
- •Overcoming Your Workplace Stress
- •Overcoming Your Workplace Stress
- •Martin r. Bamber
- •About the author
- •Preface
- •Acknowledgements
- •The ‘fight or flight’ response
- •Harmful stress
- •The consequences of harmful stress on the individual
- •The consequences of harmful stress for the organization
- •Conceptualizing stress
- •The ‘camera analogy’
- •The emergency response
- •Changes in thinking
- •Changes in motivation
- •Changes in emotion
- •Changes in behaviour
- •The development of stress syndromes
- •Dispelling some myths about stress
- •Answers for the stress quiz (Table 1.1) Statement 1
- •Statement 2
- •Statement 3
- •Statement 4
- •Statement 5
- •Statement 6
- •Statement 7
- •Statement 8
- •Statement 9
- •Statement 10
- •Statement 11
- •Statement 12
- •Statement 13
- •Statement 14
- •Statement 15
- •Statement 16
- •How well did you do in the quiz?
- •How stressed are you?
- •A stress checklist
- •Scoring and interpreting the checklist (Table 1.2)
- •Summary
- •Chapter 2
- •Identifying the causes of your occupational stress
- •Introduction
- •An overview of the causes of occupational stress
- •Individual factors
- •Genetic/inherited factors
- •Acquired/learned factors
- •Personality/trait factors
- •Factors in the work environment
- •Job demands
- •Physical working conditions
- •Control
- •Supports
- •Relationships
- •Pay and career prospects
- •The home–work interface
- •The employer’s ‘duty of care’ to provide a healthy working environment Case study: Schmidt
- •The impact of employment legislation
- •Demands
- •Control
- •Support
- •Relationships
- •Further developments in management standards
- •Identifying the main causes of stress in your own working environment
- •Interpreting the results of your questionnaire (Table 2.1)
- •Interpreting individual items
- •Interpretation of subscales
- •Summary and main learning points from Part I
- •About Part II of this book
- •Primary level interventions
- •Secondary level interventions
- •Tertiary level interventions
- •Doing a job analysis
- •Case study: Tony
- •The benefits of doing a job analysis
- •Interventions aimed at reducing the demands of your job Reducing the volume of work
- •Enlarging your job
- •Enriching your job
- •Improving your physical working environment
- •Interventions aimed at increasing the control you have over your job
- •Interventions aimed at increasing the supports you have at work
- •Interventions aimed at improving working relationships
- •Gather evidence
- •Find allies to support you
- •Stand up to the bully
- •Present the bully with the evidence
- •Be prepared for the backlash
- •Take things further if necessary
- •Interventions aimed at clarifying your role at work
- •Interventions aimed at improving the way that change is managed in your workplace
- •Interventions aimed at improving the home–work interface
- •Some tips for negotiating with your employer
- •What to do if your line manager is not receptive to your plight
- •What to do if you do not get the problem resolved within your workplace organization
- •Chapter 4 Living a healthy lifestyle
- •Introduction
- •Living a healthy lifestyle
- •Regular exercise
- •Some tips for doing more exercise
- •A healthy diet
- •Some tips for eating more healthily
- •Monitoring food intake
- •Medication and other drugs
- •Alcohol
- •Some tips for reducing your alcohol intake
- •Caffeine
- •Nicotine
- •Some tips for stopping smoking
- •Sleep and rest
- •Some tips to help you sleep better
- •Summary
- •An exercise
- •Developing your own ‘Healthy Lifestyle Plan’
- •Chapter 5 Developing effective time management skills
- •Introduction
- •Case study: John
- •Case study: Peter
- •What can we learn from the case studies of John and Peter?
- •Developing effective time management skills Plan ahead
- •Be clear about what your goals are
- •Manage your diary effectively
- •Create some ‘prime time’ for yourself
- •Prepare for meetings
- •Choose the best time to tackle difficult tasks
- •Overcome procrastination
- •Case study: Jenny
- •What can we learn from the case study of Jenny?
