The fourth Block and Limitation to Business Genius is ineffective stress management.
This doesn’t mean ineffective in an unkind way. Far from it. It simply means that effective stress management is more vital than it’s ever been, and the reason for this can be summed up in one word:
Spillage
Take air traffic control, for example.
Years ago I met someone who worked for air traffic control, which I’d always assumed to be an amazingly stressful profession.
‘It isn’t really,’ I was told, much to my surprise. ‘When you’re at work, stress levels frequently run high (because you’re helping to avoid collisions and land planes safely), but the moment you’ve left work, the stress stops. It’s not your problem any more, it’s someone else’s!’
In the world of air traffic control, you’re either at work, or you’ve left work, so ‘spillage’ isn’t that much of an issue.
Few other jobs, however, share such clear-cut boundaries.
How many of us, for example, often take work home with us to do in the evenings, or at weekends? How many of us have a nervous tweetch, and are continually checking our business emails, or surfing the net because of FOMO (fear of missing out)? How many of us enjoy the freedom to escape work entirely without a call from our boss, or a client, saying ‘I know you’re on holiday, but …’?
The point we’re making here is that the modern business world (which is obviously 24/7 and globally connected) is fantastic in so many ways, but it’s deeply flawed when it comes to ‘spillage’ and stress.
This is simply because our bodies haven’t evolved fast enough to deal with the modern stresses of the modern age (or the ‘Attention Economy’– as authors Davenport and Beck like to call it – where we’re continually under pressure to pay attention to an infinite variety of different people and things).
Millions of years ago, for example, if we were being chased by a sabre-toothed tiger, our bodies would naturally release adrenaline (to help us run away), or nor-adrenaline (to help us stand and fight). Either way, these life-preserving chemicals would get used up in the process of handling that specific threat. Nowadays, however, these same chemicals get pumped into our bloodstream (to help us tackle multiple workplace threats and challenges) but they don’t always get used up, and they don’t always stop coming!
They just bubble up inside as we sit at our desk, or huff and puff in our office meetings, and brace ourselves for yet another tiger to pounce.
From a Business Genius perspective, therefore, it’s essential we learn how to flick off the switch (from time to time) or the chances are we’ll end up doing ourselves more harm than good.
Besides, we only need to look at Professor Stephen Palmer and Lynda Strickland’s book, Stress Management, to see the long list of psychological, physiological and physical effects stress has the power to trigger. And we’re not just talking about sweaty palms, breathlessness and 98 per cent of all headaches here.
Too much stress can also lead to everything from nightmares to backache, being cynical to being jealous, and sometimes even poor time management to withdrawing from supportive relationships.
In fact, in Japan they even have a phenomenon called karoshi (death through overwork), so no wonder Professor Cary Cooper calls stress ‘the disease of our time’.
If we really want to flick off the switch to excel, however, we need to be able to flick our thinking first.
For example, we need to be aware that stress (i.e. the imbalance between the perceived demands placed upon us, and the perceived resources we have to handle them) ultimately means psychological self-strangulation.
Yes, I know this is a horrible phrase – so please forgive me for using it – but if you go back to the Roman and Anglo-Saxon origin of most of the words used in the English language to describe stress, it’s not too hard to spot the link:
Stringere (stress) = to squeeze/draw tight
Angere (anxiety) = to choke
Tendere (tension) = to stretch
Wyrgan (worry) = to strangle
So, if you really want to UP! your Business Genius stress management, please remember the thoughts we think can either wind us up (and squeeze us into a tight little ball) or help us to unwind …
UP! YOUR STRESS MANAGEMENT
NUGGET
Few industries have prospered more from the world of stress than the tourism industry.
After all, why else do so many people – year-on-year – spend vast sums of money lounging by hotel pools, or travelling up snowy mountains to spa retreats, if it’s not to chill out and unwind?
Well, it could be argued that the Business Genius who set this in motion was the Victorian entrepreneur Thomas Cook.
Back in 1841 Cook – who was an ex-preacher and part of the Temperance Movement (which disapproved of alcohol and its impact on social well-being) – decided to commission a special train to take his Temperance group members from Leicester to Loughborough to hear a talk, and for this arrangement he decided to charge them ‘one shilling a head’ (source: www.thomascook.com).
At the time this was a highly innovative idea because, up until then, people had usually arranged, and paid for, their own travel arrangements.
Cook, however, was very smart because he found a way of taking the hassle and stress out of travel for other people. All they needed to do was buy a single ticket from him, and he’d sort out the rest. And it all grew from there …
In 1845 he started to make the whole process more commercial (even providing a ‘handbook for the journey’ which was ‘the forerunner of the modern holiday brochure’). By 1855 he was taking tourists to mainline Europe. In the 1870s he came up with yet more Business Genius ideas such as ‘hotel coupons’ and his ‘circular note’ (which was a ‘forerunner of the traveller’s cheque’). In 1869, he arranged his first trip up the Nile, and thereafter he started to take travellers on relaxing journeys around the world.
