Creative ways for managing work-place tension

An undeniable fact about today's work place: Elevated stress is a reality for any whose jobs are to interact with people outside their organizations. Like the company labour relations person who must deal with unions, or the salesperson who has to pitch a product or service to customers, communicators face stressful situations when they represent their organizations to the public.

Moreover, business communicators face what stress and anxiety researchers refer to as "boundary role" pressure because they straddle an imaginary line between their company and the outside world. This is the stress you feel, for example, when senior management wants to stay mute on a subject and the media are hounding you for answers.

The stress may stem from philosophical or ethical differences of opinion. Regardless of the nature of the stress, it is real and endemic to our roles in our organizations.

Stress is a byproduct of the situation when communicators have to put themselves in the shoes of others. "When you are writing a speech for a CEO, you have to dissociate yourself from what you are writing - you are writing for someone else. It's like you are inside the head of someone else," explains Daniel Morin, a communication officer at the University of Ottawa, located in Canada's national capital.

For Akron, Ohio-based David Meeker, executive vice-president of Edward Howard & Co., the greatest amount of stress comes from uncertainty - determining what is the right course to follow when communication advice has to be provided to management.

In companies where managements don't have a proper understanding of how excellent public relations practices can benefit the organization, "an awful lot of stress" is in store for those working in the PR department, says Roberta (Bobbi) Resnick, ABC, principal of her own Toronto consulting firm that has counseled consumer product companies for many years.

The relevance and role of public relations is a major concern and source of anxiety for senior practitioners. A university study a decade ago found that two-thirds of a national sample of practitioners preferred to practice the so-called two-way symmetric model of communication. Two-thirds also believed that management preferred one of the other communication models. A discrepancy between the model preferred by the practitioner and by management resulted in high job dissatisfaction.

Stress is a major cause of low productivity, high absenteeism, poor decisions and morale. According to the theory developed by Hans Selve, the human body cannot instantly rebuild its ability to cope with stress. As a result, people become physically and psychologically weakened from trying to combat it. When workers become burned out, they are more likely to complain, attribute their errors to others, and become highly irritable. The alienation they feel often drives them to think about leaving their jobs, to seek out opportunities to become trained for new careers and to quit.

How Communicators Cope

Regularly facing tight deadlines in communicating with diverse audiences ranging from probing media reporters to angry environmentalists, to concerned customers, corporate communicators appear to have developed necessary stress-coping skills.

The most reliable anti-stress strategy that we found employed by communicators in our interviews is one in which they sought to regain a sense of personal control over their situations. Shunning so-called "escape coping" strategies (such as trying not to get concerned about a matter), which may reduce stress but hardly deals with the cause of the stressful incidents, these communicators said they have always gravitated toward a positive "take-charge" approach.

Be Prepared

Recounting that product recalls had been a fact of life for her as PR counselor to consumer food manufacturers, Resnick says the key to stress management in our profession is to "preempt." One has to "do the right things right and then your blood pressure should stay as low as it can be." She gives an example from media relations practice: "When you do a set of 'questions and answers' - and think of almost every question - a reporter would ask, and have a statement for each question, then your executives are not taken by surprise and you don't have to worry about what they are going to say. The training documents that you use for your executives are absolutely critical."

Ruth Jubert (nee Squire), a communication consultant in Ellingham, England, agrees. She strongly recommends adequate preparation to fend off work stress. "You have to have as much knowledge as possible because if you are going into a situation where you don't have all the facts at your fingertips, then you lay yourself open to any pitfalls that are there."

Not too long ago, Jubert successfully managed her own stress to low levels when she consulted with the Watson Wyatt company that was orchestrating a takeover of one company by another. By discovering the real reasons why employees in the company being taken over were distressed, and building this intelligence into her planning, she was able to avoid barriers to a timely implementation of her client's communication.

Trust Your Instincts

"I've learned to trust my instincts, to try to do the right thing...and to be somewhat assertive, drawing on past experience," says Edward Howard and Company's Meeker. In addition, he advocates an approach by PR practitioners to deal directly with a stressor by looking at "every situation as an opportunity and to seek to convince clients that they should take advantage of the situation." In the case of a media request for information, "I try to make them [the clients] understand that, with or without them, the piece will be written [by the reporter] and it's almost always better to have it done with their point of view in the story."

