However, your clients’ stress is not necessarily the same as yours, so try not to confuse the two, says Derbyshire-based HR expert Sarah Loates, in her second article for Business Matters on work-related stress. This time, she talks about ways of avoiding taking on other people’s worries.

One interesting argument that is often levelled against open-plan offices is the spread of stress. When one person’s stress levels start to go up, that feeling of barely controlled panic can travel fast across the desks until suddenly everyone feels as though they’d quite like to run screaming for the door. Have smaller offices with doors, and the stress is easier to contain.

But my job here is not to extol the virtues of one type of office design over another, but to talk about how to avoid taking on others’ stress – specifically, that of your clients. Many of us who work in roles where we act as consultants or advisors, will be familiar with this – the problems of our clients become ours, and we become unnecessarily stressed as a result. This kind of stress is much harder to deal with because there are some aspects of our clients’ problems which aren’t under our control.

Decisions versus options 

Ask any consultant and they will tell you it’s very easy to worry about the possibility of making a wrong decision for a client. Whether it’s financial advice or my own field, HR, you can tie yourself up in mental knots worrying about the possible consequences for both you and your client if they follow a course of action you have prescribed, and it doesn’t work out as planned. Will this impact your client relationship? Will something unpleasant happen as a result? How will that make you feel?

My advice is this: instead of worrying that you will make a poor decision for your client, don’t make that your responsibility. Do what many doctors do: instead of telling your client what to do, outline a range of options and the potential consequences of each. When you visit your GP these days and you are told you have a problem that could be improved by having an operation, you will generally be given a choice as to the pros and cons of surgery, the possible alternative treatment options, and the risks of each one. That way it is your decision. Treat your clients the same way – give them the viable options and then let them choose. It’s their money and their business after all, not yours. They understand their business objectives better than you do so don’t take on all that stress unnecessarily – you’ll find it’s a big weight off your mind to do things this way and by presenting clients with a range of options you’ll probably be doing a better job for them too.

Problems versus solutions 

Having said that, sometimes when presenting clients with options, they will choose one that brings with it some tricky consequences. Sometimes they may insist you implement a particular solution which is overly complex, hopelessly unrealistic, or even completely impossible and, worst case scenario, illegal – but for the record we would not entertain this as an option. This presents you, in turn, with several options. You can worry and worry about how to make the solution happen for them, and warn them (again) about how you feel it may impact heavily on their business.

Instead of doing that, my advice would always be to take a step back and identify what the actual business problem is they are trying to address. Let’s say, for example, that you are a designer and they are trying to produce written materials for a marketing campaign but you know that the look they are trying to achieve will be so costly it will not in the end achieve the bottom-line results they want. Ask yourself, and them, which customers they are trying to reach – and try and find a different solution that still gets the results they want but at a cheaper price.

Part of the stress of dealing with clients is that you worry you will end up getting the blame for a strategy going wrong, when you warned them of the consequences in the first place. So, when faced with the situation – as we all are sometimes – that a client wants to go down a road that you would not advise, try to think if you can find a much simpler and more appropriate way of achieving the same end.

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How to avoid taking on your clients’ stress

Back in the day, the word “stress” had never been heard of – but that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. The panicky feelings of overwhelming pressure, and the accompanying crippling lack of confidence that we can achieve the tasks being asked of us, are nothing new. It is just talking about them that is.

But what is stress? The “transactional model” of stress, put forward by Lazarus and Folkman in 1981, suggests that stress is felt when “pressure exceeds one’s perceived ability to cope”. We can therefore infer that many situations are not inherently stressful, and those feelings of fear can be avoided by changing perceptions of our ability to cope. This could be done either by putting actual support in place, or by changing the way we think.

So, to start off with, here are some common stressful feelings and coping mechanisms which may help.

I feel like a fraud and I will be found out

This is a common stressful feeling called “imposter syndrome”. The important thing to realise is that everyone feels a fake at some point. It’s completely normal and you shouldn’t let it make you feel bad.

Accept failure

Don’t be afraid of failure, or let the possibility of it prevent you making decisions. It’s how you learn. One only needs look at successful business leaders who often have many failed businesses and ideas behind them. If you fail, don’t give up. Get back on the horse. Also, realise that failure is often to do with processes rather than people. Fix the processes and try again, rather than regarding yourself as defective. Accept that you are not perfect, so don’t hold yourself to unrealistically high performance standards. Put safeguards and ‘checks and balances’ in place instead to try and stop things going wrong, rather than relying on expectations of perfect people – who don’t exist!

