Top causes of stress in your role leading teams and projects?

I definitely see pressure and stress as cause and effect. As for ruminations, you reminded of something I learned a long time ago: we should not spend time fantasizing about possibilities and what if scenarios. (Unless you are in a risk identifying session.)

Pressure usually comes from unreasonable demands: additional scope and reduced timelines can create pressure if you cannot compensate in other areas of the project. I have built multiple "valves" in my life (exercise, meditation, rest, ...) to ensure that the pressure doesn't build into personal stress.

Perhaps I was a professional tennis player and after that I was coach of some tennis players, woman and man, I studied and lead with stress. preassure and fear. The first thing to understand those are things that a human being is not able to avoid. Those things have helped us to survive as humans. So, forget about to avoid them. And the first failure is trying to avoid them. Stress is about to try to alter the equilibrium. If you understand the Isacc Newton Laws of Movement you will find that stress is always there because we are working as agent or key actor to create the needed change. And according the Newton Laws pressure has to be present to move the mass beyond the change.

Hello Andy, I would like to hear on 'Workplace Stress', expert tips to reduce these. I understand the environment and culture varies. Do you see EI having any role here?

Thanks

Great points, as always, @Sergio. For the authors I spoke with today, they might use slightly different vocabulary, but agree in principle. The words they might use to agree with you is that there will always be pressure (they define pressure as 'demands to perform'). We might extend that to "There will always be tensions.... tradeoffs.... decisions..... changes.... differing opinions." As you state, trying to avoid those is denying reality. Entropy is real!

Their goal is to provide some constructs to think about how we react to the realities you mention. The program manager who collapses under the swirl of (their words) negative rumination is a program manager will miss opportunities (as you mention: the opportunity for improvements), perhaps get paralyzed in indecision, and ultimately add more stress to their team.

Andy:
As PMs we stay focused to maintain balance while managing project, team and stakeholder expectations to name a few.

A different perspective perhaps but pressure can be self induced by a PMs behavior like procrastinating, not delegating, not staying focused on goals, issues and risks to name a few. Things can begin to pile up and cause stress due to their behavior. Stress can be self induced and brought on by others when behaviors, emotional intelligence and not taking into consideration things that are out of your control. Both of these can be addressed by managing what is in your sphere of influence as long as your are applying core leadership skill-sets. Actually, the word rumination is interesting but there have been studies regarding lack of assertiveness actually presents itself as a weakness. Just like any underdone or overdone strength; the lack of emotional intelligence will place pressure/stress on individuals, teams and organizations.