What is stress and how to combat it

One of the most widely heard terminology in today’s corporate world is the word ‘STRESS’. People tend to LIVE WITH IT, without even knowing what causes the stress and how it can be easily mitigated.

Thanks to the complicated world we are living in, our younger generation is already being trained to face and handle stress right from their first day in school. Though ‘unfortunate lot’ like us didn’t get that rigorous training, we are given enough opportunity in this complex world to face issues both at work and home. In the view of trying to avoid stress, many times, people become so numb that they start taking a very mechanical approach towards our day to day issues. This results in living a less value based life and more individualistic life creating a selfish world of their own.

While stressing out is one extreme, chosing and easy path to avoid stress is another extreme.So what is the right way out? Let’s see.

My attempt through this blog is to bring some thoughts around how to skilfully combat stress and de-stress our self with few simple and logical steps.

Stress generally can be classified as ‘Mental stress’ and ‘Physical stress’. Here I am focussing on mental stress which is by far what most people in corporate world face.

What is a stress?

Stress is a situation where your mind gets stuck with a current or a past incident resulting in causing discomfort and inconvenience to you, leaving you either to regret/crib about the situation/people which caused the stress and which resulted in taking your focus out of your existing duties and thus compounding your stress further.

To know about stress, Let us get acquainted with the following 2 terms

1.       Space

2.       Situations

Space

There are 2 types of Spaces – PERSONAL SPACE and WORK SPACE.

1.       Personal space – Everything that happens to us on personal front happens in our personal space.

2.       Work space – Everything that happens to us on work front happens in our work space.

       

         Situations

There are 2 types of situations – PERSONAL SITUATION and WORK SITUATION.

1.       Personal situations – Any situation to do with our personal life.

Examples of personal situation

·         Situation where you needing to take your child to hospital

·         Situation where you needing to drop your wife from home to her work place

·         Situation where you needing to spent time with our family on a vacation

2.       Work situations – Any situation to do with our work life.

Examples of work situations

·         Situation where you are required to be attending a meeting at office

·         Situation where you need to do a delivery for a client

·         Situation where you need to do an outstation business travel for few days

The key thing to remember here is that PERSONAL SITUATIONS always happen in PERSONAL SPACE and WORK SITUATIONS always happens in WORK SPACE.

Having understood this, let us come back to our subject topic - Stress. Further to the above preface, stress also can be categorized as below

Categories of stress

1.       PERSONAL STRESS – Those stress which gets accumulated purely due to personal issues.

Examples of PERSONAL STRESS

·         A person having tussle with his spouse.

·         A Father not having enough money to pay off his bills and children’s tuition fees.

·         A Mother whose children are sick and not able to take care of them due to office work.

2.       WORK STRESS – Those stress which gets accumulated purely due to issues in work reasons

Examples of WORK STRESS

·         A team member having tussles with his manager or vice versa.

·         Your team having issues with other teams or departments.

·         A team member trying to cater to unrealistic deadlines of an extremely demanding client.

Now combining these three let us understand the following:

The above picture says most of what I narrated above and what I am narrating below. Please keep referring to the above picture to clearly contemplate further narrations.

Unlike Personal/work situations, both personal stress and Work stress can happen in either personal space or work space. This phenomenon is what actually creates complication in stress levels.

·         Personal stress happens only in personal situation and both come under personal space.

·         Similarly, Work stress happens only in work situation and both comes under work space

It is very important that you understand what is mentioned till now very well. The below narrations with examples will take your understanding level to the required level.

We are going to analyse how elements under personal space and work space interacts with each other. Each of these different stress acts differently in different ways for different people.

Let us take the following examples from our life

Example 1: How a person’s personal stress can affect his personal life and/or work life.

Scenario A: A person having issues with parents on coming late from office,

a.       Case 1 : He manages to understand the importance of his work and tries to convince his parents

·   This is a situation where the person has a Personal stress built up at in a personal situation (his house) and tries to manage the issue with in his personal space (house).

b.      Case 2 : While he is able to manage stress at home by convincing his parents about his need to be in office late, but because his parents are fundamentally not happy, he carries the tension to the work and build up stress at work.

