You can have some control over an overwhelming situation.
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Feeling out of control can cause stress. Loads of work, quick deadlines or personality differences can make you feel stressed at work. Don’t default to feeling powerless. You have the ability to control some of your situation. Here are five tips to help you better manage a stressful workplace:
1. Create a realistic, daily to-do list.
If you are stressed because you have a lot of work, break the work up. Write a to-do list that you will tackle for the day, and try not to think about what needs to be done the next day.
When you break up your work, your work can feel more manageable. When you complete a task, you feel accomplished and satisfied. You reassure yourself that you can manage your workload. Create a realistic, daily to-do list to set expectations for yourself.
2. Develop templates.
Templates eliminate the repetitive and redundant elements of work. Why write the same headings on a daily or weekly memo if you can create a template that has the headings already typed when you open the document? The more elements of your work that you can automate, the more time you will have to devote elsewhere.
Templates can also help your colleagues. If you are on vacation or are on sick leave, templates can provide your teammates with the framework to complete the work for which you are usually responsible. Templates cut down on the time to explain how to tackle a task or structure a document and ensures consistency of a product.
3. Get to know your colleagues as human beings.
Working with people can be harder than the work itself. Different personalities and approaches can be difficult to work with, if there is a lack of understanding and trust. Taking the time to understand your colleagues can help uncover that you share similar motivations and good intentions. Recognizing similarities can help to drop the judgment and build trust. Trust is the foundation for a solid working relationship.
Invest the time and energy to learn about your teammates. This might take the form of a virtual coffee, an after work happy hour, participating in an employee resource group or small talk before a meeting or in the hallway. Relationships are not transactional. Relationships take time and intention to develop.
4. Set expectations for others.
Set expectations with your peers and manager. Communicate how you are seeing the work at hand, including potential roadblocks and timing. If you don’t express your concerns, other people won’t know your concerns.
Being good at your job requires you to manage other people, even if you are not in a formal manager role. Your manager or leadership executives may not be aware of the day-to-day details or short-term work that is required to accomplish the project. You have to communicate with them to ensure they can achieve their goals and the overall goals of the organization.
Setting expectations can be challenging for more junior professionals, but you can do it. You are not talking back at the person. You are not challenging their authority. You are communicating the facts and offering solutions. Your communication is critical to helping them succeed. Set expectations to help you better manage your workload and stay the course for supporting organizational goals.
5. Ask for help.
Asking for help may be the easiest answer to reducing stress in the workplace, but it can be the most difficult action to take. Asking for help requires you to be vulnerable.
Asking for help does not mean you are inept or unintelligent. Rather, it demonstrates that you have self-awareness of what you can currently handle and are more committed to achieving company goals than protecting your ego. Being willing to ask for and receive help is critical to being part of team.
You have the power to better manage stressful situations. Write a realistic, daily to-do list, create templates, develop relationships with your teammates, set expectations and ask for help.
What helps you to manage stress at work? Share with me your stories and thoughts via Twitter or LinkedIn.
