Regaining control over your job

Work can be all-consuming. With increasing overwhelm and anxiety, it can be hard to see the path forward to regain a sense of control over your job.

Add to this that boss behaviors significantly affect how you experience work. Since we are “organic with the world” we deal simultaneously with personal and outside influences, causing the sense of “control over the job” to feel like a moving target.

To get back a feeling of calm control over work, we have two problems to manage: our own anxiety and the expectations of our boss(s).

Three things that can help are:

1.??????Calm yourself to respond instead of react

2.??????Use the EAR acronym to set respect boundaries by clarifying needs

3.??????Practice the “buy some time” method with prompts to increase your sense of safety and control over your job

1. Calm yourself?first

Reaching a more balanced relationship with work is more about who you can be than what you can do. We are oriented towards doing and activity. Yet the paradox of being human is that stopping and slowing activity is a necessary release from the emotional toxins that otherwise stay lodged within our bodies. Regularly practicing this simple mindfulness exercise, can greatly increase your calm, confidence, and perspective.

After reading the instructions, try this two-minute example: ?

1.?????? Tune into yourself as you close your eyes.

2.?????? Be conscious of your breath and notice your heartbeat. See if you can do that for five breaths without changing anything.

3.?????? Feel yourself sinking into your chair deeper and deeper as you count backward from 10-1

4.?????? Sit in that space for a few more seconds. Count back up from 1-10 and open your eyes.

5.?????? Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Ahh.

6.?????? How do you feel? Notice anything? If not, you might when you try it later. The cumulative effect of doing this short exercise regularly is significant.

I teach many similar techniques to my coaching clients as part of our work together. This is important because if you want to respond appropriately to someone’s request, you need to first be in an emotionally and bodily regulated state yourself.

2. Set boundaries with EAR: empathy, attention and respect

The next strategy is to respond to a request based on clarifying needs and priority instead of just saying yes. Bosses are not always clear about what they need, want or why. To help find out what your boss needs, consider asking, “Can you explain to me how this task fits into X project or Y timeline?” “Who needs to have this next/who will be seeing it next?” are also good questions to ask.

Sometimes the boss’s needs and wants will be expressed more clearly when your questions create a sense of safety and assurance. Bill Eddy suggests using “EAR” phrases to help you set your boundaries without feeling like you are saying no to your boss. These phrases are particularly helpful when the other person is showing anxiety or high emotion.

E -Empathy “I understand this is difficult for you right now…” “I feel how worried you are about this…” “You sound frustrated, did I get that right?”

A – Attention: “Help me understand this better. Tell me more.” Or: “I want to pay full attention to your concerns.” Or: “I’m interested in knowing your point of view.”

R - Respect:?“I respect your efforts at dealing with this problem.” Or: “Congratulations on your promotion.” Or: “That was a helpful/insightful presentation you gave.”

Using empathy, attention and respect, open the door to emotionally safety, needs clarification and curiosity. EAR statements and questions build rapport and increase a sense of safety and trust.

3. Buy time

The final strategy for taking control of your job is to “buy yourself time”. I learned this from a past employee. Full of visionary ideas, I completely overlooked my employee’s experience with the project or task I was assigning to her. ?She would tell me:

“This week we agreed our priority was X but this task you just gave me will take three hours out of my day when I can’t work on our priority job. What would you like to prioritize?”

This helped me to empathize with what it took for her to do her job, and to rethink my idea into a more realistic timeline.

Here are some other scripts you can use to buy yourself time.

“I would love to help you with that, can you help me picture the finished product from your perspective?”

“To put this project together I will need to create a structure and gather resources. What if I come up with the framework by next Tuesday, and we can add the rest then?”

“What have we done with this in the past that worked? Could that be repeated?”

“Could I get a couple of people together to come up with a plan and get back to you next week?”

“Could I get the framework to you by the end of the day tomorrow?”

In conclusion, here are three strategies to help you feel more in control of your job:

1.?????? Calm yourself, by slowing down and tuning in for 3-4 minutes daily.

2.?????? Clarify priorities before saying yes, if your boss needs calming use the EAR questions and statements: empathy, attention, and respect.

3.?????? Buy yourself time with phrases that show you want to help but create a cushion of time to alleviate unnecessary stress.

If you found these strategies helpful, imagine the power of support and guidance from an expert coach??

If you want to chat about taking back control of your job, book a complimentary strategy call!

About the Author:

Marie Gervais helps people move from work trauma to career transformation. With a Doctorate in culture and learning in the workplace, Certification in Emotional Freedom Coaching, and as a Certified Training and Development Professional, Dr. Gervais has helped hundreds of stuck career professionals and managers take charge of their lives and reach their goals.

If you want to gain new insights, release what is not serving you, and turn wishful thinking into a meaningful, well-compensated career, book your career strategy call to find out how. ?