·   This is a situation where the person has a Personal stress built up in his personal situation and carries it to his Work space.

c.       Case 3 : Without being able to either cater for his parents needs or to convince them, the person feels stressed both at home and work thinking about his parents’ inconvenience.

·   This is a situation where the person has a Personal stress built up in his personal situation and carries it to his Work space as well as personal space.

Example 2: How a person’s Work stress can affect his personal life and/or work life.

Scenario B: A person having issues with his client as the client is not happy with his delivery and which resulted in an escalation to his management

a.       Case 4 : Consider that the issue is still being resolved, the person still has control of the situation and manages to contain his stress at work by initiating meaningful dialogues with his      management/client:

·         This is a situation where the person has a Work stress built up at in his work situation (office) and tries to manage the issue with in his work space (in his Office).

b.      Case 5 : The person trying hard to resolve the issues with the client at office, but not being able to resolve it, he starts pondering about it at his house too:

·         This is a situation where the person has a work stress built up in his work situation and carries it to his Work space as well as personal space.

c.       Case 6 : The person was able to do a damage control at his office by trying to keep calm at office. He chose to not speak up in office as it might lead to more complication between the client and the company. While doing so, on the other hand, he started building up stress as he couldn’t express his point of view. Though the situation in office was under control, this stress started translating in his actions when he is at his house:

·         This is a situation where the person has a work stress built up in his work situation (his office) and carried it to his personal space.

Have you ever imagined that our stress at any point can be caused out of so many different combinations? If not, that exactly is the reason why people find it difficult to tackle it. When you do not know the source of your stress, your measures taken will be incorrect and in effective.

One of the most common means of incorrect and in effective measures taken is when people resort to smoking and drinking as stress busters. While in reality, it adds to the stress in long run.

To tell a common example of how your stress translated across 2 spaces (Personal and work); If you have fought with your family members before going to office, and if you are not conscious that your emotions are at highly inflammable level, there exist all possibilities that you might barge up on your team as soon as you reach office for not good reason.

Now comes the interesting part of the blog - how to deal with this? Simple! Follow the below steps

Rule number 1: Never allow the stress in once space to bother you in the other space.

If this is happening (Case 2, 3, 5, 6 under the above scenarios), the first thing that you need to be aware is the fact that you can never handle

·         a personal stress sitting in Work space or

·         a work stress sitting in personal space

Unless you are able not to carry stress across the spaces

To clarify this, take the example where you have fought with your parents and you are worrying about it while you are at work. Think about this!

·         Is there anyone in the office who can help you in resolving your issues with your parents? In most probability the answer will be a ‘NO’.

·         Is there any activity that you do in office which can help you resolve the issue. Again the answer will be ‘NO’

·         Is there any advantage of you worrying about your personal issue in office. The answer will be ‘NO’.

·         Is there any disadvantage of you taking personal stress to work space? The answer will be ‘YES’ due to the below obvious reasons

o   Your focus on work will shift and in turn reduce your productivity and performance

o   Without knowing your personal issues, management will start looking at you as a nonperformer

o   Without knowing about your issues, your peers will start losing respect on you.

o   With you losing focus, your team members will also lose focus on delivery and result in client escalation

o   These overall results in work stress and with your natural mode of reaction, you will take the work stress back to your personal space.

o   Thus, a complicated combination of stresses will evolve and you will fall in to an endless loop of stress.

So, the first rule is , never allow stress in one space to cross over to another space.

Rule number 2: Never see your stress as caused by one single issue; instead isolate different stresses by isolating the reasons causing it and tackle each issue one by one.

For example, let us assume that you are in a highly stressed out situation. Many a times, you even don’t understand what is causing the stress. Track down from that stage to a stage where you are able to isolate all issues that you are currently facing. To your surprise, you might even find that there are reasons beyond what you thought is causing the problem.

For example, let us say that you have listed down the following issues which are causing stress

1.       A tussle with your brother (Personal space)

2.       A client delivery issue at work (Work space)

3.       A recent break up with your life partner (personal space)

After identifying these, contemplate whether all your stress will bust if you resolve the above. If you have even slightest doubt, it means that you have not listed all issues completely. Else proceed with the next step. I.e. to isolate issues and segregate issues under personal and work space.

