What my panic attack taught me about managing stress

Two years ago I woke up in the middle of the night with a massive panic attack. I swore up and down I was done with work and that I couldn’t do it anymore. The stress and the pressure of building a national sales team at lightning speed had finally gotten to me, and we were still less than a year in. At that moment, it was over for me. I couldn’t shake the cold sweats that I was feeling and the pressure was too strong. I wanted all of the weight that my shoulders were carrying to be removed, and I just wanted out. Thankfully, after a few hours of talking through it, and learning I was on the verge of the flu, I calmed down.  

In the twelve months that would follow that memorable night, I would fly over 100,000 miles, spend over 70 nights in a hotel room, and board too many to count Alaska Airlines flights. I never looked back as the panic attack was a rocket booster to the challenges that my work would hand me. Like many of you reading this, I thrive in the face of stress.  

As a leader though, nobody ever talks to you about managing the stress and the pressure that comes with your job. Sure, your company will do an amazing job at training you on how to handle specific situations in your day to day. They’re great at providing online courses on how to navigate challenging moments or even technical training on new tools you have to use. But the reality of working through the incredible stress that comes with being a leader in your role is something that you may be on your own to solve. Let me be clear, I was never left alone in this journey and my leadership team was incredibly supportive, but the stress can often be too much.  

I can still recall the day of events leading up to that night. I had flown back from Dallas the day before after two days of interviewing what would become the start of our Texas sales team. I was in the process of opening an office in Dallas as we opened our first market in Houston, and I was already fighting off a cold to begin with. The energy rush of doing 12-15 interviews a day for two and a half days with a suppressed immune system probably wasn’t a great recipe for success. Upon landing from Dallas, I had dinner with a group of high performing reps, a tradition on my team that I so dearly miss with work from home. The next day, Friday, I walked into the office to a packed calendar starting with meetings at 8am and not ending until 5pm. I was literally back to back all day long without any breaks. Thankfully those were the days of walking between meeting rooms so I didn’t have to stare at Zoom for 9 hours straight.  

Already feeling the rush of a sales team that had grown from seven to seventy employees in a six month window, I was starting to feel the pressure of systems that were breaking and a lack of scalable processes. It seemed like every hour there was a new issue that we had to fix with duct tape and elmers glue. Actually elmers glue was probably too generous, it was more like strands of bubble gum. When you’re going a few hundred miles an hour, you just keep solving problems in real time. The concept of a real strategy on how to fix things was an afterthought when your boat is taking on water.  

That Friday I had a meeting with a mentor. I can still feel the stress of trying to pretend I had it all together in that meeting as I sat across the table in a sport coat attempting to eat a salad during this lunch hour meeting. I wanted to showcase that I was making all the right decisions and that I could handle the onslaught of stress and insanity that I was pushing through. The reality is that meeting pushed me over the cliff to evaluate everything about how I think about workplace stress. Over the meeting, we talked about things that felt so foreign to me at the time like hiring a sales process architect to help engineer the processes that would drive customer experiences. We talked about the need to invest in better tooling as we were still not on a full Salesforce platform and the idea of starting a full operations team. While all of these suggestions were the right ones, and they were incredibly helpful to stretch my mind around, it was the breaking point that pushed me over the edge. 

I wrapped the rest of the day with a few phone interviews and headed home. My body knew it was time to rest as the three day weekend was ahead. I could go home, throw on some sweats, and try to put the laptop away for at least the next 36 hours before firing it up again on Sunday afternoon to catch up. I had plans to rest, my mental state had different plans.  

Around 3am I jumped out of bed mumbling that I had to quit. In panic, I tried to figure out what I was saying. I was hellbent on the fact that it was all too much. I couldn’t take it anymore and I wasn’t the right person for the job. They would have to replace me with someone who knew how to think about decision architects or whatever the hell that role was to solve problems. Simply put, I was done in that moment, and it scared the hell out of me. 

I’ve been leading teams for almost thirteen years at this point. I’ve managed everything from teams of 5-6 to leader of leaders and national teams of up to 250 in total size. I’ve learned a lot along the way, but the one thing I’m still learning is how to manage stress. Until that panic attack, I had generally felt like I was good at managing stress. The reason I thought I was good was because it never really made a profound impact on me. Sure my work was stressful, anytime you’re managing a team of people, you’re going to deal with pressure, but this was certainly new to me.  

If I was going to keep scaling this team, something was going to have to change in my approach to stress management.  

From that point forward, I changed a few habits. No, I didn’t institute a no email policy at 5pm. I didn’t delete slack off my phone or something radical like no meeting Fridays. I made subtle, small changes that helped me, and hopefully they could help you too.  

Meetings

You can control your calendar or you can let it control you. Spending forty hours a week tucked away in meetings is an instant stress creator. If you’re always sitting in meetings, how are you going to spend time to produce? On top of that, if you’re only in meetings, how are you going to spend time on future projects that drive the vision of your business or team?  

