For most of us, stress is an inevitable part of our lives. Not just because of work, but because of personal and family life.
Stress has many negative consequences on both physical and mental health, so it is important to find ways to reduce and manage it.
Having a leader who understands this and helps to create a working environment in which this is possible is crucial for a change in the culture of an organisation.
Here are 6 things a manager can do to help his or her team reduce stress and increase productivity:
Focus the team on what really matters:
The first step is to identify what the team brings to the company that no one else can bring. The answer to this question may seem simple, but it is important to involve employees in the process of finding it.
Once everyone agrees on the purpose of the group it will become the guide by which everyone decides how to spend their time and the test for deciding whether to take on a new task or let it go.
Edit the workload:
This means evaluating all projects to see if they meet certain characteristics: do they fit with the team's purpose, do they match the individual's strengths, are they important to the organisation's goals? It is the leader's job to help everyone be more productive and to protect them from low-priority tasks that are imposed by top management.
When a project arises, the manager should consider it according to the above questions before deciding.
Schedule uninterrupted work:
When a person is distracted from their work it takes them at least 20 minutes to refocus on the task at hand. What a leader can do to avoid this is to ask his or her team to designate at least one hour each morning to do proactive work without interruptions, unless it is an emergency. By making this a group goal, collective focus is increased and everyone helps each other to achieve it.
Another strategy is to help employees "break down" large projects into smaller tasks that can be completed during concentrated work times.
Reduce meetings:
Business meetings are unavoidable, but they can also be a big waste of time. Therefore, all meetings should have no more than three objectives in order to achieve productive discussions and important decisions.
Limits should also be set on their duration and the people who really need to attend should be well chosen. But most importantly, before calling a meeting, the boss should consider whether an email or a memo can achieve the same objective.
Set limits on emails:
Technology has meant that we are all always in work mode, as work can be filtered out in the off hours or weekends thanks to email.
This is counterproductive because people never feel they had a break and if they don't have that time to recharge, dangerous levels of stress and anxiety are generated.
A leader must remember that few things are urgent and that it is more important to connect with what matters to us, both personally and professionally.
Leading by example:
If the boss wants to create new norms for his team, he must be ready to live them too. For example Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn, schedules time for what he calls "nothing".
If a leader wants to reduce the level of stress, he must be able to discuss this goal with his team and thus change the ways of managing the organisation that are not working and are not consistent with this goal!
