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What
This Section Gives You
Job
Stress Management from Mind Tools
The previous
section looked at the basic skills you
need to handle work overload, conflicting
demands and deadline stress. These are relevant
to most jobs.
This section looks at some of the special
skills you need to survive in jobs that
are changing, have not been properly thought-through,
or are not supported by the resources and
capabilities of industry-leading companies.
It also looks at tools that help you take
charge of your career and gives pointers
to handling truly unpleasant jobs.
Relations with your
boss, your co-workers
and your team are outside the scope
of this section.
A World of Rapid Change
Jobs can be particularly unstable and inconsistent
in fast-changing organizations. This is
evidenced even more when organizations are
new, have recently changed their strategy,
or are taking on new and more complex work.
This will continue to be the lot of many
organizations as globalization and the impact
of technology force change in the business
environment. In these cases, job designs
can be non-existent, or can quickly become
inconsistent and out of date.
Where this happens, little thought can
be given to career paths or anything other
than short-term handling of difficult situations.
Objectives can be vague, demands can be
irreconcilable, and goals and priorities
may conflict. There may also be inconsistencies
between what the organization says it wants
and what it rewards.
Finding the Positives
This all sounds quite negative. Yet, in
the right organization, a lack of structure
and system can be intensely stimulating.
Fast-growing organizations can offer tremendous
opportunities for quick career advancement.
These organizations can face enormous challenges,
and working through these can give a tremendous
sense of achievement. Lack of structure
also means that there is plenty of opportunity
to get experience (albeit sometimes quite
shallow experience) in a wide variety of
roles.
But Avoiding the Negatives...
On the other hand, mediocre companies in
stable or contracting industries can be
dispiriting places to work. Opportunities
can be limited, career progression can be
difficult, and working conditions can be
grim. Particular types of job can be intrinsically
unpleasant, particularly when you have no
control over the pace of your work, or where
the work involves exposure to routine unpleasant
stresses.
An important point to remember:
When employers create jobs, they have no
obligation to make them pleasant or rewarding.
Some employers will care little about anything
other than their own reward. It is up to
you to find jobs with good employers, and
in some cases, you need to recognize that
the best option may be to leave bad ones.
Introducing the Tools
There are several different groups of tools
in this section, addressing the different
issues that you can face in these difficult
jobs.
The first tool we look at, Job
Analysis (2), is a longer version of
the Job
Analysis (1) tool we looked at in the
last section. This longer version does everything
that the Job Analysis (1) tool does, while
simultaneously focusing on flushing out
inconsistencies with the job and problems
with the job design.
In the many jobs without established career
paths, you may be the only person looking
after your long-term career. The second
tool, Career
Planning, helps you better plan your
career to ensure that you keep moving it
forward.
As you become established in your job,
career advancement often comes through specialization
- you will develop more and more skill and
expertise in a particular field. In time,
however, you can end up in a frustrating
position where your expertise is such that
you are too valuable to your employer in
the role you are doing.
Your career progression can be blocked
because your employer cannot afford to release
you from this role and/or because you have
not had the opportunity to develop the skills
you need for other roles. While you may
be paid well, you will soon become bored
and frustrated, feeling like "a bird
in a golden cage". The Career Planning
tool also helps you to break free of these
career dead ends.
The final tools are helpful for handling
the stress of intrinsically difficult, unpleasant,
stressful jobs. Here, stress can come from
the nature and environment of work itself,
or from conflict with personal goals, ideals
and beliefs.
The next
article helps you understand structural
problems with jobs...
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