Leading Under Pressure - Psychology Tools for Coaching

By Matteo Rovatti

There are many ways stress can be viewed in our normal day-to-day struggle, but I’ll do my best to try not to treat it like a superficial topic, and while I wrote this with the intention of it being clear and practical, this is not a how-to guide or a tutorial on deep breathing. This is not the place where you’ll find someone to tell you what to do, it’s a place for you to seek deeper understanding, sometimes seeing something you might not like to see.

My purpose in this book isn’t to eliminate all stress in our lives, whether that’s even possible, but cutting the unnecessary one and learning to thrive under pressure for the stuff that matters to us. To shape and shift our relationship with fear and stress so we can grow and develop with them. This is what stress and leadership are to me: stress is about self-discovery, and leading is about putting that self-discovery into practice and giving back to others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Apr 26, 2024
• ISBN: 9781398413986

Matteo Rovatti

Matteo Rovatti was born in the northern regions of Italy. Growing up, he was fascinated by learning and the learning process. This interest led to early exposure to anything related to anatomy, psychology, coaching, and sport. These interests keep strong to this day as he expands his insights in understanding anything related to movement, the underline structures of things and the connection between mind and body.

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About the Author

Matteo Rovatti was born in the northern regions of Italy. Growing up, he was fascinated by learning and the learning process. This interest led to early exposure to anything related to anatomy, psychology, coaching, and sport. These interests keep strong to this day as he expands his insights in understanding anything related to movement, the underline structures of things and the connection between mind and body.

Dedication

To all the people whose words and years of research inspired the content of this book. To Luisa, and all the people whose time I’ve stolen to ask for feedback and brainstormed ideas on my work.

Copyright Information ©

Matteo Rovatti 2024

The right of Matteo Rovatti to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398413979 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398413986 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2024

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Acknowledgement

Thank you to Austin Macauley Publishers for investing in this book and helping me make it the best version it could be.

1

Introduction

If I want to define what this program is about and what you should expect from it, I would have to start by defining how I see stress and how I think about a leader.

There are many ways stress can be viewed in our normal day-to-day struggle, but I’ll do my best to try not to treat it like a superficial topic, and while I wrote this with the intention of it being clear and practical, this is not a how-to guide or a tutorial on deep breathing. There is no quick fix or hacks given, no simple shortcuts to take, the reason is two-fold. First, cheap and quick fixes hardly solve any deep trouble, they often just create more instead. Second, my way isn’t necessarily your way, my situation isn’t necessarily your situation, and what works for me might not work for someone else. This is not the place where you’ll find someone to tell you what to do, it’s a place for you to seek deeper understanding, sometimes seeing something you might not like to see. My purpose here isn’t to eliminate all stress in our lives, whether that’s even possible, but cutting the unnecessary one and learning to thrive under pressure for the stuff that matters to us. To shape and shift our relationship with fear and stress so we can grow and develop with them. This is what stress and leadership are to me, stress is about self-discovery, leading is about putting that self-discovery into practice and giving back to others.

While I’m sure anybody could benefit from this program, the leader has a special place in it, not just because he or she can be more prone to stress, but also because of the impact that he or she has on other people. As I define it and see it, a leader is someone who has a higher-than-normal influence on other people’s lives, and this influence can happen in many forms. Someone who is in an executive position certainly fits that category, but also do coaches or managers. It’s also not limited by title, some people can have a great level of influence among their peers or their own manager, without having any particular title to give them more direct power over others. A leader is someone who guides the team and, most importantly, decides to own the responsibilities of his choices and actions, because denying one’s responsibility in the face of mistakes while exerting power on others is nothing more than being one form of tyranny. Influence on others to me defines a leader more than the title of the person, and while that influence can be for good, living with the weight of other people on one’s shoulder isn’t always easy. At the same time, failing to manage that weight can affect not only our physical, emotional, and social health, but also those of the people around us. It doesn’t matter how good our technical skills in our particular job are, leading means having to interact and cooperate with other people, and that type of social regulation requires first and foremost that we take a good look at ourselves.

That is why for me it is important not only that we learn to take care of ourselves but to learn how to take care of those who depend on us. Our good intentions count for nothing if we cannot apply them in a skilful way. Learning how to hold yourself at your own standards is as important as understanding who people are and how to approach their character, their personality, their level of motivation, and their well-being. Self-awareness is the idea that is going to be sprinkled all over this program, the exact reason why we will see it at the end.

I do believe that one of the greatest gifts a person can have is the ability to remain centred in who they are and feel connected to the people around them. It is that feeling of being connected to oneself and letting our actions develop from an authentic place, rather than us reacting to everything around us like a leaf in the wind. Who we are at our core needs to be joined into our social environment if we want to find our place in the world.

What I can do is to share what I know with you—my knowledge and my reflections. Unfortunately, what I can’t do is put that knowledge to work for you. Just reading these pages will most likely not be enough, simply because we understand something intellectually does not mean that we know how to put it into practice.

