The Office Psychologist

If you’ve read management books or blogs you’ll know that a common theme is the need to be a good listener if you want to be a great manager. It’s absolutely true, but what many people don’t realize is that being a good listener is only part of the equation. Once you’ve listened to your employees (or even fellow co-workers) there are many times that you’ll need to give advice or impart words of wisdom. Enter “the office psychologist.”

If you plan on being a great manager you need to understand how to ease the psychological stress of your team. As the business environment fluctuates and evolves, it’s not uncommon for people to have challenges with managing through the change and associated stress. Sometimes it’s as simple as a basic pep talk, while other times you’ll need to patiently help people work through larger harder problems. If you are passionate about being a “people’s manager” you should strive to be a go-to in times of stress and offer your team an outlet for discussing challenges, stress, and problems.

Be A Repository For Fear and Anxiety – Give people an outlet to deposit their fear and stress. You’d be surprised how many times this will allow people to get the stress and fear out of their head and instantly start to deal with it. Now you need to be careful here. Just because people can use you as an outlet to deal with their stress doesn’t mean you need to take on that stress yourself.

Get People Talking – The more you do this the more you’ll come to realize that people can solve their own problems (most of the time). They know the right thing to do but they might not realize they have the answers in them. The more you can facilitate people talking thought their challenges the better.

Give Them Time To Think – It’s not always about “fast food” answers. Many times the best thing you can do is give people an outlet and then give them the time and the space to go away and let everything “sink in”. There are many times when all it takes is a simple comment or observation to jump start an employees coping mechanism to help them get through their mental barriers.

It’s not always easy (or convenient) but being able to manage your team through times of stress is critical to being a truly great manager.

Related Links:
http://www.badbossology.com/workplace-psychology
About.com – Stress Management