Workplace Stress And Personal Effectiveness: A Symbiotic Relationship

You probably never thought of workplace stress as being the paramount key to your career success. Most people and so-called experts want to emphasize people skills or technical skills or even how you interact with your boss. But without stress and chaos, you really have no opportunity to stand out from the crowd. Sure, you might have great technical skills. But your competition can get some training and catch up to you. And your superior people skills can be equalized by a seminar or intensive workshop. Some bosses really can tell the difference between co-operation and obsequiousness. That is why your particular method of handling stress well can set you apart, since so many people do it poorly or superficially.
Workplace stress attacks everyone all the time. This is because so many stress management systems try to merely handle it instead of seeking to get rid of it. One hidden problem with this approach is that the bad health effects of stress weaken your ability to fight stress for long term. Stress requires you to either conquer it or be conquered by it. So trying to fend it off puts you in the position of just delaying the inevitable collapse. This is not the way you stand out from the crowd.
Here are 5 ways that workplace stress and personal effectiveness have a symbiotic relationship:
1. You have to be conscious of how you manage your time. Stress removes the luxury of just wasting time at work. You have to be aware of exactly how you spend your time so that you have time to respond to stressful situations as they come up.
2. You have to be aware of your energy levels during the day. Stress will really sap your energy, so focusing on how your energy goes up and down during the day can negate this. You also can harness your energy when it is most effective to fight stress most efficiently.
3. Socializing is a very important component of being considered for advancing at work. Companies don’t want to promote someone who cannot get along with people. But stress can interfere with this. By making socializing a priority during high stress situations, you can overcome this bad effect of stress.
4. Make a special effort to attend to your personal appearance. Stress affects your health, which can make you look haggard and incompetent. By making sure you look your best, you will also be strengthening your body’s and mind’s defense against stress, without even knowing it. You will also be demonstrating that stress is not bringing you down.
5. Develop a support network with your co-workers. This is more than merely socializing with them, or being friendly with them. It involves reaching out to them for solutions, involving them in managing stress, and giving them feedback on the results. Most people do not make this a paramount issue, and even less so during periods of stress.
Stress is changing all the time. If your method of dealing with it is not, you are falling behind. If you have a one-dimensional stress handling system, you are incapable of handling stress from multiple sources. The ultimate effect of this is your increasing impotence to take control of your own life.
A comprehensive stress management system is the way to not only keep your calm in chaos, but to increase your personal effectiveness. Being able to attack stress in all of its forms will provide you with the best defense. Having a system that can respond to stress however it attacks you allows you to maximize your personal effectiveness. This is the leadership that your company and co-workers are looking for.