It's the People Connection!

The people crossing your life path can be the source of utmost joy, happiness, excitement, and love whilst at the other end of the scale, they can cause us the most stress, despair, pain, and misery.

Look no further than for most of us at our own families. We get to choose our friends but not as the adage says, our family. Love them or hate them there is a reason Christmas and big family celebrations are often a cause of headaches and stress for many people.?It’s because we are stuck for a duration, with complaining “a minute” Aunty Rose and grumpy grandpa.

There is yet another environment where the majority of us, have no control over who inhibits the same space as us. It is our workplace.

Given the increasing number of hybrid working models and still, in some places 100% home working, you would think this would be less of a challenge. However, don’t be fooled, out of sight does not mean out of your life. Just because folk are not sitting opposite you in the open-plan office anymore, doesn’t mean people relations are no less significant

It is these so-called work relationships or interactions, that if we allow them, can negatively impact our well-being and be the difference between us feeling well and fulfilled in our working space or downright miserable and stressed out.

Before we delve further into this topic, take a moment to, pause and think about any individual right now in your working environment who either gets under your skin, triggers you, stresses you out, or just simply is a pain in the neck.

Then go to the why? And note the immediate emotion associated with the thought of them.?Is it irritation, fear, annoyance, or resentment?? Ok. shelve that for a moment and we’ll return to it later.

Boss Cultures

Unless you happen to be a CEO the majority of us have a direct line manager in some shape or form. The female or male boss is our guiding light, a figure of wisdom, knowledge, and leadership. This person builds a culture of mutual trust and respect amongst the team. She or he appreciates strength, applauds effort and success, handles pressure well, and communicates superbly…. Oops, have I lost you all??

Ah, I get it!??You are all looking out the window watching flying pigs? :-)?Ha ha!?How can you be so harsh?

Unfortunately, too many of us have less than great memories of being managed! Although to be fair to the other side, some of you must be lucky enough to have had managers with some of these qualities, if not all of them. Haven’t you? However just as many of you, I’m sure, could compile horror story examples for the “How Not To Be managed” Encyclopaedia!

From ethnographic research, that I conducted as part of my “Design Thinking” workplace well-being project in 2021, the results came through clearly that, it is this individual who potentially can have the greatest influence either positively or negatively on our well-being in the workplace. No matter what edict senior management passes down the line.

In the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic, with everybody homeworking, the interaction with and support from these individuals, for their direct reports came under the spotlight. Exposing the good, from the bad to the simply appalling!

Did they trust you to get on with your work at home or did their micromanagement tendencies become of nano-management proportions?

Did they show that they cared for your welfare and checked in on you? And asked not just whether you were going to hit the project timeframe but actually how were you coping?

On returning to a hybrid way of working one employee I interviewed stated

?“I knew my boss came on site the same day as I did yet, I never saw him for months and months.?It would have just been nice if he popped in, just once to ask how I was.”

Like a parent-child relationship, the essence, the traits, and the culture of the department or team is determined by the manager. And it is not an easy tightrope to walk as any good manager reading this will testify to.?They are triple deckered between having to deliver what is passed down from the leadership team, to achieving departmental goals,. whilst proactively supporting the development and everyday needs of his / her direct reports.

Whoever has worked for a workaholic manager, will know that they are close to the worst.?These people, by their example simply put so much unseen pressure on others to follow suit.?To deliver, to complete, to sign off whatever is the task, even if one’s body is consumed with blood poisoning and one’s gangrenous limbs dropping off.

?Archetypes for Stress

Add into this mix, the characteristics of different professions. The sales manager, who drives his team hard to achieve maximum sales and profit for the big bonus within a tight timeframe.?The senior lawyer, who believes that his/her junior minions need to work through the “pain” like he or she did to learn how to be a “real lawyer”. ?That it’s necessary to toughen up and serve their clients even if it means practically dying at one’s desk.

Not forgetting the poor young doctors overseen by consultants with similarly old-fashioned views.?These young practitioners are renowned for being burdened with long hours due to the view of the profession that this is the only way to work yourself up to earn your wings or rather your stethoscope. Similar models exist in the financial professions and equally across many others.

Why is it that being seen as, working extremely hard, under intense pressure with chronic stress is considered, a sort of rite of passage to success? Something, one has to put up with, accept and shut up about, within some of the top professions. If you can’t hack it, get out you are not worthy, is the attitude! Yet surely, the rates of burn-out and addictions in these professions must be proof enough that it is way beyond time for change!

Your line manager, is not the only source of relationship stress, as anyone who is a professional interacting or dependent upon others in a multi-level organisation, will confirm

Look no further than B2B, particularly in marketing and sales where there is often a reliance on technical or application input for product samples, trials, or results. Tread these relationships with care if you want to deliver on time to your customer and avoid their frustration directed at you in the frontline!

And of course, there is the much-maligned project manager. ?She or he must steer their ship to the destination, to the satisfaction of all, on time and within budget.?Being a giver or receiver in either of these scenarios can be a huge headache if your people skills are not finely tuned.

