REDUCE STRESS IN THE WORKPLACE

Our world today is filled with stress as we strive to be successful in both our personal and work lives. Reducing the stress which employees experience at work is one of the many benefits of introducing employee engagement in an organization. People tend to feel especially stressed by those things they have little or no control over. Part of engaging employees is to give them more involvement—and ultimately control—over the problem-solving and decision-making processes in their jobs. This ultimately can reduce the amount of stress they have at work, creating a more relaxed and productive workplace. Building this less stressful and more productive workplace environment will be a positive reflection of a manager’s leadership, as well as having the benefit of reducing their own stress level at work.

Pressures to Succeed

There is no doubt that we live in a world of increasing pressure to get everything done in our busy schedules at work and at home. This pressure certainly exists in the workplace, as the demands at work to get more done with less resources increases. These pressures at work cascade down in an organization from the top to increase shareholder value in a very competitive marketplace. As a manager, it may seem that the only way you can meet these increasing demands for higher levels of performance is to put more pressure on your employees.

However, as Figure 9-1 illustrates, simply putting more pressure on employees to produce more can get to the point of diminishing returns. As you can see, putting more pressure on employees can result in higher performance, but only to a certain point. Putting too much pressure on employees can reduce performance overall, especially if you overload or burn out people in the process. This is where the concepts of employee engagement can be most beneficial.

Figure 9-1 represents the traditional way that many leaders believe is the way to get better performance from employees. However, the concepts of employee engagement suggest that you approach this challenge in a different manner. In an engaged workplace, a supervisor would be more likely to discuss the production goals the organization is hoping to achieve, and together develop a plan to achieve this objective. Just asking employees who are already working hard to work even harder is not the way to achieve such an ambitious goal. Instead of asking employees to work harder, what you should be asking them is how they can work smarter. Ask employees for their ideas about how to improve their performance and increase their output. This is a better strategy for achieving goals and is much more likely to be accomplished, especially over time. Employees will feel a greater sense of ownership for the established goals, and will be much more likely to work toward successfully reaching them if they are engaged in the process. They will also feel less pressured and stressed out by what they likely feel were unrealistic demands being imposed on them—without any say about those decisions.

Helping Employees Deal With Conflict

Another cause of stress in the workplace is when conflict exists between employees, or even between supervisors and employees. Conflict may sound like it is on the opposite end of the spectrum from employee engagement, but it is actually part of the process. Conflict is inevitable in any situation in which people work together. People bring many different perspectives to work, and this causes conflict. Some conflict is a natural part of working together. But conflict is not necessarily a bad thing. Conflict can help achieve better, more creative solutions to problems. It allows different perspectives to be expressed and explored by employees who work together. Better solutions are the result of beneficial conflict.

However, it needs to be managed to ensure conflict doesn’t become counterproductive. It must not get to the point where it damages relationships. Learning to deal with conflict constructively is an important goal in achieving teamwork and supporting an engaged workplace. Helping employees learn to deal positively with conflict should be part of your responsibility as a leader.

A Leadership Conflict Resolution Matrix can help you better understand the different ways to deal with conflict at work. These strategies can help your employees work through conflict more productively.

First, look at the indexes on both the horizontal and vertical axes. On the vertical axis is the assertiveness scale from low to high. This indicates the level of assertiveness one may use to deal with conflict at work. On the horizontal axis, the involvement scale reflects how one may deal with conflict from low to high. These nine strategies are combinations of assertiveness and involvement. For example, the retreat conflict strategy is lowest in both assertiveness and involvement. On the other extreme, you find collaborate is the highest in both assertiveness and involvement.

It is important to understand that each of these strategies can be an effective way to deal with conflict depending on the situation and circumstances. None of these strategies are necessarily right or wrong, but all may conceivably be the best strategy in a certain situation. For example, when confronted with conflict, it might be best to retreat. This would likely be the best strategy if someone is confronted by another person in an argument or potential physical altercation. However, this strategy would not be most effective in every situation. It is your job as a manager to help team members understand and learn how to use as many of these conflict management approaches as possible. This will help everyone work better together and deal constructively with conflict.