Criticisms frequently are leveled at Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL), a federal government agency that produces nuclear energy. But those criticisms don't particularly daunt David Lisle who has adopted a mixed coping strategy for dealing with the stressful episodes he faces as senior manager of public affairs for the sometimes controversial work that AECL does.

After managing the PR problems for his organization for almost two decades, he sees the stress as part of the pleasure of the job. "I think if it wasn't there or if that bothered me, I'd be in the wrong business." On the one hand, Lisle says he has one stress reaction in situations when the media or community groups want AECL to provide information that can't be released because of "proprietary, legal or other reasons." It is to view the tension as "a simple fact of life - information you just can't reveal."

On the other hand, he confesses that his reaction would be different in the case of specific ethical positions that a company might take. "I don't change my own ethical beliefs or positions to suit the situation - if I didn't feel the company was in a position that I could maintain those ethics, I don't think I'd be able to stay with that company."

If it's your job to deal directly with media reporters, the "right thing" is to convince them "what the corporate opinion is," declares Bob Mervine, PR director for The Villages, an expansive retirement facility located in Lady Lake, Fla. "My job isn't to convince people what my opinion is.

"When you've got a good working relationship with reporters, they know most of the time where you are coming from, so I've never run into any serious moral dilemma that resulted in stress, despite having [personal] major conflicts with issues," Mervine says.

One of Michele Schiavoni's approaches to stress management on the job is to assemble the decisionmakers of her employer, the Christianna Care Health System in Wilmington, Del., so she can get the opportunity to properly "'frame' the issues to ensure that organizational goals can be met."

She always makes sure that the company's CEO, the risk management experts and lawyers are all in the same room with her to prevent what she describes as "fragmentation and misinformation." This strategy avoids the stress of having to "run back and forth from one another with information" and in "ultimately making a bad decision," says Schiavoni, who is the company's vice-president of corporate communication.

While some communicators have found creative ways to temper the elevated stress levels accompanying their role as the "middle person" between their organizations and the public, the concept of "moderate stress" is beginning to take stronger hold in some countries, particularly the United States and Finland. According to stress management experts, those two countries are seeing declines in cardiovascular disease and alcoholism that are believed to be stress-related.

The experts also emphasize that some stress is healthy. How else could one survive without the extra burst of energy that comes from an extraordinary demand in the work place? The feeling of being tugged at in two directions is a sign that "you're probably doing a good job," adds Elizabeth Hirst, communication vice-president of Veritas Communications Inc. in Montreal.

But moderate stress is the key to survival. And stress management gurus advise that you have to take positive action on high-tension situations, otherwise relief will elude you.

"Take Charge" Tips to Control Stress

* Discuss issues with your supervisor

* Try to be well organized so you keep on top of things

* See the situation as an opportunity to learn

* Put extra attention on planning

* Get other people involved in the situation

* Work faster and more efficiently

* Decide what you think should be done and explain it to people who will be affected

* Ask for help from people who have the power to do something for you

* Seek advice from people outside the situation who may not have such power

* Tell yourself that you can probably work things out to your advantage.

- Psychologist J.C. Latack writing in the Journal of Applied Psychology

General Stress Reduction Tips

Once you become stressed, the Canadian Mental Health Association recommends that you recognize your symptoms of stress; look at your lifestyle and see what can be changed; use relaxation techniques; exercise; manage your time well; aim for a diet with a balance of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and foods high in protein but low in fat; get enough rest and sleep; talk with others - friends, professional counselors, support groups; help others - volunteer work is a stress reducer; get away for a while; work off your anger by being physically active; ease up on criticism of others; don't be too competitive; make the first move to be friendly; have some fun.

And finally, Loretta Laroche, author of "Relax - You May Only Have a Few Minutes Left," (Random House, 1998) recommends:

Don't hold off on being happy! Don't anticipate suffering; focus on what's right with people; recognize that you are not the centre of the universe; most of all, laugh a lot.

John Yuen is senior communication officer, Financial Services Commission of Ontario, based in Toronto, Canada. Maryjane Martin is a communications management consultant and a member of the corporate communication faculty at Centennial College of Applied Arts and Technology, also in Toronto.

COPYRIGHT 1998 International Association of Business Communicators
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group