TLDR: Stress Intelligence (SQ) is the capacity to notice signals in your body and mind, interpret when pressure is shifting from acute to chronic, and respond in ways that protect decision quality, relationships, and long-term health and performance. As work shifts from short bursts to sustained pressure, Stress Intelligence is becoming a core workplace capability, not for avoiding stress but thriving within it over time.

Stress is not new. Pressure, challenge, and uncertainty have always been part of meaningful work and discomfort core to learning and growth. 

What is new is the duration and density of pressure people are operating under. 

Modern work is no longer defined by short sprints or isolated peaks. Instead we work in environments of sustained intensity, compressed recovery windows, and rising cognitive and emotional load layered on top of already demanding roles. Always on. Always reachable. Always behind. 

In this context, chronic stress rarely arrives as a dramatic breaking point. It accumulates quietly and pervasively, keeping the body and brain in a prolonged state of activation, gradually depleting health and the capacity to recover and adapt.

This is where performance and health begin to erode, with burnout as the invoice. Not because stress exists, but because we’ve been missing a critical capability to interpret and respond to it. 

Stress Intelligence names that gap. 

“Burnout isn’t the core problem. It’s what happens after months or years of missing or overriding signals. Stress intelligence is reading the system at mile marker five, not waiting for the breakdown at mile marker twenty.”

— Dr Lydia Roos | Chief Scientific Officer, WONE | Health Psychologist, Stress Scientist

The Failure Mode of High Performance Under Chronic Stress

Two equally capable people can be exposed to the same pressure – the same deadlines, expectations, and complexity – and yet experience radically different trajectories over time.

One adjusts early. They remain clear-headed under pressure, recover faster, and sustain the energy, health, relationships and clarity of mind that compound into a long, thriving career. 

The other keeps pushing, convinced they are simply paying the cost of their ambitions, until their capacity quietly, and then suddenly, collapses.

For years, research has shown us the outcomes of chronic stress at work: burnout, poor decision-making, disengagement, health breakdown, and short-termism.

The World Health Organization recognizes burnout as an “occupational phenomenon” linked to chronic work stress, with Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace reporting that 76% of employees experience burnout at least sometimes.  

It has also identified many of the right behaviours:

• The most effective CEOs structure their time intentionally.
  Research from McKinsey shows that high-performing CEOs deliberately allocate time to a small number of high-impact priorities, rather than reacting continuously to operational demands.
  
  

• Reflection improves leadership effectiveness under pressure.
  BCG’s "The Rewards of CEO Reflection" finds that CEOs who carve out protected time to step back from day-to-day urgency make better long-term decisions and are more effective at navigating complexity and uncertainty.
  
  

• Teams with space to rest and reflect outperform those operating in constant urgency. Research highlighted by Harvard Business Review shows that even brief micro-breaks during the workday improve focus, energy, and sustained productivity, helping teams maintain higher engagement and performance over time.

What’s been harder to explain is why some people and organizations act on these insights early, and others don’t, even when they know better. 

“Under stress, ambitious people almost always make the same trade-off: immediate relief over sustainable performance.”

— Dr Ashely Whillans | WONE Scientific Advisory Board | Professor, Harvard Business School

Stress Intelligence fills that gap. It explains why two equally capable leaders, under the same pressure can diverge over time. Why one adjusts early while the other just keeps pushing.

As work has shifted from short bursts of intensity to prolonged, cumulative pressure, Stress Intelligence becomes the critical bridge between experiencing stress and building real resilience. 

What Stress Intelligence Changes at Work

Stress itself is a natural physiological response to challenge or change. In the short term, it can sharpen focus, mobilize energy, and support growth. In the right dose, stress is not only helpful but entirely necessary.

The problem begins when stress is treated as one size fits all, flattened into “busy” or “overwhelmed”, dismissed as weakness, or glorified as the price of success. 

At work, we’ve learned to override signals that we would never ignore elsewhere. We wouldn’t walk on a fractured ankle or work through a high fever. Yet we routinely dismiss chronic fatigue, irritability, cognitive narrowing, and emotional reactivity as things to push through.

​​Without Stress Intelligence:

• Mental and physical signals are overridden in the name of productivity

• Recovery is delayed or skipped entirely

• Resilience is confused with endurance

• Performance holds in the short term…until it suddenly collapses

At its core Stress Intelligence reframes stress as valuable information that can be acted on early. 

Restoring Agency, Upstream: How Stress Intelligence Works

Stress Intelligence restores agency. Instead of reacting automatically, people with high SQ notice early signals – biological, behavioural and contextual – and pause long enough to interpret what they mean. 

