Forster N. - Maximum performance (2005)(en)

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victims of external events beyond their influence. The belief that one is in control of events is closely linked to high self-esteem and, in turn, this is associated with high levels of self-motivation. They have a positive sense of involvement with others in social situations. They have a tendency to perceive or welcome major changes in life with interest, curiosity and optimism. They like to learn, and have a child-like enthusiasm and curiosity for new things (Friedman and Rosenman, 1974).

An individual with high levels of hardiness is not overwhelmed by challenging or difficult situations. Unlike ‘outer-directed’ personalities, they don’t blame others for misfortunes in their lives. They cope with these and learn from their mistakes. They always maintain a positive attitude, no matter what setbacks they encounter, and think of these as challenges to be conquered and overcome. They are often socially and emotionally intelligent, two important leadership qualities. They also have high levels of self-efficacy, the belief that they can cope well with novel and uncertain situations. As a result, their resilience to stress, in even the most difficult circumstances, is considerably above the average. They are likely to have a good sense of humour, and know how to relax and enjoy themselves outside work. While this may look like an impressive list of personal attributes, the good news is that many of these can be learnt and enhanced if we choose to do this. How this can be achieved is described in the next section.

Strategies for coping with occupational stress

As if mirroring the rapid growth in occupational stress over the last two decades, a growing number of self-help books on personal performance, well-being, hardiness, resilience and stress management appeared in bookshops in the late 1990s and early 2000s (see, for example, Warren and Toll, 1997). On 14 May 2000, the two best-selling books in Australia were Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, by Richard Carlson, and Calm for Life, by Paul Wilson. The latter author, who described himself in his younger days as being ‘tense, angry and aggressive’, had sold more than 2.4 million copies of his first book, The Little Book of Calm, worldwide (Slattery, 1998). Originating in the USA in the late 1990s, there has also been a rapid growth in on-line counselling services for people who are either uncomfortable talking face to face about their problems or who are just too busy to visit therapists in person during work hours (Hamilton, 1999). While we cannot change our core personalities, occupational and clinical psychologists believe that successful stress management can be achieved by actively changing our behaviours and/or attitudes. There are many personal performance and stress coping strategies that can be employed by individuals, and while

their benefits can be substantial it can take some time for these to take effect. These include adjusting personal attitudes and outlook on life, better time management, exercise, improving diet and nutrition, promoting deep sleep, meditation, yoga and relaxation, balancing home and family commitments and owning pets. A discussion of these now follows.

Living the life you have imagined

You are a disciple, a follower of your own deep values and their source. And you have the will and the integrity to subordinate your feelings, your impulses, to those values.

(Steven Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, 1989)

In Chapter 1, it was suggested that the starting point on the journey to becoming a successful and effective leader/manager is self-awareness. This means that we have to be quite honest with ourselves about patterns of behaviour in the past that may have led us to suffer from occupational stress now, or whether it is our choice of job, career or organization that is the root cause of the problems we are encountering at this moment in time.

Exercise 2.3

What do you care passionately about?

What would you like to achieve over the next 20 years?

Will the job/profession that you are now in enable you to achieve your ambitions?

On a scale of 1 (hate it) to 10 (love it and couldn’t be happier), rate how much you like your current job/profession.

If you scored seven or less, are you in the job/profession or career that you really want to be in? If not, why?

If you are unhappy with your job/profession, why do you stay in it? What’s holding you back?

What would your ideal job/profession be and how could you achieve this?

Answering questions like these, setting personal objectives and creating action plans to achieve these is nothing new, but many successful leaders have spent time doing this, rather than allowing circumstances, or other people, to dictate the goals they pursue in life (Covey,

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1989). Generally speaking, people who feel that they have no control over their lives suffer more from stress than those who believe that they are in control of their destinies. It’s also important to recognize that we are in our current jobs/professions, because we decided to be in them. No one else made this decision for us. Each one of us has the freedom to get out of these – if we want to – and move to jobs or professions that give us more control, intrinsic rewards and enjoyment, although we may have to work very hard to make this transition, particularly if we decide to change careers or set up our own businesses. But if you feel that your life lacks direction, or if you often dream about doing something else, it could be time to reappraise why you are stuck in a rut, or why you persist with a job you don’t enjoy. You might also want to visit websites that can help you to focus on ways of finding more fulfilling work and personal lives (see, for example, www.passionmaps.com). You’ve only got one life and, unless you are religious, it is not a rehearsal for something else. As the 19thcentury writer and traveller Henry David Thoreau put it with simple elegance, ‘Go in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.’ An example of someone who did just this is described below.

