How stress affects you and your business
Stress is a significant issue in any business. One of the problems with stress is that it often increases over time without you noticing it. Stress is like the story of the boiled frog. If you put the frog in boiling water, it will immediately hop out, but if you turn the heat up gradually, eventually the frog will be boiled. Like the boiled frog, stress increases without us noticing until it is too late.
Increasing stress can have adverse impacts on your health, your business, your employees and your customers. There are four main types of stress (Albrecht) that business owners and managers deal with every day:
- Time stress, when you worry about time
- Anticipatory stress, when you worry about the future
- Situational stress, when you are dealing with a difficult situation
- Encounter stress, when you are dealing with difficult people
Each of these types of stress can sneak up on you, but there are ways to deal with them.
Time stress is often caused by the feeling that you don’t have enough time in your day. One thing you can do to offset this stress is to delegate and prioritize.
Anticipatory stress is caused by what you are afraid of happening. Worrying about the future is very common for business owners. They have an enormous investment in the future of their company. Often, everything they have, their house, life savings and future are at stake.
Situational stress is based on a loss of control or conflict — situations where you are powerless to affect the outcome of the case. Things beyond your control can be one of the most difficult stressors to deal with.
Encounter stress occurs when you have to deal with difficult people. For business owners, dealing with customers, suppliers and vendors can be a challenge with customers making demands, suppliers not living up to expectations and employees being human.
Contact Arbutus Management today to see how we can help you identify things that you can do to reduce stress by improving management processes.
References:
Albrecht’s Four Types of Stress, https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/albrecht-stress.htm
De-Stress with Dr. Ingrid, www.dringrid.ca
