Stress

Leadership - action on stress

By Will Campbell ⋅ December 19, 2008 ⋅  Printable version ⋅

What can leaders do to help lower stress within their workforce? We have looked previously at the leader’s responsibility for stress, but what should leaders do? Here are some practical steps to minimising their impact on other’s stress levels.

• Clarity of expectation - make sure that everyone in your team knows what you expect from them. You should be clear what their role is, and ensure that each team member understands their role. Tasks and responsibilities should reflect their role. If colleagues are unclear on their role, duties or responsibilities, then their stress levels will increase. Strong and clear expectations help to remove this.

• Adequate resourcing - if you don’t put the resources in place to carry out a task, then you’re asking the impossible of your team. They’ll try, but it won’t be easy, and you’ve introduced a huge problem right at the start. “Resources” covers everything that is required to do the task in hand - whether that be additional personnel, an increased capital budget, or simply access to a photocopier. It’s the tools required to do the job, and if you don’t give them to your team, they can’t do the job to the best of their ability.

• The talented team - your team is talented, each individual has their own unique strengths, you need to use these. Challenge staff, and reward and praise their success. Introducing challenges to staff demonstrates your confidence in their abilities, and provides reassurance that their talents are recognised. By praising and rewarding, you recognise their success. Colleagues who feel their talents are valued, and efforts appreciated, have sense of their worth. Conversely, individuals who do not feel valued, and feel their talents are not used effectively quickly become disinterested and resentful.

• Who knows best? - use knowledge effectively, and recognise the sources. Individuals frequently have a very clear idea on how their role, or tasks, could be improved, or made more productive. Listening to your staff, welcoming their contributions, and treating them seriously will not only give them a sense of value, but of contribution. They feel part of the bigger picture, and involved in it. The more experienced members of your team have something to contribute - their experience. Mentoring team members ensures that knowledge and experience is shared, and utilised on an ongoing basis. A culture in which colleagues are respected and their knowledge and experience valued, is supportive to all and key to reducing stressors in the workplace.

• Who cares? - take responsibility, and care, for everything you can, from the personal welfare of individuals, through to the product your team delivers. Encourage a similar approach in all your team, until the answer to the question “Who cares?” is “Everyone”, irrespective of the subject. Who cares about team members personal issues, who cares about putting a job out half finished, who cares about meeting targets? In an environment where everyone takes responsibility, individuals feel they are part of the team, not an outsider. However, if nobody cares about them, their work, or their participation, it’s all too easy to slip into a culture of negativity, the breeding ground for stressors.

Remembering the HSE stressors of demand, control, support, relationships, role and change, you can see how the above concepts contribute to strengthening the culture in all areas, thereby reducing stressors and stress. You may say that these are just good management techniques, and you would be right. Good management is about ensuring you get the best out of your staff, and maintaining a healthy, positive work culture is the start. Reducing the stressors in your organisation reduces the stress, and increases team effectiveness as a direct result.

Tags: Stress