I began to institute a 9am-3pm schedule, with a mandatory lunch from 12-1pm. This allowed me to start my days early and catch up on emails, produce work for the team and business partners, and think about the future. It also allowed me to end my day early enough to still have some brain power left to produce, wrap emails, or make phone calls. That lunch hour gives me time to slam down a quick bite while also putting a bow on my morning and preparing for the afternoon ahead. The 9am-3pm meeting schedule was a game changer for controlling my calendar and saying no to meetings that I simply did not need to be in. I found myself being more effective in my mornings and afternoons and spending less time late at night, when I could be de-stressing.  

Delegating

My direct reports may laugh at this concept but I think I’m improving here. While I didn’t hire sales process architects, within thirty days I did begin the foundation for what would become our Operations team. I swiftly moved two people into Operations roles so we could start work on fixing our challenges but also becoming more strategic in our approach. This delegation to Operations allowed me to start to think about the current team structure and stop trying to solve every problem that came to me. I was now able to say, “send it to Ops!”

Delegation is always a challenge for leaders. Even the ones who think they are best at it tend to still have room to grow. I had to learn how to stop holding onto projects and hand them off to the right people early in the process. My lack of ability to delegate at that time added a wave of stress that I couldn’t outswim. By stepping back and delegating, it put me in a position of leadership to help guide the project, which is your job as a leader anyways. The more you try to control, the more stress you bring, and typically you will find that you screw the project up before giving it to the proper people.    

Today I take a lot of joy in starting an email thread with a group of leaders in my org and handing off things early in the process. The quicker you get at delegating, the quicker you will shed pounds of stress off your shoulders.  

Finding time for fun things

Think back to a time where you were in the middle of a stressful situation and someone said something funny. Chances are you felt a ton of joy in your entire body while releasing the stress that was the moment or project before that comment.  

The same goes for me today. I make sure I find ways to integrate fun moments into my day and when I need a pick me up, I pick up the phone and start calling people on my team just to say hello. Finding time in your day for the joyful things is what separates a hellish day from a day that you can get through with a smile on your face. It doesn’t mean it alleviates all the stress, but it can help you to process all the challenges you may be facing.  

When I’m having a rough day, nothing breaks it up and de-stresses it like a quick phone call to someone in my org to just check in and say hello. Although my team will tell you they love it when I call to check in, say congrats on a great month, and just ask how they are doing, they don’t really know that those phone calls are even more valuable for me. They help brighten my day more than they know and I’m so thankful each time someone picks up my call.  

You also have to find time to break up the day with slack threads with great co-workers, meetings that start with shooting the shit of the weekend ahead, and icebreaker moments in which you ask everyone in the meeting who their spirit animal is. Find ways to break up your days by having fun. If laughter is the best medicine then finding time in your day to have fun with peers is the vitamin we all need daily.  

Finding time for yourself

It sounds so easy and so cliche but when you’re trying to live your personal life and handle a demanding job, finding time for yourself tends to get shoved in the closet. If you follow my writing, you may have pieced together that I started playing Call of Duty on my Playstation at an extreme rate around the time of the panic attack. While that is one way I have enjoyed finding time for myself, it’s only a piece of it.  

Although I’m not winning any Pulitzer’s anytime soon for my run on sentences and lack of punctuations, I do enjoy writing. Hell I’m not even sure I know what a verb is, but it’s always been an outlet for me. I love to sit down in front of the laptop with my headphones on and zone out around a topic that I can share with others. The time I spend writing is cathartic and it's a hobby I wish I would spend more time on.  

You have to invest in your own time, whether it’s exercise, going for walks, therapy, or anything that is designed to set aside personal time. It’s so important for you to stop thinking about your work for an hour or two and really pour your mind and heart into something else. I would also encourage you to think about small tasks that you can do consistently. I hear a lot of people talk about golf, which is really a great way to invest in time for yourself, but you’re not likely to go golfing every single night. So find ways to break it down into tasks that allow you to process the day’s events while zoning out.  

I share this very vulnerable and personal story with you because I want you to know that if you’re dealing with a feeling of extreme stress, you’re not alone. I always used to think that extreme stress was just the trailer that you pulled behind you when you signed up for a certain leadership title. The reality is that stress will always be there, the difference is in how you handle it. Your mental health is more important than any job, and while that’s easy to say in theory it’s much harder to pull off in practice.  

I’ll end with this little disclaimer, I’m incredibly grateful to work for the company I do. There are few places that treat their employees and leaders the way that our company does. This article has absolutely zero to do with the way Zillow creates and or drives stress in me specifically. I couldn’t be more thankful to have the support and tools I do to be successful in my role. I am one of the lucky ones who wake up every day surprised that I get paid to do what I truly love to do. (don't tell them I said that)

by Scott Bond