Comment by leonroy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by leonroy | Hacker News Reader

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One thing I'd love to know is how leaders who have faced incredibly stressful situations for sustained periods manage to push through.

Hannibal the Carthaginian general for example spent nearly 20 years fighting the Romans on their own turf in Italy. He had a string of victories and also suffered incredible losses including the loss of an eye to infection.

Despite that he led his men and was incredibly popular. After laying waste to the Italian countryside for two decades he was reluctantly recalled back to Carthage where he served as a statesman for several more years.

He was then exiled and a price put on his head and he made plans to ally himself with other leaders of the day - honestly his life goes on and on. The guy's resiliency is incredible and he isn't the only one of his age. There are numerous examples of similar people from the history of the time.

I suppose your modern day cases like Musk or Jobs are what we'd think of today. The former's challenges are well documented but the latter had just months to turnaround a sinking Apple and restructure the company before it ran out of money. He'd been through many ups and downs and again displayed a resiliency which is pretty remarkable.

I think that everyone's ability to handle stress varies. What I'd love to know is why some people can suffer incredibly and not only survive but thrive and if there is some way in which we can learn how to suffer the everyday arrows slung our way and bear our burdens better.

Because Hannibal did not have the six factors of burn-out: lack of control, insufficient reward, lack of community, absence fo fairness, conflict in values, work overload.

Arguably Hannibal:

- is in control (he's leading),

- he's probably rewarded through pillaging, (I feel that reward is absolutely key to continue pushing through)

- there is probably a sense of community while they are laying waste,

- as a leader he probably get "fair" shares of reward for himself (cf. the Iliad, opening list of treasures)

- the work he's doing is probably aligned with his own values (unlike Xenopho who was hired as mercenary in terrible conditions), as we can see he didn't want to stop campaigning

- work overload is probably there, as campaigning men have little sleep and work a lot (cf. Cesar)

Conclusion: Hannibal is less at risk of burn-out than men serving under Hannibal.

At risk of being nitpicky, Hannibal's reward was probably more in terms of defeating/killing Romans, as his entire life was more or less focused on hatred for Rome and a wish to destroy it.

I only bring this up because rewards can be (and in my opinion the best ones are) immaterial, the type of things that would fit into the self-actualization part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I think this type of reward is much more critical than material ones for being able to endure those conditions for a long time.

Absolutely, but we can also see that such needs are more likely to be met at the top of the hierarchy.

>Because Hannibal did not have the six factors of burn-out: lack of control, insufficient reward, lack of community, absence fo fairness, conflict in values, work overload.

This makes burnout sound incredibly similar to "Learned Helplessness." Tweaked, I suppose, to the problems of a workplace.

This is a brilliant list. Did you think of it, or is there a source?

I think Christina Maslach, world expert on burn-out, highlighted these six factors as conducive to burn-out. I'm just a bad copycat but you can see her talk on the topic.

Don't forget Czech refugee András Gróf, who went on to found Intel: https://www.referenceforbusiness.com/biography/F-L/Grove-And...

But in all these stories there's a huge selection effect. We only hear about the great generals, not enough about the disastrous ones. We hear about the refugees who persisted, not the ones who gave up.

Nitpick: he was Hungarian.

You're assuming that continued high stress is enough to induce burnout. What causes burnout requires high stress but also a lack of reward and relaxation, and a mismatch in personal values.

Great leaders probably do not suffer from self-doubt and honestly believe in their own righteousness. I am often amazed by how the executives I meet genuinely seem to lack the ability to self-criticize and admit wrongdoing, even in personal settings. For great leaders, the worldly rewards and affirmation in the form of praise are never ending. This makes individuals highly resilient to external stress.

Not only that, but they know to delegate. Especially in the military; a general doesn't command the troops, they command the people one or two ranks below them, who then distribute the load.

I see a lot of 'flat' organizations where there's one person having to manage 50+ people, which IMO is just too much responsibility, especially if they have multiple roles (financial, personnel, strategy, etc).

The first thing that anyone needs to learn if they grow into a leadership position is to be able to delegate instead of doing things themselves / micromanage. That is difficult for e.g. software developers because doing the work itself (writing code etc) and doing it well was what got them there. In a lot of cases.

I think that stress causes constant stress hormones like cortisol to flow. Rewards and relaxation (or exercise) interrupt the flow with positive hormones. But without that, you physically alter your brain chemistry in negative ways from constant stress, literally producing psychological problems such as burnout, anxiety, anger, depression not to mention physiological ones, such as high blood pressure and other health issues.

I think it can get as bad as a form of PTSD induced by constant low-to-mid level stress rather than one major upfront trauma.

"I think it can get as bad as a form of PTSD induced by constant low-to-mid level stress rather than one major upfront trauma."

I would recommend looking up a concept called CPTSD (Complex PTSD)[0] which is a somewhat controversial idea that one can develop a flavor of PTSD specifically from long periods of chronic trauma. (PTSD is ordinarily described as hailing from acute trauma.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_post-traumatic_stress_...

The stress vulnerability model[0] in psychology may give some insight with regards to mental illness.

Robert Sapolsky elaborates on them comprehensively in his Stanford lecture about depression[1]

[0] http://www.psychiatria-danubina.com/UserDocsImages/pdf/dnb_v...

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NOAgplgTxfc

John D. Rockefeller was managing global oil monopoly and occasionally in the letters to his wife he raised concerns about his "mental strains".

By reading [1] it seems to me that the way he very efficiently coped such immense amount of pressure was through strict sandboxing of his work-vs-personal life and proper delegation to his lieutenants; it gave him ample time to spend with his wife, children, in-laws, his church and his hobbies.

[1] Rockefeller's biography "Titan" by Ron Chernow

I think it boils down to energy. Much more than ability.

If you don't have enough to handle an issue, you need to be around people who do. They need to be interested in the same issue and you have to give them reasons why you need to be on their team.

There are lots of people who handle stress well one time. There are very few who can handle it as it piles up. They can't do it without others around them absorbing some of it. 'It takes a village' and all that. Niall Fergusan's book the square and the tower talks about the networks of people behind famous personalities and stressfull events. It's very interesting to understand how those networks emerge.

The village props up the endurance athletes. Because that give the village the best shot.

Having agency (aka being in charge) definitely lowers my stress level. Not that those examples weren't amazing people, but most people are not in charge, and that's more or less why they're stressed out.

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