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I was heading up a small team of eight people, each of whom had a full but manageable workload. Some of the team were coping easily nay cheerfully with the work, but one team member claimed to be suffering with work related stress…… what on earth were they on about?!?! I needed to know what causes ‘stress’ anyway?!? – I had to research and trawl through resources to find out, but through what follows, hopefully this can be a short-cut for you!
Did you know that in the United Kingdom 57% of all lost working days are attributed to stress?!? That’s a lot of lost productivity, and a lot of people who are suffering!
What causes some people to suffer from workplace stress when others doing the same jobs are seemingly unaffected? Are there some key strategies to limit the potential for causing stress, both for you and for those people you are managing or employing?
YES!
You may not realise it, but the problem could be simple things that you are either doing or not doing that could be easily fixed.
Let’s Converse!
Healthy people can fall victim to stress due to predictable factors that are easily controlled. The first step in addressing this issue is to ASK!……..
Then….. LISTEN!
Give every member of your team individual attention. The ideal time to do this is during formal feedback sessions – (if you’d like to know more about the benefits of attentive feedback, read this article)
Have an open and honest discussion
Hold regular conversations with your team, hold project meetings, regular 1:1s and performance reviews and through those have a look into what follows:
(For access to a great monthly focus meeting template which includes a section on feedback, visit the Let’s Work Healthy shop).
Overloaded?
Is the work demand achievable? Fundamentally, have you actually given them too much to do?! What is taking up most of the employee’s time? Could it be better managed? What could you put in place to ensure that at busy times, there is a process for dealing with the workload and flagging when the workload is unachievable?
The way deadlines are set needs to be deliberate and thought through, not just by responding to emergent pressures. You’ll often find employees have conflicting deadlines, so let’s think about strategies for managing that. Can they give honest feedback about the demands being too high and do you trust what they are saying? If they have competing demands, can a system be implemented to empower them to prioritise based on defined criteria? Here we need the team member to be confident that they can push back deadlines on some tasks in favour of completing others, knowing that the factors that influenced their choice on which ones to prioritise are well established and pre-agreed by you. You have their back!
Competence is key!
Equip your staff with the competences they need to achieve what is expected of them. Do they feel comfortable asking for help? In a culture where high achievers are praised or where poor work performance is seen as a weakness, your employees may not want to flag their inability to complete what you are asking of them. It is often safer to assume that people will always benefit from training (or refresher training) to make sure they feel confident, even if they claim to be happy with the tasks.
Control…… give it up! (You won’t regret it)
Involving members of your team in how decisions affecting their work and their working conditions is huge in fighting stress! Even if the workload stays exactly the same, and the deadlines don’t shift, I cannot overstate the importance of giving control to your team members over their own work methods and conditions.
Back in 1971 a researcher called Weis conducted now legendary experiments to determine causal factors of stress. Control over your own destiny is THE major factor. The details of these experiments can be found here – what they discovered was that not having control over how things in your day are done, or how they effect you can be a huge cause of stress.
This factor is easily avoided without hurting your business. I’ll explain how…..
The end result, the final goal, is fixed, and of course if that team member is required to achieve that goal then so be it. But, the manner in which the task is undertaken or hours of attendance or work location may not always need to be specified by you. Take a collaborative approach wherever possible. By asking the individual for her input, inviting her to show initiative and making reasonable adjustments to bring the method and working conditions as much in line with her suggestions as possible, you’ll give the team member control over her own working day. The trade off here is that she is still entirely accountable for her performance and the output being achieved, but research has repeatedly shown that she will be happier, healthier and much more productive as a result.
Everyone has status… I mean everyone!
Individuals perform better if their strengths are played to and utilised. Finding a team member’s niche or area of particular skill has multiple benefits, and not just the obvious ones. First of all, utilising someone to maximise what they do best will clearly mean that the most effective person at completing that task is doing it. People enjoy being good at things and enjoy doing things they are good at. But…. Acknowledging someone’s area of expertise in front of their peers and allowing them to own that area of work gives them something that is essential for anyone’s mental health….status!
It doesn’t matter how successful, wealthy or loved someone is, if the sense that their status in a particular area of their life is jeopardised it can plunge them into despair.
Having status isn’t just about being the most senior person in the company, it isn’t just about power or seniority. People need to be acknowleged for what hey know and respected as an authority on at least something in their lives. Just because the office admin junior isn’t the boss, doesn’t mean their need for status can’t be met, as long as the other members of staff respect what they do and consult them about how best to mail merge documents (for example), they will feel appreciated and that they have status in the team. Maslow’s now very famous ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ pegs this need on the fourth tier, lack of fulfilment of this needs prevents satisfaction and will ultimately lead to poor mental health.
Something easy and effective to try – Giving people a small side project or area of work that they excel at, to lead a sub-team on, is incredibly empowering. This has the effect of acknowledging their status in that niche amongst their peers, but also gives them opportunity to develop their project management and leadership skills. Helping people develop their skill set in this way ensures an engaged and competent team report to you! And another bonus? It takes some pressure off you!
Value – is valuable to you and your team
We talked about status earlier, and this goes hand in hand with value, not just of how the individual is perceived by their immediate peers, but also the organisation as a whole.Ask your team members if they feel valued by the organisation, and if they feel that it’s a positive place to work. Be prepared for some home truths here. This may be where you need to work hardest, team wide negativity is a tough nut to crack.
Find out if your team members need support, and make sure you have systems in place to offer them that support. The type of support you are able to offer will depend on the company, its size and other factors. But some examples are:
• Making sure you and the managers (if there are any) above or below you are available to offer support in any practical way possible
• There are simple systems to enable managers to support their staff and the team members to support one another. This may be with coaching sessions, toolbox talks, or simply buddying team members together to allow for sharing of experience
• Ensure everyone knows about these arrangements and facilities, and feels willing and able to use them
• That your team receives regular and constructive feedback! (again this is covered in more detail here)
Surprise Surprise!
