Hope all's well with you and that you're having a good summer. This month's newsletter is setting the tone for future instalments in that there's one article focusing on the individual, and the other a little more on the organisational perspective. I've been talking to people a fair bit recently about how the individual and the organisation are very much one-and-the-same, and depend on and reflect each other to a great degree, so that's the reasoning behind it. I hope you find something of interest here, that you can use personally/for the organisation.  

How are you going to react if you are this surfer? We probably know what we should do - something along the lines of 'go hell for leather in the opposite direction'!!!!! - but in these circumstances, we might well be so stricken with fear and anxiety that we end up panicking, doing the wrong thing, splashing around, and making the worst of the situation. The thing about it is, that when things are really difficult, and something really bad happens, or we're confronted with a shark, its not always very easy to make the best of the situation..........Those who can do just that are more likely to prosper and succeed of course. Whenever we do meet adversity, or a setback, or things don't go to plan, asking ourselves 'Am I making the best of this situation?', and doing something about it if we're not, is clearly what we want to aim for.

SCROLL DOWN TO SEE THE BEAST CLOSE UP

IT'S FLIPPER, NOT JAWS!!!

'Fraid so - what looked like a shark, was in fact a dolphin. As you undoubtedly know, sharks (elasmobranchs) have vertical tail fins, whereas dolphins (cetaceans) have a horizontal tail fin which you can see on the image. 

And what I am getting at here? Well, I wanted to compare 'coming across a shark which turns out to be a dolphin', with the sorts of things that can happen to us in our everyday lives (setbacks, change, adversity, the new, when we're out of our comfort zone for example). What can appear at first look/first thought to be very threatening, can actually turn out to be something innocuous, and it's how we deal with it that's important, as we can make things far worse for ourselves than they need to be by how we handle them.

Just wanted to share 3 potential learning points

1)    The double-whammy: say it was a shark, then our panicking, thrashing around etc would be very counter-productive. What we can sometimes do is have something bad happen on the one hand, and on the other hand handle it badly - get stressed, anxious, down for example - and it makes it 10 times worse than it needs to be.

2)    Are you sure it's a shark? It could just be a dolphin. What we thought was going to be really terrible, just isn't at all, and the way we perceive it for one, and handle it, for two, means that we can find ourselves over-exaggerating, catastrophising, and ending up making the worst of it

3)    Let's try and assume it's Flipper until we have incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. That way, we'll deal with it well, because we're not scared of Flipper. Truth be told, with a lot of things that happen to us, more often than not it is Flipper, wouldn't you say? And even if it does turn out to be Jaws - which it probably won't very often - let's ask ourselves how we can best deal with it in terms of how we think about it and what we do about it. (It could be to fight Jaws)

(That's enough Jaws and Flipper-related analogies, Ed) 

We have a helpful brief questionnaire that you can use to identify and acknowledge that we can find ourselves doing 1), 2) or 3) - and having identified it we can do something about it. Drop me a line and I'll send you a copy. 

My point about the above is that we need to go a lot further than the idea that 'staff are our most valuable asset' to 'Staff ARE the organisation'. I say this because 

• when the individual staff member is ill or under-performing, the organisation is 'ill' too, in the sense that organisational performance will suffer, productivity is affected, sick absence may ensue, there's pressure on colleagues, there's the cost of paying someone to be at home etc etc. From this perspective, when one person is under-performing, or not at work due to sick absence, the whole 'corporate' body suffers

It follows therefore that if we want to address the issues of sick absence and under-performance, we need to start with the individual. To begin with, if the individual is psychologically well, free from stress etc, they're more likely to be engaged, and also if they're more engaged, they're more likely to be psychologically well (as work is fulfilling, meaningful, they're motivated, have purpose and direction and so on). I've used the example of engagement, and we can equally use skills and attributes such as resilience; confidence; optimism; taking responsibility for our own wellbeing; being flexible; being able to deal with change and uncertainty.

Ask yourself: How good are our people in these areas?

If we have staff who have these skills and attributes, they are more likely to perform well, and take less sick leave. Someone who is resilient and optimistic and confident is likely to be able to deal with much more of work and life's challenges, and see things through, and cope when times are hard. They're more likely too to learn and develop and grow as a person. Most importantly, as indicated above, these characteristics will apply to the organisation as well, and if our people ARE the organisation, we can have a business that is resilient and optimistic and developing and not resistant to change.      

Promoting wellbeing/Addressing workplace hazards

How about what the organisation/manager can do to foster an environment and relationship that encourages and promotes wellbeing and engagement and those other skills and attributes mentioned above? An industry-standard model that is evidence-based and free for the organisation to use is the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) Management Standards approach. These are the 6 'wellbeing indicators' that we can use - again at the individual level or organisational level - to ensure that as far as is possible we are encouraging the helpful environment described above. We are at the same time minimising the chances of one or more of these workplace hazards creating a problem for us. You can use them on an 'informal basis', one to one with a member of staff, no matter what the size or nature of the organisation, or incorporate them fully into the way your managers manage, and how the organisation operates and functions. (Let me know and I'll send you a copy of a simple and straightforward questionnaire you can use with your people). Just as an example of how we can use them:

Have a conversation with your staff member around the Demands they're under work-wise (too much, too little, any problems with equipment/environment-wise?); the Control they have over their work (do they need more/less flexibility?); the Support they get at times of need from you the manager/the organisation/colleagues; what are Relationships like at work, what kind of culture is it and how well is conflict dealt with?; is their Role clear-cut and a good 'fit' with others?; are we managing and communicating Change as well as we could?

The HSE have a wealth of info and resources on this at http://www.hse.gov.uk/stress/standards/ They include what you can do skills-wise to promote wellbeing and support your staff. 

Please get in touch if you have any questions or need any support with any of the above. 

That's all for now. I'll be in touch again before too long.

Best wishes

Marc

Marc Kirby

Stress Management Plus

tel. 0118 9001652

info@stressmanagementplus.com