Performance Under Pressure - Effective Human Interactions: Detecting Stress in Others

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The second guideline to help you deal with stressed colleagues is detecting their stress. It's helpful to know colleagues' work styles because reactions under pressure are related to assertiveness and responsiveness. For example, expressives, being both assertive and emotional, may become angry. Or, amiables may become docile, given their lack of assertiveness and desire to please.
Identifying Emotional States
When trying to detect stress responses in others, behaviors are usually more obvious from the more overtly assertive styles - expressives and drivers. However, with analysts and especially amiables, it can be harder to recognize the subtle differences between normal and reactive behavior.
When detecting stress in colleagues, try to identify their emotional states. You can do this by listening carefully to what they say and how they say it. You can gather clues from how they respond to external events such as someone greeting them or asking them to do something. For example, if under pressure, their style-based behavior may become more extreme or more rigid.
Learning to Recognize the Signs
Having spent a lot of time with colleagues, you should learn to note specific signs of stress in their behavior. For example, your manager is an expressive and he frequently becomes agitated with you when the team doesn't meet its deadlines. A typical behavior that indicates stress is demonstrative body language, for example pointing, visible tiredness, or a defensive body position.
It's beneficial to think about your colleagues' feelings. Ask yourself how their behavior makes you feel. For example, when your manager's agitated, do you feel guilty? Being able to identify that the behavior is related to stress can help you deal with it better. For example, instead of feeling guilty, you can choose not to take the reaction personally.
Remember Sally and Noah? There are many ways that Noah could've identified Sally's emotional state to improve his reaction toward her. Her body language indicated she's an expressive, as she was waving her arms around as she spoke.
Sally's tone of voice indicated that she was upset. It was high pitched and she spoke very quickly. Sally also expressed fear of losing the client. (...)
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