Visibility

A lot of good business practice is about transparency. Ensure that you have visibility of measurable things, then you can make informed decisions based on facts, removing the stress of the unknown. For example, you might be worrying about whether your business has enough money to pay its staff – by putting processes in place to measure this effectively, at least you’ll know the answer.

So what causes stress?

During my 20 years of experience working in HR, both in large corporations and SMEs,  and talking to employees suffering from stress, it has been my observation that it is caused predominantly from people fire-fighting their way through their day. Therefore my tips on reducing stress are largely to do with time management.

The Covey matrix

In his 1994 self-help book First Things First, Stephen Covey draws a key distinction between tasks that are “urgent” and those that are “important”. This distinction has a lot to teach us about personal fulfilment, both at work and at home. It is very tempting just to deal with jobs that are “important and urgent”: the ringing phone from the bank, the crying baby in the kitchen. But spending all your time dealing with things in this category means that there is no time for “important but not urgent” tasks – such as a business’s long-term strategic goals, or, to take an example that might come from someone’s personal life: doing more exercise. Not allowing time for this latter group of tasks means that eventually everything will become urgent and you will constantly be firefighting. Also, jobs often become bigger unless they are dealt with sooner rather than later.

Making time for important but non-urgent jobs

Reserve a small part of each day to take bitesize chunks of your looming “elephant-sized” problems. You could call this time “red-hat” time – a portion of your day where everyone knows you can’t be disturbed no matter what, enabling you to actually make progress. You can do this by:

• Putting your phone on ‘busy’.
• Turning off your mobile.
• Turning off your email.
• Putting yourself down as “in a meeting” on the calendar.
• The Pomodoro technique is great for actually making productive use of your time. With its name derived from the tomato-shaped timer used by inventor Francesco Cirillo, the technique works by working on tasks in 25 minute timed chunks.
• Work to the Pareto principle: try to find the immediate 80% of benefit you can get from 20% of the effort. The rest can wait.

Celebrate small victories

Stress means that we can’t see the positives in the things we have achieved. By making yourself take time for important but non-urgent tasks, you will make small but significant progress with your challenging long-term goals. Allow yourself to mentally celebrate this and it will really help overcome that feeling of anxiety when feeling overwhelmed.

Hope for the best but plan for the worst

Optimism is a key, but often under-rated, personal attribute when it comes to business. But that doesn’t mean being naïve. Take time to consider the long-term threats to your business and put contingency plans in place so you’re not firefighting when all goes horribly wrong. This includes:

• Making sure you have effective cover so that you can go off sick or take a break without worrying about everything grinding to a halt.
• Learning to pace yourself. Business is a marathon not a sprint – accept that some days just aren’t going to be super-productive.
• Accepting that timely decisions are often better than ‘perfect’ decisions. Sometimes procrastinating means that the only option left is a bad one.

Self-acceptance

Buddhism has a lot to teach us about working and living well. One very important aspect of the Buddhist way of life is to learn to “let things go”. In business, failures can be as important as successes as, if tackled properly, they teach us how to improve. Post-mortem all successes and failures to improve your processes. But then, let it go, move on, and don’t continue to mull over what you think you should have done, as this just poisons the mind. Accept that the decision you didn’t take might not necessarily have had a better outcome. You will never know for sure, so be happy that you made the best decision given what you knew at the time and don’t judge your decision with the benefit of hindsight.

How to make decisions

• When faced with a problem it’s often what you do next to stabilise a situation that counts, so take time to stop and think about what the first action should be. Don’t rush that initial decision-making process, otherwise you could make the situation worse. When a chip pan is on fire, the worst thing you can do is what might seem instinctive, to throw water on it, since water and grease don’t mix. The best course of action is to take a few seconds to remember that cutting off the oxygen supply is the best method of tackling this type of fire.
• Delegate. Spend your time where you add most value to your business, and delegate everything else. If you don’t trust other people will get the task done properly, you’ve got the wrong people. Get an effective team in place. That does not mean a cheap team – a good team will pay for themselves and they help run the business themselves. A good leader doesn’t micromanage, they trust people to make good decisions. To do this well, they accept that even if their way is different to how they would have done it, it can still be absolutely fine.

