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Related Faculty

Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries
Distinguished Clinical Professor of Leadership Development and Organizational Change

Thomas Hellwig
Adjunct Professor of Organisational Behaviour
Keywords
Executive Coaching; Executives; Psychodynamic Lens; Stress; Taboo
Journal Article
Purpose: Workplace stress is becoming an acknowledged problem, and employee assistance programmes are widely invested into reducing workplace stress. However, there is still a group of people who are neglected: senior executives. There is a taboo among this group about admitting to overwhelming stress, as the executives themselves can consider it a sign of weakness. Executive coaches often pick up symptoms of underlying stress, including sleep deprivation, or substance abuse in leadership development programmes or executive coaching sessions. However, unless the coach is a trained stress expert, medical doctor, or psychotherapist, he or she may feel unequipped to help a senior executive deal with stress. This article introduces an interpretative protocol to gage senior executive stress to flag up potential stress issues and areas to be addressed in coaching or by health professionals.