| Stress Hurts |
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Comments from a manager in a technical industry:Hi Beth,Thanks for this. I always appreciate your insights. I just rarely seem to find the time to write them down and send to you. A couple thoughts on this one. Wrt the portion of the article on why managers act as they do...particularly the point on projecting an image of strength. I sort of agree...
Personally, I do try hard not to project signs of stress. Not because I want to appear strong, but because I am aware of the stress state of my folks and one of the best things I can do in times of change or conflict is present a calm air of normalcy. If I look panicked or stressed, that has a tendency to amplify through the organization and stress out my troops to a greater extent. If I am calm and in control, it tends to diffuse some of the stress... if not, at least I do not make things worse. I suppose this is the signal dampening leadership function(a la Beer).
Also, I know that my own emotional level reactions to leaders that can't deal well with stressful situations is that I feel that they are in above their heads. In my ethos, it is fine for leaders to acknowledge that they have stress and are dealing with it but it is not OK to exhibit signs that it is getting the better of them or in any way allow that to be destructive to the productivity of the team.
One other challenge I find when I try to test and address my work groups- engineer types have a real tendency to shield signs of stress or weakness. Few will openly tell you that yes, they have an issue until there is no alternative or it is too late. Some will deny even to themselves that it is an issue.
I have seen this manifest as:- "leave me alone, I will judge my own work life balance" - until they have a health failure,- the employee that seems fine until they give notice they have left to work for a competitor because of a stressful influence they never shared with their supervisor, but their supervisor could have addressed(commute issues, work tasks that could have been altered, etc),- masking - i.e. workforce will not respond to attempts of leadership to take issues head on (for fear of reprisal? not sure), but given a "safe" alternate topic to target, they completely unload all out of proportion to the topic.
I take this to be an emotional transference from perceived "risky" subject to safe one. This is also perhaps a good remedy if a supervisor can recognize the situation and set up a "safe zone" or topic to to allow the workforce to vent.So, the challenge with my work groups is often to be able to pick up on the signs of the stress. They are often subtly hidden. |
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