Candan Akkan
E&E Group, Assessment Director
Change is an indispensible part of our lives that forces us to deal with the Notion of uncertainty. We react differently to change in order to maintain our emotional balance and productivity. We are human after all and our emotions inside have certain logic and cause and effect relation. However stress is the most important outcome that change brings into existence in our bodies.
Even though being aware of our emotions and referring to them is a healthy approach, not being able to manage our emotions in the times of stress results us to be overwhelmed with stress. Stress is a reaction that our bodies take to the environment, change and events on life. Stress causes a lot more diseases than modern medicine encounters. And we still keep on embracing it instead of beating it, even though we know stress is bad for health. Everybody has a limit. Not everyone tolerates the stress same way.
In business world, stress experienced by the work force effects both individual and team and organisations productivity extremely negative. If the employees are stressful, they tend to behave more different compared to normal circumstances. When stressful, we behave in a way where others have difficulty to understand. This behaviour reflects upon all our relationship and to the organisation like a virus. When stress fades if we can question ourselves, we may try to mend the broken pieces. Or we may choose to cut off communication and withdraw.
It is our responsibility as HR professionals and managers at organisations to deal with people who had problems in labour relations and stress behaviour at organisation, to coach them to a healthier psychology and mend the broken relationships. In the act of decreasing productivity, unavoidable course of events we may have to give a warning and/or disqualify individual for their negative behaviours.
It is possible to foresee these situations by making analysis regarding coping with stress. Let’s take a look at a management team that works together.
Elif (B) is at the “Stressed Achievement” quadrant. Her development area is to be in the “Poised Achievement” quadrant. Elif is recipient to stress but even though she is taken with stress she can perform. Most important factor in her performance is Elif’s tolerating pressure trait score is high. In brief if Elif doesn’t have a challenging target, she can mess around do other things until the deadline. Only when deadline approaches she can have a dominant energy to meet the target in a flash. But when she is bored with oppression, she can feel tired, would like to pull away, leave unfinished business. Properly speaking, Elif’s high score in not only “Tolerance to Pressure” but “Managing Stress Successfully” and “Ease” demonstrates she can do “Stress Management” successfully. As we know we cannot give Elif the entire responsibility expecting her to do the job somehow. She has a development area in “Balanced Success”.
Everyone is different from one another. If you take into account that each employee can react totally different under stress and fight back the stress, this can help you with better management.
My next article will be about personal stress areas. Follow us!
Meanwhile:
Within this study, can you tell me about a stress you experienced at work? You can e-mail me at cakkan@eandeen.eande.pro. Your inquiries will be treated anonymously. I will respond and assess each incident in its own right, anonymously here.