Stress can be very invasive and if you are
not in tune with early warning signs of stress you can often feel as if it has
crept up on you. How you deal with stress is due to historical and habitual
responses. Responses differ as a consequence of different cultures,
experiences, beliefs and personalities. For example, if in a crisis, a report
needs to be produced within a day, you might see this as a challenge or you may
become stressed by it. You could be someone who enjoys managing twenty staff or
be someone who prefers to work at home alone. Ensuring the right person is in
the right job acts as a protection for both the organization and the
individual.
When stressed you are likely to react in
one or more of the following ways:
·
make more mistakes
·
prefer solitude
·
want to go further and further
with the challenges, raising your stress levels ever higher
·
need to be right
·
become over–controlling
·
believe there is something
wrong with you
Resilience is a key
factor in stress prevention. Resilience is the ability to recover despite
periodical setbacks and problems. Highly resilient people know how to bounce
back and find a way to have things turn out well.
Stress can be eased through the ability to
make good relationships because then you are likely to believe that you are OK
and others are also OK. If you have difficulty in forming relationships you are
likely to believe that either, you are not OK and others are better than you,
or that you are better than others. Believing that everyone is OK offers a
secure base from which to operate. When this happens attachment to your team
and to the organization is likely to increase. One outcome of this is that you
will be able to appropriately say ‘No’ to things whilst still keeping yourself
and others OK.
All organizations need to take account of the organizational culture, leadership styles and the current pressures being faced by leaders and shop floor workers alike. It is not only the individual who is responsible for their own stress but so too is the organization. If a manager's leadership style is brusque and aggressive this will inevitably have an effect on the workforce. Good management entails effective
supervision which in turn entails noticing when someone is on overload and
doing something about it.
One of the causes of stress on people is
the need to multi–task. Administrators and secretarial staff have to do this a
lot – be it writing a report, answering a query when someone comes to their
office or answering the phone. Whilst this is an accepted pressure for
administrators it does not mean that it is necessarily any easier for them than
for others. The western world tends to see multi–tasking as good, hence the
comments about women being able to do it well, whereas men are often seen as
lacking this ability. Whether or not this is a fallacy it does highlight that
fact that multi–tasking is valued. Getting your life in balance probably means
doing less multi–tasking and becoming more focused.
For more on managing yourself and others
then buy our book: Working Together,
Organizational Transactional Analysis and Business Performance, Gower, 2011,
also available from Amazon. You can also
attend our Advanced Communication Skills, Level 1, (incorporating the Official
Introduction to Transactional Analysis) later this month but you can register
for our next one in February, 2012. Go
to our website: http://courses.mountain-associates.co.uk/ta101.html