- •Learn to delegate
- •Stay focused
- •Prioritize tasks
- •Be organized
- •Developing an action plan to manage your time more effectively
- •Chapter 6 Developing assertiveness skills What is assertiveness?
- •Why are some people unassertive?
- •What are the consequences of being unassertive?
- •Case study: Caroline
- •Case study: Rosie
- •How can you become more assertive?
- •Education
- •Aggressive behaviour
- •Submissive behaviour
- •Manipulative behaviour
- •Assertive behaviour
- •Knowing your rights
- •A ‘Bill of Rights’
- •What can we learn from the case study of Caroline?
- •Developing assertive attitudes
- •Developing assertive behaviours
- •Other useful assertiveness techniques to help you
- •Use the ‘broken record’ technique
- •Use fogging
- •Be concise
- •Be specific
- •Clarify
- •Use ‘I’ statements
- •Active listening
- •Aim for a workable compromise
- •Negative assertion
- •Empathic confrontation
- •Self-disclosure
- •How assertive are you?
- •Table 6.1 scores and interpretation Scoring of individual items
- •Interpreting the total scores for the questionnaire
- •Developing an action plan to become more assertive
- •Chapter 7 Developing effective interpersonal skills
- •Introduction
- •What are interpersonal communication skills?
- •Why are some people interpersonally less skilled than others?
- •What are the consequences of being interpersonally unskilled?
- •Developing your own interpersonal skills
- •Body posture and gestures
- •Facial expressions
- •Eye contact
- •Voice projection
- •Personal space
- •Personal appearance and presentation
- •Verbal skills
- •Paraphrasing
- •Reflecting feelings
- •Summarizing
- •Minimal encouragers
- •Asking open questions
- •Immediacy
- •Concreteness
- •The use of small talk
- •Higher level interpersonal skills
- •Developing cognitive skills
- •How interpersonally skilled are you?
- •Developing an action plan aimed at becoming more interpersonally skilled
- •Chapter 8 Developing relaxation skills
- •Introduction
- •Informal relaxation techniques
- •Semi-formal relaxation techniques
- •Massage
- •Releasing your shoulder tension
- •Soothing your scalp
- •Relaxing your eyes
- •Formal relaxation techniques
- •Deep breathing exercises
- •A deep breathing exercise
- •Progressive muscular relaxation
- •A progressive muscular relaxation exercise
- •A brief relaxation exercise for the neck and shoulders
- •Mental relaxation techniques
- •Meditation
- •Mindfulness
- •Mental refocusing
- •Visual imagery
- •Summary and main learning points
- •Chapter 9 Changing the way you relate to your work
- •Introduction
- •Understanding the links between thoughts, feelings, behaviours and bodily reactions
- •The cat vignette exercise
- •Identifying unhelpful patterns of thinking
- •Labelling dysfunctional thinking styles
- •Catastrophic thinking
- •Jumping to conclusions and mind reading
- •Overgeneralization
- •Magnification
- •Minimization
- •Personalization
- •Black and white thinking
- •‘Should’ and ‘must’ statements
- •Challenging dysfunctional patterns of thinking
- •Examining the evidence
- •Exploring the alternatives
- •Identifying advantages and disadvantages
- •The friend technique
- •Checking it out
- •Estimating probabilities
- •Reattributing meaning
- •Conducting behavioural experiments
- •Case study: Sarah
- •Challenging work dysfunctions
- •Challenging patterns of over-commitment Modifying perfectionism
- •Modifying workaholism
- •Challenging patterns of under-commitment Modifying underachievement
- •Modifying procrastination
- •Summary
- •Chapter 10 Overcoming stress syndromes
- •Introduction
- •Treating anxiety syndromes
- •Performance anxiety
- •Case study: Philip
- •Treating Philip’s performance anxiety
- •What can we learn from the case study of Philip?
