What I Now Know About Stress

Stress occurs when two or more forces are acting in non-complementary directions.

In the workplace, people become stressed when they feel pressure to perform beyond their ability, under unreasonable time pressure, or without support required for realistic expectation of success. I have often believed workplace stress to be something largely self-inflicted. I mean, do superiors really expect their staff to accomplish more than is humanly possible? Apparently, sometimes, they do.

We all need, on occasion, to push ourselves beyond what we think possible. George Bernard Shaw wrote: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Effective employers set expectations high and, at the same time, guard against excessive transference of their own stress onto employees. Healthy employees should know that they are expected to do their absolute best – and no more.

On a personal level, in leading an organization I recently encountered stress as essentially a battle between must and can’t. In this case, can’t eventually prevailed, and the pain subsided. The bittersweet discovery is that we truly can emerge stronger and wiser from all the twisting and pulling of stress.