Stress at work is something which has become synonymous with the 21st century workplace, but I hope that by following this advice you can at least reduce it, and help others to do so as well.

Read more:
How to deal with stress at work

Is getting a reputation as a positive employer by encouraging diversity and inclusion in workplace dress as important as avoiding litigation? Yes, if not more so argues HR specialist Sarah Loates. After all, you want to maximise your recruitment pool, not reduce it …

Dress code can be a thorny topic for employers, as they strive to balance the need for staff to be smart at work while avoiding discriminating against people based on their appearance, related to an underlying ‘protected characteristic’ such as sex, religion or belief and race.

It is still common for businesses to have a ‘dress code’, ‘grooming’ or ‘look’ policy, with the aim of managing their brand image, co-worker relationships, and – especially in the case of businesses which interface with machinery or food – the all-important health and safety.

But changing societal norms have increasingly meant these can lead to as many problems as they attempt to solve.

First things first: it is important to avoid discrimination claims on the basis of any of the nine protected characteristics within the Equality Act.

Don’t discriminate

Cases of employees bringing discrimination cases against businesses can and do hit the headlines. Many will recall that of Nicola Thorp, who successfully argued it was unfair that she was asked to wear high heels to work as a receptionist, as well as launching a petition which attracted 123,000 signatures.

When developing any kind of policy, carefully consider whether it applies as equally to women as men, take care that any stipulations strictly focus on the employees’ ability to do their job, and be mindful not to apply practices which indirectly discriminate by disadvantaging one group over another. For example, requiring a Muslim not to wear a headscarf could potentially discriminate, unless it achieves a ‘legitimate business aim’. Such as the case where a support worker argued that being asked not to wear a veil whilst teaching children when male colleagues were present was indirectly discriminatory, the tribunal found that this was not the case, as the employer had evidence that the children did not engage as well when the support worker was wearing her veil, and therefore this impacted on her effectiveness in the role.

Changing times

But while in the past the debate on dress has been focused on clothing and hair, it is now increasingly shifting to what even recently would have been seen to be “out of the question” aspects of personal appearance, such as tattoos and piercings which do not fall under the Equality Act. (unless it is argued they link to a protected characteristic such as religion or belief).

With one in five Brits thought to have a tattoo, a figure that rises to a third of people in their 30s – with the wife of former Prime Minister Samantha Cameron having herself been permanently adorned – no longer is body inking seen as a subversive counter-culture but a social norm.

With that in mind, employers may choose to adopt a more flexible approach. For instance, at Starbucks, employees initiated an online petition to amend the company’s tattoo policy, a move that has met with some success and could improve employee engagement and encourage workplace diversity.

Embracing this type of change will help achieve a consistent, inclusive reputation as a good employer; not doing so could lead to negative publicity but will also mean missing out on large sections of potential talent. While in the past a tattooed staff member having meetings with clients would have been seen as a potentially embarrassing negative brand-image, nowadays those clients are as likely to be inked as staff, so the issue may not arise. And even if they’re not, one hardly imagines any eyebrows will be raised.

It seems that in response to this, the trend is shifting towards a more relaxed approach with The Police Federation now calling for a more open-minded attitude towards inked officers.

So, what’s the answer? No-one is suggesting that employers should let their staff be scruffy and unkempt at work. Indeed, standards of personal grooming for both men and women is in some ways higher than ever in the 21^st century. Not being smart when interacting with customers is as much a no-no as it ever was.

But freedom of self-expression is increasingly highly valued and employers risk alienating both staff and clients by trying to stamp it out.

By showing adaptability to society’s changing norms, employers will find they don’t unnecessarily restrict the recruitment pool and avoid discriminatory practices. Not only that, if staff feel they can express themselves by means of their appearance, morale and therefore productivity will increase too.

Which is a win-win.

Read more:
It’s time to forget the dress code

Sarah Loates, who founded her own highly successful Loates Business Solutions after two decades climbing the corporate ladder, gives her advice to businesses just starting out.

