Applying This to Your Life
Job Stress Management from Mind Tools

This section has introduced you to three useful tools for managing the stress of working with powerful people. Now is the time to put these skills into practice!

Do the following:

• Spend a few minutes thinking back through the interactions you have had with other people during the past week. Think about your relationship with your boss in particular. Also, look at the stressful events in your stress diary. When you reflect on the way in which you handled things, would you say that you used an assertive approach?

• Look at the table of rights in our assertiveness article. Again, do you find yourself making any of the outmoded traditional assumptions described in that table? Think through for yourself whether the traditional assumptions or the legitimate rights are correct for you.

• If you come to the conclusion that you need to be more assertive, then learn the LADDER approach. Next time that you feel that your rights are being infringed, use LADDER to push back against this infringement. You may find it easy to build up a bit of confidence by pushing back against minor infringements before you tackle major ones.

• Print off the process diagram on our Unreasonable Demands page and keep a copy of it with you. Next time someone makes a request of you that seems to be unreasonable, work through the flow chart and use it to manage the request effectively.

• Use the Stakeholder Analysis tool to identify the stakeholders in your job and in the goals you want to achieve.

• Use the Stakeholder Planning tool to think through how you can win the help and support of your stakeholders. Start using these tools on a routine basis to manage your stakeholder relationships.
  

Where to go from here:

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