Charlie’s story

When I first got to Perth in 1997, I thought I’d landed on my feet with the nice beaches, great weather, the restaurants, as well as a good secure job at one of the best schools in WA. But then, having done the MBA, I realized (by Easter 1999) that I really wanted more than teaching was providing. It was a really strong feeling, something inside me saying, ‘I really, really don’t want to continue in teaching any more.’ I think it was the fact that there was really no challenge and it was the security and safety of it all that I found scary. It was stagnant and nothing much was going to change. I’d also probably got as far as I could in career terms at that time. At times, the frustrations of the job literally drove me to tears. I was stuck in a rut and thought that there had to be something more. Doing the MBA certainly contributed to my dissatisfaction with teaching. You could see how great companies operated and you learnt how companies got started and grew into successful enterprises. I thought, ‘I can do this.’ I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I was confident that I could do something else, something different. I really had no idea at the time what that something was and at one stage thought I’d continue with teaching, but maybe set up a small business on the side and see how it went. So let’s say that I was definitely open to a change in my life and a change of career at that time.

I talked with Lisa [Charlie’s wife] about not wanting to continue in teaching, during a holiday at Easter 1999, and she was fantastically supportive as always, and she basically said, ‘Well don’t then.’ That certainly helped me in the decision I took to leave teaching. Initially, I thought about getting into consultancy but it didn’t really turn me on even though it had some parallels with teaching. So it had to be a business idea, something original and something exciting. Soon after, Nick Streuli [co-founder and director of aussiehome.com] rang me on that historic night in May 1999, when Lisa and I had been on stage with Barry Humphries, and suggested the idea that was eventually to turn into aussiehome.com. We’d discussed the frustrations and annoyances of buying properties in Perth when we first met on the MBA and Nick’s basic idea was, ‘Why don’t we put Perth properties on a website?’

We did quite a lot of reconnaissance and weren’t that impressed with what we saw out there. So that was the genesis of the idea and two years on aussiehome.com is a successful and respected company that is moving in the right direction, although we all know that we’ve still got a very long way to go. I knew it was a gamble. It was a real risk with both me and Lisa giving up secure jobs but, deep down, I knew that we had to go for it. In a weird way, it would have been an even bigger gamble to stay in teaching, in terms of my well-being and personal development and the lack of challenges and frustrations of that job. And, looking back, the first year was really tough, just after the dotcom crash, and at times we really struggled. Setting up and running your own business is fantastically rewarding but it can also be very stressful. There were sleepless nights, disappointments, mistakes and setbacks, but all of these have actually made us a better company. We were able to learn from our mistakes and spot new opportunities. As a result, we’ve moved into new areas that we had never even envisaged at the beginning, such as producing magazines and creating websites for other businesses. By getting out there, being nimble, learning fast and providing a great service we’re succeeding.

For what it’s worth, my advice to anyone who feels stuck in a rut or hates the job they’re doing, there’s a whole world of opportunities out there. Life doesn’t have to be what you’re in now. You just have to get out there and look, talk to people who’ve done it and just give it a go. I’d add this though. Do your research. Nick and I treated this like an MBA project. We did a tremendous amount of background work; we discussed our ideas with GSM professors and other business people over a period of about seven months. We did this without a safety net, but we were also confident that we had a great idea, a sound business plan and, of course, enough investors to back us up. So my suggestion to anyone who’s thinking about a radical change like this is just try it.

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Follow your dreams and instincts. Even if it hadn’t worked for us at least I’d tried it and I could have gone back to teaching, and would have been a better teacher as a result. I’m happier and more energized, and although there are frustrations I never experience the same kind of frustrations that I had in teaching. The rewards, even in the tough times, have been fantastic. I’ve got that motivation, that feeling if I work hard I get to see the results directly and feel that I’m really achieving something worthwhile. It’s been fantastic and it’s been a ‘rush’.

(Extracts from an interview with Charlie Gunningham, Perth, Western Australia, 15 March 2002.)

Aussiehome is one of the few e-companies that have been successful in the aftermath of the 2001 dotcom collapse, and is now expanding into Melbourne and Singapore. The company has also received several awards for innovation and e-business, with Charlie receiving a personal prize in the Western Australia ‘40 under 40’ competition for young entrepreneurs and small businesses in 2003.

Of course, you may enjoy your current job and be broadly satisfied with your choice of profession, but still find that there are situations at work that always seem to cause stress. Why does this happen? Do certain kinds of people or particular individuals always stress you out? Do you experience something called the ‘stuck-record’, where the same people and the same situations regularly cause problems? Why? If you find that you are having personality clashes with people at work, remember that you cannot ever change their personalities. You may be able to change their behaviour and, over time, their attitudes, but this can be very difficult. So what you really have to focus on now is changing how you react and respond to people and situations like these. Perhaps you may also need to think about how you might be affecting other people. Do you cause stress in other people? What are the consequences of this for your stress levels? How well do you know your staff as individuals? Are you aware of the pressures they face, at work and home? Are you sympathetic to their problems? Answering questions like this can help you to start changing the things that cause you and your staff problems, and you’ll have an opportunity to do this at the end of the chapter.

