Helpful Stress Management Tips to Avoid Burnout
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Managing stress can feel like an insurmountable task, especially during a time that has required each of us to dramatically change our personal and professional routines. What if you had a few tools to help you more effectively manage your stress during the work day?
Recently, local thought leaders, expert psychologists and co-founders of The Leadership Effect Rik Nemanick, Ph.D. and Bob Grace, Ph.D. led a webinar about just that. On February 18th, they invited professionals to join them live as they demystified stress and its causes and discussed approachable ways to cope with and overcome stress. We were delighted to attend and are excited to share our thoughts and learnings with you.
First of All, What Is Stress?
Rik and Bob pulled back the curtain on one of the most prevalent causes of disruption in daily life by defining stress as the physical and psychological response to challenges or demands encountered by an individual. By now, many of us know that in order to tackle something that looms large over us, we have to break it down into bite-sized pieces. With stress, those bite-sized pieces can be viewed as stressors.
So, what are potential stressors in your life? In your professional life, stressors may be: COVID-19 disruption, project deadlines, role ambiguity, or impending performance appraisals. In your personal life, you might run into one or more of the following stressors: loss of a loved one, moving homes, legal issues, financial uncertainty, or something banal as traffic during your daily commute.
We feel stress as a reaction to the challenges or demands in our life. While we can’t control stress, we can learn to manage our response.
Approaching Stressors In Your Life
Essentially, stressors are challenges that we must overcome, and they fall generally into two camps: perceived hassles and perceived uplifts. Perceived hassles are regarded as negative and arrive in your life as a roadblock to progress. On the other hand, a perceived uplift has a positive tone and boosts our resilience against stress (such as receiving good feedback from your manager).
In order to better handle stress, you can practice the art of evaluation. When stress arises in your life, evaluate it in terms of a challenge vs a hindrance. A challenge will feel more within your control and aligns with your big-picture goals. You’ll receive satisfaction from overcoming the challenge. Hindrance stress feels like you are out of control, and often satisfaction comes from escaping the stressor—leading to avoidance, procrastination, and other detrimental coping mechanisms.
Managing Stress At Work and At Home
During the webinar, Rik and Bob facilitated an enlightening discussion on several approachable ways to manage stress both at work and at home.
Connecting With Your Team From Afar: While many of us have shifted to remote working situations, teams can feel disconnected and managers might be stressed by a perceived loss of control with their teams. To combat this, team members are encouraged to ask direct questions rather than open-ended questions. Here are a couple of examples:
If you’re looking to understand why a team member may not be turning on their camera during Zoom calls, try approaching them one-on-one with a “seek to understand” perspective: “Hey [Name], I’ve noticed your camera has been off in meetings recently and I wanted to check in to see what might be keeping you from turning it on. How can I/the team help you feel comfortable in being visibly present in meetings?”
Work to create a culture of safety with your employees; if they feel safe answering questions about how they are doing, you’ll build closer and more productive relationships across the company. It is vital for your employees to both feel trusted by their managers and also to feel that they can trust their managers.
Setting Boundaries At Home: Boundary seems like a hot keyword these days as many of us have had to realign our boundaries with new work and home situations. If you’re a parent, being able to set clear and healthy boundaries with children while at home 24/7 may feel like a moving target. Try reinvigorating the age-old children’s playground game Red Light, Yellow Light, Green Light. Discuss with your children (and perhaps even your partner!) that you’ll be using a sign on your office door to inform them whether they can interrupt you. Green light means you are available to chat, while yellow light means you are busy but could be interrupted if it is important. And red light means “do not disturb.” From a whiteboard to a sheet of paper with stickers, there are multiple ways to institute this at home.
Last but not least, the webinar touched on something so many of us tend to forget while working from home: our bodies are made to move. Recent studies show that the connection between your brain and your body is a “two-way street” and that means movement can change your brain, too! A few of Rik and Bob’s favorite ways to keep movement in your daily life include: taking a quick walk break during the day, practicing a bit of chair yoga, or even learning a few simple breathing exercises. All of these can impact your management of stress.
It may not be common to think of reducing stress as having major positive ROI, but we like to think that it does! When you invest in your health and managing your reactions to challenges, you positively impact your overall health and life.
Thank you again to Rik Nemanick, Ph.D. and Bob Grace, Ph.D. for leading such an informative and uplifting webinar.
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