Handling New Manager Stress

The moment has come after years of hard work and dedication – entering the ranks of management. New managers face a host of challenges between business tasks and people issues. As a result, expectations of performance change, impacting the process of getting comfortable with the new role. The pressure of competing demands can break individuals who prized the concept of management but found the realities of the function quite different. There are a few ways to ease the burden of new manager stress.
Set Realistic Priorities

The tendency to over-commit can be a big problem. New managers are eager to show they are ready for added responsibilities and tend to accept all assignments given to them. Soon everything is a priority and the quality of work declines. The struggle to please upper management, and stay attentive to employee needs, blurs the process of proper planning. Tips to setting realistic priorities: 

1. Document mission critical goals. Start your planning around the most important top level goals. All sub goals will flow from there and drives individual employee goals. Establish time measures for tracking progress as appropriate (e.g. weekly versus monthly).

2. Build in flexibility. The tendency with setting goals is to get so specific and fixed that changes outside of your control wreaks havoc on an otherwise iron-clad plan. Understand that change is inevitable and the ability to adapt your goals to changing conditions is necessary. Flexibility in goal setting occurs through estimation. That means factoring in buffer space. If it takes two weeks to complete a task, estimate three weeks. If issues come up that impact this task you know that you can adjust quickly and still get the original task done.

Communicate and Delegate

One of the many mistakes new managers make is to micro-manage people and processes. This can result from lack of confidence, lack of trust or knowledge of team competencies, or individual control is the only way to feel comfortable handling business demands. Managers need to establish role clarity early on with employees to share the workload properly. Through team meetings and 1-1’s, a manager can communicate his or her role, how they can help, and what they expect from their team. Recognition is key – offer your team praise and thanks for their help and reward them for strong efforts when deadlines are met.

Can You Build a Small Business While Working Fulltime?

Are you pursuing greater financial freedom and personal independence by building a small business? Unless you have a lot of extra capital lying around, chances are you are also working fulltime to pay your bills. Is it possible to create your own company, still get your regular work done from 9-5 and spend time with your family?

It’s certainly not a challenge that everyone can handle. But, if you are ready to take that leap, here are some things to bear in mind.

Balancing Career Responsibilities

As an ethical employee, you have made a commitment to give your employer an honest week’s work in exchange for your paycheck. This can become increasingly difficult to do when your primary focus is on the needs of your new business.

If your employer has a moonlighting policy, you may be required to disclose any secondary job you hold. This is so that your boss can decide if it interferes with your current employment by:

Can You Build a Small Business While Working Fulltime?

Tweet Can You Build a Small Business While Working Fulltime? By Guest Blogger: Tony Deblauwe Are you pursuing greater financial freedom and personal independence by building a small business? Unless you have a lot of extra capital lying around, chances are you are also working fulltime to pay your bills. Is it possible to create [...]

Workplace Violence – Dealing With Coworker Altercations

By Guest Blogger: Tony Deblauwe

With the rash of workplace shootings in 2010, the awareness of workplace violence has been magnified for employers. Have you ever been a witness to workplace violence? About 1% percent of U.S. workers are assaulted each year by a coworker. Such peer-on-peer attacks can result in serious physical injury, an inability to return to work because of fear of further victimization, and other serious problems. A pattern of aggressive behavior including harassment, stalking, threats, and unwanted physical contact is a critical warning sign that an employee poses a danger to coworkers. Employers are wise to take the issue of coworker violence very seriously.
However, there is a grey area where you, as an employee, might not feel comfortable reporting an incident between coworkers – especially if you are friends with both parties. You might fear that the response from HR would be out of proportion to the offense if your employer has taken OSHA’s advice and established a zero tolerance policy.

Here are a couple of example scenarios:

How To Cope With Being Passed Over For Promotion

Have you recently been passed over for promotion? Seeing a peer being offered advancement opportunities while your career seems stuck in a rut can be an unpleasant experience. This is especially true when you consider your skill set and commitment to be equal to (or better than) that of your promoted coworker. Coping with the emotional fall out of this situation requires objective self examination and good communication. Stressing out about your capabilities and worth isn’t effective either so the best thing to do is find out what happened and get feedback.

Talking to Your Boss

Storming into your manager’s office and demanding an explanation for why you weren’t chosen is a bad idea for obvious reasons. Someone who can’t stay in control of their emotions isn’t ready for additional responsibilities. On the other hand, trying to figure out “what went wrong” all on your own is a sure way to become paranoid and depressed. So, it is OK to talk to your boss about how the decision to promote a peer was reached – once you have calmed down. Here’s an example of a respectful way you can talk to your boss that may shed some light on what’s holding you back in terms of your career:

Elder Caregivers Need Policies and Benefits to Change with Times

Many of today’s workers are faced with a stressful caregiving situation as their parents become more and more dependent. Even if you don’t have an aging parent living with you, there’s a good chance you could be “on call”. Mom may fall and break her hip while she’s home alone; Dad might have a memory lapse and be found wandering the streets. As the emergency contact, you’re the one who is asked to come and sort things out.