One of the basic principles of stress management is that stress is a reaction, an outcome of the way people interpret and react to external events. These have no intrinsic meaning in themselves. Hence one person may regard a difficult project as an exciting challenge, while another may look on it as an impossible ordeal. A positive mental outlook can help people to overcome potentially threatening situations

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The Insomnia Squad.

(Nickname given to Thomas Edison’s hardworking employees at General Electric during the early 1900s)

These days, few leader/managers are lucky enough not to suffer from time pressures at work, and while some people choose to work long hours very few employees enjoy being workaholics. However, the pace of life in modern organizations means that most people have to cram more and more into the working day. Increasing pressures for greater productivity and efficiency during the 1990s created a phenomenon called ‘time poverty’, with many professionals having to work twice as hard, with half the resources to produce twice the results of the 1980s. For example, Henry Mintzberg conducted some research in 1973 which showed that, on average, managers had nine to 12 minutes between interruptions from their staff. He repeated the study in 2000 and found that this interval had fallen to five minutes (cited by Frost, 2002). Managers are also routinely bombarded by hundreds of voice messages and emails every week, as well as unsolicited spam-mail. As companies have downsized and their workforces have shrunk, there are even greater pressures on leader/managers’ time in most organizations. A culture of remaining at the office, ‘presenteeism’, has become endemic and well established in many businesses.

As Albert Einstein realized in the early 1900s, time is relative and not everyone uses their time or works in the same way. However, as we have seen, if people are put under continual pressure and worked for long hours, their ability to think, make decisions and process information declines, and the number of errors they make increases. Therefore, as leader/managers, it is important that we are able to manage our time at work as effectively as possible, while at the same time not overworking our followers. Time Management (TM) is a well-proven collection of simple but very effective techniques that can help any leader/manager use their time more efficiently each day. TM techniques can be implemented in nine interlinked steps.

Step 1: stretch your targets

Set yourself realistic life-goals. These should be long-term (up to five years), medium-term (one to three years), short-term (one to 12 months) and micro-term (up to one month). Establish milestones along the way for you to achieve your long-term mission and short-term goals. Simple planning like this can have a powerful motivational effect, because it helps us to focus on what we should be spending our time on as well as helping us monitor our progress. Once you’ve set your career, job and personal goals, it is easier to prioritize, plan for the future and organize your time more efficiently. Always keep your ultimate objectives and

goals in mind and review and update these at regular intervals. Aim for small wins rather than trying to conquer the universe in one go. Exercise 2.2 can be used to review your personal goals and objectives in life on a regular basis.

Step 2: take one bite at a time

Effective leaders decide early what tasks they need to accomplish and then allocate specific blocks of time to achieve these. Only then do they allow their PAs/secretaries to make other appointments for them (Covey, 1989). So, at the beginning of every working week, identify the tasks that are important and the tasks that are urgent. Then allocate time to deal with both the important matters and the urgent ones. If we spend all our time ‘fire-fighting’, we will have no time to deal with the creative and strategic parts of our jobs (and think what the cost of delaying these ‘A’ priorities might be). Consider delegating urgent, but unimportant, tasks to your subordinates and ask yourself if there are other minor tasks, that you now deal with, that you could give your junior staff the authority to deal with (discussed further in Chapter 4). It may not always be possible, but try to accomplish at least one substantive task each day. Treat your workload like you are eating an elephant. An elephant is very large, but if you focus on one good bite at a time you will gradually consume it.

Step 3: plan your day – every day

Tackle the toughest and most time-consuming tasks in the morning while you are physically and mentally at your freshest and most alert. Even if you don’t always feel this way, your energy and creative levels are at their peak four to five hours after waking up (assuming you have had a good night’s sleep). Don’t avoid the most important tasks by dealing with trivial jobs. Leave these and other unimportant tasks until later in the day. If you know that you are likely to be interrupted a lot on a given day, schedule several trivial or boring tasks for that day: you may even welcome the interruptions. The ‘post-lunch lull’ period is a good time for informal chats, but not a good time to give a formal presentation at work. If you have to schedule meetings for lunchtimes, always provide snack food and drinks.