It is very easy for you to list down very obvious causes for stress. There is another level of thinking which will pull out causes which you never imagined was a cause. For e.g. “My confidence level is low and hence am not able to perform”  This might seem to you as just an issue which is not causing too much stress. But subtle reasons like these will not be revealed to you unless you do a thorough introspection.

To un-fathom such subtle causes of stress you need to be 100% true to yourself. You conscious will tell you what exactly are the subtle causes for your stress. Don’t underestimate our hunches. Sometimes, we tend to play down what our conscious says just because we are not at convenience. Do not do that while doing this exercise.

Rule number 3: Once listed down, tackle stress in one space while you are at that space itself.

The personal stress needs to be tackled in personal space only and work stress needs to be tackled in work space only. This is extremely important as any cross over while resolving issues will result in waste of time and cause more stress (as explained in example above).

You may choose to handle issues one after another or multiple issues at one time depending on your appetite to take up more than one issue at a time. The key thing is to identifying and tackling the cause of stress. The count of how many issues you are able to tackle at one point of time is immaterial as long as you are on top of the issues.

Suppose you are given a bundle of entangled threads and are asked to un-tie the knots and free it. You will end up doing a detailed analysis of the route of the thread and skilfully untie each knot until all knots are cleared and the threads are freed up. There is no way you can untie all knots at a time. While trying to do it that way, you will end up stressing out and will might take more time.

To un-knot something as visible as a bundle of thread if you need to spend this much focus, imagine, how much more quality time and energy you need to spend to resolve your issues and de-stress yourself.

I urge all my readers to spend quality time on your issues, do scientific analysis on all problems that you face and untie knots one after another.

All the best!

What it means to be an 'understanding' person

 

Often I have realized that the root cause of any issue is difference in perceptions and opinion between people. Every issue that we face is created out of human requirements.

For example;

1.       You have an issue with your client because you didn’t cater for his requirements

2.       You have an issue with your colleague because he didn’t cater to one or some of your requirements

3.       etc

So what is the solution out here? You need to accept and appreciate the differences. For that you need to be an understanding person.

Now, 'understanding' is required when there is difference. And the irony is that the world is full of differences.

Couple of examples I can cite for differences in the world are;

1.       Differences in culture of people in different regions of the world

2.       Likes and dislikes of each individual

3.       Perception differences

4.       Difference in beliefs of each individuals

5.       Taste of food varies from people to people

6.       And so on

If you sit and think, you will find that almost everything differs between individuals or group of people.  So how do we survive in the middle of differences? Only one simple answer for it – ability to understand and appreciate both abilities and inabilities of the other person. You need to be an understanding person all throughout your career and life both.

This is one of the very important qualities that you would need to develop as an individual. This will help you go extra miles when you go up in the ladder in the organization.

Let me explain you this in more detail. I will clarify this point with a hypothetical scenario.

Example

Suppose you have been gifted with an eye through which you can see everything only in Blue colour. On the other hand your friend has been gifted with an eye through which he can see everything only in Green colour. Without knowing or being able to experience this between each other, If you chose to stick on to your own beliefs that everything is made of Blue colour, you will lose the chance to understand your friend. If you get in to a conversation at this stage, a clear difference in opinion will emerge and you will start disputing with your friend on what colour the world around you is actually made of. In reality perception at both end are true at the same time and your dispute resolution exercise is a futile exercise unless it ends when both of you understand and believe each other’s experience.

Look this issue from a larger perspective. Doesn’t it send you the signal that at one level you are limiting your beliefs and perceptions to what you can see, touch and feel in your surroundings?

This is where we need to break the paradigm. While our beliefs are true to some extent, the same truth is contradictory in another level. Like the way we feel that Sun is moving round the earth while in reality it is the other way when you look from a higher altitude. Your beliefs need to be relooked in to when you try to understand another person.

If you don’t understand this basic principle, you will constantly be trying to fool yourselves with the false belief that your perception is always right for you. Many times your own perceptions deceive you.

I have comes across many people who keep saying that ‘What I feel right is how I do things’. This is good as long as you have good level of adaptability. For someone who is rigid in thoughts and action, this attitude will do a lot of damage and they will lose lots of opportunities around them to be useful for others - Simply because they will fail to understand their team members’ perspectives.