If a health issue is ongoing, FMLA may kick in. This provides you with legally protected (but unpaid) leave to care for an ill family member if you work for a company with 50+ employees. However, when you pitch in to care for a mother or father in-law FMLA does not apply. So far, the law hasn’t caught up with the realities of elder caregiving. It’s up to employers to decide when and if emergency time off will be granted or if you will be fired for attendance violations.

Some Employers Have a Double Standard

Many employers seem to have a compassionate attitude about parents having to leave the office suddenly when a dependent child needs them. Part of this has to do with a wariness of being accused of discriminating against women. After all, it’s still usually Mom who gets the call to deal with a child-related emergency – even if both parents work.

However, employers don’t always view the elder caregiving relationship as a serious commitment. Apparently, they figure you can just get someone else to step in and take care of an emergent need. Unlike in the UK, there is currently no law protecting U.S. employees’ right to put family first in these situations. Employees can’t afford to wait for the law to catch up – they need to start negotiating for changes in the workplace now.

I Fired My Dad

Are you in your 20s to early 30s and filling a managerial role at your job? Congratulations! Your work ethic, educational accomplishments, and job skills are paying off already. As a Gen Y boss, you’ve got a bright future ahead if you can learn how leverage the talents of those who report to you. This can be a particularly challenging task when your employees are older – in some cases – old enough to be your parents. It’s even more challenging when you encounter performance problems that can result in disciplinary actions that can, in some cases, lead to termination.

Many Gen Y managers are adapting, often rapidly, with how best to manage the needs and motivations of a multi-generational team. Supervising an older workforce as a young adult highlights the generation differences that impact work relationships. This can create a host of awkward and stressful communication challenges to Gen Y managers.

Generation Profiles: Comparing Work Styles

In order to understand how to approach performance issues between a younger manager and an older employee, you have to recognize that discrepancies abound between Gen Y and other generations in terms of work ethic. The chart below highlights some typical attitudinal differences about work between generations that make up the bulk of current workforce populations.

Managing Workplace Stress by Clarifying Your Role

Are you having difficulty managing workplace stress because there is simply too much on your plate? When the responsibilities of your position are unclear, this will make you feel overloaded. Clarifying the scope of your job duties and your role within the organization can offer relief. You will be able to prioritize and organize your day-to-day activities much more easily.

Also, you can unload tasks that are rightfully part of a co-worker’s (or boss’s) job function. When you no longer feel stuck trying to do it all, you will perform more effectively and productively. This will increase your sense of satisfaction and your confidence in your own abilities.

Reduce Your Workload

Tips for Job Stress Management during a Career Change

A career change can be a difficult transition, even if you are excited about pursuing your dreams. Maybe you’ve just earned an online degree that has opened up possibilities in a new field. Or, perhaps you have decided to start your own business. Either way, job stress management will be important during the remaining weeks or months at your current place of employment. You’ve got a lot going on – especially if you have significant obligations to fulfill at your old job before you move forward.

Pressure from Your Boss

Ironically, the more your boss likes and depends on you the worse her reaction may be when you give your notice. Sometimes, a manager will take it personally when you decide to leave. This can create unnecessary stress during your departure phase. Give your boss a few days to adjust; he or she will generally come around to being happy for you.

Leaving on good terms is important for keeping emotional stress to a minimum. Knowledge retention is one of the most important parting gifts you can give your old employer. Before you even announce your intention to leave, begin putting together a transition folder. It should include detailed instructions for how to do the more difficult parts of your job – the things it took you years to learn because no one told you how to do them.

Present this to your boss when you give your notice and offer her some options. She can have you continue to document your job, provide mentoring/training for your replacement, or simply keep performing your duties as usual until your last day. This shows good faith on your part and can make it easier for your boss to fill your position when you are gone.

Tony Deblauwe – Workplace Stress Episode #20

When it comes to dealing with a “Tyrant” who happens to be your BOSS, I can certainly speak first hand. I use to be a concierge at the Venetian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas and my boss was on a power trip of the highest order. She ran the department by purposefully cultivating a culture of fear. That’s never a smart strategy. It only serves to make the people who work for you hate you behind your back and even do things out of spite. She was an expert at threatening people into doing what she wanted, and would even get them to lie for her. It wasn’t a very happy place to work. However, I learned a lot from that experience. She taught me a lot about “Tangling with Tyrants”

I’m sure there are more then a few of you out there in the same situation. So I have asked a top Human Resource expert and the best selling author of “Tangling with Tyrants: Managing the Balance of Power at Work” to write a series of articles to help shed some light on this topic which can create such stress in our lives.

So it’s with great pleasure that I introduce to you, our newest guest blogger here at StopStressingNow.Com

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