During Weis’ research, he also identified something else that is a sure fire way to dramatically increase the stress response in individuals, predictability… or lack of it!
It has been clearly shown that if an individual is aware of an impending situation of high demand or discomfort, and they can prepare for it mentally, stress response is significantly reduced. How can this information be of use to managers and team leaders? – Individuals who know what is expected of them and are in a position to be aware of increases in demand will be able to manage their stress levels much better than those who are left unaware and have the information sprung on them.
You should make sure to operate a strict no surprises policy on your performance and feedback evaluations and appraisals. If you hold six monthly appraisals, and you allow a team member to maintain performance or results that fall below your expectation of them for this period of time, you are setting them (and yourself) up for a stressful outcome. Regular short and documented meetings between you and your team members allows for feedback on performance expectations to be given regularly and openly. Be sure not to surprise your team members with sudden news about improvement requirements that could have been communicated much sooner and less formally. (For access to a great monthly focus meeting template which includes a section on feedback, enter your email address in the box at the top right of this page).
Behind the scenes
The workplace is an environment where people from all walks of life are required to rub shoulders and interact with each other in a ‘professional’ (whatever that means) way.
Is the culture in that workplace one that lets people get away with (or even encourages) unacceptable behaviours, like bullying or intimidation?
Traditionally macho work environments may seem to thrive on allowing this kind of thing to go on, but the truth is, everyone is far better off if these behaviours are stamped out, by the leaders and managers. People who are confident to give things a go, and make mistakes, are always at their most innovative and productive.
Taking a proactive approach to dealing with unacceptable behaviours will give other members of your team a clear understanding of the boundaries, and confidence that if they are on the receiving end of bullying or intimidation, you’ll do something about it.
Workplace culture is a huge topic in itself and has been covered in more detail in other articles on this site, but its important to realise that poor or negative workplace culture causes stress in record time. We’ve all worked in organisations where negativity is the order of the day, and its seen as ‘brown nosing’ to be anything other than derogatory about the company’s goals, aspirations or ambitions. But this is debilitating to every member of staff over time… and change has to start with YOU!
Mean what you say and say what you mean
A key source of stress in the workplace is the feeling of being kept in the dark or worse, being misled. Of course, there will always be information that will be confidential that absolutely must be protected, but is everything that is on the QT, really necessary to be secret?
Open and honest communication with your team promotes a feeling of trust and loyalty. People thrive when they feel that everyone is pulling together for a common goal, and there are no hidden agendas.
In the course of leading a team, you’ll become aware of information, often personal or performance information about the people who report to you. Now this really is the kind of information that is absolutely confidential and must be treated that way.
Where things should be confidential….keep them that way!
This is obvious stuff I know, but the temptation to discuss how a team member has underperformed or other personal information with colleagues is sometimes overwhelming…. Never Gossip!! – Trust me, it always always gets back to people, and you can be sure that the person who is listening to you, will be sure not to share their personal information with you in the future.
A cog in a machine…
Another massive stressor is one that is very often overlooked…. And that is ambiguity in someone’s role. Yes, in modern business, it is often the case that you need your team members to be able to fight fires and respond to changing circumstances, that’s a given… but are they all clear on exactly what is expected of them? Are their role descriptions accurate and clear?
It must be understood what they are and are not responsible for and importantly, what you are responsible for! Being the Team Leader means taking responsibility for how things turn out, and that means two things… you have the final say….. but you may not always know best. Again, use a collaborative approach, this is not showing poor leadership, it is making your team realise they are involved with the process, and that when you make your final decision, you have considered their input.
Your company or organisation will have different people filling different roles, and to help everyone understand where they fit in the organisation and where their responsibilities and tasks mesh with other people’s, it is important to have clear documents that make this obvious to everyone involved. Knowing where they fit will reduce stress on everyone.
Changing Times…
Regularly changing how your company or team is structured, how tasks are done or who is responsible for doing them is often necessary and often very beneficial… but people find change stressful, very stressful.
Psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz explored what happens in our brains when faced with change in an article titled ‘The Neuroscience of Leadership’. He concludes, “Humans have brains designed to register change as a threat, and thus they often cling to old habits and mind sets”. When we are faced with a new way of doing things, the pre-frontal cortex must become engaged and expend a lot of energy to keep focussed and learn the new approach. We therefore have a built-in preference to go on with the comfortable known and stick with methods and habits that require less energy for our brains to process.
Change management is therefore essential to limiting this potentially very stressful time for your team. I have a detailed article here on change management, which can help you avoid the pitfalls and unlock the many benefits of a well delivered change strategy.
Ask your team if they feel your company handles change well, if they feel you consult with them about the change thoroughly and if the reasons are made clear to them.
Take positive steps now
Tackling stress in your team is not only an extremely worthwhile thing to do, but its also a legal requirement if you are a business owner. I have developed a downloadable Stress Buster Meeting Guide to shortcut some of the thinking for you. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) have developed tools that can help you here too – follow these links for free downloads:
If you follow the advice above, and fill out a very simple risk assessment, you will be able to easily make an action plan which will address the HSE’s management standards, and you and your team will be all the healthier and more productive for it!
Get involved
As you can see from the post, I am trying to give simple practical help to leaders wherever I can. I would love to hear your thoughts on the tips in this article, so it would be great if you could leave some comments below. Have you successfully tackled stress in your organisation? Let me know below!
See you for the next article!
Greg Bennett is a Public Health Professional and
Leadership Coach
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