On a scale of 1-5 (low good, high bad), what's your stress level since we last met?
If my teammate says 4 or 5, I ask what we can do to bring it down to a 3.
We also address this as part of the simple assessment we do in each sprint retrospective.
My company struggles to define meaningful KPIs and OKRs. This is the one that's most important to me.
Welcome to impostor syndrome!
If I were in a situation where I felt like I needed to approach interactions with my manager this way lest they try to screw me, I don't think I'd be interested in staying in that kind of environment. I guess some folks have overriding priorities where they are willing to endure antagonism and gotchas like that, but sheesh.
Obviously this is filtered through (emotional) humans, and job roles have differing fungibility, but the corporation doesn't really care about you except perhaps where it benefits itself.
If someone is treated this way, a whole cadre of other >people< had to be the ones to enact it. My previous statement stands - maybe there are overriding reasons to do business with people like that for some, but to me that's a hard pass. If you can't trust somebody to even be a decent human being, what can you trust them with?
One way I could try to pre empt this is to say: "nobody was ever fired for answering 4 or 5 to this question"
But I'm not sure how effective that would be.
If they don't have much to complain about it will be low priority items, if they're in a 4-5 situation it will be a longer discussion. At least they might be more open to explain heavy stuff if they know you're there to solve them and not just analyse.
With rare exceptions, management wants to hear 'no problem' and that 'everything is fine'.
The next thing to do is a PowerPoint chart for the 2nd level managers showing names and stress levels over time with trends.
Also you should leave when there is more middle management then people who do real work.
This makes me so sad. As a manager (formerly an engineer), I want to hear about problems as soon as possible! I can help! It's my job to clear roadblocks, to help find interesting projects, to keep the team working well together for the long term.
It doesn't do me, the engineer, the project, or the team any good to hide problems. Such a bummer when managers push for short term results over the long term health of the team.
OTOH, directors/VPs (and other intermediate levels in larger firms) are not only the people that senior technical staff will run to for various reasons, but also are the folks who love to hear 'no problem' and that 'everything is fine'. Bringing them things to worry about is best done cautiously. In the final analysis, the worker bees are ERUs.
YMMV (very much so) of course. I can speak only for about a dozen companies. The world is a big place.
I immediately begin to micro-analyze what the likely outcome would be for each scenario. Does these get recorded, and reflected upon to judge my ability? Will it spread? What will the 1on1 manager think of me? If I answer 4-5 am I not capable? If I answer 1-2, are they going to think I'm more capable than I am, and overwork me?
etc etc. Probably not a fault of the question / approach.. just how I operate. Every move in life is a chess move.. and it's stressful.
You'd think I'd be further along in life with that attitude. Yet, it's a fairly recent (~10years) adjustment.
I kept up with him until he felt at around a 3 and then I asked him to take bereavement then... he kept sending me pictures of his WoW Classic character doing quests during his vacation... love that guy.
So it would be zero effective. Employees cannot trust their employer to act ethically, at any level of management, ever. Full stop. Every measurement that could be used to influence management will be gamed. The employee can't know whether their manager is asking out of genuine concern, or due to a top-down directive to identify stressed workers, probably so they can be fired first.
If you want to know if the employees are stressed or unhappy, ask via an anonymizing third-party, such as their union rep.
The number doesn't matter as much as doing anything one can to help.
eg, imposter syndrome. It has a cure. But being okay bringing it up and asking for help is required steps. This doesn't have to be with a manager. It can be with a therapist. People care, and if they don't, is it worth working in an environment like that?
If it's a 1 or 2 I will assume you want to push it to 3 as well.
It's not great, of course, but there is huge potential downside to being honest.
If I didn't trust my lead to not potentially think less of me (consciously or not), or even worse, to use my answer against me somehow (toxic environment) ... then I definitely would answer "2 or 3" even if I was a 5.
That said, I've managed people who have mental health problems that results in high anxiety from answering these types of questions. As a manager / lead you have to know your employees and work with each of them as an individual.
But the real problem comes when the stress is caused by the team lead!
Some of it could be "solvable" (better pay, better hours, ...), but some of it may not (family problems, health issues, ...).
Is it taken into account or addressed?
But job-related stress is there and is often solvable (e.g., a developer may be stressed if he committed to a a week's worth of work done in 2 days, etc.). My 2c.
Flexible work hours, remote work and a strictly never-over-40-hours work week has been absolutely essential to be able to cope and still be a good parent (hockey practice weekdays at 4 twice a week for example).
Trying to help with non-work-related things directly is a minefield, but ensuring that the employee has access to everything they need to succeed should be table stakes.
