Psychological Safety and Stress Management
Psychological safety refers to the way a person thinks, feels, and behaves while taking an interpersonal risk like calling out missed opportunity or pointing a mistake. Just as physical risk to health, infrastructure and business, environment can pose a risk to psychological health and safety of the employees too.
The Impact of Work-Related Stress
Work-related stress develops overtime when a person is unable to cope with the repeated demands placed on them. Stress can be debilitating and anyone at any level of the business in any industry could experience it.
Identifying and Reducing Psychological Stressors
The first step in working towards creating a workplace that provides psychological safety is to identify and reduce psychological stressors in one’s ecosystem.
Common psychological stressors include:
- Varying workload
- Perceived lack of control
- Unsupportive work environment
- Bullying and lack of respect
- Shifting goals or sudden change
Effects of Continuous Exposure to Stress
Long-term exposure to these stressors can severely impact employees’ psychological health, resulting in symptoms like loss of appetite, fatigue, disinterest in social interactions, and a decreased sense of achievement.
Stress Management and Psychological Safety Training by Strengthscape
Strengthscape offers hands-on workshops in stress management and psychological safety. These programs aim to help teams express themselves freely and build trust through increased collaboration and vulnerability.
Understanding Stress and Its Management
Stress is a natural mental and physiological reaction to overwhelming demands. While not an illness itself, prolonged stress can lead to mental health issues. The difference between motivating challenges and harmful stress is crucial; the former can drive success, while the latter, if excessive, leads to distress.
Individual Variations in Stress Response
People have different stressors. What one person finds stressful is not necessarily another person’s stressor. Our stress tolerance varies and so does our response to different types of stresses. Personality factors, behavioural preferences, culture, health status, ethnicity and age etc can all be possible stressors.
According to Hans Selye who is also known as the father of stress: ‘Every stress leaves an indelible scar, and the organism pays for its survival after a stressful situation by becoming a little older”. He studied stress in detail and divided our stress response into three stages – alarm, resistance and exhaustion stages.
Hans Selye’s Research on Stress
The alarm stage, a fight or flight response is essentially a signal to the body that the organism is in a threatful situation. This prepares to respond to the threat and is expressed as higher blood pressure, enhanced pulse rate and an obvious shortness of breath. In the next stage, “Resistance stage”, the body tries to cope with stress and return to the balanced state – of pre-stress levels. If the stressors continue to provide “stress”, the body enters the “Exhaustion stage”. This stage is an outcome of continuous fight between the body and the stressor. Continuous, unending stress can overpower the body. As the body succumbs to the stressor, we may experience low immunity to bacterial infections, mental illness, insomnia etc.
Role of Managers in Fostering a Stress-Free Workplace
Managers play a crucial role in shaping a stress-free environment by promoting psychological safety, intellectual diversity, and team norms that encourage collaboration. This proactive approach not only enhances productivity but also boosts overall organizational effectiveness.
