An informative report - Essay Example

[Your full May 3, An Informative Report on Workplace Stress Affecting Leadership There are a lot of issues that tend to negatively affect the leadership, management and the overall organizational culture. One of those issues is workplace stress that the leaders and employees go through and which results in decreased productivity and deteriorating relationships within and outside the organization. Challenges and hurdles that a leader or a manager may face during his job may have him undergo a stressful situation.

The stress that he experiences otherwise gets added to the stress that waits for him at the workplace. In today’s world where leaders have to cope with difficult economic situations, they essentially have to go through stress both emotionally and physically. During financial crisis, stress adds up. For the management, layoffs, delayed salaries, low budgets, and pressure from senior staff produces put strain over the managers’ minds which then results in decreased productivity and poor output.

They undergo fear, become irritable, suffer through nuisance, and all this reflects in their relationship with the co-workers. Workplace stress includes: fatigue due to overworking without lunch or rest breaks or working for longer hours without naps dissatisfaction caused by lack of motivation when the employees are not given their due rewards lack of interest in the job due to constant pressure coming from seniors and poor communication among the leaders, management and the employees. It becomes important for the leaders and the management to learn how to deal with stressful situations to escape fear, tension and uncertainty.

This stress management ability decides whether a leader is going to prove himself as success or failure. Stress is, mostly, very much related to how a person deals with the situation. According to the research carried out by Professor Cox (qtd. in Stranks 4), stress was found to be very much associated with two major characteristics regarding jobs and workplaces. These characteristics played a big role in producing tension and health damage among leaders and managers. First characteristic is the work environment, like the organizational culture and setting.

The second is the nature of the profession like working schedule, time management and work load. Smith et al (qtd. in Stranks 5) in their report have “estimated that there are 5 million workers suffering from high levels of stress at work”. A big stressor at workplace is the culture, policies, procedures and operations of the organization. Culture means the overall atmosphere of an organization, for example, the atmosphere can be friendly, bullying, appreciating, non-rewarding, and so on.

Leaders and management is very much affected by this culture. Maravelas (164) states that “competitive systems with harsh economic norms result in aggressive, and sometimes unethical, behavior”. If the organization’s structure undergoes continuous changes, the employees feel job insecurity. If there are continuous reorganizations, over-promotions or demotions, takeovers, consolidations, unexpected closings and openings, amalgamations and downscaling, then these changes become key stressors for the leaders, as organizations try to stay in the competition to endure in market.

Thus, increased job demands, less job control and lack of understanding between the leaders and the management and other employees causes adverse effects upon all those involved, both mentally and physically. Works Cited Maravelas, Anna. “Changing System Changes Behavior” How to Reduce Workplace Conflict and Stress: How Leaders and Their Employees can Protect Their Sanity and Productivity from Tension and Turf Wars. U.S.A: Career Press, 2005. Stranks, Jeremy W. “The Evidence of Stress” Stress at Work: Management and Prevention.

UK: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2005.