The bottom line is that the art of ‘understanding ‘ is a pure personal trait and can only be developed with constant observation of world around you, with your need to know more about a person, this can be easily achieved.

And why do you need to know more about a person? - Because you don’t have a choice. To be able to live in a specific community, you need to understand and appreciate their culture right? Similarly, to be able to move along with your team members, you need to know about them. The exercise of knowing about them is nothing but understanding them and appreciating their individuality.

Having known the importance of being an understanding person, now let’s see how to identify situations where you need to be understanding.

It is little tricky and your mind can mis-lead you . You will face 2 situations

1.       The person opposite to you is very understanding

2.       The person opposite to you is not very understanding.

In the former case, you need to be aware that the person opposite to you is already very understanding and it requires minimum effort from you to understand that you have an understanding counterpart. Many times, we unknowingly exploit this advantage and start piling up on him which often leads to testing his patience. Once he brakes-up (which is an in evitable result) you forget his good past and label him as a non-cooperative person. Example for this scenario is when two close friends break up.

In the latter case, you need to be aware that you have a tough case to resolve. The good thing is that you are more alert. Your expectation is set properly from the beginning and the chances that you will give your best is high. Here you have a real tough task to not only understand your counterpart’s perceptions and beliefs, but also to make him accept of your perceptions and beliefs. This is the scenario similar to two foes trying to patch up.

In short, differences are inevitable and the only solutions to resolving differences is to genuinely try and understand the other person’s point of view.

Hope you got enough food for thought. Keep exploring people’s mind. Be a constant observer. Success will follow you and you will discover the best possible people management abilities in you.

WHAT is an 'attitude issue' and HOW to deal with it

One of the most widely used terminologies in the space of people management is the term ‘Attitude issue’

Many a times a grievance gets raised to higher management by the team member and the manager comes back with his explanation saying that the team member has an ‘incorrect’ attitude issue. From my experience, many of the manager – subordinate tussle gets raised and contested in the above manner.

As managers, we should know exactly to categorize a person’s behaviour as a onetime disturbance or an incorrect attitude. Else, we will end up using this as an excuse and wrongly categorise undesired gestures as incorrect attitude most of the time. So, then the question is “how do we conclude if there is an attitude issue with a person or not?

The only way is that you understand what an incorrect attitude issue is!

Let me start explaining this to you with an similar example.

How do you differentiate if a person is asking for money out of ‘GREED’ or out of ‘NEED’? The following indications will give you the answer for it.

1.       A person with NEED will be contented after getting enough money. A person with GREED will not be satisfied no matter how much money he gets.

2.       A person with NEED will ask for money only if he is in need. A person with GREED will crave for money which is out of proportion to his needs.

3.       A person with NEED is conscious of what he needs. A person with GREED is Blind and open ended in that respect

Such simple logical queries can bring out the difference when you hit a T-End like this. So, here above, the conclusion is that the real problem is not money, it is their ‘craving’ for money. This is an attitude issue and have a pattern. Which means, craving for money will not subside by interim money supply but has to be treated at the subtler levels of the victim’s mind.

Now let’s come back to our topic – ‘incorrect attitude’. Something similar happens here. An ‘attitude issue’ can be identified if the same has a pattern in behaviour.

In other words, it is a habitual disorder. Just like any other habitual disorder (like smoking, drinking etc) this habitual disorder can never be rectified by giving one time feedback or showing off your criticism. The person in question is victimized and is a part of the problem and he needs help to resolve it.

How do you resolve an incorrect attitude issue?

This is where your role as a manager comes. When you know how powerful your role is; you start using it effectively. Many times people doesn’t know how to use their role effectively

For example, of a person speaks rude to you. It can be of 2 reasons

1.       He was rude because being rude is a part of his behaviour

Or

2.       He was rude because he was upset on that day for some personal reason.

A manager who looks for attitude issues in team will fail to see the second possibility and will end up taking incorrect inference and future actions.

So what is the way out?

A careful dealing of the issue. I would advocate you to follow the below step by step process whenever you face with undesired gesture from your team member.

