forward knowing that it may not be perfect, it may not meet the expectation of what that product project management timeline suggested in the very beginning.
It may not look exactly like this step your supervisor or your manager or you the business owner or you yourself thought you were going to take as you are working toward that goal.
So you want to, just like in project management, they take these really big goals and they break it down into something that is smaller and it is manageable because everyone has a part to play.
And furthermore, every person playing a part knows what their part is and knows what their part looks like when it is complete.
The end result is very clearly defined.
So if you're feeling like, okay, Holly, all those things are in place.
We've broken up the goal into smaller pieces.
Everyone on the team knows exactly what their role is, exactly what is expected of them, exactly how it lines up with the timeline.
If all of that is in play as as the the bare minimum, you're going to notice that the pressure on yourself and the pressure on your team is going to be lightened a lot.
Because just having clarity in what is the expectation, what is what is the expectation of that person in that role so that everyone has clarity on exactly what they're supposed to do and by the exact time and who they are colleagues and teammates with in a particular item and who they are not, that gives people so much peace of mind.
And the pressure is off because the clarity is there.
If the clarity is not there and people do not understand what the final result is going to look like or they do not know exactly who is in charge of what and they do not know what the actual timeline is for each part of this project, it creates confusion, it creates muddiness, and it makes the mental bandwidth that we all could be giving to productivity, and efficiency and joy in our life.
It forces us when we have all this confusion to use our mental bandwidth, to worry, to use the time in our calendar to go and ask clarifying questions because it was never clarified from the beginning.
And that has pressure, because you're tracking things down that may not be your responsibility to track down or you are leading people who are tracking answers down from you and you're wondering, why can't they just get it done?
Well, it's either because they are incompetent or it's because they are which is always a possibility or it could be because the clarity of what they are supposed to do, how and by when is not entirely there.
So breaking the bigger goals down into a smaller manageable task absolutely can be accomplished with very clear communication.
It's going to help release the pressure from yourself and your team, which therefore means in their personal life, they will not take that pressure home with them or impact their personal life in that way either, which is great.
It will also decrease overwhelm that anybody might be having.
Clarity is the antithesis.
No.
The anecdote.
There we go.
Clarity is an anecdote for overwhelm.
I want people like you who are leaders to know how to speak clearly, be open to answering questions even if it means a lot of questions.
Because remember, the clearer the people are that you are leading, the more likely you are to get the result that you're after and have it turn out the way that you want it to turn out and not just something really close.
None of this has to be perfect, but we want to be striving to make our communication and our goal setting and the way that we delegate certain tasks so much simpler.
We want it to become more streamlined and something that everybody can get on board with.
That's really good for company morale as well.
So here is your action step.
If you're ready to navigate this pressure that you're putting on yourself for these goals to get done or the pressure that you or the people you're leading are feeling and you don't wanna sacrifice your well-being, again, look at the big picture, take just one day or one moment or one project at a time and set one clear, achievable goal that you are going to accomplish and let's just set it for a timeline of 1 work week to have it be complete by the Friday of the particular week that you are in.
And it's super important that as each person on the team, yourself included, even as a leader, you communicate what that goal is and you furthermore, here's the best part, communicate it with everybody so that everybody knows that that is what they're gonna do.
It places ownership and responsibility of that task on the person that says it And that alone, it might sound like, wow, that's a lot of pressure.
But if we can, instead of looking at a goal that's gonna take the whole team 30 days, if we just chunk down your role to the next 5 days, it feels more doable and the pressure will begin to alleviate and that will set yourself up for for, success.
Right?
Unlike just guessing when things are going to be done.
This creates a collaboration amongst all of you instead of a competition.
If you're looking to have a collaborative work culture, it's super important, right?
You want to make sure that everybody feels like they are a part of something, that they all know the step to take and that it isn't this, you know, 30, 60, 90 quarterly outlook that we could just be spinning our wheels until we get close to the, the finish line and that doesn't help.
So a small goal.
What is your goal?
One goal per week, one goal per day, whatever it's gonna best fit for your team and the job that you're doing.
It really makes a big difference.
Communicate it, cheer each other on, ask how you can be there for one another, ask how you can support one another.
And I promise you you will be able to get these results and not feel the pressure the way that you are now.
And you can reclaim some of that peace of mind and mental bandwidth in your professional life and, yes, of course, in your personal life as well.
Hopefully, this episode was beneficial to you.
Like I said, my goal here is always to give you something that you can use as a leader in your professional life, but you can leverage it and use it in your personal life as well.
So maybe you heard this today and you thought, wow, this really makes sense for the goals I'm setting for my health or for my finances or for my family or for my home.
Fantastic.
Use it.
Chunk it down, communicate clearly, know who your colleagues are, who your teammates are in that situation and use that to your advantage.
That's all I have for you today.
Until next time, I will talk to you next time.