As with many programs of this kind, the knowledge in these lines comes from an original search for answering questions that I had about my personal experience. Not only to make sense of outside events or from simple curiosity about human nature, but to comprehend my own emotions, thoughts, actions, and behaviour. Understanding those and how they affect not only me on a personal level, but how those same things expand to affect other people as well. Naturally, once I started to understand how I function on a somewhat deeper level, I would transfer those same questions to other people—do they think and feel the same way? Do they struggle in similar ways? How do my internal beliefs and conflicts affect what I do and how I do what I do? How does this affect others? Does my internal state indirectly create my personal reality? Is this impacting my relationships? What am I missing that others see? This then inevitably raises more questions—Is there a better way? Is who I am just who I am, or am I who I decide to be? Is practice going to make me better? If yes, what would that practice look like? Is there an end to all of this searching? I hold the belief that no, no matter how hard we try, we will never be able to fully and completely understand ourselves, because after we reach a certain depth in our own consciousness, the same thoughts we are trying to chase are the ones spawning the chase in the first place, and so the origin of who we are can never be understood, unless we are somehow able to leave our own selves and see everything from the outside. But I personally don’t take this as a sign to give up self-reflection and its rewards, because some understanding and insight are still better than none, and progress with an unreachable destination is still progress as far as I’m concerned.

The ideas in this program are taken from classical and clinical psychology, as well as sport and performance psychology, the science of nutrition, sleep, biology, and anatomy. The ideas presented are the fruit of the research of people who spent their days or years developing, testing, and solidifying the research. All credit should go first and foremost to them. While the program is built from the related knowledge from those fields, I want to make clear that this is not a substitute for therapy or professional help, nor should it be treated as academic material. If you think you need professional help I invite you to reach out in your local area. My goal is to spread knowledge, make you reflect, and with a bit of luck, inspire even a small change in your life. These are the reflections of one person, they are anecdotal, and should be seen as such. Nevertheless, I aimed at making those thoughts and reflections clear, scientifically based, practical, and honest.

As they are presented, you’ll find that the topics cover three main categories of development—physiological, psychological, and philosophical. But the distinction between those areas is purely intellectual because, as the body is an interconnected organism, everything affects everything else. How we think affects how we feel and our physical state, our philosophy, and the way we frame and understand the world around us will affect our psychology.

Physiologically oriented topics will focus on developing a relationship with our body sensations and how to work with them. To feel the emotions our body is creating, to understand how food, sleep, and exercise influence our behaviour, our relationship to stress, and how we present ourselves to the world.

Psychologically oriented topics will focus on understanding human nature, how we develop an ego, our personality, our emotions, our attitude. In highly stressful situations, how both psychological and physiological signs of fear and anxiety can affect the way we perform.

Philosophically oriented topics will focus on developing a more productive personal framework. In this case, by using the term productive here I mean something that works better for the individual, it has internal standards. Productive in this case is not linked to any external achievement.

Planning

The topics will be subdivided into sections, each section containing a list of the smaller chapters covering different topics relevant to that section. We will start by analysing the classic research on the stress response, moving on to define generally what stresses us. We will take a look at our character and how our perception and attitude play a role in defining our stress reaction and how our mind can get us to perform suboptimally under intense pressure. We will see how recovery plays a role in our reaction to stress, both physically and mentally. Finally, we’ll analyse our leadership style and how that can affect the people around us, and how to manage their stress levels.

1. INTRODUCTION

Introduction

Planning

2. THE ANATOMY OF STRESS

The old tiger behind the bush

The nervous system tree

Hormones

Homeostasis

The HPA and HPT axis

3. WHAT STRESSES US

Good stress, bad stress

The allostatic load

4. THE ROLE OF ATTITUDE

The space between stimulus and response

The ego and identification

The main personality characters

States vs traits

Emotional intelligence

The science of optimism

Control

Building your inner citadel

5. HIGH-STRESS ENVIRONMENT

Choking: the freeze response

The rider and the horse

Fear and anxiety

Mindfulness

Pre-performance conditioning

6. THE ROLE OF RECOVERY

Sleep

Nutrition

Exercise

Thinking

Relationships

The habit loop

7. LEADING OTHERS

Emotional contagion

Your leadership philosophy

Leadership styles

Motivation and frustration tolerance

Types of motivation

Giving praise

Building culture and trust

8. THE PATH AHEAD

h. How do we approach change

i. What now?

During the program, you will find some writing exercises and practices at the end of most chapters. I won’t be forcing you to answer those, but I obviously encourage you to take 10 minutes of your time to reflect on those questions and write things down.

If you want to go the extra mile, in the writing exercises I invite you to not always write down the first thing that comes to mind. Those will be often exercises in self-reflection, so try to dig a bit deeper, until maybe the words you’re writing make you feel slightly uncomfortable, that’s how you know you got to the core of something important, that you’re keeping it real.

