Page 30 - Council Journal Autumn 2019

FEATURE Stress is Contagious
How was the situation meaningful to me? Sometimes, steps we take to reduce stress can have the unintended consequences of triggering more stress. If a manager says they are going to take a hands-off approach to manage the stress load, they can find this is actually worsening their stress because they lose visibility into how projects are progressing.
tunnel. But this can become very difficult when your work never seems to let up. If your job doesn’t have natural breaks, create recovery periods for yourself. These can be organised around common stressors like business travel or key meetings, or spaced at regular intervals. Be as vigilant (and guilt-free) at scheduling activities that relax you as those that are work-related.
pressure to respond. Therefore their entire team exercise more caution about sending emails on the weekend, clearly marking what was truly urgent, and people can then start showing up to work more refreshed on Monday.
By uncovering what’s causing you stress, you can develop workable solutions to address the sources and not just the symptoms. Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson describe in their book It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work how excessive workloads are touted as badges of honor in many organisations, even as employees complain about how overwork is detrimental to their well-being.
Plan for stress by planning around it
In fact, the top goal of many affected by stress is to get a handle on their workload by finding strategies that reduce the amount of work, such as better delegation or expectation setting. But this on its own is rarely enough. You can make adjustments, but there will always be more work. Instead, start by examining how you feel about the workload. Do you feel compelled to be perfect? Are you prone to second-guessing yourself? Is there a pattern in your career of not saying no to requests?
Because stress is so prevalent at work, we talk about it — a lot. While sharing our stress can make us feel better momentarily, we’re actually contributing to a stressful culture because emotion spreads. In short, saying “I’m so stressed” increases stress for other people. Plus, what we focus on gets stronger, so we can even increase our own stress by talking about it. This doesn’t mean that you should be inauthentic. A more helpful approach is to share that, while work is stressful, you’re trying to manage yourself so it has less of an impact. By sharing strategies you’re employing, you model for others that it’s acceptable to push back against stress instead of accepting it. As a bonus, if you state what you’re doing out loud, you’re more likely to follow through on your commitments.
We’re not as helpless as we might think. By exercising your own sense of agency, you can reduce your own stress and show others how to do the same. You might just shift the culture. Because while stress may be contagious, so is calm.
Every job has busy periods when the best strategy is to hunker down and look for the light at the end of the
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For instance, a manager instructing his or her team to refrain from checking or responding to emails during the evening ro at weekends, means that others are relieved of the
Kristi Hedges is a senior leadership coach who specialises in executive communications and the author of The Inspiration Code: How the Best Leaders Energise People Every Day and The Power of Presence: Unlock Your Potential to Influence and Engage Others. A version of this article first appeared in Harvard Business Review.
Create pockets of sanity
Saying you’re stressed isn’t going to help on its own
While most of us have accepted the idea of stress at work, we still feel surprisingly besieged by it. We can even have meta-stress — where we stress about having stress. Perhaps a better solution is to consider it the norm and plan for it. Jobs are stressful, industries are turbulent, and there are rarely enough resources or time. If that’s the case, how can you keep from adding to the churn and swirl? What are ways you can sustain your own energy and that of others?