We are living in a pressure cooker environment. Increasingly all of us asked to deliver more with less. Our stress zones are being stretched. It is tossing up multiple balls in the air and making sure we do not drop any of them. It is simultaneous and competing priorities at work and not serialized priorities as time management gurus might have taught us in the past. The distinction between life and work is blurring and too fast. It is shrinking to greatness even it sounds like an oxymoron! The dividing line between eustress and distress is fast disappearing. Welcome to the world of management reality! Make no mistake. Stressful work environment is no longer the prerogative, if I may say so, s of the busy CEOs. It has become part and parcel of every manager's life in modern organization.

Stress is universal and democratic:
First line managers are expected to deliver both qualitatively and quantitatively more today than ever before. They are expected to demand high performance from their team. They are often told that they hold the magic key to employee engagement. They are held accountable for recruitment and retention. They need to differentiate people when it comes to rewards and recognition and prove to the whole word that in doing so, they have been fair!

Middle managers in most organizations are known for their stress. They are often questioned for their value addition. I have coined a term to describe their predicament. I call this "the Mridangam Syndrome". The metaphor here is to describe the fact they get beaten on both sides like the mridangam instrument. They have to prove their mettle to bother their juniors and their seniors in the organization in terms of pursuing the cause of both the categories of employees. The major cause of stress for the middle manager is constant nagging from both people below and above complaining that they are slowing things down and that they are not passing information up and down as the case may be.

Senior managers have a set of challenges that puts them under pressure all the time. The sheer facets of these challenges are stressing enough, if not the specific issues at hand. They are expected to balance many things such as short term and long term, be close to people and yet maintain a distance, cut costs and invest for growth, weed the worst performers and bind the best performers, and the list goes on.

Building resilience as key to