3 Ways to Deal With Frustration At Work

Research shows that frustrated employees make up 20% of the workforce of a typical company. The consequences of frustration are striking. Not only do they damage the potential development and career opportunities of frustrated individuals, but the economic losses due to low productivity and lack of engagement due to frustration are in the several billion dollars a year.

I want to focus this post on dealing with frustration, especially from the side of the employee. This post is for any of you experiencing any level of frustration with the work you do, the culture of the organization you work for, your relationship with your boss or colleagues, the level of pressure to get things done, or any other factor that you might consider frustrating.

Let's begin by defining frustration in a way that gives us more power and responsibility to deal with it. Usually, when most people think about frustration, they look at the situations that are frustrating, meaning what’s outside of us. For example, "my boss wants me to do this thing and he's not giving me any instructions or resources! This is frustrating!!!"

Unfortunately, the approach of thinking of any given situation as frustrating, instead of thinking how we react to it or what we can do about it, puts the blame and the responsibility for change on the situation itself and not on us. Following the example above, we could say instead “I’m frustrated because I don’t have enough information and resources to perform the task I was assigned to”.

Maybe it sounds just as a meaningless semantic difference. Perhaps we think that changing the focus from the situation to ourselves doesn’t have any effect at all. It is certainly way more comfortable to put responsibility for action or change outside of us rather than within us. For example, saying something such as "it's not my fault" or "I did my job, but they didn’t do theirs" sound not only more comfortable but also reassuring. It sends the message that “we are fine, but they are not”. Such an approach is indeed comfortable, but only in the short term. In the long term, it will leave us helpless in times when harder challenges and roadblocks hit our lives with more power than ever before and when the life’s situations really become nasty and there is not anybody around to put the blame on.

Once we understand the subtle, yet transformational difference between defining a situation as frustrating versus thinking of how we feel about and react to it, the focus of change immediately switches from the situation (over which we might have no control at all) to us. Then, the actions that we want and need to take to make it "less frustrating to us" become more of our responsibility. This approach is about taking ownership of our lives and the way we react to “frustrating situations”. It’s about being reassured of our skills, talents and capacities, and our inner strengths to solve complex challenges, rather than helpless and vulnerable to the obstacles of life.

I want to ask you to do one exercise here: use a piece of paper and divide it in two columns. On the left side, write down everything that you consider frustrating at the moment, either personal or professional situations. On the right side, next to each of those statements, write the transformed approach and change the focus from the situation to how you feel about and react to it. This is the first step to increasing self-awareness and ownership.

Now, once we have done this exercise, I can go on proposing three ideas to deal with frustration at work:

Self-Awareness

Increasing the understanding of who we are, our strengths, talents, abilities and capacities, is fundamental to deal with frustration. We won’t be able to react in a more positive manner to the challenges of life if we don’t acknowledge the tools we have available to deal with them. On the other hand, there will be some situations from which we are going to have to walk away, and to do that it is necessary to also get to know the tools we don’t have and whether we can learn them or not. Self-awareness is a powerful way to know when to invest our energy dealing with a particular situation, or when accepting it or walking away from it might be the best course of action.

The circle of influence

This is sort of an old one, but worthy to repeat.

If we think about every situation in life, we may be able to place them in three categories. First, there are situations that we can totally control. For example, the time we wake up in the morning, whether we decide to work out or get on a diet, etc. Second, there are situations over which we have influence, but we cannot control. For example, explaining to our boss all the data that shows that more resources are needed to continue with a special project. We have the power to influence our boss’s decision, but we can’t make that decision for them.

Finally, there are also situations over which we have no control or influence. Self-awareness and situation-awareness are essential to categorize each situation and decide whether we can do something about it or not. I tend to get really frustrated by situations that are completely beyond my control and influence. The problem is not in the situation, but in the way I feel about and react to it. Only by changing the focus from the situation to me will I be able to let them go and save my energy for the things I can control or influence.

Learning to say No

Very often we find ourselves helpless because of work overload. A bunch of things come to us nonstop, and there are several of them that we cannot control or influence. It is fundamental to learn how to respectfully say no. Should we continue to accept everything that comes to our desks, disregarding whether we can do something about it or not, we will become more and more vulnerable and unable to respond positively to things that go beyond our control and influence.

Saying no doesn’t mean that we are unwilling to help. On the contrary, it means that we are accepting what we are capable to do and we can decide whether we could potentially be helpful or not. Respectfully saying no is an acknowledgement of our self-awareness, but also of the importance of the task we are saying no to. It’s not saying no for the sake of it, but because we know that the task is important and somebody needs to take full responsibility for doing it.

Follow me on Twitter: @erubio_p

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About the Author: Enrique Rubio is an Electronic Engineer and a Fulbright scholar with an Executive Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Syracuse University. Enrique is passionate about leadership, business and social entrepreneurship, curiosity, creativity and innovation. He is a blogger and podcaster, and also a competitive ultrarunner. Visit the blog: Innovation for Development and Podcast. Click here to follow Enrique on Twitter. 

Disclaimer: opinions are my own and not the views of my past or current employer.