“Remember, remember the 5th of November”… although perhaps not for the reason you may think. Next Wednesday is National Stress Awareness Day as well as the day that the English celebrate the botched attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament on this day in 1605. Will your organisation be doing anything to raise awareness of stress in the workplace on this day?
Considering the current economic climate stress and its impact on performance ought to be in the forefront of every manager’s mind. And key to effective stress management is to remember that it is not what causes stress that is important but how one copes with it. Why? Because we work in complex organisations constantly undergoing change. It is an inherently stressful environment and toughening up your employees to effectively handle that stress is a critical step in enabling them and hence your organisation to reach and sustain peak performance. But you do still have to start with identifying the causes of stress.
There are many tools available on the market to help review and identify the causes of stress. But reflecting on past events is not always the best way to identify causal effects of stress; that’s if you are able to create enough time for reflection. A far better method it to capture what is going on in real-time. This can be done effectively by keeping a stress diary for a 7 day period that capturing and reflecting on a normal working pattern.
A Stress Diary needs to be filled in at three different times during the day: in the morning at breakfast (say 8-9am); at lunchtime (12 noon – 1pm); and in the evening (around 6-7pm or just after dinner). Take a few minutes out to fill in your diary at these intervals even if you do not actually eat or take a regular break at these times. Download your own stress diary template here courtesy of JHK (www.jhkltd.com)
By identifying what causes you stress you can either put in place actions to tackle them head on (if they are within your control) or introduce coping strategies to minimise their effect (if they are outside of your control).
Remember: “If it’s outside your control, ain’t no use worrying, ‘cause it’s outside your control. And if it’s under your control, ain’t no use worrying, ‘cause it’s under your control” – Satchel Paige
Through this process you can implement effective stress management and work toward optimising performance.
The Stress Diary provides a structure within which an individual can measure the way they are feeling about the emotional, mental and physical demands that the day holds. How in control they feel, how effective they feel the support infrastructure around them is, how the way they are during the day enables them to work effectively with others and lastly and perhaps most importantly how they take care of their own needs. Reviewing a Stress Diary can be a sobering experience, providing many useful insights into the effectiveness and appropriateness of our coping strategies and habits. If meal times and/or breaks are being skipped then how these impacts an individual’s energy levels and ability to achieve peak performance can easily be observed.
Odd or out of character behaviour is often one of the most common and visible effects of someone under excessive stress. So if the only explosions you want to have to cope with on 5th November are fireworks then do take some positive action on National Stress Awareness Day.
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