Managing Stressful Situations: Enhancing Self-Awareness & Resilience in the Workplace
Managing Stressful Situations...
Why this course?
Managing Stressful Situations is an essential skill in today’s fast-paced world, where pressure can come from any direction—be it work deadlines, interpersonal conflict, or unexpected challenges. Everyone experiences stress differently. What feels overwhelming for one person might be energising for another, and understanding these individual responses is key to handling stress effectively.
This course explores the psychology of stress and how our natural fight, flight or freeze responses—once necessary for survival—now shape our behaviour in professional and personal settings. Whether you’re dealing with frustration, conflict, or emotional overload, Managing Stressful Situations helps you regain control and respond with calm, clarity and confidence.
Through engaging discussions and practical techniques, learners build awareness of their personal stress responses and learn how to manage them proactively. Instead of shutting down, avoiding conflict, or reacting defensively, participants develop the tools to stay grounded, think clearly, and communicate effectively—even under pressure.
Managing Stressful Situations focuses on real-life scenarios, equipping you with strategies to remain composed in the face of difficult conversations, demanding workloads or emotionally charged environments. You’ll leave with techniques to de-escalate tension, improve resilience, and support both yourself and those around you when stress levels rise.
Whether you’re a team leader, manager, or simply someone looking to improve your wellbeing, this course empowers you to take control of how you experience and respond to stress—making tough situations feel far more manageable.
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Managing Stressful Situations
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What does it cover?
Managing Stressful Situations: Mastering Self-Awareness & Communication Under Pressure
The Managing Stressful Situations course empowers individuals to better understand how they respond under pressure and equips them with proven techniques to stay calm, think clearly, and respond effectively. Stressful situations at work—especially those involving customer interactions or emotional triggers—can have a significant impact on behaviour, decision-making, and wellbeing. This course helps you take control.
Through increased self-awareness, learners begin to recognise their own stress triggers and the behavioural patterns that follow. Managing Stressful Situations focuses on developing emotional insight so individuals can interrupt reactive habits and replace them with more considered, constructive responses.
Our unique approach uses observational drama and forum theatre to bring stressful scenarios to life—realistic, relatable, and tailored to your organisation. Learners practise managing stressful situations in real time, working one-to-one with professional actors to simulate challenging conversations and receive personalised feedback for growth.
Participants will explore the link between emotion, communication, and performance under pressure. With a focus on customer-facing and high-pressure environments, this course provides practical tools for responding rather than reacting—enabling individuals to remain calm and professional, even when things get heated.
The session ends with reflective practice, helping learners identify specific, personalised strategies they can use to regulate their stress responses and maintain emotional wellbeing.
Whether you’re in a leadership role, part of a customer-facing team, or navigating the daily challenges of a busy workplace, the Managing Stressful Situations course offers valuable, applicable skills that support both personal resilience and organisational success
Excellent course, engaging and informative. Practical tools to use in the workplace
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LIVE ONLINE
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ABOUT Managing Stressful Situations
Who is Managing Stressful Situations suitable for?
The Managing Stressful Situations course is suitable for employees at all levels, across all industries, who want to build greater control and confidence in how they respond under pressure. Whether you’re working in a fast-paced customer service role, managing a busy team, or simply navigating day-to-day workplace challenges, this course provides valuable strategies for staying calm, clear-headed, and composed in stressful situations.
It is particularly beneficial for individuals in customer-facing roles, where emotions can run high and difficult conversations are common. However, Managing Stressful Situations is equally effective for anyone looking to enhance their self-awareness, communication, and emotional resilience. From team leaders and frontline staff to office-based professionals and remote workers, participants gain practical tools that help them respond constructively rather than reactively—no matter what the situation.
If you’re looking to improve your personal wellbeing, support your colleagues more effectively, or lead with greater empathy and composure, the Managing Stressful Situations course offers relevant, applicable skills that make a real difference.
What techniques will I learn to manage stress at work?
On the Managing Stressful Situations course, you’ll gain a practical toolkit of techniques to help you recognise your emotional triggers, regulate your responses, and stay calm and composed under pressure. These techniques are designed to support you in real-world workplace scenarios, especially in customer-facing or high-pressure environments.
