How often do you see it? An IT project team starts out
collaborating well. Three months later they are in fire-fighting
mode and blaming one another for the chaos. Team members may have
gained weight, resumed smoking or even experienced trouble with
their families or sleeping. It’s all evidence of too much
stress.
Excess stress isn’t just bad for individuals, it’s bad for business
too. If you find your project team has locked into response mode,
operating on a task-by-task level to survive the day, you may be
achieving less than you think. Better project management that puts
stress in balance can help you increase your competitive
edge.
What’s bad for the brain is bad for business
When you’re under stress, you use less of the front part of your
brain responsible for advanced thinking, and more of the back part
that handles primitive thought processes such as the
fight-or-flight response. Consider the over-burdened IT
executive who, during a project meeting, checks his e-mails and
calendar on his laptop, or responds to messages on his handheld
PDA, He’s so busy multitasking to keep up that he isn’t using the
full capacity of his brain. He misses things, doesn’t ask the right
questions, and can’t quickly prioritise issues. As a result, the
project doesn’t run as efficiently as it could. Of course, not
all stress is bad. In fact, occasional stress can be motivating.
But as business problems increase in complexity and cycles of
change accelerate, more employees today are in a constant state of
survival mode than ever before, and their work can suffer because
of it.
Manage more when you manage stress first
Any organisation that can keep its employees relaxed, focused and
using their full mental capacity is going to operate more
effectively – and ultimately be more competitive – than one whose
employees are highly stressed and locked into a pattern of reacting
to problems or competing with each other.
While you can’t necessarily change the external forces causing
stress levels to rise, you can recognise the signs and take action
to help employees find balance well before the fight or flight
response kicks in. Sometimes managers are under such pressure
that they depersonalise employees, viewing them as numbers, budget
line items or roles. If you can see employees as unique people with
individual needs, both inside and outside of work, you’ll be more
likely to keep stress in check.
How to keep stress under control from the
start
Awareness is the first step in dealing with
elevated stress, yet one of the first things you lose under
pressure is your ability to self-monitor. Ask questions that will
help a project team look inwards at how stress may be negatively
affecting their behaviours and lives. Model behaviour that
doesn’t promote stress as a badge of honour, but encourages people
to set healthy boundaries and teaches them when to say no. If
employees are over-committing, look for ways to reduce the demands
on their time and check their priority levels. Offer support and
encourage them to take a good look at their diet, sleep and
exercise patterns–the first to suffer when stress becomes
unmanageable.
Remember, high stress may be a badge of honour on the battlefield
or in sports. But in business, where maintaining competitiveness
means thinking and operating at our best, it’s nothing more than a
liability.