These days, it seems everyone is looking for a prescription for something – headache, depression, love, success. When we ask managers what prescription they’d like someone to write for their team, one of the most frequent answers we receive is, “a prescription for managing stress.” They tell us that when tension is high, productivity is low, and conflict grows.
As the manager, you are responsible for reducing both your own stress and the stress of your team. When you are reducing stress, you are increasing your company’s bottom line. Job stress is estimated to cost American companies more than $300 billion a year in health costs, absenteeism, and poor performance. Yes, billion with a B.
Managing stress well can mean the difference between success or failure in the workplace. Our prescription for managing stress in your workplace has four parts.
Manage Yourself
Start with getting a handle on your own stress. Most of us blame outside sources for our stress, but the truth is that it’s how we handle outside events that creates stress. As the leader, how you handle stress sets an example for the whole team. When you focus on being calm and resilient, you not only reduce your own stress, but you help to minimize the “trickle down stress” that can affect your team.
Manage Expectations
If you have been leading well, your team has played an active role in setting goals and establishing expectations. As the manager, it’s your job to ensure that expectations are consistent with the skills, resources, and capacity available. Encourage the team to adjust as necessary. Help your team members to set appropriate and reasonable expectations for themselves and for others to reduce the stress that results when goals are not met.
Manage Communication
Your team is constantly receiving and sending information, both up and down the organizational ladder. As a manager, you often act as the messenger who delivers these messages. Making certain that communication is complete, timely and accurate goes a long way to reducing stress in the workplace by ensuring that all sides feel heard and understood. Openness and transparency are keys to a culture of trust and respect. Stress is a by-product of secrets, hidden agendas and keeping people “out of the loop,” so avoid these behaviors at all costs.
Manage Time
Deadlines can be deadly when it comes to managing stress. Too many deadlines falling at the same time can really increase the stress quotient for your team. Allowing enough time to complete tasks will reduce stress. As the manager, you oversee the clock, so make sure that you monitor how a task is progressing before the deadline looms and adjust as necessary. Plan for the bumps in the road that are bound to occur so that you don’t miss the mark at the end.
Following this prescription will not eliminate stress from your workplace, but it will go a long way to minimizing the toll stress takes on both morale and productivity.