How is your team managing their stress right now?
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[Written by Steve Van Remortel on July 22, 2020]
TIME TO READ – 3 MINUTES
Has this pandemic increased your stress? What about your team’s stress; are they experiencing more stress right now?
You may not control how much stress you or your team experiences. But you do control one thing:
How you manage your stress and how you empower your team to manage theirs.
Why should you care about the stress of your team?
Authentic leadership in 2020 is caring about the total person. You may argue that if your employee’s stress comes from their home life, it’s not your responsibility.
The issue with that thinking is that you’re assuming that an employee’s personal life doesn’t affect their professional performance.
The leader of the future understands this core principle: When your team is both happy and fulfilled at work and home, they will bring more to their job and perform at a higher level.
“Unhappy workers are 10% less productive. While happy employees perform 12% better.” – Research from the University of Warwick
These may seem like small numbers, but that’s a 22% swing when you take an employee who is stressed and unhappy and empower them to be happy both at work and at home.
Leaders of the future understand the importance of developing the total person.
The two sides of stress
Not all stress is bad stress. There is good stress, which usually comes in small amounts and can push you to achieve more and live a healthier life.
There is also bad stress, which usually comes in excessive amounts and can be debilitating to your performance and life. That’s why it’s essential to know how your stress is impacting your performance and life.
The longer you allow bad stress to go unnoticed and unaddressed, the more challenges you will face, professionally and personally.
It’s not about avoiding stress. It’s about being aware of your stress and if it’s good or bad. The final step is to use that information to develop a plan to manage and reduce your negative stress.
How to create a plan to manage your stress
There is no one size fits all approach to managing stress. Your plan and techniques will look different than mine because we likely experience stress in different areas. So, what does this look like for me?
First, I took our stress quotient assessment to gain clarity about where my stress is coming from and whether it’s good or bad. The largest area where I’m experiencing negative stress is in the things that are out of my control (control index). This means that I’m experiencing the negative effects of stress in the areas where I feel I have little or no impact to move forward.
Until July 31st, Stop The Vanilla offers you and your team a complimentary stress quotient assessment to help you clarify where your stress is coming from and help you create your plan to manage stress.
All you have to do is email info@stopthevanilla.com and mention the free stress quotient.
The next move was to finish my plan and have techniques in place when my stress rises in that area. My techniques for managing stress in this area are:
- Figure out the situation(s) that I am avoiding because of a lack of control
- For each situation, I ask if I’m powerless in making a change or not:
- If the next steps are out of my control, I need to move on and be okay with it
- If I can change the situation, I will then proceed to create a thoughtful process on overcoming that issue
With the right strategy and the right talent, there is no issue you cannot overcome. For me, stress reduction comes with a solid plan to move through it.
When you manage your stress, you will increase your performance and live a better life. And when you empower your team to manage and minimize their stress, you will increase their well-being while dramatically increasing your team’s performance.
Now that is a cure for stress!