Managing Emotions Amid Stress

The NBA season starts tonight — and the Boston Celtics are considered among the favorites to win the championship after making several key roster additions.

But before team president Brad Stevens earned a reputation as one of the top executives in the league — before he was even on the sidelines of TD Garden — he was a college head coach facing many of the same emotional challenges that we do.

Stevens, long considered a shrewd tactician with a mild temperament, helped guide Butler University to an 8-0 record in his first season as a college head coach, before losing on the road to a conference rival.

It was a loss that still sits with him.

“It was solely my fault,” Stevens recently said on the Slappin’ Glass podcast. “We were on edge. We played on edge. I was complaining to the officials. I was on edge about every possession.”

After the frustrating defeat, he made a pledge to himself.

“I’m not costing us a game again,” he said. “Even if I’m feeling the butterflies, I’m going to be as prepared as humanly possible, and I’m going to sit there and give the impression that I’m not (feeling them).”

It’s an important reminder.

Most of us as coaches and leaders put a tremendous amount of effort into what we do and want the scoreboard to reflect our hard work.

But with that work ethic and the desire for success can also come heightened emotions that can have a reverse effect on our teams.

Being ambitious is good. Being so ambitious that we can’t think rationally or regulate our emotions isn’t.

Going into a big game, a major presentation or a critical work function, we may want to:

1. Consider in advance how we’re going to respond, not react, to adversity
2. Assign an assistant or teammate to monitor our body language or our general temperament
3. Make a pledge to ourselves, like Stevens did, that if our team comes up short, our emotions won’t be the reason why

Stevens earned a reputation as one of the most stoic coaches in basketball and went to two National Championship games at Butler.

But while his schemes were top notch and his ability to motivate seemingly up there with anyone’s, what distinguished him to many was his ability to manage his emotions and remain even-keeled under pressure.

That’s a skill we almost all can do better with.