March 2015
A Powerful Predictor of Workplace Stress
The world is full of danger and when people feel safe, they trust and cooperate. When they don’t, they waste time and energy defending themselves from each other.
We live most of our lives wired and wound up, rarely pausing to relax or unplug from the daily grind. What are the consequences of your ever-hectic life? When you are stressed at work, you lose natural qualities of communication, compassion, patience, cooperation and creativity.
Why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential and more profitable than others? Why do some people naturally command greater loyalty?
Research shows that what you do with your knee-jerk reaction is key to workplace stress.
Business relationships are often rocky due to poor communication, misinterpretation of facts and pressurized environments. Mole hills become mountains and mistakes become disasters in the course of a day.
Whether you are the president of the company or the assistant who sets up the conference room — your communication style can have an enormous affect on others.
Knee Jerk Reactions that Create Stress:
Passive or Aggressive Communication
When you don’t proactively ask for what you want or need from your employees/boss – you are passively communicating. With a passive style, you don’t often share your true thoughts and feelings, especially if you think it will lead to conflict. You aren’t direct and succinct during or after confrontation.
Passive communicators often believe they ‘aren’t good enough’ and that ‘other people are better’, and so you take the ‘one down’ position. This creates resentment and long-term stress. You might resort to sarcasm or gossip to indirectly communicate your feelings — neither are helpful.
If you use aggressive communication, you take the ‘one-up’ position. You might attack, belittle, blame, criticize and generally denigrate the other person to get what you want.
People who speak with an aggressive style tend to use the words, ‘always’ and ‘never.’ For example, an aggressive communicator might say, “You never finish your reports on time. You’re always sloppy!”
You might think your aggressive style is direct and effective but it tears down feelings of equality. Trust, faith, safety and goodwill in your workplace relationships will erode. People will eventually leave you or turn on you.
Reactions that Reduce Stress:
Assertive Communication
Assertive communication is a balanced communication style that privileges each voice in the conversation equally. An assertive communicator will freely and respectfully disclose their feelings, thoughts, wants and needs in a way that can be heard by the other.
The basis of assertive communication is to treat all people equally. You support yourself in having a perspective and a voice, and you also respect that your employee has a perspective and a voice that may be different from yours, but is just as valuable.
Assertive communicators use ‘I’ language to express their thoughts and feelings.
Assertive communicators will expect that differences will arise in their team and be prepared to move into difficult and anxiety-provoking discussions with a goal of equality and resolution.
An assertive communicator doesn’t blame others for how they feel which is an important distinction from the aggressive communicator who will often blame others for the way they are feeling.
How to Shift Your Knee Jerk Response
1. Take a breath or 2 or 3. Slow yourself down for the briefest of pauses—just enough time to subvert your default reaction. In that moment, notice your gut reaction. How do you tend to handle poor performance? Do you get angry? Stressed? Needy? Distant? Your goal is to give people what they need to perform, not what you need to release.
2. Decide on the outcome you want. Be specific — maybe it’s improved performance. What does this particular person need in order to turn around this particular poor performance or failure? Maybe it’s help defining a stronger strategy, or brainstorming different tactics, or identifying what went right. Maybe they need to know you trust them, you’re on their side and that mistakes happen.
3. Choose a response that will achieve the outcome you want, rather than simply making your already obvious displeasure more obvious.
The added bonus in changing your knee-jerk response? It will improve your marriage and personal relationships, as well. An extra goody for you and everyone in your life.