“preventing staff burnout comes down to flexibility, work-life balance, communication, having the latest tools and understanding what makes Vancouver particularly stressful.”

This quote is from a recent interview with Lorne Matlin who writes for Business in Vancouver (BIV).

What I like about Kristi’s approach is that she encourages leaders to look outside their organizations to understand what might be contributing to the stress experienced by employees.

This is also known as an environmental scan…an approach not usually seen in discussions about preventing burnout.

Let’s look at each of Kristi’s ideas individually:

• Flexibility: This applies to both individuals and organizations. We all need to be more flexible than ever. This includes being open to continued learning as the world and our workplaces keep changing.  I could substitute the word resilience for flexibility. Research has shown that resilient people are better able to manage stress and avoid burnout.

• Work-life Balance: I don’t hear this talked about much outside of Human Resources circles. Balancing work and the rest of life also implies a degree of flexibility.  If at all possible organizations must allow people to have flexible working hours. Of course this depends on the type of work that needs to be done.

• Communication: Not knowing what is going on in an organization can be stressful especially if the organization is going through a lot of changes. Without clear communication from the top rumours become rampant and people spend their time trying to guess what is going to happen next.

• The Latest Tools:  This goes beyond the obvious (hardware, software, and training) and includes clear job descriptions and the tools to be able to do the work efficiently and effectively (e g people skills, leadership skills, team skills).

• Understanding the External Environment or Community: Kristi Searle is the first person I’ve heard refer to the environment as a potential cause of stress and burnout. There could be many reasons to look at the environment when considering how to support employees– including the high cost of housing, the commute to work, changing demographics, shortage of daycare for young children, and the high cost of living in general.

• Teamwork: Being part of a team and sharing the workload can be a blessing or it can be a nightmare. During stressful times workers may find themselves fighting with each other.

I’ll leave you with another BIV quote–this one’s from Jamesie Bower, owner of Staff Systems in Vancouver,

 “As employers we have to be much more nurturing than we have been in the past. When I started in this industry the employer was king and that was that. Now I think it’s definitely a 50 – 50 road.”

Nurturing employers! What a wonderful idea!

Cheers, Lesley

Do you have a friendly workplace? One that is hospitable?  According to Wikipedia hospitality…”involves showing respect for one’s guests, providing for their needs, and treating them as equals.”

Author Henri J.M. Nouwen provides us with another way of looking at this, “hospitality is a fundamental attitude toward our fellow human beings which can be expressed in a great variety of ways”.

Hospitality is about creating space to develop relationships with others. The opposite of hospitality is hostility and hostility is becoming increasing common in our rapidly changing and diverse world.

Unfortunately, hostility is also present in many of our workplaces.

“Many places that are created to bring people closer together and help them form a peaceful community have degenerated into mental battlefields. Students in classrooms, teachers in faculty meetings, staff members in hospitals and coworkers in projects often find themselves paralyzed by mutual hostility, unable to realize their purposes because of fear, suspicion, and even blatant aggression.”    Henri J. M. Nouwen – Reaching Out: The three movements of the spiritual life.

Sadly what people want is the opposite of this. I know from personal experience and from speaking with others that what is needed and wanted is kindness, a sense of being part of a community, and the opportunity to find meaning in working toward a common purpose.

All of this is dependent on having close relationships and friendships with the people we work with.

Hospitable workplaces are also friendly workplaces. This fact has not been lost on the Gallup organization which has studied workplace relationships for years.

“This quantifiable link between friendship and business results strongly suggests that fostering friendships should be a management priority.”  Gallup

In fact, the Gallup organization’s research led to the inclusion of “Do you have a best friend at work?” as one of the 12 questions on Gallup’s popular employee engagement survey.

Hospitality is a universal virtue that seems to be in danger of disappearing in our fast paced, competitive society.

What can we do to reverse this dangerous trend?

• Become aware of how hospitable our organizations are
• Reflect upon our own attitudes toward welcoming ‘the stranger’
• Be mindful of how we bring people together at work
• Invite people into the conversation about creating friendly workplaces
• Experiment with using social media to create more hospitable work environments

What do you think? What have you tried that works?

Thanks! Lesley

Thanks to all of you for reading and commenting on my blog. I truly believe that we have more power and influence over our world (and our workplaces) then we sometimes think. Together we can change the world!

Here are some words of wisdom from Dr. Wayne Dyer:

Remember, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. How you perceive the world is an extremely powerful tool that will allow you to fully bring the power of intention into your life.

So, with that in mind, think about how you want your life to be in 2012. Decide on your goals and give thanks for your blessings and don’t feel you have to go it alone. Once you set your intention and  decide on your goals help will arrive from the most unexpected places.