Step 4: blam the spam

A major problem for all white-collar employees these days is information overload, particularly in the form of emails. On 16 June 2003, spam-mail exceeded 50 per cent of all email traffic on the Internet, up from about 8 per cent in 2000 and 40 per cent in 2002 (Ellis, 2003). According to analysts IDC, the total number of emails sent daily will have doubled, from about 30 billion a day in 2002 to 60 billion in 2006. Giga Information reported that spam-mail increased fourfold during

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2001–2, with some 206 billion junk emails circulating in cyberspace (with an increasing variety of nasty viruses attached to some of these). Some 90 per cent of these originate in the USA. On average, according to the Meta Group, a typical medium-sized company now receives about 20 000 spam-mails each day (cited by Wales, 2002). Brightmail, a spam-fighting software firm, has revealed that about 30 per cent of all email correspondence in US companies in now spam-mail, and the problem is getting worse (Tatum, 2002).1

Solutions to this include never responding to emails that request any kind of confidential information, changing code words and/or Internet banking code words at regular intervals, investing in up-to-date heuristic screening software, such as the Death2Spam mail server or Cloudmark’s SpamNet which claim to eliminate 90 per cent of junk emails, being very liberal with the email ‘delete’ button on your keyboard and blitzing anything that looks remotely suspicious or likely to have a virus attached. If you can, set aside two 30-minute time slots each day to deal with voice and email, and ignore these for the rest of the working day whenever possible.

Step 5: beat the paper jungle

There is a belief that a messy desk or office reflects a disorganized or messy mind. Whether this is true or not is of little importance. What does matter is that piles of paper, memos and reports on the desk generate a feeling of not being up-to-date with your work, and may also force you to think about more than one job at a time. It has also been estimated that some managers waste up to 30 minutes every day trying to locate ‘lost’ papers in their offices (Roydhouse, 2001: 263). A messy office may also create the impression with customers and clients that you are disorganized. If you don’t already have one, create an ‘in’ and ‘out’ system and maintain a strict regimen to deal with your intray on a regular basis. A good idea is a desk-file or a tier of drawers to organize work into urgent and important tasks, tasks that need to be done that week, tasks awaiting further information and so forth. Throw away everything that you know you will do nothing about. After the family dog, a waste-paper basket (or recycling facility) is man and woman’s best friend. Periodically, have a ruthless cull of all the outdated memos, redundant reports and other useless pieces of paper you have collected in recent months, and apply the same approach to their electronic equivalents.

Step 6: involve the troops

If you subscribe to the view that ‘If you want a job done well, you should do it yourself’, it may be time to start delegating more effectively. Focus on the methods and processes your staff use to achieve

their work goals and reschedule tasks according to these. As far as possible agree these goals with your staff; do not impose them and spend time making sure that they fully understand what it is you want them to do. The fewer mistakes your staff make, the less time you will have to spend sorting these out and putting out fires. When you’ve decided to delegate an assignment, carefully explain what is required and agree a deadline for completion. Then stand back and let them get on with it. Give them a reasonable amount of independence and let them prove their abilities. Try giving more responsibilities to your junior staff. It may be slightly risky, but you might uncover some of their hidden talents (described in more detail in Chapters 3–5). In this context, recall three of the most important lessons we learnt about leadership and people management in Chapter 1: (a) leader/managers cannot lead in isolation, (b) leadership and management are two-way processes and, primarily, social activities, (c) if your followers perform better, you will too.

Step 7: create quality time

Create personal time-spaces or time-outs in the working week to deal with complex or demanding work. This may be difficult in a few occupations or organizations, but it is important that you try to do this. Once your staff understand that you are not available on (say) Tuesday and Thursday mornings, they will get used to this very quickly and work round it. During these periods, switch your phone to ‘voice mail only’, or transfer it to your secretary and ignore emails. If you regularly have to wait around for other people in your job, take small pieces of work or short articles relevant to your work to fill these dead time periods.

Step 8: you’re OK (as long as) I’m OK

This means that we should, as good corporate citizens, try to help staff and colleagues when needed, above and beyond the formal requirements of our jobs (working the odd evening or weekend, for example). We can say ‘Yes’ when people ask for our help. However, we must also have the strength to say a firm ‘No’ to unrealistic requests that impose unacceptable demands on ourselves or our families, without feeling guilty about this.

Step 9: minimize time wasting

How much time do you and your colleagues waste in unproductive meetings? How much time do you waste because of a lack of planning and foresight? Do you ‘hover’ between jobs, leaving tasks unfinished? How much time do you lose checking up on other people and their work? By clarifying goals and prioritizing your work tasks (Steps 1–5) and creating personal time-spaces (Step 6), time wasting should be greatly minimized. Last, but not least, if the phone is ringing constantly