# Sustainable High Performance Without Chronic Stress

**Podcast:** LEITWOLF Podcast - Leadership, Führung & Management
**Published:** 2026-07-23

## Transcript

Can I get high performance without stress?
Yes, you can.
If you do a couple of things well, with discipline and well prepared, peak pressure is hardly sustainable over a longer period of time.
High performance is the result of more clarity.
Hello and welcome to today's Lightwolf podcast.
Your podcast for leading with impact.
And I underline...
Das ist heute, heute ist es called...
High performance without stress.
Is it really possible?
And the answer is yes.
Looking across the patch, looking across the many clients we've had the pleasure of working for, some of them for more than a decade, I think we've normalized stress as if it were a leadership strategy or a leadership tool.
It is not.
And the companies that learn this will be the ones that outperform all the others.
Now the question is, can leaders build high-performing organizations without creating constant stress?
And I believe the answer is, yes, they can.
It might not be easy, it might not work all the time, but yes, they can.
But only if we rethink what drives performance.
And I would like to start today by sharing three observations.
First, sustainable performance.
Yes, we will feel some pressure some of the time.
I assume you do, sometimes I do.
I think that's normal.
And we can easily sustain some pressure.
But we should not always strive to increase the pressure more and more and more and for way too long periods of time.
Because peak pressure is hardly sustainable over a longer period of time.
High performance is the result of more clarity.
Teams rarely underperform because they work too little.
If they underperform, they do so because priorities compete, decisions are delayed and expectations are somewhat or utterly unclear.
Just this morning, I come from a conversation that my cooperation partner Jan and I were having with a software company that has been our client for years.
The relationship is growing, the trust is mutual.
We both have fun helping dozens and dozens of those leaders in that company grow to higher levels of performance and effectiveness.
However, no surprise that now with AI reaching the mainstream, a software company needs to change and needs to transform.
And that is happening.
And the top management team is starting that change that is required to make this business fit for future.
However, the organization is unclear.
Top management communicates clear strategic choices and a clear strategic direction and a few key KPIs.
But there is a problem.
The organization below is uncertain.
und nicht genau wissen, was jetzt kommt und hat keine Ahnung.
Wie soll ich das Direktions-Dirgendwerfen?
Das ist ein Unclarity.
Die zweite Kontext-Komponent ist Stress ist nicht der Enem.
Chronic, unmanaged Stress ist.
Short Periods of High Intensity Das ist es, dass es sich in den letzten Jahren weiterführen.
The behavior of the leader determines emotional climates of teams.
It's not just the pressure from outside and from the world and from tariffs and wars and you name it.
It's also the pressure that is accelerated, intensified or created in addition by the leaders of those teams themselves.
Leaders who get excited easily and just pass on pressure from the top.
They radiate stress.
They multiply stress.
On the other hand, leaders who stay calm under pressure create calm.
They radiate confidence.
They take stress out.
So, what can leaders do?
What kind of leadership do you exercise when you are under pressure?
I would have a couple of ideas for you that may help to stay calm under pressure.
Und das kann helfen, dass die environment you want, die du vorst, wenn du leadst.
Suggestion 1.
Replace activity with goals.
Don't steer with busyness.
Steer with clear goals.
Goals should not be described with verbs.
So one of the more frequent phenomena I see in Goal agreements, when they are written down, is that there are some verbs in them.
Sometimes they are full of verbs.
They describe activity after activity.
Why is that the case?
I think that is the case because it's so much easier to describe an activity than to formulate a well-defined goal.
It's so much easier because you don't need to make a decision.
You don't need to focus.
You just describe what you expect people to do.
That's easy.
But it's wrong.
A goal agreement should not have any verbs at all.
Kill them when you write your own goals.
Just define outcomes.
What result?
In what quality?
By what day?
Scrap the rest.
Why?
Because it focuses on goals, on outcomes rather than on activity.
It reduces the risk that people think they have to be busy all day to be seen as productive.
No, it's not about busyness.
It's about effectiveness and efficiency of achieving an outcome.
And that starts with you setting the right outcome, setting the right goals rather than defining activities.
Let me illustrate this with two.
Work examples from our real work this week and last week.
This week, six of us were together with a group of 100 leaders from all five continents.
Probably we were 20 different nations in the room.
There was Mexico in the room, China was in the room, there was Brazil in the room, so Germans were in the room.
People from the UK, Australia was in the room.
So really a global group of leaders from a global company headquartered in Germany.
And the work was about leading with impact.
One of the topics was goal setting.
And what I've learned is that this company had the culture and the habit until about five years ago not to work with goals at all.
They worked with themes, with topics.
And five years ago, the company for the first time started sharing goals at all.
So in top management leadership meetings, it was the first time about five years ago that the top management said, ladies and gentlemen, these are the company goals.
There are paper copies in the corner of this room.
If you'd like to have a copy of this, help yourselves.
So that's when they started with starting to set goals on company level at all, five years ago.
Und jetzt, fünf Jahre später, sie sind intensiviert die Leading und Guiding-Fokus-Gol-Einheit.
Sie sind jetzt auf die Beine-Goals-Gol-Einheit und eine Level-Done-Einheit und noch eine Level-Done-Einheit.