Solving stress out of work is not reasonable. But knowing about it and being flexible is. One key reason to understand this is that many people recommend vacations to people who are stressed. If stress is coming from outside then this has a negative effect and work may be an escape from whatever other issues.
As a manager I’d consider tools to use might include paid time off, temporary re-assignment to work that is more rewarding/less demanding.
Even simple things like showing concern by following up to find out how those life stresses are coming along and being an ear to listen can go a long way.
Or if you work for a company that puts life insurance on you to profit from your death: "What can we do to take that to a 6?"
Why not 1? Is the only way to work effectively to be moderately stressed?
I don't know if there are inventories for depression, but every time someone tells me I'm a bit talkative I take the Young Mania Ratings Scale. It's a wonderful, wonderful tool:
It's not a meaningful KPI where I work, since everyone's basically bullshitting all the time to keep the number low.
I was in a high pressured project for about 3 years and saw many engineers leave the project due to it. My fear that for the engineers still in it after 2nd year, their stress level of 4-5 has become the new stress level of 3. It has essentially masked the problem.
Relatedly, I've heard that in Helsinki they have some mobile saunas which are parked in front of businesses which are available for stressed out employees... not sure how true it is.
It never feels like i have to plan my vacations around work, and my previous manager was very strictly insisting on no emails or comms while you were on vacation, and i loved how it actually worked out.
- common sources of stress
- common tricks to solve them1. I am often the source of unexpected stress.
Sometimes it's something I said (or didn't say). It may be something that gets interpreted in a way I didn't expect. Simply clarifying what I meant or discussing the matter further usually resolves the more serious aspects of the issue.
2. It's frequently a great way to address issues that improve performance or productivity.
This is not the point. But a lot of times I'll have a developer, especially a younger developer, say something like, "I'm really stressing out over this user story I'm working on." Then we have a higher level discussion on design or scope or something else that's blocking them.
I also learn important business-related stuff I might not have known otherwise. "Wait, you're working on that? Why are we working on that?" Or, "Oh, cool, I didn't realize we we're doing that." And then we discuss that with the goal of taking the stress out of things.
3. Personal issues do come up.
Occasionally my teammate will ask something like, "Are we talking about stuff here in the office or home, too?" I'll usually respond anything goes but note that my ability to help is largely constrained by things I can control here in the office. But that includes, as other have suggested, a more flexible schedule, days off, or referrals to others that may be better qualified to help. A manager's ability to assist is going to depend to a certain extent on the culture and policies of the organization. But as others have pointed out, sometimes the most important thing for the person you're talking to is just being heard out.
I'm a little surprised by the level of skepticism exhibited in the response to my original comment. I mean I understand it. But if your response to your manager asking this question in a 1-on-1 is to immediately question your manager's motives, I'd recommend looking for another job. I'm not saying it will be easy to find one, especially one with an organization or supervisor who is necessarily any better. But as this thread shows, they are out there. And if that is your reaction and you're not exploring your options, I think you're ignoring a huge signal regarding your wellbeing.
I'd also say if this is a question you think it would help to discuss with your manager and you're not sure how to bring it up, maybe ask them the question.
Finally, my point in mentioning this is to hopefully encourage more leads and managers to ask this question or some variant of it and pay attention to the issues raised in this thread. If your reports are unduly stressed out, you're not getting your best performance out of them. You're not really doing your job.
And to clarify this isn't an official metric in any sense. It's really just an icebreaker to get to underlying issues that may affect performance and wellbeing. 3 is a step on the way to 2. 2 is optimal in my view. But if someone is a 1 and they're getting their work done, all the better!
I'm hoping it's a corrective to a lot of the braindead KPIs and metrics and just generally toxic practices that are out there. But, yes, something like that IT Crowd clip is a potential unintended consequence of this question in the wrong organization. To the extent you can make things better for yourself and others, please do so.
If I can help anyone, you can probably guess my gmail address. Feel free to drop me an email.
Years ago, I noticed one of my reports had been performing uncharacteristically poorly, often late to work, making sloppy mistakes etc. I dug into it a bit in one of our one-on-one meetings and turns out he had a lot of things going on in his personal life, his girlfriend had been laid off from her job, there was an illness in the family etc.
All we did as a company was give him two weeks off work so he could focus on dealing with things, and he was back to normal, and went on to have a long and successful tenure at the company.
This worked only because we were a very small company, and he and I had a pretty good personal relationship and hung out socially outside of work, so he felt comfortable enough to confide in me given the opportunity.