For instance, find the reject strategy, which is at the top of the assertiveness continuum and lowest on the involvement continuum. Rejecting an idea may not always be pleasant, but it does have the potential of resolving a conflict quickly and decisively. This may be the best strategy if given circumstances have a conflict that needs to be quickly addressed.

The confront strategy may also fall into the category of being unpleasant but sometimes effective as a conflict management strategy. Sometimes unaddressed issues cause conflict to continue unchecked. If you simply confront the behaviors that are causing the problem, this can resolve the conflict. Confronting conflict and its causes can sometimes be an important role of the team leader (when used at the right time and circumstance).

The resist strategy is another frequently used conflict strategy. This strategy is in the middle of the assertiveness continuum, which makes it more comfortable for some people. Resistance, when it comes from a leader, mostly sends the message that he is opposed to the conflict, but not yet committed to taking definitive action to address the issue. Hopefully others will get this message and end the conflict on their own. There can be different levels of resistance, ranging from passive resistance to more active resistance, which sends a stronger message from the leader.

The ignore strategy is also complicated, in that using this approach in the wrong situation can make it worse. However, certain circumstances require that you ignore the situation. Sometimes, letting a conflict resolve itself may be the best strategy. In some circumstances, a team leader who gets actively involved in the conflict may only make things worse. This can be especially true when two team members are having a conflict between them and you feel it is best they work out their issues themselves. However, in these circumstances, you need to keep aware of the situation and make sure that it does get resolved by itself.

The give in conflict strategy is low assertiveness but has high involvement, and thus may sound like a poor way to resolve conflict. However, giving in can be an effective conflict strategy, especially when the issue isn’t important to the leader or team members. Sometimes we find ourselves taking a more assertive position just for the sake of argument. But if something isn’t really important to you, then there isn’t any sense in fighting for it, and the best thing to do is allow the other person to have her way. This is why it is on the high end of the involvement continuum, as it takes certain involvement to use this strategy in the right situation. Team leaders and team members need to recognize these situations, and give in when it makes the most sense to do so.

The judge conflict strategy is in the middle of the assertiveness and involvement continuums. As its name implies, this strategy involves evaluating the conflict and making some kind of determination about which side of the conflict is right and which is wrong. Judging is a frequent role for the team leader. As any good judge or arbitrator, you must remain as impartial as possible in these situations, and make decisions based solely on the facts and circumstances of the situation. You often decide according to the rules which have been established by the organization. Also, you should explain your rationale for making such judgments, because it helps those involved more readily accept your decision.

The negotiating conflict strategy typically involves each side giving something up to reach a compromised outcome. As the leader, you may find yourself playing the role of a mediator in a conflict situation, in which this sort of process is the best way to be fair.

Finally, the conflict strategy highest on both the assertiveness and involvement continuums is collaborate. When everyone collaborates, they are trying their best to find the most acceptable ways to resolve conflicts and problems at work. They are totally engaged in the conflict resolution process and are open to all suggestions to resolve any existing conflicts. Having a collaborative attitude can resolve even the most difficult conflicts that exist in the workplace. Perhaps one of the greatest advantages of creating an engaged workplace is the collaborative spirit it can create throughout the organization.

An important point to understand about these conflict strategies is that each of the responses to conflict can be an effective and appropriate way to resolve conflict within your work group, depending on the situation. One of the things you will learn as an engaged leader is that you don’t always have to be in control of every situation that may arise at work, including conflict amongst your employees. Sometimes less is more when it comes to conflict resolution, and allowing your employees to resolve conflicts within their group on their own may be a better strategy. Using as many of these conflict strategies as possible, including those on the less assertive or involved continuum of this model, can be just as effective, if not more so, as those involving more leadership control.

Conflict Comfort Zones

Each of us has our own conflict comfort zone that we naturally gravitate toward when faced with a conflict situation. In other words, this is the way we instinctively respond to conflict. This may have a great deal to do with our own unique personality style as a leader, as we are all either more or less assertive or involved in the way we interact with others. Understanding your unique conflict comfort zone can help you better deal with conflict, which will inevitably arise in the normal course of people working together.