Best wishes, Lesley

 In search of inner peace some of us head off to an ashram, a spiritual retreat center where a teacher facilitates physical and emotional healing. Within the serene confines of an ashram, visitors gain deeper insights into their existence and learn to live in harmony with their fellow human beings.

When an ashram stay ends, the real challenge begins. Putting newly discovered insights into practice within the realm of day-to-day living is easier said than done. The chasm between theory and practice is immense. It’s like the difference between practicing telling your boss off in front of your bathroom mirror and actually doing it in your boss’s office. It is only in the mirror of our relationships with others that we get a true picture of who we are, as opposed to who we imagine ourselves to be.

If your schedule or bank account prevents you from booking a stay at an ashram, there’s another place you can go to find inner peace. Here, spiritual teachers abound and learning sessions fit in nicely with your work schedule.

Actually, they exactly match your work schedule.

I’m talking about your 9 to 5 ashram: your workplace. It might not have the mystical aura of a formal ashram, but it has all the elements you’ll need to put you in touch with your inner self.

Who are your spiritual teachers? The people who drive you nuts every day. The people whose behavior is so offensive that you think about them long after you leave work each day. The people you blame for your rising anxiety, your foul moods and your broken sleep patterns. These are the teachers who can point you toward the root of your suffering, the teachers whose lessons you must ultimately absorb if you want to find inner peace.

To convert your workplace into an ashram, you simply need to come to work every day with a new focus. You need to develop what a spiritual teacher might refer to as a third eye. Instead of focusing on how others act, you develop an awareness of how you react.

Rather than contemplate what a lazy slob your coworker is, what a dictator your boss is, or what an empty suit your president is, you contemplate how your personal judgments of those sharing your work space are the real reasons behind your emotional meltdowns. Instead of shaking your fist at their behavior, imagine your hand clutching a mirror that reflects an image of your angry face. It is the expression of a person who has yet to look inside and observe that unhappiness is completely self-inflicted.

Until you grasp this truth, your workplace will continue to be a combat zone. You will continue to think that the behavior of your colleagues must change in order for you to be happy, and there’s no chance of that happening. None. They are who they are, and their personalities aren’t going to change just because you want them to. Making your happiness conditional on the behavior of others is a doomed strategy. But then, you know this better than anyone.

So what can you do? How can you step out of this pattern of judgment that sends your blood pressure soaring every day and creates a toxic atmosphere for those unlucky enough to work anywhere near you? The mechanics behind the meditation process offer a way out.

At its base, meditation is simply developing an awareness of your thoughts, which are the real culprits behind your unhappiness. By watching your thoughts, you detach yourself from them. You watch them pass by as you would a stream of cars from the side of a highway. Whereas before it felt as if you were stuck in traffic, now you are removed from the action. Another part of you has come into play, a dimension of awareness that is just as much a part of you as your thoughts. Your thoughts continue to move under their own power, but you remain still. It is in this stillness that you will experience inner peace.

At an ashram they might give a name to this witnessing dimension, but you don’t have to call it anything. Simply to understand that there is more to you than the endless stream of thoughts parading through your mind is a subtle but game-changing insight. Why? Because you are no longer relying on thought as an antidote to your anxiety. Thinking is what got you into this mess, and more thinking isn’t going to get you out of it – not for long, anyway.

The stress-reduction strategies you conceived at 3:00 AM while you stared at the cracks in your bedroom ceiling haven’t worked because you were seeking answers in the same dimension that created them – thought. But by stepping out of thought into a dimension of awareness, by becoming a studious observer of your thoughts, you will have the means to find the peace that has so far eluded you.

Changing the way you think will not lead you to inner peace; instead, you must change your relationship with thought. As you come to know yourself as thought’s witness, the sliver of space separating you and your thoughts will grow into a gap, and eventually it will seem as if you are watching them from across a football field. In this state you may leave work pondering what’s for dinner rather than what’s wrong with the boneheads you are forced to work with every day. This will be a good day for you. And it will be an especially good day for the boneheads who’ve had to put up with you.

Cheers, Lesley

The following is from the December 15, 2011 World Business Academy Currents in Commerce e-zine:

Here are 10 success tips from folks who have been so successful in life they have become billionaires.

Four billionaires shared the following tips during a recent episode of ABC’s 20/20 show.

The tips are consistent with the Academy’s basic philosophy, as articulated in innumerable ways over the last 25 years, and we are pleased to share them with our readers:

1. Figure out what you’re so passionate about that you’d be happy doing it for years, even if you never made any money from it. That’s what you should be doing.

