Struggling With Stress at Work? Try These 5 Change Management Techniques

Are you wondering how to manage workplace stress? 

If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed with your workload recently, it can be difficult to support team members and to be productive. This is especially true when we manage others, as busy times can be disruptive to the workplace and can leave us feeling like we have no time to manage our own emotions.

If you’ve been feeling this way, try using these four techniques based on change management to decrease workplace stress and reconnect with your work:

1. Communicate About Time Allocation and Goals

Be clear with both your team and yourself about what you can reasonably accomplish on your own, and where you need support. For example, if you have to catalogue and file your 2019 folders in a company archive but the task is not high priority, delegate the job so you can focus on time-sensitive tasks.

Decide how much time you need to allocate each day towards completing the tasks that are causing you anxiety, and block them off in your calendar. Make sure your team knows not to disturb you during these times so you can focus.

The key to true workplace success is effective communication and delegation, so don’t be afraid to ask for help. Leaning on your team for support shows vulnerability, which strengthens your connection to one another.

2. Reassess Your Priorities

Meetings should always have a purpose: either to share new information, or to solve a specific problem. 

If you’re feeling stressed at work, one of the easiest ways to alleviate some of that stress is to cut out all nonessential meetings. 

If you feel like you can’t cut any meetings, take this advice from The Wall Street Journal, which found that managers can save 80% of their wasted meeting time by sticking to an agenda, and starting and ending on time.

3. Make Decisions Based on Data

Take a moment to think about how you divide up your time: do you take care of small tasks early so you know they’re out of the way? Or, do you focus on high-level projects that you know will have the biggest impact?

Think about the tasks you need to complete, and then break them down into one of these four categories:

• Urgent and important
• Not urgent but important
• Urgent but not important
• Not urgent and not important

Organizing your tasks this way allows you to take an objective approach to everything you need to do, and to organize it into categories to tackle based on priority.

4. Consider How You Procrastinate

One of the most common stressors is procrastination. If you’re like most people, you probably procrastinate for one of three reasons:

• You don’t like doing the task.
• You don’t know how to do the task.
• You feel unsure of how to start or approach the task.

Once you’ve identified why you’re procrastinating, break the task into small, micro-steps. Breaking your thoughts down this way helps you take a systematic approach to solving problems and completing whatever you’re avoiding. 

Invest in 1-1 Training

If you’re invested in developing the capacity for great leadership, consider investing in 1-1 executive coaching to develop your emotional intelligence (EI). 

Understanding how you tackle problems, react to stress, and manage your emotions can go a long way towards true mastery of yourself, and your profession. Drop us a line today!