Stress Management
Relax. Take a rest. Go fly a kite, or just calmly sit and watch the world go by. Easy to say, but often difficult to do—maybe even stress-producing. Stress exists in everyone’s life, but not all stress is necessarily bad. What stresses one individual might not stress another. Managers might have their own stress, plus inherited stress of others. How stress manifests itself, how we react; and how we manage it can be different for each of us. For example, the opportunity to present the outcome and success of a team project to upper management might be an agonizing prospect for one employee, but an honor, a challenge, and great fun for another. Our response to stress can take different forms:
● Physiological: Increased heart rate, muscle tension ● Behavioral: Talking faster, social isolation, decreased or increased productivity ● Cognitive: Negative thinking, unwanted recurrent thoughts, new ideas ● Emotional: Excitement, anxiety, depression
Stress can undermine our effectiveness. Agitation and short fuses discourage employees or colleagues to approach each other in an open, nondefensive manner. If you are stressed, others know it, and the effect cascades. Calm, controlled leadership can inspire calm, controlled employees. Ability to identify stressors, their effects, and methods to harness the energy that stress produces can make managers more effective. It would be ideal if we could eliminate all stressors, but that would be unrealistic in the complex world where we live and work. You can remove some stressors from your life—a process that, in and of itself, can prove stressful. Some people actually take comfort in knowing that they are stressed–they are in demand, or they consider the causes of their stress to be important. Any method that you find effective in approaching stress is acceptable as long as the stress does not negatively impact your life or those around you. People are different; they want or need different things, they behave differently (even under the same circumstances) and may believe differently. Some people like to be around other people, while others prefer to be by themselves—going to a party is actually stressful for some. Some make decisions quickly, while others prefer to keep their options open, perhaps collecting more information before making a decision. Some enjoy working from checklists, laying things out in an orderly fashion and systematically accomplishing items one at a time. Others find their creativity stymied if they are forced to work under such requirements, and they find it humorous to infuriating that more time might be spent documenting the performance of activities than in actually performing them. Some are highly rational, logical, and orderly, while others are reflective and intuitive. Some go “by the book,” doing things consistently and predictably every time. Others seek creativity and innovation; they thrive on chaos and are bored by routine. Experience shows that some personal styles are generally better suited to technical endeavors, scientific activities, and engineering. Certainly not all engineers are alike, but there are many similarities in personality traits that lead to similarities in managing stress. There are many personality-testing instruments available today. None comes close to measuring all the nuances of human personality, but they can help us to obtain a glimpse of who we are. The Meyers-Briggs Temperament Indicator is one of the best known. The full test consists of several hundred questions, although a shorter adaptation was developed by David Kiersey and Marilyn Bates. The tests examine the way people perceive the world and the way they determine what to do. Human reactions and perceptions have been analyzed, and the tests are designed to identify an individual’s traits; i.e., general personality styles. People often straddle more than one category, and categories can overlap. The tests’ designers believe that it is important to pay attention to those personality elements (i.e., psychological preferences and needs) that have the most significance, while acknowledging the overlaps. Both tests score along the same four scales below and are available on the Internet or through management consultants. Remember that the tests are not infallible but are merely indicators of personality and temperament. Test instruments can be fooled if not answered directly and truthfully. In addition, temperament on the day of the test can moderately affect results. The results can identify strengths and weaknesses in leadership as well as stressors that need to be mastered in order to be more productive and effective.
1. E/I = Extrovert/Introvert: This scale measures the ways in which use of perception and judgment is affected by yourself and those around you. The person who prefers to be with other people probably tests more E than I. The person who prefers his own inner world of ideas and reflection probably tests more I than E. Approxima