Also, always remember that I’m me and you’re you.

What does that mean?

As you read, try to understand the ideas behind these practices and try not to get stuck into the details. Learn and adjust them based on your needs, your schedule, your opportunities. Do you prefer to go for a walk in nature rather than doing a sitting meditation? Be my guest.

You are always the expert of your life, you know your daily schedule, your level of energy, your abilities. You know what you are ready or able to do or what is relevant for you. Some of these practices might not at all be relevant to your life. I invite you to go through all of them at least once, but if you want to dive a bit deeper feel free to pick and choose the ones you feel more attuned to.

Since we have to begin somewhere, let’s begin by reviewing the classic studies of the stress response. Some of it can already be common knowledge, but it’s important to review it so that we can move on easily.

2

The Anatomy of Stress

The Old Tiger Behind the Bush

To understand how and why the stress response evolved, we need to go back to the days where its presence, in the right situation, could actually save our lives.

Let me paint the picture: back to the times where this huge thing called civilisation wasn’t born yet, back to where we were all living in small tribes at the edge of the forest. In the big, unknown, and scary world.

You could have been walking between the trees scavenging for food, with a sunny day ahead of you. Right in the middle of your perfect day, you start to hear a rustle from a nearby bush, without even realising it you instinctively turn your head to check what it might be. A few instants and eye darts later, as you scan the environment, you make eye contact with the eyes of a four-legged predator that’s gaining speed and coming exactly in your direction. It cannot be a coincidence. Suddenly your body is in a whole different state, that beautiful sunny day seems miles away. The calmness you had before is completely gone, together with the awareness of whatever you were doing out here. Your muscles are tensing, and in a split second, you’re considering the options. If a quick and convenient escape route is available to you, you’ll probably take it. Otherwise, if either you feel cornered or you think you can take it, you’ll prepare to fight.

More than a couple of things happened in that split second. First, your senses detected something that was out of the ordinary: you hear the sound of the bush moving in the background, which catches your attention. Second, you automatically turn your head to investigate with your eyes what your ears have captured. We are visual creatures, so we don’t rely on our hearing too much.

Third, once you made visual contact, your brain detected danger before you even consciously realised what was standing in front of you, and it started a cascade of electrical and chemical signals that would temporarily transform your physiology to better deal with the threat. Mainly:

your heart starts beating faster, accelerating the normal circulation speed, bringing more oxygen and energy to the big groups of muscles

the body raises the level of glucose in your bloodstream and makes it ready to be used by the muscles

as a consequence, your hands may start shaking

your breathing also speeds up and becomes more shallow

you tunnel vision on what is in front of you, losing track of everything else

you start sweating

Of course, as everything that is good and balanced in the universe, this extra energy wasn’t created from the void. Every non-essential service is reduced or shut-down:

your digestion of food is slowed or stopped

salivation is also slowed or interrupted

your sense of hearing is cut off and effectively, you become temporarily deaf

your bladder relaxes

your immune system is temporarily weakened

Original by Jvnkfood, converted to PNG and reduced to 8-bit by Pokéfan95, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Ultimately, the encounter (whatever the outcome) won’t last more than a few seconds.

If you’re unlucky and don’t survive it, well, you don’t need to worry about it then.

But, if you do end up surviving and discourage the predator, either by escaping or attacking, and you find safety again, you will take a deep breath and slowly your body will get back to a normal status.

This was the original, evolutionary purpose of the response known as fight-or-flight: it is a temporary adaptation that helps us deal with immediate dangers in the environment.

Today, this same response becomes a problem when those dangers are mostly made up in our mind, or appear so often that our body doesn’t have the time to properly recover, and the same response becomes maladaptive.

Next, we are going to take a look at the gross anatomy of the stress response to understand how exactly the body reacts to these stimuli, and have some theoretical knowledge for context (don’t worry, you won’t be tested on this).

The Nervous System Tree

Medium69,Jmarchn,CCBYSA4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

There are two main types of messengers in the body for our intended purpose: neurons and hormones. In neurons, the signal passes via a chemically generated electrical input called an action potential. When an action potential is generated in a neuron it passes the same electrical signal to the next neuron, and so on until the destination has been reached.

Hormones are molecules generated by glands, transported through the bloodstream to the targeted organs that regulate physiology and influence behaviour.

Let’s start from the first type: the sum of your neurons form your nervous system, which can be divided into two main different branches:

The central nervous system (CNS)

The peripheral nervous system (PNS)

Central Nervous System

The CNS consists of the brain and spinal cord, whose purpose is to gather and make sense of the information coming from the senses which then communicates to the PNS and the rest of the body.

MacLean (1975) classified the brain itself as having three functional levels:

The Neocortex: The newest step in evolution and it is the predominant feature that differs humans from other animals. Our neocortex is the biggest in size and proportions compared