What
This Section Gives You
Job
Stress Management from Mind Tools
Whatever you do, on whatever scale, there
will always be people who have the power
to affect you and your goals. These people
may be your boss or may be clients, politicians,
managers within your company, or external
people who have the power to help or hinder
your projects.
These people may be able to help you and
support you in realizing these goals, or
may be able to undermine you and block your
achievement. They may have the power to
overload you with unpleasant and stressful
tasks, or may knowingly or unknowingly be
quite unreasonable in the demands they seek
to place upon you.
This section helps you to deal with the
special stresses of working with people
who have power over you.
Introducing the Tools…
A key area of potential stress lies with
your relationship with your boss. Issues
here revolve around balancing work and free
time, managing workload, and handling apparently
excessive demands or unreasonable behavior.
The same can be true of working with clients.
While your boss has an interest in keeping
you as part of his or her team, clients
may see things on a much shorter-term basis.
Clients may wish to get as much as they
possibly can out of you, irrespective of
the long-term consequences to you as a person.
The first tool in this section, Assertiveness,
shows you how to defend your right to a
well-balanced life in a fair, reasonable
and positive manner. It helps you to express,
and get, what you want in a way that is
rational, non-manipulative and adult.
The second tool, Coping
with "Unreasonable" Demands,
helps you to handle seemingly unreasonable
demands in an appropriate and mature manner.
People tend to react emotionally to demands
that they perceive as unreasonable, often
jumping to the conclusion that such demands
are being made by a ‘bad person’.
In reality, most people are fair and rational,
and many apparently unreasonable requests
arise from misunderstandings and lack of
knowledge. It is also possible that demands
may be objectively reasonable, but that
circumstances make them impossible to meet.
This tool gives you a process to follow
when faced with apparently unreasonable
demands. It helps you to make sure of your
facts and reach a balanced conclusion that
you can have confidence in. While you may
not always end up with a pleasant conclusion,
this tool helps to eliminate the intense
stress of uncertainty and over-reaction
that comes with an impulsive reaction to
seemingly unreasonable demands.
The final tool, Stakeholder
Analysis, shows you how to manage your
communication with powerful people so that
you can win support for your projects. This
helps you to cut through much of the politics
and unpleasantness that can lead to frustration,
and get in the way of accomplishing your
goals.
Click here
to find out about Assertiveness,
the first of these tools.
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