Pressure pointers
Keith Froud, international managing partner, Eversheds Sutherland, and Dr Rob Archer, director of Cognacity, explain why they’re training lawyers to achieve a mindset commonly found among professional tennis players.
Almost two years after launching a firm-wide wellbeing programme in May 2018, Eversheds Sutherland has now rolled out an organisation called Cognacity’s ‘Sustaining peak performance’ workshops in the UK.
Cognacity’s Performing under pressure programme combines preventative mental health expertise from its clinic and the performance focus from elite sport. The programme, built on principles taken from cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), empowers people with awareness and reflection tools. These therapeutic approaches are adapted to build resilience – essential techniques to enable a workforce to perform under pressure and sustain high levels of performance in a way that does not compromise its mental health.
Research shows recurring themes relating to poor lawyer wellbeing, including long hours, poor work-life balance, perfectionism and overachievement, as well as a cultural stigma around mental health difficulties in law firms. The aim of Cognacity’s workshops is to enable legal professionals to move beyond survival mode – to thrive.
There is a difference between ‘pressure’ and ‘stress’, and understanding this difference helps us to respond proportionately to the event we are experiencing and protect our emotional resources. An example of this might be focusing on the elements of a situation within our control, rather than wasting energy trying to control the uncontrollable.
Pressure is our response to an external event imposed upon us – whether a fast-approaching deadline or presenting in front of senior colleagues. The intensity of the physical, emotional, and psychological demands is largely subjective – two different individuals can tackle the same event with completely different levels of pressure. One can even create more pressure by imagining consequences if things don’t go according to plan.
Stress on the other hand is a physiological response: a flood of hormones cause increased heart rate, sweating, and a nervous feeling. The level of stress generated by a specific situation depends on whether a person perceives the situation as a threat – rather than the threat being objective.
Eversheds Sutherland understands that its people work in an increasingly high-performance, and often pressured, environment – so the programme supports in achieving high performance levels in a way that is sustainable and doesn’t result in stress.
Read the full story in Briefing April 2020, here.
