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Leadership expectations have evolved at a breakneck pace in the last six decades. Leaders once faced a fairly straightforward set of expectations, primarily driven by the bottom line. Now they navigate an uncertain business and global landscape while balancing individual contributor responsibilities along with a complex and ever-changing set of expectations around how they deal with people and deliver bottom-line results under pressure.
It’s no wonder stress is climbing. According to Gallup, 49% of Americans report frequently feeling stressed in daily life, with a staggering 29% having been diagnosed with depression at some point in their lives. Leaders are asked to be everything to everyone while managing their own well-being, and this expectation is simply unsustainable.
As coaches, we see the impact of this stress first-hand. In a flash poll during our recent webinar, 77% of coaches polled said that their clients are more stressed overall than they were 5 years ago.
To survive – let alone thrive – in this challenging landscape, leaders need to be resilient. But the overwhelming stress they find themselves under can make building resilience harder than ever. So what’s a coach to do?
We tackled the topic in the webinar Coaching for Resilience: Help your Clients Out-Smart their Reactive Brain, presented by our expert coaches, Maria Brown, Ph.D. and Christine Chasse. Watch the full webinar on-demand now, or catch up on the highlights below.
The Brain and Stress: Why We React the Way We Do
One of the key reasons stress persists is due to how our brains are wired. The human brain is designed to keep us safe and conserve energy. In ancient times, it helped us avoid life-threatening dangers, but now, in a modern work context, that same instinct makes us hyper-sensitive to perceived threats. Our brains often react to stressors—even ones that are not life-threatening—as if they were immediate dangers. This can lead to reactivity and decision-making based on shortcuts.
According to Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, our brain has two primary modes of thinking: fast and slow. Fast thinking is automatic and efficient, scanning our environment and making quick decisions based on intuition. This mode is great for simple tasks, but when complex problems arise, the fast brain can make mistakes because it relies on assumptions and past experiences. On the other hand, slow thinking is methodical and logical, but it requires more energy and attention, which makes it harder to access when we’re already overwhelmed.
Shortcuts, Biases, and Decision Fatigue
When leaders face stressors like tight deadlines, team collaboration across departments, and navigating ambiguity, the brain tends to rely more heavily on fast thinking. It makes inferences based on prior experiences and assumptions. For example, if a leader once received negative feedback about a project, they may interpret similar feedback in the present as negative, even if it isn’t. These cognitive shortcuts often lead to less optimal decisions.
Because the brain doesn’t distinguish between an assumption and a fact, leaders may act on incomplete or inaccurate information. As their cognitive load increases, they are more prone to errors, further escalating stress levels and impairing resilience. When mistakes happen, it’s harder to recover, leading to a downward spiral of stress and decreased performance.
The Stress-Resilience Cycle
This reactive cycle makes it difficult for leaders to build resilience. Stress increases cognitive load, which triggers reliance on shortcuts and reactivity. This leads to poor decision-making, more problems to solve – and even more stress. The pattern is self-perpetuating and can erode a leader’s ability to bounce back from challenges.
Breaking the Cycle
The key to reducing stress in leadership roles lies in recognizing this cycle and learning to manage cognitive load more effectively. Leaders need tools and strategies to pause, reflect, and shift from fast thinking to slow, methodical problem-solving. Organizational support—like better training, reasonable expectations, and resources—can also help.
In the end, modern leaders are expected to do more than ever before, and without addressing the root causes of stress, we risk burning out some of our best talent. Understanding how our brains work under pressure and building environments that support slower, more thoughtful decision-making may be the key to turning the tide.
How do we break this cycle? The answer lies in self-awareness—specifically, understanding our motivations.
Motivation: The Key to Unlocking Resilience
Motivation, in the simplest terms, is what drives us and what drains us – and when we understand it, it explains a lot about the why behind our feelings, thoughts, and actions. Motivation itself, however, isn’t visible to others – but it’s shaping how we respond to our world every day. So understanding it can help us make more informed choices about how to navigate our work and personal lives, ultimately reducing stress and improving resilience.
What to Know Understand about Motivation – and How to Reveal It
- Motivations are formed early and evolve throughout our lives.
- We may not recognize how strong or weak our motivations are compared to others’.
- Our most extreme motivations are easy to underestimate – they’re so ingrained, we just see them as normal.
