Don’t make matters worse
A manager will experience stress, often intense. How she handles it for herself will affect her happiness and abilities. But what should she do with it for her team? Pass it on fully? Multiply it? Or block it out?
An amount of stress is good for our performance. It energizes us, focuses our minds, helps us handle the vicissitudes of work better and grow in skill. Too little pressure and we may wallow in lassitude. Too much and we may lose our composure and perform below our abilities.
Like our managers, we vary in how we handle our stress and use it, both that which comes from outside and that which we create for ourselves. While we work by ourselves on the internal if we have a manager who controls it from one of the external sources, namely work, to the right level for us, aren’t we lucky?
How practical is this idea though? It would need the manager to think about the types of stress, the right level for each team member and have at least a rough way to measure it coming in and passed on. Is it all too much and somewhat unnatural? Would it remove the spontaneity of the manager and make her less effective? Should we let her nature take its course in this matter and just let it be a part of having a good or bad manager? Certainly not, else why would I write this article?
I know you think that thinking is excellent; you believe we should try to improve ourselves in many ways. Therefore, you’ll agree that stress management for the team is one of the essential skills we need in managers. For maximum effect, they need to practise it at the individual’s level.
So please become aware of the flow of stress through the circuits of the offices we inhabit, especially if you are a manager. Study its aspects and effects. Attenuate it, get it right. It will pay back big time for everyone.
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