Stress is no longer a side issue – especially leaders, HR professionals, trainers and coaches face the daily challenge of recognizing and managing stress not only in themselves, but also in their employees or coachees.
In this article, you will learn which stressors are particularly relevant, how they manifest in work and private life – and how you can identify and change them with the persolog® Stress Profile.
Stress Is Individual
All the stress factors described below can, but do not necessarily have to cause stress – because stress is individual. Whether something is experienced as a burden or as motivation depends on personal perception and evaluation.
The persolog® Stress Profile distinguishes a total of 11 job-related and 8 private stress factors that can be viewed in a differentiated and individual way.
This structure helps to understand stress more precisely – and to target the causes where they truly arise.
Job-Related Stress Factors – When the Workplace Becomes a Burden
Work-related stress rarely arises from a single cause. Often, multiple stressors act together: time pressure, lack of support, or excessive expectations.
The persolog® Stress Profile identifies four key areas in the professional context to which individual stress factors can be assigned: Personality-Related Traits, Interpersonal Relationships, Organizational Structures, and Task-Related Demands.
Personality-Related Traits
- Overcontrol
The inner urge to do everything yourself and to keep everything under perfect control often leads to exhaustion. Those who deny themselves recovery time will eventually slip into non-productive stress. - High Self-Aspirations
When personal expectations are higher than those of the organization, every small mistake feels like failure. Perfectionism becomes a constant source of stress.
Interpersonal Relationships
- Lack of Support
A lack of help from colleagues or supervisors intensifies the feeling of standing alone. This increases pressure – even in manageable situations. - Social Conflicts at Work
Tensions, misunderstandings or frictions within the team quickly lead to frustration and reduced performance. - Lack of Recognition
Missing feedback or appreciation for one’s work undermines motivation and fosters dissatisfaction.
Organizational Structures
- Limited Scope of Decision
If people are rarely allowed to make decisions independently, they feel restricted in their competence. This lack of autonomy negatively affects motivation and job satisfaction. - Limited Scope of Action
When work processes or workflows cannot be influenced, a feeling of helplessness arises. Especially people with a strong drive for shaping outcomes find this particularly stressful. - Uncertain Job Situation
Fixed-term contracts, constant restructuring, or competition among colleagues create a permanent sense of threat – a strong trigger for chronic stress.
Task-Related Demands
- Mental Overload
Too many tasks and tight deadlines – the classic recipe for constant stress. When workload permanently exceeds the available time, both performance and health suffer. - Unclear Division of Tasks
Contradictory instructions or unclear responsibilities create insecurity. The lack of clarity raises the risk of conflict and frustration. - Strong Pressure Due to High Responsibilities
Those who constantly fear making mistakes or not meeting expectations live in a state of continuous tension. Leaders in particular often experience this as a subtle but constant strain.
Private Stress Factors – When Life Itself Becomes a Challenge
Private stressors often spill over into professional life – and vice versa.
Leaders and HR professionals frequently experience this blurring of roles and responsibilities. Here are the eight key private stress factors:
- Family: Conflicts, illness, or the feeling that personal issues are not taken seriously within the family create long-term inner pressure.
- Partnership: Lack of appreciation, intimacy or unresolved conflicts in the relationship can lead to emotional exhaustion – an underestimated stress factor.
- Health: Sleep deprivation, unhealthy nutrition, worries about fitness or illness are central triggers of stress and reduce recovery capacity.
- Social Relations: Arguments, lack of support or feeling misunderstood by friends drain energy and joy.
- Household: Unclear distribution of household duties and overly high standards of cleanliness lead to unnecessary tension in daily life.
- Financial Security: Financial worries are among the strongest stress amplifiers. Fear of income loss can affect all areas of life.
- Self-Concept: Self-doubt, fear of the future, and guilt can become self-imposed obstacles. Strengthening one’s self-image helps build stress resilience.
- Parenthood: Overload in parenting, conflicts with children, or lack of time for the family are major sources of stress – especially when accompanied by feelings of guilt.
The Interaction Between Work and Private Life
The combination of these factors from both professional and private contexts has a direct impact on the individually perceived stress level. Recognizing these interactions is key to developing holistic stress competence – especially for those who lead, guide, or coach others.
The persolog® Stress Profile – Your Key to Greater Stress Competence
The persolog® Stress Profile helps to identify individual stress triggers – in both professional and private contexts. Especially for leaders, HR experts, trainers, and coaches, it provides a valuable foundation to:
- Recognize stress patterns in themselves and others,
- Develop productive strategies for dealing with stress,
- Build sustainable stress competence in organizations or coaching settings.
In trainings and coaching sessions based on the persolog® Stress Profile, participants learn to understand their personal stress dynamics and to transform stress into productive energy.
The scientific foundation of the profile is the persolog® Stress Model.
The Scientific Foundation: The persolog® Stress Model
The persolog® Stress Model is based on the research of the American psychologist Richard S. Lazarus, one of the most important pioneers in emotion and stress research, and psychologist John G. Geier, whose work also laid the foundation for the persolog® Personality Factor Model.
Both researchers emphasized the dynamic nature of stress experiences: stress does not arise automatically but from the personal evaluation of a situation.
In other words: what is stressful for one person can be motivating for another. What matters is how we interpret a situation – and which coping strategies we can apply.
Knowing Your Stressors Means Regaining Control
Only those who know their stress triggers can change them.
Awareness of personal stress factors is the first step toward reducing strain, using energy more effectively, and staying healthy and capable in everyday leadership.
The persolog® Stress Profile is an ideal starting point to initiate this change.
It makes individual stressors visible – and offers trainers, coaches, and HR professionals a scientifically grounded tool to develop stress competence holistically.