1.       When a person shows an undesirable gesture, try and ignore the same and bring your focus to the matter that you are discussing

a.       50%, just by ignoring you will discourage the person to show any more bad gestures and bring his/her attention back

2.       If the person continues to show different attitudes, suddenly stop the discussion, turn around to him (whether in public or private) and assertively ask if you can help him in any way

a.       Many people doesn’t expect such sudden feedback and hence will shake up and wake up to come in line with you

3.       If a person still continues to show his non alignment, you ask for a formal one on one meeting with him and then do the following during the meeting

a.       Give complete benefit of doubt to him and clearly state that you wanted to have the discuss as you felt he needed some help

b.      Then mention that, he seemed to be in little distress as his gestures showed as if he was not comfortable with the meeting decisions and that you genuinely want to hear out his points

c.       After getting the person to the comfort zone, you hear out to him patiently. There can be 2 scenarios

                                                               i.      The person easily opening up his concerns with you

                                                             ii.      The person not willing to open up

d.      Both have different meanings.

                                                               i.      The 1^st means that he didn’t realize he was causing problem and want to help you in resolving things. Here you have 80% change of person having NO attitude issue and 20% chance of person having attitude issue but is smart enough to conceal it. You have a fair chance to be able to resolve it through mutual dialog.

                                                             ii.      The 2^nd means that he doesn’t even want to acknowledge that he has a problem or he is causing a problem – Here you have 80% chance of an attitude issue and needs more careful further moves.

Now I am taking this for further detailed analysis

Not willing to open up

Stage 1

If it is the first (not willing to open up), that simply means he needs more time. Many managers fail to realize that when people are in denial mode, it just means people need more time. So what do you do now?

Simple, you tell the person “I understand that you might be needing more time” and just conclude the conversation by saying “if you ever feel like sharing the concerns, I will always be a good friend and manager to hear it out. Similarly I too would get back to you in case I have any concerns to share with you”

This opens up an endless means to start communicating with your team member and mentor him to be an effective resource. I repeat. For cases which are such complicated in nature, your every small act has its own impact and hence should be calculated and have human touch. If you have any other or more conversation than above at this stage, it will be counter-productive and over complicated.

Give the person enough time to assimilate the subtle depths of the conversation and let it sync in to his mind the fact that you are a dependable friend and a manager.

Sometimes the nature of the topics that I chose to write has subtleness imbibed in to it and hence might need a lot of introspection, experimentation and implementation from the reader to understand and experience the essence of it. This is one such topic.

Stage 2

Now having done the above step 1, what next?

Now that you have given some time to your team member before you sync up again for another round of talk, you need to start doing some ground work and equip yourself you deal with your team member better in your next confrontation.

You should start relooking in to what you have been assigning him as work. Start giving him works that he finds interest. Look at restructuring the team if required. Do things which would change the situations to suit him.

What this will do is; while the team member is tuning himself for the changes, your positive approach will act as a subtle rider and mentor.

Stage 3

Believe me, now you don’t need to do much. Or, rather you don’t have much to do. You have ignited the fire and have put the required vegetables in the pot. Now let it boil by itself until  ready to served.

What I mean here is that when you have done some bit of work, then you have to learn to sit back relax until the next action time comes.

I will explain this by an example. It is like you have taken your effort to board the bus. Now, until the bus reaches the destination, you have nothing major to do other than to just wait patiently. Once you have reached your destination, then you again have some other action to do. Else your effort to make the journey will not be fruitful. But how do you plan your next action effectively? Simple use the time you sit inside the house to fine tune your plan of action after reaching the destination.

Hope you get my point.

Stage 4

Take the case to logical closure. This means, after your wait, when the time is right, have the conversation with the person again, but with the new changed perceptions and situations.

You no longer should view the person as your old trouble maker. You should know how to see things fresh every time. Keep no baggage of egos and keep reminding yourself that you are here not to justify your stand, you are here to help someone.

Thus, start imbibing the positive vibration and client focussed/organization focussed and delivery focussed dialogues with the team member. Give a sense of collective effort and common higher objective. Slowly lift him from a mere individual to a contributor. Bring out the best in him.

Thus take your case step by step - just baby steps and elevate your role from merely managing people to much higher objective of creating leaders.