2. Always be true to yourself.

3. Figure out what your values are and live by them, in business and in life.

4. Rather than focus on work-life separation, focus on work-life integration.

5. Don’t network. Focus on building real relationships and friendships where the relationship itself is its own reward, instead of trying to get something out of the relationship to benefit your business or yourself.

6. Remember to maximize for happiness, not money or status.

7. Get ready for rejection.

8. Success unshared is failure. Give back—share your wealth.

9. The truth is cold and hard, but it’s the first point on the path to hope and salvation.

10. Successful people do all the things unsuccessful people don’t want to do.

I thought that these were good rules for all of us to live by! Who knows, if you follow these rules, you may become a healthier and wealthier person.

Cheers,

Lesley

On November 25, 2011 Sharon wrote about the link between increased dementia and stress in middle age.  Begley quoted a study conducted in Sweden that followed 1,400 women over 35 years.

If you are not middle aged yet (lucky you) this can be a heads up for you. The bottom line…stress is not good for you and if you are finding that work is causing you stress you need to do something about it.

One way to do this is by ‘finding your voice’ and speaking up in the workplace. Not easy to do but necessary if you want to have a positive impact on your workplace for yourself and for others. And if you want to reduce your stress!

Finding your voice is a key leadership skill identified by authors James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner in their book The Leadership Challenge.

Finding your voice can be a challenge especially if you are an introvert (more about this in another post) or if you lack confidence. This also links to the last post I wrote about power and influence.

In that post I mentioned the seven sources of power.  Of the seven, connection, information, expert, and referent are all sources of personal power which give you the capacity to influence the behavior of others.

Having this capacity means that when you speak…others listen! This links nicely to Kouzes and Posners First Law of Leadership, “If you don’t believe the messenger, you won’t believe the message.”

So, how do we speak up confidently and with power?

The secret is to be clear about what you believe in and what is important to you. In other words you need to be clear about your values!

There are a lot of different ways of identifying/clarifying your values. Email me and I’ll send you one of the exercises I use in my leadership course.

Cheers,  lesley@lesleytaylorcoaching.com

If we don’t speak up when we see injustices at work we harm ourselves physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. In other posts I’ve talked about the harmful effect of workplace stress on our health so I won’t go into that right now.

There are lots of other negative effects of not speaking up but I don’t want to dwell on them either.

Instead I’d like to talk about what we can do. I began this post by saying that most of us feel powerless at least some of the time. But we don’t have to feel powerless all of the time. We can learn how to influence people and events for the common good.

In fact, leadership implies that we are able to influence others to achieve our mutual goals.

Power and influence are two sides of the same coin.  What do you think of when you hear the word power? For many people power has negative connotations but effecting change at work is impossible without power.

I recently read an article by Frank Petrock who wrote, “Most everyone tends to associate power with the dark side of human nature and with being autocratic and dictatorial…and no one wants to admit they want power and/or even to have it.”

In his work with leaders Dr. Petrock was able to reframe power from a negative to a positive by describing power as the energy we use in our daily lives to make things move in the direction we want them. Think about it! We need power to get things done!

There are at least seven difference sources of power:

• Coercive
• Reward
• Legitimate
• Connection
• Information
• Expert
• Referent

These seven sources of power are either based on your position or on who you are as a person. Connection, information, expert, and referent are all sources of personal power. In other words these are within our control and give us the capacity to influence the behavior of others.

And this means that when we speak…others listen.

In the next post I’ll talk about what it means to ‘find your voice’. This is one of the leadership skills taught by Kouzes and Posner authors of The Leadership Challenge.

Here are some coaching questions to get you thinking about how you use your power at work:

• What type of power do you use most often?
• Is this effective?
• Where do you give your power away? To whom? When?

Cheers,!

I just read the following rather alarming statistics about the link between heart disease and working long hours. In April of this year the Daily Mail reported on a study of 7000 British civil servants (for some reason the Brits like to study their bureaucrats).

Over the 14 years of the study, the researchers found that those who worked 11 hour days or longer were 67 % more likely to develop heart disease than those who only worked 7 or 8 hours.

And I’m making an assumption here. Chronic overwork leads to burnout. In other words, overwork leads to “chronic stress”.

I don’t hear people talking about ‘burnout’ as much now as in the past but I’m certain that the problem has not disappeared.

Burnout describes a set of symptoms or behaviors including:

• Emotional exhaustion
• Feeling disengaged from others
• Loss of feelings of competency and achievement

According to psychologist Pat Fisher, quoted in The Vancouver Province in 2005, “burnout begins gradually, and worsens over time”.

