Jon Caldwell
It is good to get good business tips and strategies from peers but it is also better to formulate them yourself. This is not to discredit tested business mentors of what they can do. But the thing today is the fact that people are doing practically the same thing. What is really needed is for people to make a difference and this stems from unique concepts and strategies which the world is severely lacking today.
In the world of routines, when the police officer spots a lone driver weaving in and out of traffic, his mind is conditioned to anticipate a troubled driver, perhaps a criminal. Not that it is necessarily a bad thing. Routines are important, for they help us deal with the stress of daily life. Parents and teachers for example, appreciate routines for they help structure a child’s life and provide certainty necessary for growing up. Look at it another way, if you have to relearn a routine everyday, like driving a car, it would be very stressful. When you are driving, chances are you are not conscious of how you change gears, change lanes or stop the car at a red light or accelerate. All these actions are routines and done at a subconscious level while you hold a conversation or tune to a radio station.
Yet with certain problems, routines lead us to a dead end and to false assumption as the story above shows. While routines help us a lot of times in our every day lives, it is an enemy of innovation, inventiveness and genius.
Stress is sited as the cause of a wide range of health problems, costing businesses billions each year in lost work days and in compensation and pensions. This does not capture the huge personal cost in anxiety, poor health and premature death.
In order to deal with stress effectively, either as an individual or as a manager, ensuring the well being of your employees it is important to understand what stress is and the potential impact it can have.
The first thing to understand is that stress in itself is not a bad thing. It is how we react to stressful situations which, makes the difference. One persons thrill and sense of excitement is another person’s anxiety and agony.
There is no doubt that people generally respond well to a challenge particularly if they are involved in creating or something they find exciting. Where those involved believe what they do matters and they feel they have some ownership and control over their situation there is a positive payback even when working extremely hard over long hours. We could debate whether the pressure involved in such situations constitutes stress.
Where stress is detrimental people are often in situations where they feel they have little control, feedback is non existent or overly negative, failure, humiliation, lack of support results in the person feeling that what they do has little value or they themselves are not valued. Sustained exposure to such negative situations can have serious implications for the health and well being of the individual and ultimately for the organization as a whole.