Think about how you typically react to conflict when you try to resolve it. Do you usually react in the same way (do you revert to the same conflict strategy) every time or most of the time? If you do, this is your conflict comfort zone. The problem is that this may not always be the best way to deal with conflict as a leader. For example, there may be times when you use a confrontational style of conflict management when a cooperative approach might be more effective, or vice versa. Learning to use all of these conflict strategies as a leader can help make you a much more effective conflict manager.

Hillary Wellington had become frustrated that her work group seemed to be in a constant state of conflict with one other. Members of her team were in her office on a daily basis, complaining about what she perceived to be petty squabbles between each other. Most of these issues seemed to be about either workload issues or personality clashes. Hillary never imagined when she first moved into a leadership role many years ago that her greatest challenge would be trying to resolve her employees’ arguments amongst themselves. Hillary, by nature, did not have an aggressive personality, and admittedly disliked conflict. She usually tried to avoid it whenever possible.

Then one morning her boss called her into his office to discuss her work group’s performance, which had been steadily decreasing over the past few months. He wanted to know if Hillary knew why this was happening. As Hillary sat in her boss’s office, she thought about all the conflict her team had experienced lately, and she realized this was probably why their group was declining in performance. She knew it was her responsibility to resolve these conflicts.

“I think I know what the problem is and I will take care of it,” Hillary said. Her boss looked bewildered. Realizing that he wanted some explanation about the cause of this problem and her plan to address it, she explained. “There have been many disagreements among my team members recently, which I have not done a good job in addressing and bringing to some kind of resolution. The performance numbers you just showed me tell me that most if not all of this problem is based on this conflict in my group. I believe that if I can address these conflicts more assertively, you will see a significant improvement in our performance.”

Hillary remembered learning about the Leadership Conflict Resolution Matrix during a webinar she recently participated in, and so she found a copy of the handouts she had downloaded from the presentation. She looked at the matrix and saw that her natural conflict style was on the low end of both the assertiveness and involvement continuums. She also realized that her responses to the ongoing conflict were largely responsible for her group’s performance problems. Ignoring these conflicts and hoping they would vanish was definitely not working, and she needed to act to change this situation immediately.

Hillary spent some time studying the Leadership Conflict Matrix and thought about which specific strategies she had used when members of her team came to her with their conflicts. She judged herself as relying too heavily—in fact, exclusively—on the retreat, resist, and give-in strategies. She remembered the webinar facilitator advising that each of these strategies could be effective, depending on the situation. Hillary remembered feeling somewhat relieved to learn that less aggressive conflict strategies like her own natural style could be effective when she was first presented this matrix. But she was coming to the realization that not moving away from your natural conflict comfort zone when the situation dictated it necessary was a big mistake.

As Hillary studied the matrix, she began to think of multiple different conflicts between her employees that had been brought to her attention. She had either ignored or only passively provided input or guidance to the involved employees. She thought about other ways in which she could have been more assertive to allow her team to move beyond these disagreements and focus more on their work. For instance, she remembered one situation where an employee was not following the proper work procedures and others complained to her about the problems this caused. Hillary encouraged these employees to work out this issue themselves, hoping they would work toward a cooperative solution. This did not resolve the problem, and only seemed to make matters worse. She realized that she should have confronted the situation and addressed this problem directly with the employee who did not follow proper procedures. Hillary was learning that you can’t just hope or expect employees to work cooperatively together—sometimes you have to take a more assertive role in resolving issues that naturally arise between employees at work.

The next time Hillary met with her boss to discuss her work group performance, the numbers were much improved. Her boss was obviously pleased with this turnaround, and asked her how she was able to achieve such remarkable results in a short period of time. Hillary answered, “It’s just a matter of knowing when to get more involved and assertive, and when to take a more passive role as a leader. It’s all a matter of timing!”

Dealing With Upset Employees

One of the most challenging situations a supervisor faces is of dealing with an upset employee. Regardless of the reason the person might be upset, there are many skills that can effectively manage these types of situations.

