Business and Marketing

Strategy 1. Adjust Your Leadership Behavior
Don’t create needless stress. Avoid adding needless stress to an already stressed-out team. Some of the leadership behaviors that tend to trigger work stress are listed below. Note any of those behaviors that pertain to your performance. In addition, because most people are not accurate observers of their own behavior, consider using this checklist to ask for feedback on your leadership style from a trusted team member or work associate. Do you:
•   Vacillate on decisions, procrastinate on decisions, or rush into decisions without first having sufficient information?
• Create arbitrary deadlines for projects? That is, do your dead¬lines take into account real job requirements?
• Generate conflicts by encouraging win-lose competition among members?
• Criticize members in public rather than in private?
• Make comments that make people feel threatened about the loss of their jobs?
• Intentionally withhold information from members?
• Pit people against each other?
• Use force and threats to win discussions with members?
• Gossip about members behind their backs?
• Withdraw your support, assistance, and energy from your group?
• Create conflicts between your team and others and then thrust your members into the middle of these problems?
• Become loud and vocally abusive whenever you discover a work problem?
• Monitor your stress level. Don’t use your team as an outlet for your own stress. If you find yourself ready to climb the walls because of something your boss or your supplier finds, avoid taking your frustration out on your team.

Instead, before interacting with your team, give yourself time to recover, and carefully think through the following questions:
• How much of what I’m upset about is directly within control of my team?
• Are they really the target of my anger?
• Am I angry with my team or just anxious about my job?
• If I blow up, am I really going to move the job along faster, or will I simply create more problems?
• Do team members really understand the full context of my anger and frustration? If they don’t seem to understand the significance of a problem, is it because part of the situation is outside of their visibility?