- Our motivations aren’t straightforward – they can conflict with each other.
Given the complexity of motivation – and how deeply it can be hidden – we can’t get to the heart of it in coaching conversation alone. At MRG, we use the Individual Directions Inventory (IDI), a psychometric questionnaire that measures 17 different motivational dimensions. The resulting profile identifies the motivations that most energize the participant, those that drain them, and everything in between.
With these insights, a more informed, objective, and data-driven conversation you’re your client begins. Together, you can begin to identify how their motivational patterns influence behavior and decision-making, especially in stressful or complex situations.
Take the example of a client who scores high on the IDI dimension “Giving” – a person who is driven to be helpful and supportive of others. As with any motivation, your client may be finding a lot of satisfaction from leaning into this driver – but it can also influence patterns of behavior that are less helpful, and they may not know why.
Your high Giving client may experience…
Break the Reactive Cycle with Self-Awareness
Recognizing these patterns allows individuals to pause and reflect on how their thoughts and motivations drive their behavior. This reflection is the key to breaking the cycle of stress and reactivity. For instance, once someone high in “Giving” realizes they tend to prioritize others’ needs at the expense of their own, they can start setting healthier boundaries. This change leads to more balanced relationships, greater personal satisfaction, and increased resilience.
Resilience isn’t just about pushing through challenges; it’s about understanding yourself deeply enough to make conscious, thoughtful choices about how you respond to those challenges. By tapping into your motivations and raising your self-awareness, you can stop the reactive cycle that leads to stress and burnout. With tools like the IDI and a focus on developing self-awareness, individuals and leaders can build a more resilient mindset—one that allows them to thrive even in the face of complex demands.
Building Resilience: A Process for Building Personal and Professional Growth
The process of developing resilience is not just about reacting to challenges but about gaining self-awareness, identifying our triggers, and learning how to respond in healthier, more effective ways.
One of the best tools to help individuals on this journey is through motivational assessments and guided coaching, which can help individuals gain clarity, reframe their thinking, and take decisive action.
During the webinar, coach Christine Chasse explored a real-world case study using a four-step coaching method.
In her work with “Sally,” Christine used the IDI to reveal two of her client’s strong motivators: Gaining Stature (energized by recognition, visibility, and credit for their work) and Excelling (drawn to pushing themselves toward higher goals). They leveraged that insight to help Sally understand why she’d fallen into several unhelpful patterns with her challenging boss – and to guide her to take specific action in her work to feel more resilient, less reactive – and more satisfied overall.
Watch the process unfold in the complete case study now.
Ultimately, resilience is a skill that can be developed. With the right tools and guidance, anyone can build the self-awareness necessary to recognize their triggers and respond to challenges in ways that align with their long-term goals and values.
Ready to dive deeper? Watch the full webinar on-demand and explore other resources in our Resilience Resource Hub.
The topic of resilience inspired plenty of curiosity in our webinar audience – read on for Q&A and with our experts.
Q&A with the Experts
Q: Do you have any recommendations for motivation others?
A: It may not be possible to increase another’s motivation; however, modeling self-awareness about one’s own energy drivers and creating a culture of openness where people are willing to explore and share what drives and drains them can help increase satisfaction and performance.
Each person already has intrinsic motivation. When people understand what drives and drains them, they can explore how their intrinsic motivation has been serving them well and where it might be getting in the way.
For managers who want to get the most out of their employees, creating a culture of self-awareness and openness is key. Once a manager understands what is more emotionally engaging to their employee, they can incorporate aspects of that motivation into the person’s job. For example, if I understand that my employee is motivated by Gaining Stature, which is being energized by receiving recognition, I can make sure to publicly praise my employee when they have earned that praise, and thus, increase their energy. Or if I know that someone is motivated toward Structuring, which is gaining energy from process, procedure, and being detail oriented, I can assign them tasks that will capitalize on that increase in energy.
On the opposite end, if I as a manager know that my employee has a lower motivation for Belonging, which is getting energy from working in teams and being involved in larger meetings and gatherings, I can offer support to attend a networking event by giving them some downtime afterwards.
Using a tool like the IDI Team Report can help foster that open culture and create an environment for open dialogue about each person‘s unique preferences. It can also help a leader to understand where a team’s energy lies as a whole and what might be lacking.
