MANY NEW MANAGERS BELIEVE THEY should be able to arrange their work life so that there will be no stress. Stress cannot be avoided; occasionally, it will come calling. How you react to it is the key. You cannot always control what happens. What you can control is how you react to what happens to you.
WHAT CAUSES WORK-RELATED STRESS?
There are innumerable causes for work-related stress. We all respond to difficult situations differently. Anything that negatively affects our body or mind is stressful. Here are some typical work-related stressors:
• Receiving no direction or conflicting directions from the boss
• Computer failures
• Constant interruptions
• Priorities constantly changing
• Upper management constantly changing
• Mergers
• Downsizing
• Reorganizations
• Organizational politics
• Time pressures
• Performance pressures
• Poor time-management
• Bringing personal problems to work
• Working long hours for extended periods of time
No doubt you can relate to many of these stressors.
SOME RELIEF
Here is an interesting factor about stress that may make you feel better about the stress you feel early in your managerial career: Most of what seems stressful when you’re new in management will seem ordinary and even mundane after you’re experienced. This possibility reinforces the point that it may be your reaction and inexperience that causes you to consider it stress, rather than the situation itself. That may be a fine point, but the distinction is significant.
Go back in your memory to the days you were taking driver education to learn how to operate an automobile safely. The first time you got behind the wheel was quite stressful. With experience, your ability to drive improved to the point that driving now seems as natural as brushing your teeth. The situation has not changed, but your experience and reaction to it has changed.
How you react to stressful situations is part of your management style. Some managers respond by appearing to be deep in thought. Their brow is furrowed. They are quiet. Unfortunately, this demeanor is contagious to everyone working with you, and it’s contagious in a negative way. However, managers who can smile and be pleasant in what seems to be a stressful situation instill confidence in everyone they are leading.
It’s hard to think clearly when you are uptight and nervous, so that reaction makes the situation worse. That is a double negative. First you have a stressful situation, and then your reaction diminishes your ability to bring it to a successful resolution.
The third negative is the knowledge that you will be judged by how you handle the situation, which adds even more pressure. Telling yourself not to get uptight is like telling someone not to worry. It’s much easier said than done.
There are those who believe that stressful situations get the juices flowing and bring out the best in people. You’ve heard the old saying, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” That is true once you get over the fear of a stressful situation. Fear is like pouring the juices of stress down through a very small funnel.
REACT TO THE PROBLEM, NOT THE STRESS
To succeed, you must convert the fear of a stressful situation into the challenge of a stressful situation. If you are going to be a manager who periodically faces stressful situations, here are seven suggestions for you:
1. Don’t make things worse. Don’t be panicked into impulsive action. It may make matters worse.
2. Take a breath. Take several deep breaths and try to relax. Speak slowly, even if you don’t feel like it. This instills calm in those around you. It says, “He’s not losing his head, and therefore I shouldn’t.”
3. First things first. Reduce the situation to two or three key points that can be handled right away to lessen the urgency of the moment. This will then allow you to process the rest of the issues in a timely but non-emergency manner.
4. Distribute the load. Assign three or four major elements to members of your team to process in parts and then be combined into the whole.
5. Seek advice. Ask for suggestions and ideas from thoughtful colleagues outside your immediate team and from the experienced members of your staff.
6. Be levelheaded. Think about the problem and not your reaction to it.
7. Visualize wisdom. See yourself as an actor playing the role of the wise, calm, and decisive leader. Play that role to the hilt, and after a while it will cease to be role-playing and will be you.
HAVE CONFIDENCE IN YOUR ABILITIES
As a manager, you handle tougher questions than you dealt with before your promotion. If they were all easy, anyone could solve them. You are there because someone saw in you the ability to deal with these more difficult situations. As you move up the corporate ladder, the problems become more complex, or so it seems. The important thing to remember is that your experience will remove most of the stress. When you’ve been a manager for a while, you will not react the same way to the same situation as you did the first few months in your managerial career. It will get better. And you will be more capable.
In the early days in management, just having the job brings elements of stress. That is why so many new managers look intense, as though they are carrying the weight of the world. While the concern and the desire to perform well are commendable, the intensity gets in the way of getting the job done. You are managing people in the tasks they need to complete in order to achieve a desired result. After all you are not leading them out of the trenches with bayonets at the ready, across a minefield, to engage the enemy in hand-to-hand combat.
The best advice for you to follow as a new manager is: “Lighten up.”