You’ll learn how to:
- Identify and understand your personal stress responses
- Interrupt unhelpful patterns like avoidance, shutdown or reactive communication
- Use breathing and grounding techniques to maintain emotional control
- Apply clear, assertive communication even in difficult conversations
- De-escalate tense or emotionally charged interactions calmly and professionally
What makes Managing Stressful Situations unique is its experiential delivery. The course includes observational drama and forum theatre to bring realistic, high-stress scenarios to life. You’ll have the opportunity to practise managing those situations in the moment through 1:1 roleplay with professional actors, receiving personalised feedback to help you build confidence and apply your learning back in the workplace.
By the end of the session, you’ll walk away with stress management strategies you can apply immediately—helping you respond with clarity, empathy and professionalism, no matter how challenging the situation.
How Does This Course Help with Self-Awareness in Stressful Situations?
The Managing Stressful Situations course places self-awareness at the heart of stress management. You’ll explore how your thoughts, feelings and behaviours interact when pressure rises, and learn to recognise your own unique stress responses—whether that’s shutting down, becoming defensive, avoiding conflict, or overreacting emotionally.
Through a mix of interactive exercises, role-playing and guided reflection, the course helps you build a clearer picture of how you typically behave under stress and what impact that has on others. You’ll work with professional actors in simulated real-life scenarios, giving you the chance to observe your reactions in the moment and practise alternative, more constructive responses in a safe and supportive environment.
This process of experiential learning allows you to step back, reflect, and better understand how your communication style, body language and emotional tone shift under pressure. By gaining this insight, you can start to interrupt unhelpful habits and build new strategies to stay present, professional and composed—even when situations feel overwhelming.
Ultimately, Managing Stressful Situations helps you develop the emotional intelligence and behavioural awareness needed to navigate workplace stress more confidently and constructively.
How will I apply what I learn in real-life situations?
The Managing Stressful Situations course is designed to ensure that everything you learn can be applied directly to your day-to-day working life. Rather than focusing on abstract theory, the course centres around realistic, practical learning experiences that mirror the challenges you face in the workplace.
One of the key features of the course is hands-on practice with professional actors. Through simulated conversations and emotionally charged scenarios, you’ll have the opportunity to refine your responses in a safe, supportive environment. This experiential approach helps you build muscle memory for staying calm, thinking clearly, and communicating effectively under pressure.
In addition to live role-play and feedback, you’ll leave the Managing Stressful Situations course with a set of practical, personalised strategies that you can put into action immediately. These techniques will help you manage emotional triggers, regulate stress levels, and improve how you handle challenging interactions—whether with customers, colleagues or stakeholders.
By building your confidence through real-time rehearsal and reflection, this course ensures you’re not just learning about stress management—you’re living it. The result is improved resilience, stronger communication, and a more composed, considered approach to workplace pressure.
What do you mean by ‘forum theatre’ and ‘working with the actors 121’?
Forum theatre’ is when our actors play out a scene, with the learners ‘directing’ how individual characters behave, respond and react in the conversation. Learners can pause, stop the action and rewind, giving them the opportunity to see what works and what doesn’t.
‘Working with the actors on a 121 is’ not role play – we don’t expect learners to be actors! When learners work with our actors for 121 skills practice, the learners are being themselves, and it’s our actors who are playing a character – in this instance, likely to be a customer. Both these drama techniques embed learning and enable interactive skills practice in a safe environment.
Can the drama sessions reflect stressful situations in our business?
Yes — one of the key strengths of the Managing Stressful Situations course is its ability to reflect the real pressures your people face. As part of our process, we’ll hold a dedicated DNA conversation with your team to understand the specific challenges, environments, and stress triggers that are most relevant to your organisation.
From there, we’ll create bespoke drama-based scenarios tailored to your business. These scripts are written to mirror the tone, language and emotional dynamics your learners are likely to encounter, making the learning experience more engaging, relatable, and immediately applicable.
Whether it’s handling a difficult customer, managing an internal conflict, or staying composed in high-pressure meetings, the professional actors in the Managing Stressful Situations course bring those moments to life—allowing learners to practise managing stress in a safe but realistic environment.
How good are we?
THE ted Learning Guarantee!
We have been delivering highly impactful drama-based learning for over 13 years.
If for any reason you are not completely satisfied with the learning we provide and the learner feedback reflects this, we will put it right at no additional cost or give you your money back.
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