When stress stacks up: How managers can support their teams

Most people imagine stress as a single, dramatic moment – the tough deadline, the difficult meeting, the unforeseen project crisis.

But, in reality, stress rarely arrives for people in one hit. More often, it builds gradually through the everyday: the early alarm, the unanswered WhatsApp messages, the urgent email before breakfast, the overlooked task, the delayed train, the background buzz of world events you don’t have the brain space for. These moments are rarely catastrophic on their own, but together they take a toll.

Individually, these tiny pressures seem insignificant. Collectively, they form a pattern psychologists call stress stacking – repeated hits to the nervous system that activate the body’s stress response again and again. Each trigger prompts a release of cortisol and adrenaline, and without enough recovery time between them, the nervous system stays heightened. What looks like “just a busy morning” can create the same overwhelm as a major stressful event.

That’s why the smallest inconvenience – a spilt coffee, a missing file, a less-than-polite email can feel like the final straw for someone. Over time, this persistent activation chips away at sleep, concentration, mood, and wellbeing. People become irritable or tearful, struggle to focus, forget simple things, or feel their patience with colleagues evaporate. Physical symptoms can manifest; headaches, muscle tension, stomach upsets and disrupted sleep all impact.

At work, these symptoms don’t happen in isolation. They show up in missed deadlines, team conflict, reduced creativity, and a spike in sick days. With 91% of UK adults reporting high or extreme stress over the past year, leaders can no longer treat stress as a personal issue that employees should “push through.” Unmanaged stress isn’t just a wellbeing problem; it’s an organisational risk.

The important thing? Leaders and managers can make a profound difference. Not by eliminating all stressors – that’s impossible – but by creating working environments where pressure doesn’t stack to breaking point.

So, what can leaders and managers do? Effective leadership creates the conditions where pressure is absorbed rather than accumulated.

Focus on building psychological safety: People cope better when they feel safe to speak openly about pressure. Psychological safety at work is about creating spaces where people can be their authentic professional selves, and where concerns can be raised early and addressed constructively.

Teams function best when people can question ideas without fear. Constructive debate surfaces issues early and prevents silent pressure from building.

Provide clarity as much as possible: Ambiguity amplifies stress. Define team roles, priorities for work and employee expectations. During high-pressure periods, communicate frequently and remove guesswork for people.

Model the emotional state you want mirrored: Teams take their cues from leadership behaviour. Staying grounded, consistent and composed prevents issues from escalating and stabilises the wider environment.

Encourage and embrace recovery time: Performance is cyclical, not linear. Encourage breaks from the screen, proper lunch breaks and genuine downtime after work. Recovery is not indulgence; it’s a high-performance strategy and essential for long-term success.

Distribute pressure fairly: Don’t allow the same individuals to carry the heaviest emotional or operational load. As much as appropriate, rotate high-stress tasks and monitor workload distribution closely. It also helps your team to build trust and reliance with each other.

Recognise meaningful effort: Genuine acknowledgement helps stabilise people during demanding periods. Recognition doesn’t need to be grand, but it needs to be specific and sincere. Timely praise can go a long, long way.

Address hidden stressors: Subtle behaviours, microaggressions and communication patterns within teams and businesses often cause more stress than workload. Leaders who actively confront and address these dynamics can reduce pressures at their root.

And finally, lead by example: The way leaders manage their own stress sets the baseline for the whole organisation. Those who acknowledge intense periods, maintain perspective and protect their own wellbeing permit teams to do the same. Encourage realistic working hours and model them yourself. When leaders respect boundaries, teams follow.

At Pro-Noctis, we frequently see the results of stress that has become unmanageable. It’s not because people lack resilience, but because micro-pressures and concerns have accumulated without acknowledgement or support. Leadership’s role is to interrupt that accumulation, through communication and culture.

Effective leadership creates the conditions where pressure is absorbed rather than accumulated. Leaders cannot control the rain, the train delays or the personal pressures people carry. But they can control the working environment where those pressures either dissipate or compound.

When stress is understood and managed effectively, teams don’t just withstand pressure – they perform, adapt and grow stronger through it.