Whatever the reason behind deciding to start up a company, there are some things that are always going to be important. Going it alone does feel like a huge, brave leap in the dark; after all, for many of us, you’re turning your back on the safety of an existing business and believing in your own instincts to make it out there. But with the right attitude, plenty of drive and planning, the huge feeling of satisfaction in making a success of your own business idea is a true reward in itself. There will be plenty of pitfalls along the way, but here is how to avoid some of them.

Believe in yourself

It is very, very hard to be successful in business without a large degree of honesty. Before you start, it is vital to have a good look at yourself, your ideas and your strengths, and work out what it is that you personally are best at doing. Examine your offering from every angle and make sure you’re happy with your business plan, because when you start, you will need enormous amounts of self-belief to convince others that your fledgling company is worth buying into and from. To that end, price your services fairly – don’t think that massively underselling yourself will help you get off the ground; it will simply make it much harder to put your prices up to a reasonable level when you need to.

When it comes to your involvement in your own business, work out where you add most value and try to spend as much time as possible doing that. Understand you can’t do everything your business needs, and delegate everything else.

When planning your business at the outset, be clear on your vision and your USP. In our case at Loates, we’re all about long-term relationships and personal service. Whatever it is you want to do differently from other companies in your field, don’t lose sight of it. As your business progresses, always know where you’re going. You will find this really helps make decisions, as you will be able to consider whether they move you towards or away from your planned objective.

Get your tech right

Efficiency is vital in a start-up. Everything takes so much longer at first that you don’t want to be wasting time on things that could be done quickly. Look around carefully for the best, time-saving IT systems for you, plus reliable support for those services. Also invest time in making sure you have effective financial processes in place. These are areas where you really don’t want to mess up.

Don’t burn out

A lot of people who set up their own business exhaust themselves by trying to do everything and burning the candle at both ends. It may be tempting in the short-term to think that working flat-out is the way to succeed, but you must remember that you are in business for the long-term. Pace yourself. Don’t be afraid to take holidays when you need them. Manage your energy on the right things and try to work on a ratio of finding 80 per cent benefit from 20 per cent effort.

When it comes to your energy levels, you will find that recruiting the right team is absolutely key. You have a business plan so communicate it clearly to whoever you are interviewing for any job. If they buy into it, they will work much better for you than just doing as you say without any conviction.

Think ahead

The demands of the day-to-day will always be pressing. But you ignore the future at your peril. As the business unfolds you will see what your long-term problems may be so try to think of contingency plans in case these materialise. Hope for the best; plan for the worst.

Following on from that, it is very important to allow some time for strategic thinking. Take some time out from the everyday for your long-term “eating an elephant” tasks. You will know the ones. The big things that you mean to get on top of, but somehow life gets in the way. Don’t let it. It’s your business, after all.

Treat people well

The image of the nasty business leader stepping on people on their way to the top is truly a thing of the past. Make good use of all your network of contacts and build relationships. Treat people well, play the long game and sales will follow. At Loates, the majority of new business is from personal recommendations and the majority of our clients are long-standing ones who repeatedly use our services. Go to networking events but treat them as building relationships, rather than making sales. People these days are generally wise to the “hard sell” and don’t go for it, and if you go down this route you may just come across as desperate.

Develop critical listening skills

It is vital to listen carefully to clients when they tell you what they want. But when listening, also ask questions so you can try to understand what their business objective is, rather than simply rushing to implement the solution that they’re asking you for. You know the marketplace, and there may be a better way to achieve the thing that they need, and you will impress by making different suggestions that show you really know what you’re talking about. One of my first questions to any client is always: “What are you actually trying to achieve?”

Be decisive

There is no room for dithering in business. You must be decisive. My rule of thumb is that a timely decision is better than a “perfect” one. That doesn’t mean that you must rush into things. A decision not to act is still a decision.

Think creatively

Don’t be afraid to try new ideas, but measure their effectiveness so that you know when they’re not working. Remember the vision of your company and test any new ideas to check they comply with your main plan. Being creative doesn’t mean being wacky for the sake of it. If your new idea isn’t working, take corrective action sooner rather than later. You should never be too proud to admit when your idea – which might have looked great on paper – simply didn’t work.

In summary, be passionate, work hard, take time off, and find satisfaction in what you do. Running your own business is a great thing. I haven’t looked back since I set up mine.

Read more:
Startup advice for 2017