Stress Mess? No Need to Acquiesce!

Ok, all you program managers and teammates out there in blogville: stress is a huge health problem today. The new Marvel villains COVID-19 and EndlessZoom are not making things any better. It is a documented fact that the inability to manage stress leads to physical, psychological, and behavioral problems. At work, dysfunctional stress robs productivity, motivation, morale, and quality. I find it curious that with the rise of the Work-From-Home day, life is becoming more stressful. However, if one learns to positively manage stress, it can be turned into an opportunity of increased effectiveness, growth, character, motivation, and happiness for you and the team.

What is the origin of stress? It starts in the mind. The way we process stress triggers behavioral responses. Our emotional response depends on our mental response and can magnify feelings of if we overreact of lose control. Physiologically, many things happen because of stress. Changes to the nervous system, blood flow, blood pressure, glandular secretions, and breathing. Stress producing choices are the biggest culprit. It is not really circumstance but our own irrational or negative thinking, emotional self-control, and abuse of our bodies that cause stress.

On every project team, there are stress carriers. You know who they are. They fiercely obey the First Law of Thermodynamics (aka the Law of Conservation of Energy): energy cannot be created or destroyed in an isolated system.[1] Noting that it is the Law and must be obeyed, the only way they can manage their stress is to transfer it to others, lowering their stress yet keeping the level of stress a constant on the Team. They spread tension, anxiety, and keep people on edge. You do not need a degree in Physics to understand how this can affect a project or a team. It is helpful to identify these folks and help them manage their stress in more positive ways.

How do we help these law-abiding stress magnets manage their stress and prevent it from transferring to others? I find that they tend to live under a constant fog of stress of their own making. Because it is a great burden to live under a lot of stress, they must transfer it to others, then bite off more than they can chew and repeat the cycle. If you are fortunate, you also have stress sponges: personalities on the team that are good stress managers. The stress sponge knows that managing stress starts with no excuses. They tend to oversee their own lives and control their own circumstances. Don’t bite off more than you can chew by over-commitment, not allocating a reasonable amount of time to effectively complete a task or trying to do too much all at once. No excuses: change your behaviors like over-promising, taking on other people’s work, or allowing their lack of planning to become your emergency. No excuses: change the response by being a stress manager and developing a stress plan. Aggressive people tend to express stress in unconstructive ways like tantrums, slamming doors. Passive people are not much better at stress management by running away from problems, withdrawing, or saving it up until it explodes.

Problem-solving people recognize stress symptoms and manage stress in constructive ways. As the Project Manager, you need to ensure you are the calm and collected stress manager. Help the team make careful and thoughtful decisions. Create a lower stress work climate by having a realistic outlook on accomplishing tasks, focusing on critical issues, and prioritizing issues. Not only will it lower the stress on the project but make it more effective. There are several advantages of stress management: better mental, emotional and physical health, increased energy, motivation and performance, greater self-worth, improved relationships, longer life, freedom from most fears and anxieties, maturity, and character development.

Developing a stress plan is like any other plan. You need to know your symptoms, get in balance mentally, emotionally, and physically, and develop an action plan. Mitigate your stress by practicing a minimal stress lifestyle. Develop a stress-free attitude, constantly correct goals, values, and priorities, and taking charge of your time and life. Learn from mistakes and use a feedback loop, get your life in order one step at a time, and decide which stressors to take on. Finally, let the stress sponges at Liberty Technology Advisors help you take a load off on your next project. 

[1] Guggenheim, E.A. (1985). Thermodynamics. An Advanced Treatment for Chemists and Physicists, seventh edition, North Holland, Amsterdam, ISBN 0-444-86951-4.