?

I must give a particular mention here, to the communication and diplomatic skills of the unsung heroes, salespeople. ?This misunderstood yet vital profession for all businesses is so often underestimated and unappreciated. (Note the reaction most people have when one mentions Sales!)

The salesperson’s skill of diplomacy would give any ambassador a run for their money, yet they are often perceived as pushy people at the front end, whose job it is to take the flack from whoever happens to send it.

They must liaise and collaborate right across the company, with manufacturing, technical, compliance and of course marketing. Whilst doing the same with the like personnel of their clients or customers. Required to successfully navigate, negotiation, conflict, and pressure, it is no wonder that their unwelcome companion is frequently chronic stress.

?But wait we are not quite finished. There are yet three more relationships in the workplace where interactions can have us reaching for that stress ball.

Angels or Demons in the Team??

First, there are our lovely colleagues.??Our brothers and sisters in arms.

If you are lucky, you get to work with a great bunch of folks, develop good camaraderie, and have brilliant support, all motivated working together. However, there is always one rotten apple in the basket. And if you are very unlucky, they could be deadly rotten, in fact, a workplace psychopath. There are just as many of these psychopaths lurking in companies as are walking around on our streets.?We just don’t how to recognise them.

They are that nasty individual, who gains pleasure by bullying, inflicting stress and suffering on others in any way they can. Continually pushing deadlines forward, creating impossible tasks, and piling on extreme workloads simply because they are in a position to do so, at the expense of seeing others struggle.?And sadly, these individuals are so clever and manipulative, that they manoeuvre themselves into places of responsibility, such that they can more easily act out their Machiavellian antics. ??

For those more interested in this topic, highly recommended reading is "Working with Monsters" by John Clarke. There is high probability he or she is ensconced in your office, you just don’t know it.?Suffice, to say that these people exist and are currently thriving in the current kill-or-be-killed modern workplace.

We Love Them Really, Don’t We?

Customers, clients, patients, whatever is the name for the people you ultimately serve and who eventually pay the bills, providing the oil that keeps the cogs of the business running. They are the reason for all those strategy meetings, new developments, etc without whom we would all be sitting at home doing our hobbies.

They pay our salaries, generate dividends, and finally are the scales that tip our business towards success or failure. And don’t they know it!?

Take away these people and wouldn’t all our jobs be so much easier??They are demanding (as we humans are) and want results in the shortest time, at the fee agreed (mostly less). And increasingly in this technologically biased world, they require more complexity which they believe will ensure their success and satisfaction.

Be you in sales, marketing, manufacturing (Thank you supermarkets for Just in Time!), a medic, a lawyer, a supplier, an accountant, in fact anyone, who deals with our friendly customers or clients, then you will know that these lovely people are so often ultimately the source of stress.?And that whilst, trying to provide them, high-quality efficient service or products whilst juggling and balancing one’s well-being boundaries, is no easy feat.

Such is the minefield of relationships that we must navigate within the workplace without choice, the same as with our family. At least with annoying Aunty Jean, we can pretend we are not in when she comes around ringing our doorbell, unfortunately, at work, we don’t have this luxury!

?One Relationship Matters The Most

So how does one deal with these all these relationships, communicating, and interacting whilst saving something back for oneSelf??The answer lies in the last syllable of that previous sentence, Self, or more precisely, the relationship with Self.

It’s the state of that relationship that will determine how we show up to others.

How much do we invest in You, compared to investing in others?

It is the strength of that love affair with Self, that determines if we go down that slippery slope of measuring ourselves against others negatively, such that we operate in ways that are not good for us.

It is, dare I say, the depth of our Self-love (oops this Linkedin!) which dictates if we concern ourselves about how we are seen by others, such that we put up with and tolerate that which we know is for us, intuitively harmful.

It is the nature of our care for Self that allows one’s well-being to be compromised because we value that promotion or simply that high salary, over our health so we permit the boss to push us around.

How much do you allow others to disrespect your boundaries before you say enough?

Returning to that question, from the start of the article, consider again that person at work, who gets under your skin. Note the feelings around being triggered. What emotions surfaced with your thoughts of them??

Now go deeper and try to understand where it comes from. ?Shift your perspective because we have responsibility to ourselves.?If you have real integrity, then you’ll question those feelings until you learn what You are actually projecting onto yourself!

The energy we put out and which surrounds, us is the energy that comes back to us

If we hold ourselves in high esteem. If we value ourselves and believe in the power of Self, knowing that we are good enough. Then positive energy will be our invisible impenetrable force field. Allowing us to deal with any individual on our own terms as an equal. without fear or intimidation. And to accord us permission to operate intuitively on our path in our own way.

Where chronic stress exists, so often it is this relationship that needs fixing the most. Not just as regards the workplace but across all spheres of life.

How is your relationship with Self?

Challenges in the workplace causing you headache and stress?

Then it’s time for us to talk!

FeelWell BeingYou

Let's Connect!