What Causes Stress?
According to the 2019 StressPulseSM survey by ComPsych: 36% of employees say people issues cause them the most heartburn at work. As complex as some machines are these days, they are nowhere as complex as the people we work with!
And… According to the 2024 results of the American Psychiatric Association’s annual mental health poll, 35% of workers say their boss is a cause of their workplace stress. Follow the tips below to be a better leader and help reduce stress.
How Communication Styles Can Help
An understanding of communication styles provides a road map that can improve interpersonal interactions at all levels. It can change “difficult” to “different” and provide suggestions for how to adapt to better connect with others. (See detailed overview of communication styles in an earlier article.)
Employees at all levels can reduce stress by increasing the success of their interpersonal interactions, including with their boss! Learning about communication styles gives leaders tools to reduce their team’s stress by:
- building stronger teams
- preventing or reducing conflict
- strategically assigning work
- maximizing the impact of rewards
What Are Communication Styles?
T.E.A.M. Communication Styles® is one model that provides this simple and powerful framework for solving people issues. Here’s a quick recap:
T – Quick and direct in conversation and decision making. Task focused, avoiding socializing, and prefer to work alone. Like to see results.
E – More creative and engaging, enjoying brainstorming and working collaboratively. Often strongly driven by the meaning they find in their work.
A – Very analytical. Value clear instructions, complete information, and time to do the job right. Ask a lot of questions and give detailed responses. Focus on high quality results.
M – Value harmony and work to support the group, and want the group to support them. Are friendly and great empathetic listeners. Take a sincere interest in the people they work with.
How Do I Use This Information?
With the T.E.A.M. framework in mind, let’s look at the first two goals noted above:
- Build stronger teams
- Prevent or reduce conflict
(We’ll look at the other two in our next post:
- Strategically assign work
- Maximize the impact of rewards)
Build Stronger Teams
Leaders can use this knowledge to strengthen their team. They can highlight significant differences in styles and talk about that within the team, without blame or criticism. Then they can reframe these differences from problems to assets. This will help team members see how each of the styles can strengthen the team’s performance and how people naturally excel in different areas. Team members can use the strengths of their colleagues to help them on their projects and to learn from them. Change “difficult” to “different and helpful!” Strong collaborative teams create an environment with lower stress.
Prevent or Reduce Conflict
Conflicts greatly increase people’s stress levels! Conflicts usually result from disagreements that are poorly handled. This poor handling is often a result of the people involved having very different communication styles. Without this awareness, they actually end up offending each other unintentionally as they work through the crisis.
Leaders can be alert for this and reframe the conversation from “right and wrong” or “disrespect”, to a difference in preferences for how to communicate and approach a situation. There may ultimately be a right or wrong, but unseen style differences make it hard to discuss constructively. Often in conflicts, people may be saying very similar things but from a differing perspective. They may even actually agree underneath it all! Starting with style differences can shift a conflict back to a disagreement and provide a constructive framework for discussing it.
Increase Collaboration
Sharing a communication styles model with the team provides more neutral language that leads to collaborative discussions. This can frame a smoother, low stress path through conflict.
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