The first thing to keep in mind is that the employee is most likely in a highly emotional state of mind and may say and react in ways he would not normally under different circumstances. Keep in mind that this employee will soon return to his normal state of mind and you don’t want to do or say things that will ultimately damage your working relationship with that person. How you deal with this situation can make or break not only your working relationship with that person, but also his level of engagement at work going forward. Obviously, this is an important moment in your working relationship with an employee who is in a highly emotional state. Treating an upset employee with dignity and respect under these circumstances is of paramount importance. Part of showing respect is giving this person your attention and listening to his concerns and reasons for being upset. Providing a private location for this discussion is important to avoid other distractions taking away from the employee’s issue and privacy keeping this interaction away from the attention of others. The following are tips on dealing with an upset employee:

• Let the employee vent. This can be an important part of the process of dealing with an upset employee. This is a time to listen, not to argue or present counterpoints to the employee’s current concerns. The employee is probably not in a state of mind to really listen to the logic or rationale that you might present and counterpoints will only cause him to feel you are not really listening to his specific problem. What the employee is most likely trying to convey to you is how he is feeling at the moment, and if you judge these emotions with statements such as “You shouldn’t feel that way,” it will only appear that you don’t understand the problem or don’t care about his feelings.
• Don’t try to problem solve too soon before you have completely heard the employee’s concern or complaint. Look into each person’s situation and understand the uniqueness of their situation. That is what each individual really wants you to understand under these circumstances.
• Don’t immediately reject the employee’s request or proposed remedy until you have had time to thoroughly investigate. Avoid making commitments either positive or negative to the employee until you are fully prepared and ready to make such a decision.
• Ask for additional information and ensure that you understand (to the employee’s satisfaction by repeating your understanding of the problem to him) the problem from the employee’s perspective. Remember that the problem the employee initially came to you upset about may only be a symptom of a different issue. Make sure that you truly understand the root cause of the problem before trying to address or solve the issue, or it will continue to occur in the future.
• It may be a good idea to schedule a time to talk to the employee later on if he is too emotional to have a rational discussion with you at the moment. Even if you decide to discuss the problem with the employee at the time, it may still be a good idea to have a follow-up discussion to clarify points made during your initial meeting. You may find some inconsistencies between what was initially reported to you and what you are told during subsequent discussions, so be prepared for these differences. Be careful not to bring into question someone’s integrity or honesty if you hear such inconsistencies, as people often say different things once they have calmed down and are not in a highly emotional state of mind.
• Establish a timeline for following up on the employee’s complaint, and if there are any changes, let the employee know. Avoid making or even inferring a decision on the complaint if you don’t know for sure that it may be possible. This will only make things worse if any expectations cannot be met.
• Once you have heard everything you need to know about the employee’s complaint, look into the situation to see if there is any solution or remedy to the problem. Check to see what policies or practices might be established to help resolve the problem and to see how similar situations were dealt with in the past.
• Get back to the employee as soon as possible and explain your decision (or that of others). Accept ownership for the decision and avoid passing blame for an unfavorable decision on someone else. If the decision is not favorable to the employee, explain the reason and rationale for the decision. Explain any options the employee may have to appeal the decision, such as escalating the complaint to a higher level in the organization if possible.
• Follow up on any actions that were agreed to that would be made as a result of the complaint to ensure that they are being implemented.
• Depending on the nature of the complaint, provide resources or referrals to other support systems which may be available to the employee, either within the organization, or from external resources as appropriate.

Providing Feedback to Employees

Not receiving any feedback from one’s supervisor can be very stressful for many employees. Without feedback, an employee does not know whether she is meeting, exceeding, or failing a supervisor’s expectations. Everyone needs to receive feedback about how they are performing their jobs. Providing feedback to employees helps them understand how they are valued by you and the organization. Many employees leave jobs because they erroneously believe their boss doesn’t appreciate them, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Feedback is important in any activity we engage in, in our daily lives, or even when pursuing our favorite pastimes. What would it be like if you received no feedback when you pursued some of your favorite activities? For instance, this time instead of golfing, imagine what it would be like if a bowler received no feedback on his performance, and he wasn’t allowed to keep score.