They can differentiate: 

• Controllable stress from uncontrollable stress

• Acute pressure from chronic load

• Moments that call for action from moments that require recovery

Crucially, they can match the response to the stressor. 

This might mean problem-solving and boundary-setting when pressure is controllable. Or acceptance, reframing, and emotional regulation when it isn’t. Often, it means protecting recovery not as a reward for finishing, but as infrastructure for thinking clearly.

Stress Intelligence doesn’t promise to eradicate stress or remove pressure. It enables people to stay inside their capacity long enough for potential to compound.

Why Emotional Intelligence Isn’t Enough

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) has shaped leadership thinking for decades, and for good reason. Understanding emotions, navigating relationships, and responding with empathy matter deeply.

But Emotional Intelligence operates downstream. It assumes we have the biological and psychological capacity available to flex it. 

Stress intelligence operates upstream. It protects the nervous system, cognitive bandwidth, and emotional regulation required for Emotional Intelligence to function in the first place.

In environments of sustained pressure, this distinction matters. By the time someone needs Emotional Intelligence most – in moments of conflict, complexity, or high-stakes decision-making – stress may already have eroded their ability to access it.

In this sense, Stress Intelligence becomes the prerequisite for Emotional Intelligence. 

Why Stress Intelligence is the Workplace Capability for 2026

Work has changed faster than our models for managing human capacity. We are operating in environments optimized for chronic stress:

• Boundaryless work and constant connectivity

• AI accelerating pace, expectations, and uncertainty

• Rising cognitive load alongside shrinking recovery time

At the same time, organizations are absorbing the downstream costs: poorer decisions, disengagement, rising health claims, and leadership burnout.

Just as Emotional Intelligence reframed emotions from liabilities to leadership signals, Stress Intelligence reframes stress as information about system design and human limits.

It shifts the core question from: “How much can people endure?” to: “How intelligently are we responding to pressure?”

“Being able to stay in your flow, in that optimal performance…that’s what Stress Intelligence can really unlock.”

– Reeva Misra | WONE Founder and CEO 

In this context, Stress Intelligence emerges not as a wellbeing concept but as a core performance capability. One that determines who sustains effectiveness over decades and who burns out within years.

Stress Intelligence in Practice

For too long, we’ve treated resilience as toughness: the ability to keep going regardless of cost. In practice this looks like oscillating between overwhelm and brute endurance. 

Stress intelligence offers a different model for engaging with high performance. And in a world of sustained pressure, it may just be the most valuable performance skill of all.

As entrepreneur Brent Hoberman puts it:

“Great founders don’t win by sprinting once, they win by performing at a high level year after year. Stress Intelligence is what allows that compounding advantage, just as it does in elite sport.”

– Brent Hoberman | WONE Advisor | 2x Unicorn Founder and Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Firstminute Capital, Founders Factory & Founders Forum Group

The advantage is less about heroic effort and more about early and informed perception.

People with high Stress Intelligence don’t push more. They notice sooner. They adjust earlier. And over time, those upstream decisions compound to protect performance, health, and relationships simultaneously.

The Choice Ahead

Stress is inevitable. Chronic misinterpretation is not.

Performance cultures have championed resilience while overlooking the signals and conditions that make resilience possible. That trade-off is no longer sustainable.

The leaders and organisations that will define the next decade won’t be those who can tolerate the most pressure. They’ll be the ones who can interpret it earliest and respond to it most intelligently.

The signals are already there. The advantage now lies in who knows how to work with them.

Sources

• McKinsey & Company. The Mindsets and Practices of Excellent CEOs.
  https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/the-mindsets-and-practices-of-excellent-ceos
  
  

• Boston Consulting Group (BCG). The Rewards of CEO Reflection (2024).
  https://www.bcg.com/publications/2024/the-rewards-of-ceo-reflection
  
  

• Harvard Business Review. Don’t Underestimate the Power of Small Breaks During a Busy Workday (2024).
  https://hbr.org/2024/03/dont-underestimate-the-power-of-small-breaks-during-a-busy-workday
  
  

• World Health Organization (WHO). Burn-out an “occupational phenomenon”: International Classification of Diseases.
  https://www.who.int/news/item/28-05-2019-burn-out-an-occupational-phenomenon-international-classification-of-diseases
  
  

• Gallup. Employee Burnout: Causes and Cures.
  https://www.gallup.com/workplace/508898/employee-burnout-causes-cures.aspx