The #1 thing that employers are concerned with is the overwhelmed employee. In an overwhelmed state, we are reduced to primitive emotions and reactions – our inner wild animals tend to take over.
Stress costs money. Stress costs the workplace money because it reduces access to our thinking brain and intelligence and leads to poor performance and results.
When faced with a potentially dangerous situation, mammals instinctively go into ‘fight-or-flight’ mode. In the animal kingdom for example, a rhinoceros will charge and a gazelle will run. Human physical evolution hasn’t kept pace with social evolution though, so a primitive response such as running or charging isn’t always appropriate when stuck in a traffic jam, with a client or at a board meeting. Your body, however, still reacts in a primitive way – breathing becomes faster and shallower and our ‘emotional’ brain hijacks our ‘thinking’ brain. We become less able to focus our attention, less able to plan, reflect, and use our logic, our creativity and our intuition.
At the airport in London recently, I picked up a copy of ‘The Chimp Paradox’ by Dr Steve Peters. Dr Peters brilliantly explains the need to manage the ‘inner chimp’ in our mind. He shows how our inner chimp affects our performance and output when it’s triggered by our fears, anxiety or a sense of threat. It makes sense therefore across the business world that we learn techniques to manage our chimps or emotions, to tame our rampant wild animals.
Wouldn’t it be good to make work work for you and the people around you?
Wouldn’t it be great to lower the stress responses and raise productivity?
Wouldn’t it great if your workforce were more alert, more present and better able to handle pressures and deadlines?
Wouldn’t it be good if your workforce had less sick days, less accidents, better health and better access to their inner resources?
Wouldn’t be great if everyone in work were all heading in the same direction, working towards the same vision, aims and goals of the organisation?
If you are interested in finding out how to tame your wild animals and make work work for you and your employees, then contact Dearbhla Kelly at The Career Coach email hello@dearbhlakelly.com
