One of the keys to being a good colleague, teammate, and leader is self awareness and self regulation. (The same holds true for being a good friend, spouse and parent, by the way.) And, a big part of self awareness and self regulation is knowing when your stress and anxiety levels are approaching high levels.
I have met very few people in my life who are at their best when under high levels of stress and anxiety. Performance almost always goes down under stress. Let me rephrase that… performance almost always goes down when stress is not managed correctly. Having stress is not necessarily the thing that hurts performance. Not managing the stress effectively is.
You can’t manage something you are not aware of. And problems that don’t get managed almost always become bigger problems. So taking care of this starts with self awareness. We have to be able to read the signals in ourselves if we are going to be able to successfully manage our own stress. We have to know what it looks like, feels like, sounds like.
I am making a simple point today, on October 30, 2020. Our performance in the workplace, and our communication, are directly connected to the stress levels we feel, and our success or failure in managing them.
Pay attention to yourself, my friends. Understand yourself. Give yourself grace and space to get yourself to a better place. Your colleagues will benefit, and so will your organization. And, by the way, so will you.
The timing of my message to you today is not accidental, by the way. The world around us is… unsettled. That’s one word for it. There are other, more graphic words. But for the purposes of this blog, unsettled works just fine. You get my point.
And the next few days will be important ones, no matter what happens next week. So, pay attention to yourself. Watch for cues of how you are dealing. And do your best to demonstrate some self regulation. Doing so will be an act of kindness and care for the people around you.
And for yourself.
Stay safe, and have a great day.
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Does your team:
– Overwhelm the audience with too much detail?
– Make things too complicated?
– Fail to ask for what they want or need?
Does your organization:
– Waste time because of poor internal communication?
– Take too long to make decisions?
– Struggle to clarify and frame discussions?
Do your leaders:
– Exhibit poor executive presence?
– Lean on incomplete communication skills?
– Fail to align the organization?
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