Carthage Buckley

When I think of managers and stress, I often think of the airplane safety announcement. During the announcement, passengers are told that, in case of the loss of oxygen, they should fit their own oxygen mask before attempting to assist others. The point: If you do not help yourself first, you will be in no position to help anyone else.Managing stress in the organization is very similar. Any manager who wishes to create a low-stress workplace must first create a low-stress life for themselves. If managers are busy fighting their own personal stress, they will have little of value to offer employees. Managers can reduce their exposure to stress by developing a managerial resilience.Developing managerial resilienceManagerial resilience improves your ability to handle the pressures of the business world. If you wait for stress to arrive before you take action, you are going to experience unnecessary pain. If you implement some coping strategies in your life, you greatly reduce your exposure to stress. Here are some simple strategies to help you increase your managerial resilience.See setbacks as an opportunity to learn. A manager can never be the source of all wisdom. You will make bad decisions and there will be things that you do not know. When mistakes are made, rather than beat yourself up about it, review the incident with an honest and open mind. Identify the things you need to change and put a plan in place to change them.Practice feedback consistently. Interpersonal relationships can cause a lot of stress in the workplace. Stressful situations often arise due to a lack of communication. Employees require guidance and support if they are to thrive.Praise employees for good performance and offer constructive feedback when their performance falls below expectations. This will take just a few minutes of your day but it lets employees know where they stand and prevents minor incidents from developing into stressful situations.Guard your time. Employees need to know how and when they can reach you, but they do not need to be able to reach you 24/7. Set barriers around your time. When completing important tasks, make it clear that you are not to be disturbed. This will allow you to complete the task in the most effective manner.It also encourages employees to try and resolve some of their own issues, without running to you. When you adopt this behavior, some people may initially be upset but they eventually learn to respect both you and your time.Exercise regularly. A healthy body and mind are essential for coping with the pressures of managerial life. Strength and fitness increase your resilience. Build some exercise into your daily routine and you will soon feel the benefits. A word of caution: start slowly and gradually increase the difficulty. The purpose is to avoid stress rather than create it.Ensure that you get sufficient rest. You are designed to cope with periods of high pressure. However, when the pressure becomes too much for you to cope with, stress begins to creep in. To prevent this from happening it is essential that periods of high pressure are balanced with periods of rest and recovery. Ensure that your sleep is of sufficient quantity and quality. In addition, you may alsotake a brief nap (20-30 minutes) in the middle of your dayinclude some breathing exercises e.g. yogameditateuse relaxation imagery.Include sufficient breaks in your schedule. These steps may seem counterintuitive, but rest allows the body and mind to recover from high pressure activities, and build up strength and resolve for the challenges to come. When you know that you have sufficient rest in your schedule, you can give 100 percent during periods of work, allowing you to perform to a higher standard, more of the time. Rest improves productivity.Build your support team. Nobody succeeds alone. Success requires a good support team. You need people you can confide in, people who can advise you, people who will challenge you and hold you accountable, and people who will support you through good times and bad. Surrounding yourself with the wrong people will hold you back and cause you stress.Surrounding yourself with the right people will propel you forward, further than you ever thought possible. Your support team is too important to be left to chance. Be selective about the people you include, treat it as though you are recruiting for a key position because—in reality—you are.Enjoy some personal time. Emotional balance is vital to maintain good health. The pressures of a busy work life can easily drain your emotions. To restore emotional balance, include some personal time in your schedule. Incorporate activities that bring you joy and pleasure into your schedule. If you have a hobby you enjoy, make time for it. Anything which makes you laugh uncontrollably is also good. Enjoying quality personal time will work wonders for your health and happiness.Maintain perspective by projecting forward. When you are having a bad day, it can feel like the world is caving in. It can be really hard to see past the difficult situation that you find yourself in. At times like this, remember that tomorrow is another day that brings new opportunities. Look forward into the future and ask yourself if the present situation will be such a big deal in six months, one year, or two years. You will see that this difficult time shall pass.Managerial life involves a lot of pressureKnowing how to handle that pressure is crucial if you wish to avoid stress and maintain good health. If you are struggling with stress yourself, you are not in a position to help your employees. When this happens, your stress can start to impact on others within the organization.Just like with the oxygen mask on a plane, you must care for yourself before you are in a position to care for others. Improving your managerial resilience is the best way to care for yourself. It offers you great protection from stress. If you make a few small changes, you will take giant strides towards a low-stress life, and consequentially, a low-stress workplace.