USEFUL TIPS AND
ESCAPE STRATEGIES
If you want to UP! the quality of your stress management skills, here are three practical tips and strategies that can help:
1 CHANGE YOUR SELF-TALK
Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) – which has become incredibly popular in recent years for supporting individuals suffering from work-related stress – is built upon a simple idea: Change how you think and you can often Change how you feel.
Supposing something goes wrong at work, for example, and you beat yourself up about it: ‘Everything’s my fault!’ you sigh with your head in your hands, ‘I’ll lose my job, and I’ll never get another one in this challenging business climate etc.’
Of course this may well be the case (so my apologies if it is).
What CBT would suggest, however, is that thinking this way is only likely to escalate your stress levels, rather than diminish them. Far better to imagine you’re like a scientist in a white coat looking at the evidence of what you’re saying under the microscope, both coolly and objectively.
For example, you may find it useful to draw a circle that represents 100 per cent, and then ask yourself, ‘Is 100 per cent of this problem 100 per cent my fault?’ More often than not, you’ll probably find that much of it still is, but probably not all of it. And, when you start to realise that 20 per cent is, perhaps, your team’s fault, and 15 per cent is, perhaps, your manager’s fault, and 5 per cent was owing to unforeseen circumstances, suddenly your stress levels will lower, as that 100 per cent becomes 60 per cent. This isn’t to say that shifting the blame onto others is the key; it’s simply to say that challenging our thinking errors (such as magnifying what went wrong, or minimising what went right) can be a highly effective way of reframing a stressful situation.
With this in mind, next time you feel stressed at work, you may want to ask yourself this question:
Q1 What am I telling myself to feel this way (and how much better might I feel if I told myself something different)?
2 REMEMBER TO BREATHE
Evidence suggests that, when we feel under pressure, our breathing automatically changes; it starts to become more rapid, and it starts to become more shallow.
That’s why everyone, from martial artists to Hollywood stunt professionals, knows the importance of deliberately breathing more slowly, and more deeply, to reverse this process, and bring their breathing back into alignment once again.
(Clearly, if you’re someone who suffers from panic attacks or breathing problems of any kind, please seek professional medical help as your first port of call.)
For what it’s worth, however, over the years I’ve personally found all kinds of Eastern exercises – from Tai Chi to yoga – can make a big difference to workplace stress, as can Western techniques ranging from autogenic exercises (when you keep telling yourself ‘My breathing is relaxed and effortless’) to Harvard Professor Dr Herbert Benson’s technique (where you keep repeating the mantra ‘One’ to yourself, to help clear your head of all other thoughts).
Finally, I was once told we can’t breathe in until we’ve breathed out, and so I found (counter-intuitively) that only by breathing out for 10 seconds, would my lungs naturally refill.
Q2 It’s sometimes said that ‘When you control your breathing, you control your life.’ What difference might improved breathing potentially make to yours?
3 E + R = O
There’s nothing particularly new about this E + R = O equation, but that doesn’t stop many still finding its wisdom highly valuable.
Put simply, it stands for Event + Response = Outcome and it shows how, although we can’t always change the events in our lives, we can often change our response to them and this, in turn, can often influence the overall outcome.
In Switzerland in 1541, for example, an event happened that put the Swiss goldsmiths and jewellers of Geneva under considerable stress.
A new law was introduced – by the Protestant reformer Jean Calvin – which banned the wearing of jewellery. This was totally out of their control, and there was nothing they could do to change it.
What they could do, however, was change their response to this event, and that’s precisely what they did. They decided to use a bit of Business Genius to get around the ban, and they became watchmakers instead!
By 1601 they’d created the first ever Watchmakers Guild in the world and, as for the overall outcome? Well, why else would we have companies today ranging from Rolex to Patek Philippe, and Omega to TAG Heuer, in existence (contributing more than $22 billion to the Swiss economy each year)?
BUSINESS GENIUS IN ACTION:
NEXT STEPS …
In summary, if you want to UP! your stress management skills, here’s how:
- Pinpoint specific times when you can flick off the switch (because, unless you create a bit of me-time or being-time for yourself – in the manic 24/7 ‘Attention Economy’ we live in – nobody else will, and your personal batteries will soon run flat).
- Investigate which symptoms of stress could apply to you (for improved self-awareness is often the first step towards improved well-being).
- Leverage the power of self-talk (to help you change your state because – as CBT and other branches of psychology highlight – how we think can either wind us up or help us to unwind).
- Orchestrate a plan for improving your breathing (by doing yoga, Tai Chi, meditation, or whatever, but please go easy with this one, for obvious medical reasons).
- Target what you can do something about; not what you can’t (because, as the principle of E + R = O illuminates, although we can’t always control the events in our lives, we can often control our responses to those events, and that, in turn, inevitably will have an impact on the final outcome!).
UP!SPIRATION
‘The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.’
William James (American philosopher and psychologist)