5 Ways to Defeat Management Stress

Being a manager is no easy feat. When you’re working long hours, overseeing teams and constantly jumping from one task to the next, stress can creep up on you; paralyzing you in your tracks. Employees may overcome stress, but for a hiring manager with a thousand responsibilities, is it even possible? Of course!

Overcoming stress for a manager requires a slightly different strategy than for a regular employee, so we’ve come up with 5 steps for defeating management stress. Read them below:

Prioritize, Organize!

The first step in decreasing your stress levels is thinking ahead and getting yourself organized. File all of your materials into specific folders in a way that makes sense to you, create workflows that best complement your work style and upload as much as you can to a cloud service so you’ve got all the information you need at your fingertips.

Taking an extra hour or two to systematize your life may feel like menial work but will save you a lot of time and stress down the road. Evernote is a great app for prioritizing tasks and sharing them with your team. Pocket is also a great app that saves any document, article or video you wish to look at later.

Implement Good Communication

Much like a plant that needs regular tending to, communication with the people you work with requires constant attention for your relationships to succeed. When first meeting with clients and employees, discuss what the best ways are for keeping in touch and communicating with one another. If there are any problems down the road, you can always refer back to that initial meeting. Slack and Trello are also great tools made for collaboration that keep everyone on the same page – saving all of you loads of communication grief!

Encourage a Positive Work Culture

If you are stressed and unhappy, your employees are going to feel the same way. Then their stress will rub back off onto you and it becomes a vicious cycle of discontentment around the office. But you can nip that in the bud by encouraging positive work culture. Remember that as the manager, you set the tone for the workplace. Keep your cool, never skimp on praise and make your employees feel appreciated. In those difficult moments, take a deep breath, and carefully choose your words before you speak (or type) them.

Take Care of Yourself

When you’re bearing the weight of an entire team and managing multiple clients, the biggest mistake you can make is not taking care of your own well-being. People who consistently do this get burnt-out faster, making them less efficient at their jobs. Take breaks during the day, exercise, eat healthy meals, disconnect from your phone and spend your off time with people who bring you joy. Work is important but so are you. Treat yourself with as much importance as you do your work.

Work Toward Emotional Intelligence

Whereas IQ levels used to be an important factor in hiring people for a managerial role, many companies, like Google, have now shifted their focus toward hiring people who have emotional intelligence. This is because people who are aware of their own emotions perform well as leaders and are better at managing their own stress.

So how can you achieve emotional intelligence? The first step is self-awareness. Every day, take the time to think about the different emotions you’re feeling to learn what your stress triggers are. Then decide how you would like to behave in a stressful situation and practice that behavior. It’s not something that can be achieved overnight but over time, with careful thought and practice, you can increase your emotional intelligence.

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