How to be Proactive in Managing Stress at Work

I firmly believe that stress originates as a result of poor management skill. A project manager I once met used to say, “If there are people in your organization that are regularly working overtime it means that either they don’t know how to do their jobs or you don’t know how to distribute the work.” An inadequate resource or an unbalanced work distribution cause poor performance. Poor performance by one or more of your resources usually has a ripple effect, degrading performance downstream when their badly worked product forms the basis of someone else’s job. This, in turn, leads to unhappy clients, unhappy bosses, unhappy coworkers and an overall stressful work environment.

So, as a project manager you have several ways to proactively limit stress resulting from poor performance.

• Best Fit. First and foremost, try to organize the work resources on the basis of who is the best fit for what activity. Shuffle and reshuffle the organization till you find this best fit. Of course, a never ending shuffling process is not good either, so a couple of cycles is the limit.
• Time management is another important step in the fight against stress - managing your own as well as helping everyone else on your team manages their times. Never bite off more than you can chew! Learn what the limit of everyone is and assign tasks based on what each can do.
• Assign achievable targets to your team members. And follow up on the progress - especially if have any weak team members. You cannot afford to wait till the dead to find out that one of your team members was not able to deliver and so will hold the rest of the team up.
• Separation of work and personal life. I try to keep the two separate. Unless it is absolutely necessary, I never let work intrude on my personal life. And vice versa! Of course, not everyone is able to do this so be ready to lend a helping hand to your team members while they resolve their personal crisis. Just remind them that, should this be a frequent occurrence, a permanent state of crisis is not a desirable trait either.
• Know your team's limits. If you are assigned a task that your team is not equipped to handle, raise the issue with your boss before it becomes a problem.
• Limit multitasking. Although some managers view the ability to multitask as a productive asset, it is actually a myth. Research shows that brain loses valuable time while shifting focus from one task to another, especially if the tasks are complex or unfamiliar. So, have your team members work on a timetable, focusing on one task at a time.
• Optimize Resources and Increase Efficiency. Check if there are multiple points of information logging or if the data is being registered/processed in an efficient manner. Multiple data entry points increases chances of mistakes and thus increasing confusion at a later stage. Inefficiency in processing information wastes time, causing unnecessary delays.

There are many other things that a project manager may do as they accumulate experience in resolving problems - these are some that I have learned in my professional career. I'll welcome your comments on what preventive steps you take to avoid and reduce stress in your work environment.