Bottom line is every individual comes with certain type of attitude as each individual’s character is shaped in different situations and with different kind of people and experience. So, it is foolishness to expect any one in the team without some attitude issues. It is even more foolishness to criticize it and do nothing else about it.

It is a game of intelligence to take it as a challenge, deal with it and resolve it in amicable manner. Hope this blog has given some direction in doing so. All the best!!

Technique to become Proactive

We have heard a lot about the need to be proactive in professional life. But like all good advises, this also falls in to a category where we are not told how to be proactive. In the run of trying to achieve this goal, we end up achieving different thing and assume that we have been proactive enough and then wonder why still the results are not satisfactory.

In this blog, I am trying to decipher the secret of how to be proactive.

To understand ‘Being Proactive’, we must understand the opposite of it- what we call generally as ‘being reactive’. Being reactive as the name suggests, is to act on an issue once the issue has happened. We sometimes calls it also as ‘Fire-fighting‘ in our day to day work environment. Or in simple terms it is to get to a stage where you think “I wish, I could have done it better …..”.

Hope you are getting my point.

What is being proactive?

Having said what ‘being reactive’ is, I am trying to explain what it means to be proactive. Like for all new management concepts, ‘Being proactive’ requires a small shift in paradigm. While all these days, you kept thinking how I will complete my tasks. Now I am requesting you to change the thought process.

Whatever comes to you as your WISH, from now on, convert it as your NEED.

The moment something becomes your NEED, pro-activeness becomes engulfed in to you. A Wish is always a wish, it might or might not get fulfilled and it all depends on how much effort you have put in to convert your wish to reality.

There is no push to satisfy a WISH or rather there is no such thing as 'Satisfying a WISH'. But you can always strive to satisfy a NEED and there is a natural urge to satisfy a NEED. If your wish is to get highest client satisfaction, unless you convert that wish to your need, you will not start thinking on how to achieve it.

It is like dreaming. To dream you don’t need to pay anything. But to make your dreams in to reality, you need to sweat yourself. Similarly, to simply wish for something, you don’t need to pay anything and you do not hold a stake in the outcome. Are you getting me?

For example, for a normal citizen can only WISH that his country is safe from an alien country. But at the same time a soldier’s mind doesn’t work with simple wishes. He over a period of time has developed a strong will to safeguard his country and the same has become his NEED. In such a situation, his urge to satisfy his NEED gives him the power to anything, including giving up his own life to safeguard his NEED. After winning a war, the soldier become a hero and holds full stake in the victory.

Why? Because he took a pro-active step in his life to joining the army, getting trained, and being on war-foot. This happened because, the whole idea of being a soldier came from the realm of his ‘NEED’ to protect his country than just a ‘WISH’ that his country is safe.

See how simple it is to change things by just changing our perceptions!

Now take this in to the context of a client servicing.

When you think ‘What I need to do to complete my tasks?’, it is a clear reactive mode of client service. Here your tasks are already laid down by the client and you have so much to catch up. Because of this you get in to vicious circle of trying to achieve the targets and never getting over it.

‘Being proactive’ is thinking from

·         ‘How do I ensure, my client is always in delight mode?’

·         ‘How do I ensure, I am completely on top of delivery and all the action items are acted up on with timeliness and quality?’

·         ‘How do I ensure, every small action item during client meetings becomes an input in to process fine-tuning and re-engineering?’

·         ‘How do I ensure. client doesn’t have to remind me of my deliverables?’

·        ‘How do I ensure, all of the above is my NEED and not just a WISH?’

We are taught so many techniques and tools to help ensure all of the above. For example, risk mitigation plans, project plan works sheets, resource allocation charts, Daily activity charts, Action items and so on. But the fact is that, unless this basic shift happens in our mind first, all of the above are just off the shelf products which gets used meaningfully for some period and then becomes a ritual and many time waste of time/effort.

The basic paradigm about these off the shelf tools is that, they can do the issue resolution for us. It is incorrect. They are just catalysts or just some means to achieve the objective. The actual and only requirement to be proactive is to change our perception about ‘how to be proactive?’

I hope this blog has helped you to change the mind-set and tune yourself to ‘Be Proactive’.
Be active as well as proactive. All the best!