Q: How does the IDI compare to other assessments like the MBTI, Disc, VIA Strengths…?
With so many assessments measuring many different aspects of the people we coach, it’s understandable that we receive many questions about how the IDI compares with other assessments. While these assessments may have some aspects in common with the IDI, there are some critical distinctions. In many cases, other assessments can be used in conjunction with the IDI, allowing motivation to provide depth and context to other results.
How is the IDI different from personality assessments? (e.g., MBTI, Disc)
Personality assessments measure something that is hard-wired and mostly consistent across situations. Personality can change throughout someone’s lifespan, but changes tend to be very small. The IDI measures motivation: something that can evolve as people’s experiences shift in life and may be more situational. An IDI profile reflects what energizes and drains an individual at this moment in their life.
Some motivations are going to be the result of personality-environment interactions because one’s personality may influence how they interpret their experiences. However, the IDI doesn’t identify the source of a motivation. It simply identifies the strength of 17 motivators relative to other people and to each other. This provides actionable self-awareness by helping people:
- See why the behave the way they do, interpret things as they do and react to things in specific ways.
- Determine how they can align their life and work with their motivation to maintain a higher state of emotional energy.
- Have a conversation about motivators for which their responses are more situational and less automatic.
Personality assessments tend to classify individuals into personality types. The IDI measures 17 motivational dimensions that are independent of one another. That means one score cannot be predicted from another. Therefore, an IDI profile is specific to the individual who completed the self-assessment and it reflects the strength of specific motivators while allowing for the exploration of interactions between motivators. This approach gives participants and their coaches the opportunity to increase self-awareness and explore action steps that are truly specific to the individual and all their consistencies and contradictions rather than reducing them to a type.
How is the IDI different from assessments that measure strengths or talents? (e.g., VIA Strengths, CliftonStrengths)
Some assessments are designed to identify positive human qualities such as talents and strengths as opposed to the deficits which traditional psychology focuses on. Similar to the IDI, they measure the areas people most strongly identify with and help them identify positive tendencies in themselves.
Alternatively, the IDI measures what types of activities and situations are most emotionally satisfying to an individual. It identifies the motivators that people most strongly identify with. However, it does this using a more neutral approach, where motivators are neutral in nature and have both liabilities and assets associated with them.
For example, someone who gains satisfaction from helping and supporting others (Giving, in IDI terms) may gain a good deal of social capital, but they may also get taken advantage of by others. Someone who does not gain much satisfaction from helping and supporting others may receive less reciprocity from their network, but they may have more time to focus on their personal goals. What makes something a strength or a weakness will depend on how the motivator plays out in the individual’s life.
How is the IDI different from assessments that measure negative emotions? (e.g., the Saboteur Assessment)
Some assessments help people identify the negative things they tell themselves that lead to limiting beliefs and unhelpful mindsets. These assessment focus on identifying negative thoughts so that people can learn to quiet them or react to them in more productive ways. The primary purpose of the IDI is to increase self-awareness around motivation. It helps people make choices about how to expend their energy in ways that align with their motivation. As part of this work, coaches can explore negative thoughts, beliefs, and reactions that may result from their strongest motivators. However, the IDI can also help identify motivational patterns that have led to positive outcomes for the individual. It provides a more complete picture of where beliefs and mindsets – both positive and negative – may be coming from so they can be addressed at the source.
The IDI Questionnaire Design
A big concern in assessments is the possibility that participants can influence the results to reflect a desired outcome. Many assessments currently available use designs that can be gamed by the participant. The IDI uses a semi-ipsative questionnaire design that really forces participants to think about their answers and greatly reduces the ability to game the results. You can learn more about it here.
Using the IDI with other Assessments
This article compares the IDI to other assessments. However, it is important to note that the IDI does not need to be used in place of another assessment. The IDI works well with other assessments. It can help people understand the why behind other assessment results: why they behave the way they do, why they feel the way they do, why they respond to others the way they do.
At MRG, we often use the IDI alongside the LEA 360, an assessment that measures leadership behaviors. The IDI helps leaders and their coaches understand their behavior profile at a deeper level and to anticipate which behavioral shifts may be more difficult because they push the leader outside of their natural tendencies. The IDI is also a great tool for understanding clients quickly by discussing who they are and what drives them deep down, and this is helpful in any engagement.
