When your team is stressed: 5 things you can try
As I shared last week, being overwhelmed with too many priorities can lead straight to stressing your team out. Setting clear expectations, explaining how someone will be measured, and tracking progress can help alleviate some of that stress.
But what if that is not enough? What if all the priority setting you do does not remove the stress?
When a team member is truly stressed, it may manifest itself in several ways. We all have a humanistic instinct when faced with stress or conflict to respond through either fight or flight. For some of us, when we are stressed and under the gun, we may get irritated, defensive, or start to challenge more -- the fight response.
For others, we may react to stress and conflict differently -- we withdraw, shut down, put up our shields, not comment but stay silent, or even disappear. This is also a stressed response -- the flight response.
It is important to know your team members and what their style is, and we need to recognize a stressed response when we see one. Regardless of someone's response, there are actions we can take as a manager to help our team members through stressful times.
Ask questions.
This can be an uncomfortable place to be as a manager. You are not a counselor or therapist so you don't want to move into that space but you can ask open-ended questions based on observable facts to see if work or anything work-related may be causing the stress. For example, "In our last team meeting, I noticed you were not as engaged as usual. Is there something at work contributing to this?" "Last week, I noticed you challenged your colleague on most of his decisions. Is there something new driving this?"
Coach them through the stress.
If the answers lead to a work-related issue(s), this is when you can put on your coach's hat and ask more questions to help coach them into a resolution or at least actions to take. Good coaching questions include: 1) What do you think is causing ... (your stress, disengagement, disagreement, feeling pinched, feeling overwhelmed, etc.)? 2) What else? 3) What would you like to change? 4) What impact do you think that change will have? 5) How can I help?
Create a mini-action plan.
We set plans all the time for projects, processes, clients, and other work. How often do we create a plan to manage our stress? A service we can provide as a manager is to help our team members create this kind of plan. For years, I have set annual plans for myself that span personal and professional goals. For the last few years, one of my goals has been to better manage stress and anxiety. I listed tactics I could do on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis to help manage stress and keep bad feelings at bay. Some of these tactics included: Exercise, drinking water, standing and leaving my office for a few minutes, taking a breath, and asking myself "So, what?" when I think something is really bad. If you can identify the root cause of stress, you can devise a plan to tackle it...I promise.
Determine if something can be paused.
If workload or type of work is causing stress, ask yourself if something can be paused to give your team member a break. If we get to a point of stress, sometimes walking away or taking a break for a short amount of time can help. Maybe pause the project causing the issue for a week or longer. Maybe they need a vacation -- a true break from work. It is okay to encourage your team members to do that. Some of us are terrible at planning and taking time off. A break from work is greatly needed even if we stay at home.
Give them space.
If a conversation doesn't yield a true root cause or many actions to take, it is possible someone just needs some space to figure it out for themselves. Maybe they have a spouse, mentor, or other person in their lives they can turn to. Also, be sure to let them know of any company resources at their disposal and that you are accessible as a sounding board or to help solve problems.
December can be a funny time of year. It can be filled with joy and happiness and yet with great stress and even sorrow for some. As managers, we are not expected to be therapists. We are expected to notice when our team members are in a fight or flight state, open a dialogue about it, and try and overcome the stress with some actions.
Oftentimes, people experience stress when they feel stuck. So, an action plan directly combats that. Remember: Clarity comes through action, and progress always feels good.