If you are a bad bowler, you may be thinking it might be better to not see the results of your performance. But what makes bowling enjoyable and challenging, like golf as we discussed earlier, is getting feedback immediately after each action. Either the bowler sees the results of throwing the bowling ball properly or the consequences of not performing correctly. It would not do you much good during your game to receive your scores in the mail months later.

Just like the bowler, employees need immediate feedback on their performance. They need to know their score about how well they perform their jobs in real time. They also need to receive this feedback on an ongoing basis instead of just once a year. Engaged employees need to receive feedback and coaching about their performance on a regular basis.

Feedback for Continual Learning

Feedback is important to growth, development, and continual learning in life. The purpose of feedback is to promote learning and thus enhance performance. Coaching gives employees feedback and helpful suggestions that will allow them to grow and develop on their jobs. There are four levels of feedback that an employee might receive from her supervisor. Each of these four levels is better than the previous one, with the last one as the ultimate level—what you should strive for.

No Feedback

Think about some of the many problems created if an employee receives no feedback at all about her performance. Unfortunately, this is all too common in many workplaces, and often becomes the default performance feedback system.

The greatest problem with this is that employees won’t know if they are performing the job correctly; they will not have any opportunity to grow if there is no feedback to direct them. Again, it simply isn’t fair to hold someone accountable for things that you never discussed with her.

Only Negative Feedback

What happens if an employee only receives negative feedback? This is also a common occurrence in many workplaces. This situation creates problems, such as negatively affecting the employee’s self-esteem, creating a negative work environment, lacking reinforcement to motivate the employee, and creating a poor working relationship between the employee and the supervisor. This type of work environment would most likely disengage employees.

Only Positive Feedback

What if an employee only receives positive feedback, assuming that there are negatives to be discussed? If employees don’t hear about those aspects of their job performance that are lacking, they won’t be able to address these problems and grow in their jobs and careers. In many ways, a manager does an employee an injustice by not communicating where the employee needs to improve and by only telling her the positives about the performance. Often, it is this type of feedback—the one that is hardest to hear—that can ultimately be the most beneficial to the employee’s growth and development on the job.

Balanced Feedback

Balanced feedback, which is an appropriate amount of both positive and negative information provided to the employee, is the optimum level of feedback an employee should receive from his manager. Balanced feedback means that the person receives both positive and constructive feedback on how he can improve performance. The ratio of positive to negative should be determined by the employee’s actual performance, but there should typically be much more positive than negative feedback presented to the employee. Usually an employee’s strengths are first presented, and then any areas that he could improve upon should be reviewed in a constructive developmental way.

Types of Feedback

There are basically two types of feedback that an employee can receive: formal and informal. These are fully detailed below.

Formal and Informal Feedback

Formal: documented annual/semiannual performance review. Formal feedback is typically provided as part of the organization’s established performance appraisal process. Formal feedback is generally given annually, sometimes with midyear update reviews. There is usually a standard form required by the organization and an evaluation system that requires supervisors to rate each employee. This rating typically determines the amount of raise an employee receives for the past performance year, bonuses, consideration for promotions, or even disciplinary actions if rated below acceptable levels of performance. The formal performance evaluation form is usually kept in the employee’s personnel file as an official company document according to the organization’s policies and procedures for record-keeping. You should check with your own human resource department for guidance on your organization’s policy.

Informal: day-to-day communication and feedback about performance. Informal feedback is not usually documented; it is rather presented verbally by a supervisor to an employee. The most effective managers ensure they provide this informal, day-to-day feedback and direction to employees. There is no limit on the amount of informal feedback that a supervisor can provide to employees. It could be as frequent as daily. Informal feedback can be positive to reinforce good performance or negative to address any performance issues at the moment. Informal feedback doesn’t have to take a lot of time. It can be a passing comment or even a thank you to an employee to recognize completing a job or task. It could also include providing guidance on how to perform a particular task more effectively or correctly.