The consequences of burnout, in additional to deteriorating health, are increased risk of suicide, and higher levels of divorce.

There are consequences for the organization as well:

•  Increased absenteeism
• Increased short and long term disability leaves
• Increased complaints from customers
• Increased turnover
• Increased cost of recruiting, orienting, and training new employees

The first step for both workers and the organizations they work in is to ‘take stock’ of the situation and do a thorough evaluation.

Individual workers need to examine their current levels of ‘self-care’ and ‘positive coping skills’. Organizations must look at what the level of ‘burnout’ is, what is causing it and what resources are in place to assist workers.

In addition both workers need to assess their current levels of stress and the effect that stress is having on their health and their work and personal lives.

If you are a leader and are interested in engaging your
workforce you might want to start by asking yourself, “What kind of leader am
I?”

You need to ask yourself this question because it is up to
you (bottom line) to create the culture in which everyone can perform at
his/her best. Not an easy challenge.

Between 1930, when the first formal studies of leadership
began, until the 1970s, the role of leaders was to maintain the ‘status quo’
and create and maintain order. During that time leaders were expected to rule
with authority and this authority was rarely challenged and certainly not by
their ‘subordinates’.

Our expectations of leaders have changed over the years. So
have the challenges that leaders face. Today leadership is much more challenging! How’s that for an understatement?

Today the world is more complex and change is rapid and
continuous. And the people who do the work (call them subordinates, followers,
or stakeholders) expect a very different style of leadership—they expect to be
engaged!

In 2008 the CIPD in the UK released a research paper on leadership and engagement. The report cited a 2005 Towers Perrin survey of 85,0000 people in large and  mid-size organizations in 16 countries around the world.  Towers and Perrin found that those organizations with high employee engagement levels also experienced a higher operating margin, net profit, revenue growth and earnings, than organizations with low engagement.

In the public sector high employee engagement translates into lower costs in the following areas:

• absenteeism
• staff turnover
• training

Towers Perrin (2005) also found that

 “many people are keen to contribute more to work but their managers behaviour and the culture of
their organizations is actively discouraging them from doing so.”

Speaking of organizational cultures, I just read, in the Vancouver Sun, that
Microsoft has topped the list of best multinationals to work for. Microsoft is
at the top of this list because it has created a ‘trust-based’ culture.  Trust is the ‘glue’ that holds everything together.

Trust is the foundation of an engaged workplace culture.

How do leaders engage employees?

Here is a rather daunting list of knowledge and skills to help you become a more engaging and transformational leader (in no particular order):

• Show genuine concern for others
• Enable others to do their best work
• Be accessible and transparent
• Encourage questioning
• Act with integrity (are trustworthy)
• Be honest and consistent (walk the talk)
• Network and stay connected
• Build a shared vision
• Resolve complex issues
• Facilitate change sensitively
• Inspire others
• Be a team players
• Be decisive
• Support a culture of learning and development

What struck me as I read this list was that the reason
leadership is so difficult today is that leaders have to be both
transformational (engaging) and have they also have to exercise their authority at times.

Creating a culture of engagement takes time but the rewards
are great for everyone involved in the organization.

Cheers! Lesley

In an earlier post I argued that workplace stress is a public health issue because it not only affects workers directly but it affects their families, their communities and society as a whole.

Those of us who have experienced stress at work know that it is real.

Unfortunately many employers still see stress as something that workers somehow create themselves, independent of the organization.

It is for this reason that most workplace stress education programs focus on what the individual worker can do (relaxation, exercise, diet changes etc.) and make no attempts to change the things in the workplace that are causing the stress in the first place (poor leadership, bad job design, lack of training, poor communication, lack of control over the work, etc.).

Yes, we can mitigate the effects of stress SOMEWHAT by our approach to it BUT we are still left with the things that we cannot control without the help of management.

Sunday Azagba and Mesbah Sharaf are the two doctoral students mentioned above. What they have done is to “examine the impact of job stress on health care costs.”

“There is medical evidence that stress can adversely affect an individual’s immune system, thereby increasing the risk of disease,” Sharaf continues. “Numerous studies have linked stress to back pain, colorectal cancer, infectious disease, heart problems, headaches and diabetes. Job stress may also heighten risky behaviours such as smoking, drug and alcohol abuse, discourage healthy behaviours such as physical activity, proper diet and increase consumption of fatty and sweet foods.”

Despite mounting evidence most Workers Compensation Boards
in North America do not recognize stress as a “work place injury” and many
physicians discourage their patients from taking stress leave.

And because the cause of stress is not being addressed, the cost of stress in the workplace is rising.