Performance under pressure: managing stress in the workplace

172 Pages·2003·0.3 MB·English

by  Heidi Wenk Sormaz

Performance
Under Pressure
Managing Stress
in the Workplace
Heidi Wenk Sormaz, Ph.D.
& Bruce Tulgan
HRD PRESS
Amherst, Massachusetts
Copyright © 2003, RainmakerThinking, Inc.
Published by: HRD Press, Inc.
22 Amherst Road
Amherst, MA 01002
800-822-2801 (U.S. and Canada)
413-253-3488
413-253-3490 (fax)
http://www.hrdpress.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the
prior permission of the author.
ISBN: 0-87425-741-7
Cover design by Eileen Klockars
Editorial and production services by Mary George
ƒ
From Heidi Wenk Sormaz: To Nik
From Bruce Tulgan: To all of the people who
have suffered as a result of poorly managed stress
in the workplace.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments.......................................................vii
Introduction..................................................................ix
Part One: Managing Stress in the Workplace
1. Stress in the Workplace........................................ 3
2. Managing Stress in Your Work Group or
Organization .......................................................23
3. Managing the “Stressed-Out” Employee............ 35
Part Two: Performance Under Pressure
4. Clarify Your Relationship With Stress and
Its Causes...........................................................47
5. Optimal Energy Management: Stop and
Breathe...............................................................57
6. Optimal Perception: Rewrite...............................75
7. Optimal Performance: Take Action.....................85
8. Making SBRT a Habit .........................................91
9. Dealing With Time Pressure.............................101
10. Dealing With Anger Pressure ............................111
11. Dealing With People Pressure .........................121
12. Dealing With Fatigue Pressure......................... 133
13. Dealing With Evaluation Pressure.................... 141
In Conclusion . . . .....................................................149
References and Further Resources ........................151
Appendix: List of Employee Support Sevices.......... 157
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Acknowledgments
FIRST AND FOREMOST, we must thank the many
thousands of incredible people who, over the years,
have shared with RainmakerThinking the lessons of their
own experiences in the workplace. We are also grateful
to all the business leaders and managers who have
expressed so much confidence in RainmakerThinking
and our work; thank you for giving us the opportunity to
learn from the real management issues you deal with
and solve on a daily basis. And to the tens of thousands
who have attended our seminars, thanks for listening,
for laughing, for sharing the wisdom of your experience,
for pushing us with the really tough questions, for all of
your kindness, and for continually teaching us.
Second, Heidi wishes to acknowledge Nikola Sormaz
for his support and Steven Bennett for his guidance.
Many thanks as well to our publisher, Bob Carkhuff, and
his team at HRD Press, especially Mary George for her
superb editing and book-design work. And thanks to all
our colleagues, present and past, at RainmakerThinking.
Finally, for our families and our friends, we reserve our
deepest and utmost gratitude.
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Introduction
EVERYONE IN TODAY’S WORKPLACE is under
pressure. We are living in an era of uncertainty, with
wildly fluctuating markets and fiercely competitive busi-
ness conditions. Organizations are determined to get
more and better work out of fewer people, and most
employees are routinely told they must work smarter,
faster, better, longer, and harder. It is no wonder that
study after study shows that managing stress is a grow-
ing challenge.
In general, we tend to think of stress as something
negative; but in fact, it does have tangible benefits.
Stress generates action. It creates a physiological
boost that gives you increased energy and clarity with
which to perform well. If channeled correctly, stress can
enhance your performance and the performance of
those you manage. Of course, if channeled incorrectly,
stress can be overwhelming and performance will rap-
idly decline.
In today’s complex world, most of us are susceptible to
feeling and manifesting stress, at least sometimes, in
all the different areas of our lives. The workplace in
particular holds many potential stressors, so many that
we are all in constant danger of “stressing out.” The
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Performance Under Pressure
critical task for you as a manager, then, is to gain a
better understanding of stress in the workplace, in your
organization, and in teams and individuals. We encour-
age you to consider best practices for reducing stress,
alleviating the effects of stress, and intervening to help
“stressed-out” employees. However, there are limits to
what a manager can do to help employees manage
stress. Ultimately, to perform well under pressure, em-
ployees must develop stress management skills.
The good news is that, with training, all individuals can
learn how to work well under pressure for optimal per-
formance. The ability to perform well under pressure
comes down to two skills:
1. Perceiving a situation in an optimal way (optimal
perception)
2. Using the physiological boost associated with
stress to one’s advantage (optimal energy
management)
Unfortunately, most individuals must work at develop-
ing these skills. That is the principle focus of this
pocket guide.
Overview of the Pocket Guide
The explanations, analysis, and best practices in this
pocket guide come directly from two sources: ongoing
workplace research conducted by RainmakerThinking
since the mid 1990s, and academic research con-
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