Which do you think is most important to performance: informal or formal feedback? You actually need both to effectively provide the right amount and type of feedback that employees need to perform their jobs to the best of their ability. A manager’s goal should be to provide a balance of both formal and informal feedback to each employee who works for her. Providing only one of these types of feedback at the expense of the other can be a problem. If either formal or informal is not provided to employees, a serious gap could grow in the employee’s understanding. Employees want and need to receive both formal and informal feedback. Each should support the other. When a manager provides regular informal feedback to an employee, there will be no surprises at the end of the year, when the formal feedback includes the aggregate of the whole year’s performance. Informal feedback should likewise be reciprocal of the formal feedback process, because it reinforces and continues the topics presented during the employee’s annual performance review.

Engaged Managing Tips

How a supervisor corrects poor or ineffective performance very often determines just how successful he is in helping that person improve her performance in the future.

 

As a supervisor who corrects poor performance, it is important to not only point out that the employee is doing something wrong, but also to tell why it is wrong, why it is ineffective to do it that way, what the desired performance is, and why it is better to do the right way. When the employee understands why you are asking him to change the performance behavior and why it is important to perform the task correctly, he is more likely to make the change, as well as more likely to trust his manager in the future. The same is true when telling an employee that she is performing a job or task correctly and these same steps should be followed: tell her that she is doing well, and why, and how that fits into the overall workflow. Too often, this explanation is skipped, and the employee doesn’t understand why performing the job or task correctly is necessary. Taking the time to point out this important information helps the employee be more engaged.

Recognition

An important part of creating a more engaged workplace is providing recognition to employees. The results of many employee engagement surveys typically show that many employees do not feel they are recognized for their hard work and efforts on the job. Recognizing employees’ good performance must be personalized and tailored to each employee’s individual needs. The goal of recognition is not only to acknowledge someone for his significant contributions and good work, but also to reinforce these behaviors so they will be repeated in the future. You need to understand what your employees perceive to be reinforcement. That way, what you think is reinforcing to employees actually is doing what you hope to accomplish with your recognition efforts. Sometimes, we think we are reinforcing or rewarding someone, when we are actually doing the opposite. Remember, one person’s reward may be another’s punishment. For example, you could give someone the chance to speak in front of a large group as recognition, when he is actually petrified of public speaking.

It is important to give some careful thought to the effectiveness of your reward programs and efforts to provide positive reinforcement for employees. Even the best of intentions can have the opposite effect if you get this wrong. Instead of providing a positive recognition experience, you could actually be creating a punishing experience, one that employees would prefer not to repeat. This could counter your efforts to create a more engaged workplace and could reinforce the behaviors you do not want to see continued in the future.

One way to prevent this recognition gone wrong scenario is to ask employees what they would want to receive as recognition. You might be surprised at how inexpensive and easy it may be to provide these types of reinforcement to employees as a reward for their hard work and accomplishments.

Think about some of the many advantages to your employees dealing with conflict more effectively. Think about the story in this chapter about Hillary Wellington, and how conflict amongst her employees was making her group a dysfunctional team. Remember how she ended up addressing conflict proactively, and how this helped her group work better together as a team.

1. What might be some advantages to dealing directly with any conflicts in your work group or area?

Think about situations in which you as a leader have been faced with conflict amongst the members of your work team or group. Ask yourself the following questions:

1. How has your conflict strategy and style been useful to you on your job?
2. How might you change from a less productive strategy used in the past to a more productive strategy?
3. How can you utilize the collaborate conflict strategy more than you do now? How could this help create a more cooperative working environment for everyone involved?
4. Think about a time when you had to deal with an upset employee and how you handled this situation. Looking back, do you think you dealt with this upset employee in the best manner possible? What could you have done differently?
5. What are some opportunities for you to provide more frequent and meaningful feedback to your employees? Do you think that this feedback could help them better perform their jobs? Why do you think this might be the case?
6. How can you ensure that you are recognizing and rewarding your employees in ways that will be most appreciated?

1. What are some of the things you need to do to reduce your own stress in the workplace?
2. How can you get started?