Why Is It Important To Know How To Manage Stress At Work?
What is stress management? How does it affect us in the professional field?
These are very pertinent questions considering that many work contexts are very prone to putting us in uncomfortable situations to which we must know how to adapt as quickly as possible: presentations to department colleagues, coordination of a team to carry out a special event, accumulation work, etc.
However, not everyone considers them, since Many times we fall into the trap of considering that stress is simply something we have to suffer, a type of discomfort about which we can do nothing. Fortunately, reality reflects the opposite.
Why should we know how to manage stress in the workplace?
It would be very simplistic to assume that stress is just a personal problem, specific to each individual; Those who become stressed do so not because their brain experiences a spontaneous change, but because something in their interaction with the environment has changed; For example, someone has assigned him a task to finish in 24 hours, and he feels that he will not be able to do it. In other words, stress It arises somewhere between the person and the context where that person is and it would be just as valid to say that there are stressed people as it is to say that there are stressful situations.
That is why there is no magic recipe to make stress disappear from our lives, as if by taking a potion an anti-stress bubble surrounded us: the reality is that stress-generating contexts are not going to disappear. However, That does not mean that we cannot do anything to manage our emotional problems in the best way possible and, in fact, the difference between knowing how to modulate our stress and not knowing how to do so can be key.
This is why fields such as psychology have been researching for decades what the best coping strategies are to adapt to stressful situations, so that even though we are not able to control everything that happens in our lives, we take advantage of our room for maneuver in what we can control.
Thus, Today we have some useful and effective strategies that, without detracting from the usefulness that anxiety and stress have for our survival and in predisposing us to solve problems and avoid unnecessary dangers, they help us make our emotions work in our favor, and not against us.
As a result, there are currently many professionals who are trained in these theoretical-practical principles that help manage stress at work and that can be applied both to oneself and to others, work groups. The importance of taking advantage of this is fundamental, especially in organizations where people often work under pressure, as we will see.
How does poor stress management at work affect us?
These are different ways problems can arise at work due to poor stress management, with examples.
1. Propensity to experience conflict
In the context of organizations, it is inevitable that clashes of interests arise from time to time ; However, the key is how these conflicts are resolved. Knowing how to adopt a negotiating and empathetic attitude means obtaining very different results than what we would obtain if, for example, we let everything take its course and “let the strongest win.”
In times of great anxiety or continued stress, many people become significantly more irritable, and are not able to react well to what generates feelings of frustration. Therefore, in this psychological state the discussions become more heated and it is easier not to seek to reach a consensual solution but to immediately release that accumulated discomfort.
For example, a department head who does not know how to manage his stress well could try to discredit a middle manager in front of the team or even humiliate him, something that in addition to personally harming the latter, is bad for the organization’s work dynamics.
2. Greater exposure to psychological disorders
People who experience excess work stress on a regular basis become more vulnerable to a wide variety of psychological disorders, including depression, insomnia and addictions.
We must not forget that if things do not work well in our way of adapting to a job, that means suffering. psychological exhaustion for many hours a week and that in companies strongly based on the value of competitiveness, this discomfort can be almost uninterrupted and accompany the person home during their free time hours.
3. Abandonment of orientation towards achieving goals
A very important aspect when making a professional project work is to always be goal-oriented. That is, not just “comply” and that’s it, but rather adapt one’s own behavior depending on the problems that arise, without having to wait for others to tell us on their own initiative that there is a change of plans.
When we let stress accumulate in us and we do not give it a satisfactory outlet, this leads us to a state of fatigue that significantly limits our performance at work For example, even if we continue to reach the minimum daily, weekly or monthly objectives, we will probably be leaving aside other “unofficial” sub-objectives that are important to attend to out of pure common sense, beyond direct instructions from our superiors.
As a result of all of the above, inadequately managing stress causes the way the entire company in general, or certain departments in particular (if the problem only affects those people) to function, deteriorates, generating a bad environment. labor that is noticeable both in the work dynamics and in the formal and informal relationships between workers: distrust, resentment, fear of new projects emerging on which to work as a team, etc.
Are you interested in training through a stress management program?
If you want to train in techniques and strategies to manage stress in the professional context, you may be interested in the “Program in Stress Management: channeling and projecting energy”, carried out by the European School of Coaching
This is a completely online training program based on live classes through a synchronous classroom, and has a total duration of 12 hours divided into several sessions. This course includes theoretical-practical content related to topics such as time-use techniques, conversational skills, the keys to detecting stress and knowing how to react to it from the first moment, and other fundamental aspects to maintain emotional balance. To see more information about the European Coaching School, access this page.
