December 2, 2024

On The Stress In Our Lives

Hands up if you are not stressed by the world right now? I can’t see any hands!

I would regularly give lectures on stress management during my days as a management prof. This would make my wife laugh, since her view was that such lectures were best given by those who could deal more positively than I with their own stress levels!

I was not the worst in the world at handling stress, but when it came down to talking about the importance of resilience and hardiness as keys to dealing with workplace stress, I did often find myself wondering about my own capacity to cope with prolonged periods of great stress. I count myself resilient, in that I have survived the ups and downs of the tough worlds of business and politics as well as most, however in terms of hardiness I was not so sure.

Great stress can rarely be tolerated for long by anyone. I recall attending a seminar on stress given by a sports psychologist, where one of his strongest messages was that “high stress needs high rest”, whether the stress arose from playing competitive sport, completing a research degree, or being part of a prolonged period of personal or organisational change.

And there is no doubt that extraordinary stress comes from extraordinary events. Sometimes in textbooks you can still find the list of “life’s greatest stressors”, from getting a divorce to being in a major car accident. I reckon I’ve ticked several of these boxes in recent years. Seven years ago, my father, who had left the family during my boyhood, died suddenly and unexpectedly. Two months later, I packed up my family and moved to the United States to teach for a semester at a mid-west university. In the following year, I had visited my ailing mother more than 150 times in hospitals, nursing homes and rehabilitation centres, then sat with her as she suffered and died from two rare illnesses. I was tired, dog tired, and in the midst of this time made the decision to move from the cloisters of academe to the wilds of corporate Australia.

In dealing with the stresses and strains, a few lessons come to mind. The first is that so much of what we teach about stress is lost on young undergraduates because they lack the frame of reference to understand and apply the ideas we offer. One macho male student looked me in the eye a couple of years ago and said, without fear or favour, that “this topic is a waste of our time because there is simply no such thing as stress”. I wonder if his position changed after he failed my unit? Presumably he wasn’t stressed by his result, since stress did not exist, but the broader point is that stress management training is often wasted not just on the young but also onthose folks so distracted and frantic because of the busyness of life that they will never slow sufficiently to change their ways.

Another lesson concerns the style and temperament we lead with in our organizations. I would often begin classes in organisational behaviour with a true-false quiz which explored some of the myths of management. One sought a response to the statement “Most successful corporate leaders exhibit a Type A personality”. Type As tend to have driving personalities, and are often restless, impatient, and overbearing. Interestingly, the research indicates that most successful corporate leaders are not Type A, since most Type As burn themselves and others on their way up the corporate ladder. In contrast, the more measured, thoughtful and relaxed but still goal-focused behaviours of Type B leaders are much more likely to assist them to climb the highest rungs.

Thus, while accepting the difficulty of achieving long-term changes in leadership styles and approaches, it nonetheless makes a great deal of sense for those of us with Type A tendencies to reflect on the true effectiveness of our styles. I am learning that it is when I am calmest and when I make the effort to take some “time outs”, as well as when I am less hard on myself, that I make the best decisions, get the best work done, and have a far healthier influence on my workplace culture.

It’s one thing to conclude this, but another thing to live it over time, of course. The tanking economy, the complaining customer, the difficult employee, the traffic jam.there are so many triggers for us to revert to type. Fighting our addiction to adrenalin will be a long, long battle for most of us. Perhaps building the discipline of taking breaks, exercising, and avoiding long periods of countless office hours is a good start. Perhaps too, the need to build and nourish our outside relationships is more important than we think, and an immense challenge to those whose corporate “cult-like cultures” make work all encompassing. We need also to confront the healthyness of our drive and ambitiousness, and place those values within a fuller framework that incorporates all of the key values in our lives.

One last thing. Reflecting on stress makes me a believer in the potential for organisational mentors and corporate coaches to help us deal with our stress and anxieties in a healthier way. The ability to ‘heal thyself’ is severely constrained by the power and relentless movement of the modern corporation.