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Are you feeling the strain – UK Economy losing 100m days a year
due to stress
Increasingly more and more people are talking
about stress at work, at home and in life generally.
But what exactly is stress, how does it affect us and how
do we differentiate it from the very uplifting and motivating experience
that we refer to as pressure?
Pressure is about being able to cope very
well with all the things that we have to do on a daily basis and
it is possible to be extremely busy at work and at home and not
feel any of the symptoms of stress.
This is because pressure is not at all harmful; in fact it
is good for us. However,
when the pressures become more than our ability to cope or even
more than our perceived ability to cope, then it turns to stress. Once stress sets in our productivity begins
to curtail, but how do we know whether we are suffering from stress? The symptoms tend to fall in to two camps, physical
and behavioural:
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On the physical side in the early stages short term
stressful situations such as a driving
test
or an exam can cause dry mouth, sweaty palms, need to pass water,
hair on end etc. These are
all unpleasant but soon disappear after the stressful event has passed.
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If
the stressful event is ongoing then the physical symptoms move up
to a new level in the medium term and can cause clenched or
grinding
teeth, sleepless nights and skin problems.
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In the long term this can lead to high blood pressure, stomach
ulcers and even heart disorders, whereas on the
behavioural
side we are looking at increased irritability, loss of sense of
humour,
aggression, withdrawal and blaming others to name just a few.
Estimates vary but around 100m days a year
are lost to the British economy through stress, as well as
lower
productivity from people who are still coming to work but are too
stressed to carry out their normal functions. Clearly the cost to businesses is huge as well
as the stress caused to the individuals concerned. Many people can often relate to these symptoms
and feel genuinely stressed at times, however, apart from drinking
less coffee!, are often unaware of what to do.
Dealing with ongoing stress is something
that most
people in everyday life need to get to grips with in the same way
that they would have got to grips with their time management issues,
leadership problems and general level of assertiveness.
Despite popular belief stress isn't
just caused by work or by awful events in the news.
It's actually caused by a wide range of components and rather
than people thinking of stress as a large weight of intertwined
problems pressing down on them it is more beneficial for people
to separate these out into their component parts.
Change
Change is a well-known source of
stress for people at work and in their social and family lives.
Whereas people are mostly victims of change, it simply happens
to them with very little control being exercised, in most areas
a common mistake made by people already feeling quite stressed is
to throw themselves into a further bout of controllable change i.e.
changes they do have control over e.g. change in job, moving house
and to some degree additions to the family. Here the question to ask is, "The way I
am feeling at the moment, would this further change be as good as
a rest for me or would it simply add an extra burden of stress at
a time when I am least able to cope?"
Organisational Stress
The sources of organisational stress
come from 2 areas: the first is what individuals themselves bring
to the workplace and secondly the hierarchy itself.
On an individual basis people who
have either naturally, or who have developed, skills such as confidence,
open communication, practical solutions focus, organisation and
time management don't have an immunity from workplace stress but
are simply better placed to deal with the potential stressors of
each day. People who don't
have these skills make themselves more vulnerable to workplace stress.
This is why when we observe people in the same department
we can see that some are coping well and some are not, people who
thrive on change and see it as a challenge and those who are simply
terrified by it.
Secondly, in terms of the hierarchy
itself, people coming to work who are part of a genuine team where
there is mutual support and understanding, who report into a real
leader who motivates them through a sense of achievement, recognition
and responsibility, who communicates with them regularly and empowers
them once again does not create an immunity from stress.
It simply helps individuals cope so much better compared
to those who are simply one in a disparate group of work colleagues,
who is not empowered, poorly motivated and kept in the dark.
Behaviour
People whose behaviour is passive,
are people who don't speak up. They
see consequence in the smallest of their actions, are unable to
say NO and either don’t express themselves at all or do it so badly
everyone ignores them. Passive people are often said ‘not to be living
their lives, but to be lived by their lives’. This lack of control is one of the major causes
of stress amongst individuals. Here
the remedy is to be genuinely assertive.
You don't have to be confident to be assertive but developing
and practising assertive skills will soon give you the confidence
you need to regain control. Assertiveness
is about getting a balance between you and other people regarding
mutual rights and responsibilities as well as being able to express
yourself in a clear and direct way while always being courteous
and polite.
Stress Proneness
People who are regarded as stress
prone are often the fast moving, quickly paced individuals who pack
so much into every day, always conscious of time, anxious about
deadlines, always trying to do several things at the same time,
doing one thing while thinking about the next, often irritated by
queues and slowness of other people, often have the belief that no-one can do the job as well as they can which
often makes them poor delegators.
These people are often referred to as 'A' Type and are compared
to their more relaxed easygoing 'B' Type colleague.
Here the goal is not for busy 'A' Types to transform themselves
into easygoing 'B' Types (as was the case with stress courses in
the early 90's which often left 'A' Type people really perplexed)
but to get stress prone people merely to chip away at their needlessly
excessive 'A' Type characteristics, which add no value to their
life or to the process.
Peripherals
By this we mean the areas of stress,
which are important to get to grips with, but are peripheral to
dealing with the core problem. Things like drinking less coffee, smoking less,
being careful that alcohol consumption does not rise during stressful
times, cutting down on fast foods and chocolate, drinking more water
and eating 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day.
These factors combined with better exercise, relaxation and
enjoying ourselves both in and outside of work helps create a much
healthier balance in our lives and helps put so many of the perceived
stressors in perspective.
There is now a training
course is available that deals with these issues.
It
seems strange to imagine how a day spent covering the above can
be remotely described as enjoyable. However, that is exactly just what attendees
find. They realise that there
is absolutely no stigma attached to attending this course but in
fact that it is one of the courses in business life such as Time
Management, Managing Change and Leadership that everyone should
attend and benefit from.
Steve
Hallett, Director, Ace Training and Consultancy Limited on
Tel:
023 8040 5616
E-mail:
steve@acetraining.net
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