- •Panic attacks
- •Case study: Andrew
- •Treating Andrew’s panic attacks
- •Phobic avoidance
- •Treating phobic avoidance
- •Case study: Maxine
- •Treating the depression syndrome
- •Challenging depressive thinking
- •Challenging unhelpful behaviours
- •Activity scheduling
- •Conducting behavioural experiments
- •A note on the burnout syndrome
- •Treating burnout syndrome
- •Treating the hostility syndrome
- •Summary
- •The eight stages of a self-help plan
- •Make a problem list
- •Prioritize your problems
- •Set your goals
- •Establish the criteria of success
- •Plan your interventions
- •Develop a self-help treatment plan
- •Monitor and review your progress
- •Prevent relapse
- •Case study: Helen
- •Making a problem list and prioritizing the problems
- •Setting the goals and establishing the criteria of success
- •Comfort eating and weight gain
- •Avoidance
- •Procrastination
- •Unassertiveness
- •Anxiety
- •Poor self-image
- •Planning the interventions
- •Interventions for comfort eating and weight gain
- •Interventions for avoidance
- •Interventions for procrastination
- •Interventions for unassertiveness
- •Interventions for anxiety
- •Interventions for poor self-image
- •Developing a self-help treatment plan
- •Monitoring and reviewing progress
- •Summary
- •Chapter 12 Summary and conclusions
- •Appendix Useful books and contacts
Case study: Philip
Philip first realized that he had a problem when he had been unable to do a brief presentation in front of his peers as part of his management training course. He felt comfortable in most informal situations such as social gatherings and indeed saw himself as the ‘life and soul’ when mixing with others at a party. He just had an excessive fear of doing formal presentations. He would begin experiencing anxiety weeks before a presentation and was aware that the day before he gave a presentation, he experienced marked physiological symptoms of anxiety, particularly shaking, hot flushes, a churning stomach, a dry mouth and an increased heart rate. His strategy for coping with this anxiety was to spend a great deal of time preparing for the presentation, often for weeks in advance. He spent many hours rehearsing what he was going to say by going through his script dozens of times and repeatedly making minor changes. He also arrived early at the venue to familiarize himself with the room in which he was due to present. However, his anxiety never seemed to reduce.
On a few occasions Philip had managed to complete the presentations with great difficulty by employing a number of safety behaviours which he felt helped him to cope. These included, for example, drinking lots of water before and during the presentation to stop his mouth from drying up, wearing lots of anti-perspirant and opening all the windows to keep the room cool to reduce his sweating. He also began wearing loose-fitting clothing and keeping his hands in his pockets to hide the fact that he was shaking, wearing a high neck jumper to hide the blotches on his neck and positioning the furniture in the room to move himself out of the spotlight. While actually doing the presentations he would avoid eye contact with people, speaking quickly and not allowing time for any questions. He simply wanted to get it over with as soon as possible.
Even when he had finished the presentation, Philip would do a ‘postmortem’ by ruminating on how he had come across to his peers and convincing himself that the event had been a complete disaster. He began to develop a dread of doing presentations and knew in himself that unless he did something to address the problem he would soon be unable to do them and would end up calling in sick. This would have a disastrous effect on his ability to meet the assessment requirements of the course and subsequently his opportunities for career advancement. He knew that he needed to overcome this fear if he was going to make a success of his career.
On reflection, Philip recalled that he had experienced some embarrassing incidents at school when he had been made to stand up in front of the class to read and had stumbled on his words. This had resulted in being teased by his peers and a rebuke from his teacher. After that time he had tried whenever possible to avoid doing public speaking or presentations and had managed to do so quite successfully for a number of years. His experiences at school of having to read out loud seemed to have contributed to the development of beliefs that increased his vulnerability to social anxiety problems in his later life. However, he was no longer able to avoid doing this in his management training because it was a part of being assessed for the course.