How a true leader keeps people safe and maintains healthy pressure
If you’re rushing others or being told to hurry yourself, there can be unforeseen consequences that can waste more time than you could’ve saved from speeding up. This article is about pressure to finish jobs swifter and keeping your team safe.
“It’s a Sailor’s life for me”
In my previous life as a maritime aircraft engineer, getting today’s problems solved yesterday was just how we operated.
Sat in my deck chair on the back of a destroyer, I had to switch quickly from sunbathing to a fire suit as our helicopter was returning with smoke blowing into the cockpit. Fortunately, the aircraft landed safely, and we dragged the aircraft into the hangar to investigate the problem.
As the senior avionics supervisor it was my job to investigate the fault, I had the junior technicians strip down the radar system for me to inspect. For those who haven’t worked on ships before, often things don’t work and nobody knows why. Because of this, there was a two-hour delay in getting electrical power to the aircraft. I was very aware that the sole reason for us returning to port was so that I could carry out this repair, even though I could do nothing about the delays, I started pressuring myself to get it done quicker.
Pressure from the captain rolled to my boss, which with the extra delays was a lot of stress on him. Unfortunately, this manifested at the wrong time, shouting across the hangar for me to ‘hurry the f&@k up’. This happened while I was conducting my last tests and made me incorrectly diagnose the fault. I thought a single fan had burnt out, but actually two sets of cooling fans had burnt out.
After this I ordered a new set of fans and the ship docked in order to collect them. To my horror, they didn’t have any fans, so sent an entire radar system. This weighed over 120 kilos (264 pounds for our American friends). It was high tide, with the gangway being at about 40 degrees so physically lifting the box onto the ship wasn’t possible. To make things worse, we had torrential rain, and they had left the box in the open on the harbour. In the end, the senior mechanical supervisor held a coat over me while I stripped one of the cooling fans off. As soon as I finished, I called the logistician so they could get it out of the rain (being almost a million pounds' worth of kit) and back to the warehouse.
Stay with me here. This may seem like a long story, but it was a bloody nightmare to deal with and is very relevant to the point I’m trying to make. I fitted the new fan, tested the cooling system, and lo-and-behold, the other cooling fan was also burnt out. I rushed down the gangway and sure enough; the logisticians had taken away the new radar system with the extra cooling fan on it. Panicking now as the pressure was building to complete the repairs, i threw a handful of tools at one of the junior techs with orders to get down to the warehouse and get me my cooling fan.
About an hour later my tech turned back up, after having to break into one of the fire exits of the warehouse and navigate his way through the dark to the radar crate. We then replaced the second cooling fan, which fixed the problem. After a small resupply, we were ready to return to sea the next morning.
So from this you can see how rushing someone can have a massive knock-on effect. The intent was to get a job completed quicker, but ended up with it taking much longer.
Nobody could have predicted the ship's power supply failing or the logistics team delivering a complete radar system instead of just the fans. But a single statement made a simple job take almost four times as long as it should have.
“Under Pressure”
Pressure leads to stress, and this isn’t always a bad thing. The Yerkes-Dodson law suggests that there is a link between performance and arousal (stress), and that increasing stress to a certain point will increase performance. As you can see in the graph below, too little stress can be just as bad as too much stress. Hitting that sweet spot will help you get the most out of your people.
So how do I control pressure?
It’s important to recognize and understand two different pressures:
- External Pressure
- Perceived Pressure
External Pressure
If it’s coming from outside of your team, it’s external pressure.
Be the interface between your team and the outside world. Whether it’s from your boss or an outside agency, make sure they filter everything through you.
Tactfully discourage your boss from contacting employees directly. The chain of command exists for a reason! You are in a better position to manage tasking and workflows based on any prioritization your boss gives you. It’s also important for you to make sure any demands placed on your team have realistic completion dates.
Maintaining oversight on external communications will allow you to plan effectively and see crunch points before they occur. All this takes is getting your team to CC you on emails, or give you a quick rundown on any important conversations they’ve had with outside agencies.
It doesn’t matter where the pressure is coming from, it’s your job to make sure it stops with you
Perceived Pressure
Not all pressure felt by people is real. People make assumptions and misinterpret about what you say and the way you act. Let’s say you tell your team “I reckon we can get this smashed out by close of play Friday”. They might perceive this as encouragement or as a deadline. Also, the way you act and speak will give off signals that can be misinterpreted.
Be the eye of the storm in a crisis, if you’re steadfast then your team will be too
If you think your team is putting pressure on themselves, then talk it through. Make sure everyone is happy with the workload, deadlines and what is required of them.
There is a fantastic article on flyingmag.com about the effects of perceived pressure. Spoiler alert, lots of people died.
If you think back to the story I told, I was already pressuring myself to get the fault fixed because I was the only person qualified to do it. If my boss hadn’t let external pressure affect me, then we could have saved a lot of time and stress.
If you want to know more about pressure and managing workload, then Human Factors 101 has actionable advice here.
Let me know if you’ve had any similar nightmare stories in the comments below!
