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Stress Tolerance

January 29, 2007 — CIO —

If you’re one of those who feel you can handle a lot of stress, you might be high in the executive skill of Stress Tolerance.

Executive skills are brain functions or cognitive skills that neuroscientists have located in specific regions of the brain, primarily the frontal lobes. These functions develop starting at birth; they’re hardwired into every person, and fully developed by adulthood. The skills are called executive skills because they help people execute tasks.

Every individual has a set of 12 executive skills (self-restraint, working memory, emotion control, focus, task initiation, planning/prioritization, organization, time management, defining and achieving goals, flexibility, observation and stress tolerance). Each person has two or three that are their strongest and two or three that are their weakest, and they are not dramatically changeable for life.

For example, if a person’s weakest executive skill is stress tolerance, several stress-relieving seminars or classes taken are not likely to dramatically change it. The executive skill of stress tolerance is the ability to thrive in stressful situations and to cope with uncertainty, change and performance demands.

Over a global base of senior executives and managers, NFI Research queried business executives and managers to measure their level of stress tolerance.

Slightly more than a third of executives and managers were high in stress tolerance while only four percent were low in the skill. The remainder, just more than half, had a medium level of the executive skill.

Some executive skills are typically opposites of others. For example, a person high in the executive skill of stress tolerance typically is low in the skill of time management, which is the capacity to estimate how much time one has, to allocate it and to stay within time limits and deadlines.

A person who is high in stress tolerance would have a high tolerance for ambiguity and be emotionally steady in a crisis. They would be able to handle deadlines being moved up and even welcome the challenge of working until something is finished. “I strive on the ability to make a difference in my field,” said one manager who completed the stress tolerance questionnaire, part of the Executive Skills Profile. “When the stress level rises in the room, it indicates the time to perform if you want to make a difference.”

Someone low in stress tolerance would become emotionally stressed in a crisis and only feel comfortable when they know their schedule for the next few weeks. After making a mistake in a presentation, they might obsess about it for days.

 

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