Rx For Stress - The stress of exhilarating, creative, successful work is beneficial, while that of failure, humiliation, or infection is detrimental

When dealing with stress, you have two concerns as a manager: controlling your own feelings of burnout and minimizing the stress your employees feel.

As an effective manager, you should provide your staff with the Information it needs to do a good job. You should give regular feedback. If your workers do a good job, say, “Thank you.” Establish easy-to-use channels of communication so your people can tell you when there are problems (like unrealistic deadlines) or when they need help.  In short, demonstrate to your employees that you respect their effort and appreciate the pressure that they are under in today’s tough times. Most important, if you see one of your employees is evidently tired and suffering from work overload, then look for ways to reduce his or her responsibilities, even for the short term. If you are concerned that a worker is putting in extra hours from fear of being terminated, provide reassurance if you can. If you can’t, then level with the individual about the future with you. What about your feelings of stress? The best advice is to learn to pace yourself. The most successful managers we know are those who have learned to go on overdrive for a period, then slow down for a time, then speed up once more, and at the end of the day take a break. If you feel stressed while at the office, take a walk around the block. If you don’t want to leave the office, at least step away from your desk—get some coffee or walk over to the office copier to do your own copying. The object is to get away from the stack of paperwork or long list of e-mails awaiting your attention.

Don’t worry how you will fit a big project into your workday. Rather, plan how you will get it done. Feeling a sense of control will ease the stress. And if you work on the project when you feel most energetic, you will find you are more productive. Finally, try to put people and situations into perspective. Don’t look at each situation at the office as a matter of life and death. Remember: if you don’t complete a project on schedule, the world won’t end.  It’s also unlikely that you will lose your job. Maybe, your supervisor will think less of you, but the added time may help you to

produce a better report or analysis that ultimately will get you a gold star.

In offering advice about stress Health, mention also has to be made of the impact of the following four factors on work fatigue and burnout: task demands, role demands, and physical environment, and interpersonal demands. For instance, managerial positions are particularly stressful because of time deadlines, performance evaluation responsibilities, and decision making activities. In today’s tough times, coping with the demands of senior Health, lack of staff and financial resources, and fast-changing marketplace add to these responsibilities. If roles and responsibilities aren’t clear, then stress can occur. Over time, the stresses can lead to burnout. I don’t need to mention how a poor work environment can add to the feelings of stress, specifically if it is in conjunction with long hours. Finally, differences with thers with whom you work can make the workday less pleasant. In time, interpersonal  onflicts can mean severe pressure on the body and spirit and lead to burnout.

Keeping Stress in Check

It’s easy to advise stressed managers and employees to learn to pace themselves but not so easy for these burned out employees to take the advice. In time, the individuals suffer from burnout and its consequences—including anxiety attacks, headaches, sickness in the stomach, sweaty palms, lack of productivity, loss of

temper and bursts of anger, poor productivity, and memory loss. If you want to learn

how to pace yourself, here are three tips that may help.

1 Stress Diary – These are especially helpful in identifying short-term stress in your life. Not only will detail about stressful situations help you identify the most common sources of stress, they will also help you identify the levels of stress at which you operate most effectively and how you react to stress and if they are appropriate and useful. Every time you make an entry, record the following information:

■ The date and time of the entry.

■ The most recent stressful event you have experienced.

■ How happy you feel now, using a subjective assessment of -10 as the most unhappy and a +10 the happiest you have ever been.

■ How effectively you are working now (a subjective assessment again should be used, with a scale starting at 0 for ineffectiveness to a 10 for greatest effectiveness ever achieved)

■ The reason behind the feelings of stress (being as honest and objective as possible). Review your conclusions and develop an action plan to resolve the problem. To analyze the nature of the problem, you may want to move to the next step. It assumes that your work responsibilities have increased.

2 Job Analysis – Take out a copy of your job description or job analysis and review the specific chores for which you are responsible. Also, review your performance goals to identify those that are most critical. By understanding the priorities in your job, and what constitutes success within, you can focus on these activities and minimize work on other tasks as much as possible. This helps you get the greatest return from the work you do. [Confirm your conclusions with your boss. If you can drop the less-important tasks, do so. Where you can de-prioritize, do so.]

3 Don’t forget your vacation this summer – Given the economy, many executives and managers are choosing to pass up vacation—at best, to take time away from the office but remain at home and in contact with the boss, just in case. If you must stay at home, make it a joyful holiday if you can. The point of vacation time is to refresh yourself for the year to come.

Writer: Continental Who’s Who^® Member Author: Chris Malone