View or download the printable version of the Quick Guide to Building Work Stress Resilience (PDF).
Managing work stress is all about building your capacity to adapt well and bounce back from difficult circumstances. As a supervisor, you can serve as a role model to your team in becoming more resilient and preventing burnout. How? You have the ability to lessen many of work's greatest stressors for the individuals you supervise.
What are work stressors?
Work stressors are common in the workplace due to increasing demands and limited resources. Below are the four most common work stressors:
Role Conflict: Facing conflicting demands (i.e., succeeding at one part of the job will mean failure in another part).
Role Ambiguity: When expectations and goals are not well understood (i.e., unsure of responsibilities and how to prioritize issues as they come up; lack of clarity about what success looks like).
Interpersonal Conflict: When disagreements and conflict become personal and emotional, and are not addressed.
Lack of Social Support: Feeling disconnected from others within and outside of work; lack of help solving problems or not enough emotional support.
What happens when work stressors linger?
Burnout. This is how the mind and body try to cope with a high level of ongoing work stress. These are the three most common symptoms of burnout:
- Exhaustion: being tired and worn out, or feeling "drained" of energy.
- Cynicism: disengagement or detachment from the work.
This can sound like: "I don't even care. I'm done, I'm over it." - Inefficacy: feeling helpless and ineffective, having trouble concentrating, and decreasing in productivity.
Burnout can impact performance. It's easy to write people off when you start to see these types of behaviors, but first consider, might they be overwhelmed or need more support?
What can I do to prevent burnout?
Preventing burnout involves effectively managing work stressors which requires resilience.
What is resilience?
Resilience is your own capacity to adapt well, and helping your teams and departments adapt in the face of stress, change, and uncertainty. It means "bouncing back" from difficult experiences.
Keep in mind individual differences
We all have different temperaments and the ability to adjust, which leads some of us to handle stress more naturally and easily than others. Regardless of these factors, resilience can be learned and developed.
Recharge
Be intentional about creating time to relax and recharge: free time between the workdays, during weekends, and holidays or vacations. At work, schedule short breaks or try unscheduled breaks by shifting your attention to other work tasks.
As a supervisor, you can help your team to adapt to difficult circumstances by coaching them to use effective coping strategies by reducing or even removing work stressors.
How can I build resilience around work stressors?
Building resilience is an ongoing skill that requires self-awareness and practice with the outcome of viewing yourself positively and having confidence in your strengths. Building resilience also means finding healthy ways to manage the stress at work and the ability to coach your team to use effective coping skills.
Stress at work is a growing concern that causes loss of productivity and engagement that might lead to burnout. Knowing the most common work stressors will help you determine the most productive way forward and build resilience in you, your team, and department.