Keeping Your Brain Healthy: Brain-FX

Leadership "Power" Stress

Leadership, whether in an organization, small biz, sports team, or in your own family requires the exercise of influence or power. It requires having an impact on others to make things happen.

The higher a person is in an organization, the more power is involved in his or her role. In business leaders are selected for their strong motivation for power. (The power motivation is one of three powerful drives defined by David McClelland; the other two are the drives for affiliation and achievement.)

As a result of the nature of leadership roles, leaders experience a form of stress called "power stress." (Boyatzis, McKee, 2005, Resonant Leadership, Harvard Business School Press). The higher up they are in power, the more isolated and distant they are from feedback. The more likely they are subject to intense pressures, scrutiny, and stress. And the more likely they are to respond to stress through working harder, achieving more, driving themselves and others for results. Often, leaders will override their affiliation drive in favor of power and achievement.

Chronic stress releases glucocorticoids such as cortisol from the adrenal gland and this has immunosuppressive effects. One study showed that people with the leadership motive pattern, i.e., high need for power, primacy of need for power over the need for affiliation, and high self-control, showed consistently lower levels of immunoglobulin A, and accepted indicator of immune system functioning.

Many common human diseases are stress related: hypertension, myocardial infarction, infections, peptic ulcer, autoimmune disorders, obesity, cardiac arrhythmias, heart failure, diabetes, and susceptibility to cancer.

Relief from Stress

Relationships and connections to others activates the parasympathetic nervous systems, responsible for recovery from excitement. Thus leaders who wish to remain effective over the long term, who wish to sustain energy, might reach out to others in order to experience relief from stress. They must engage in recuperation and renewal activities.

Renewal from stress can come from many sources, including meditation, exercise, walks, caring for pets, and engaging in volunteer activities. Caring relationships have been associated with lower blood pressure, enhanced immunity, and overall better health. Social networks and social capital have both been found to decrease mortality rates in human population-based studies.

It is believed that during experiences such as compassion, hope, and mindfulness, a person has a greater amount of neural activity through the left pre-frontal cortex than the right. Feelings of happiness, amusement, enthusiasm, and elation emanate from the positive equivalents of the amygdala, the nucleus accumbens.

Some Questions

Is there a way to activate the nucleus accumbens artificially (drugs or other stimulation) as an antidote to stress?

Are talk therapies, executive coaching, or other leadership development programs addressing these issues effectively?

Can a leader choose a particular path for renewal, or is that like asking someone to fix themselves?

Less Stress, More Bliss

A more gentle approach to life can reduce chronic mental stress, which floods your brain with chemicals that damage neurons.

How do you do that if you are a hard-driving, goal-oriented, high achiever? Can you still win while reducing stress? You can by increasing feelings of satisfaction, gratitude and happiness. In fact, you can’t win in the great Game of Life without developing the capacity to generate such feelings.

When you put yourself into stress mode, your cells are flooded with adrenaline and other stress-activated chemicals that damage neurons. Stress mode is voluntary. At some point, you make a decision to go into over-drive and allow the adrenaline to surge.

Admittedly, some high performers are addicted to the adrenaline rush. Some people actually provoke stress and competitive situations in order to get that adrenaline pumping. (You know who you are...)

What if there were ways to live your life without the damage caused by stress hormones and still be a winner? Here are some things you would need to do to keep the competitive edge.

1. Physical exercise improves blood flow to the brain and even perks up mental activity in specific parts of the brain, new research shows. Keeping your blood vessels free of clogging and damage is essential to preserving brain function. That means controlling blood pressure, bad cholesterol and toxins that promote strokes and disease.

2. Stimulating your brain by doing new things including new games. Mental gymnastics actually encourage growth of new brain cell connections, enlarging memory and learning capacity. Using your creativity is a good way to do this.

3. Whenever you stop and reflect with gratitude about the positive things in your life, you are sending a message to your cells to produce certain chemicals in your brain. These chemicals are experienced as pleasant feelings throughout your body. It is impossible for the brain to experience pleasant emotions and negativity at the same time. Your good feelings calm you, and decrease the presence of stress hormones and chemicals in your brain.

4. You can learn to relax. You can learn to replace addictive stimulation with true happiness and gratitude. Meditation, yoga, stretching, massage, self-hypnosis and just being still will regenerate energy for your body and brain and reduce the effects of stress.

The most important thing to remember is that your brain is growing and changing every instant. You have more control over it than previously thought. You can create a healthy environment for your brain cells to repair themselves, to flourish, and even to regenerate.

Your brain thrives on stimulation, creativity, exercise, education and the right diet and supplements. It also needs relaxation time to rejuvenate. It is never too late or too early to influence your own brain’s destiny.