Work pressure ails everyone, especially managers, team leaders, organisation leaders and everybody else at the CXO level because these leaders have to manage everybody else’s work apart from theirs. In this blog, we look at how leaders can manage work pressure well so that organisations benefit from it by using it in a healthy manner.

What is work pressure?

Work pressure is considered a negative state of mind that affects individuals, teams, organisations and eventually relationships between organisations and their clients. It is generally manifested in terms of:

1.     Stress

2.     Inability to meet deadlines

3.     Breaking up of teams

Work pressure is caused by several factors. Some of them are:

1.     Lack of resources

2.     Unrealistic expectations

3.     Difficult people in the team

4.     Imbalance in the distribution of work

 

There are many more allied factors that trigger work pressure and affect the organisation’s productivity in general.

The point is to work towards overcoming work pressure. Here’s what leaders can do to manage work pressure, not just for themselves.

1. Connect the work pressure to a purpose

A girl facing office work pressure

 

Organisations that do not have a clear vision or mission, or struggle with their “why”, have a tough time in the long run attracting and retaining talent. On the contrary, they end up attracting people who are motivated only by financial incentives.

Generally, work pressure begins to hit everyone when work becomes a target to achieve. If the team is driven by the purpose of the organisation, work ceases to be work. And it ceases to translate into work pressure.

2.  Establish responsibilities

 

Different responsibilities at work

 

A lot of work pressure is caused by a lopsided distribution of work among the team members. To overcome that, leaders need to assign clear responsibilities of the projects to individuals as they assign goals.

Identify key people and assign clear teams to the key leaders so that you can establish transparency regarding work distribution. You will be able to avoid countless disasters and unmet deadlines because nobody was clear about who was supposed to do what!

3. Nurture the value of ownership

 

Ownership at work

Designations and titles are one of assigning roles to people. Nurturing ownership is another. Like the idea of purpose, the value of ownership is an intangible asset an organisation can have.

Tasks are nothing more than a to-do list. People want to finish them off and hand them over to the next person in charge. Ownership, on the other hand, is about ensuring quality and punctuality.

 

4. Offer support to your team

Team working together andsupporting each other in an office

 

Teams thrive on collaboration and exchange of ideas. If they need your time, be generous with it. If they need expert guidance, do the best you can to offer it. If they need a plan for going about the work, or smaller milestones to achieve their main goal, break it up for them.

If they need to be upskilled for efficiency or in the domain of soft skills, provide them with the right resources – from online courses, videos, and reading material to workshops by experts.

Work pressure arises from the one way top-to-bottom communication. These 4 tips will help you get at the root cause of work pressure. Following these will help you show empathy to your team and establish a two-way communication – which goes a long way in getting rid of the idea of work as a burden and nurturing the idea of work as something meaningful.

So, what strategies have you been using to handle the work pressure in your team?