Sie sind also auf die Beine-Goal-Einheit und auch auf die Beine-Ausstechnung zu gewinnen, als nur auf die Beine-Ausstechnung.
Und es war liberating.
to see the faces, to hear the feedback.
They were really positive about those 90 minutes of a short workshop on effective goals, how to define them and how to cascade them.
Liberating is the word I would use, how they felt after that workshop.
And I would also like to share another piece of work that my cooperation partners Lor and Sascha Laura Buske from Ingolstadt and Sascha Dornbusch from Kelkheim did with me at Procter & Gamble last week.
There we had about 80 leaders in the room.
And just today in my LinkedIn profile, I received a really nice feedback from one of those participants.
And here it is.
The feedback comes from Matthäus Henrike Maronese Brum.
von Procter & Gamble in Europe.
Quote, Hey Stefan, thank you for the connection and for the very rich and insightful training last week.
I left that room with more courage, more self-awareness, more humble and equipped with tools that will help me and my teams to grow and be more effective.
You and your team were very inspiring.
Keep it up.
Hope to meet you again around.
Kind regards, Matthäus.
Unquote.
Und diese waren einfach nur einfachen Tools, open Conversations, Quick Practices, um Menschen zu helfen, um mehr Outcome zu haben.
Um zu beantworten, die Frage ist, kann ich ein High Performance ohne Stress?
Ja, du kannst.
Wenn du ein paar Dinge gut mit Disziplin und gut vorbereitet.
So, suggestion number one, replace Activity mit Goals.
We cannot create certainty, even if people want it.
But we can create clarity.
Let us do it whenever we can and as best we can.
It helps our people to deliver higher performance with less stress.
So suggestion number one, replace activity with clear goals.
Don't steer with busyness, steer with outcomes.
Suggestion number two.
Replace control with ownership.
Define clear outcomes.
Then give people the freedom and accountability to deliver.
Just this afternoon, it's Friday today.
And once a month, Friday afternoon, there is Lightwolf Academy Group Live Coaching.
One hour on one of the deep dives.
Today, the deep dive was on...
Course number one, which is leading employees.
Courses two to six are leading myself, leading my boss, leading my team, leading a leader and leading strategically.
Great stuff, simple stuff, effective tools.
And we spend an entire hour going deep into course number one.
And one of the more frequent phenomena that participants and members of Lightwolf Academy shared when discussing leading employees was, All too often I don't delegate enough.
All too often I still try to do work myself.
It's because I don't trust my people enough.
It's because I want to control more and I should not.
So people realize 9 out of 10 leaders don't delegate enough.
And one of the barriers is lack of trust.
So my suggestion for you is, if you're one of the many, and it happened to me as well at times, If you're one of the many who replace trust with control, at least gradually, then reflect.
Do you delegate enough or should you delegate more?
And if you feel like you could or should delegate more, then do that.
First thing when you're in the office.
Think about what's on your plate for the next week and is there one piece of accountability that you could delegate to someone else?
Do it.
Believe in your people and replace control with ownership.
Because every single one in our organization who is motivated, and they are all motivated, they have more potential than they themselves are aware of.
And it's your and my job as a leader to give them responsibility, to give them courage, to give them trust, to give them space, and then just help them when they need help.
So replace control with ownership.
Und 3.
Protect energy as deliberately as you manage results.
The best teams don't work at maximum speed and at maximum energy all the time.
They know when to sprint and when to recover.
They know when to reflect and when to run.
And very personally, I'd like to share with you a few more suggestions as well.
Sleep enough.
Und ich schluss auf den nächsten Tag.
Ich habe jetzt schon eine Woche geholfen, weil ich es ein Wetter habe, dass ich jeden Freitag mit ein Reflect and Kill-Exercise starte.
Das heißt, ich reflect die Woche und diese Woche, viele Dinge funktioniert wirklich gut, dankz zu meinem Team und dankz zu great collaboration und great preparation.
Wir wirklich hatten eine sehr productive und successful Woche.
Und dann, I still reflect what could improve.
Of course, also in this week, we could have done things even better and we will next time.
But then I look at the future.
I look at next week and I ask myself, what can I kill?
And I did kill already three hours next week that I will either stop or do quite a lot later.
But now I have three hours of quality time next week, which I will consciously invest.
into the most important work that I'm doing anyway next week, but I'm giving it more time to get more productive.
So reflect what worked and what didn't and then kill some of your work ahead.
It works wonders.
A quick poll.
If you could please participate in this poll.
It just takes you less than 10 seconds.
Question to you on your work.
Do your own goals.
Focus more on A, activities, or B, on goals, on outcomes.
So what is it?
Do your goals more reflect activities, A, or B, outcomes?
Please be so kind and put it into the poll by just one click.
And as soon as we have feedback that I deem valuable, and this is a particularly hot candidate, I may come back to you with the results and the learnings in one of the next Lightwolf Podcast episodes.
So, three points in a nutshell.
Is high performance without stress possible?
Yes, it is.
Three suggestions.
One, replace activity with goals.
Do not steer with busyness, steer with outcomes.
Two, replace control with ownership.
And three, Protect energy as deliberately as you manage results.
High performance and low stress are no opposites.
Sustainable peak performance comes from focused priorities, trusted people and leaders who create clarity instead of chaos.
I hope this inspires you and helps you on your way forward to become exactly the leader you want to become.
Thank you for dialing in.
I look forward to welcoming you.
Again, here on the LiveWolf Podcast, hopefully soon.
Thank you, take care and bye-bye.