Managerial Resilience

Managers often ask me for the one piece of advice that they can implement to help create a stress-free environment. The answer often takes them by surprise. I tell them to ensure that their employees understand the most important principle of stress management: There is no such thing as good stress.Distinguishing between pressure and stressFor years, stress management professionals have perpetuated the myth that a certain amount of stress is good for employees.  They claim that it helps them perform to their best. In this belief, they have confused pressure and stress.Pressure arouses the body and mind, preparing employees for the difficult challenges that lie ahead and allowing them to perform at their optimum. As long as employees believe that they can cope with the pressure, there is no difficulty. However, once they no longer feel that they can cope, the symptoms of stress begin to set in.The Health and Safety Executive of the United Kingdom define stress as: “The adverse reaction people have to excessive pressures or other types of demands placed on them.” Stress has often been dismissed as something that is “all in the mind.” However, the differences between pressure and stress are not just psychological, they are physiological too.Research has shown that stressed individuals have higher levels of the stress hormones than someone who is experiencing pressure. Studies have linked stress with a range of physiological illnesses, including:heart attacksstrokesulcersdiabetescanceranxietydepression.None of these consequences of stress are good.The problem with the concept of “good stress”Like any other health issue, the earlier that stress is diagnosed, the easier it is to make a successful intervention. The difficulty is that stress is very much an individual experience. Each individual begins to experience stress at a different point. Therefore, the manager is reliant on the employee to recognize that they are experiencing the symptoms of stress. This requires a culture of awareness, openness, and trust.Employees must be able to trust that they can speak openly with their manager without fearing the consequences of doing so. Once the employee opens the channels of communication, the manager is in a position to help them find a workable solution. There will be many potential solutions available to the manager but they cannot be offered if the employee has not identified, and highlighted, the stressful situation.Talking about “good stress” may seem harmless, but it creates a macho culture in which stress is viewed as a positive thing. Stress is treated like a badge of honor—a reassuring sign that they are working hard. Rather than viewing the symptoms of stress as a warning sign, employees begin to view them as something to be accepted, and expected, as a natural part of working life.In this sort of culture, there is a stigma attached to stress. It is not normal to state that you are struggling to cope with the pressure. As a consequence, stressed employees may feel that it is they who are the problem; not the situation. They are then unlikely to raise the issue with management as they fear it will draw attention to their inadequacies.Rather than discuss their experience with management, stressed employees tend to adjust their behavior in an attempt to cope. Work hours are increased by arriving earlier, working later, and taking shorter, if any, breaks. In the short-term, this may appear to be an effective solution, but fatigue sets in and performance levels drop.Employees may try to extend their working day further, but there are only 24 hours in the day. And the more they try to put off dealing with their situation, the more severe the consequences of their stress become. Eventually, the situation will come to a head due to poor health, poor performance or a reluctant acceptance by the employee that they have to seek help. By the time the situation has come to a head, the employee will have endured a great deal of unnecessary suffering and the consequences will have become more severe than necessary, making the situation more difficult to resolve.Moving forwardWhen dealing with stress management, the greatest gift that a manager can give their employees is awareness of the true nature of stress. Pressure and challenge are necessary to optimize performance in the workplace. An optimum level of pressure enables companies to maximize productivity and allows ambitious employees to fulfill their potential. As such, pressure is a positive thing for management and employees.Stress and pressure must never be confused with one another, however. They are psychologically and physiologically different experiences. Unlike pressure, stress is never good. Employees must understand that stress is both unsustainable and unnecessary.Employees who understand this will be quicker to report any stress related issues they may experience. This provides the manager with the opportunity to intervene swiftly and resolve the situation, thus returning the employee to a healthy and productive situation which benefits both the employee and the company.

Carthage Buckley

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