The Workplace Choir: Why You Can't Control Everyone Else's Tune

This was from a reader named Ike: "Stress shows up in many different ways. For me it's usually while I'm working. I work remotely in cybersecurity. 

 

We deal with midsize to larger businesses who panic VERY easily.

That's stressful enough, but what makes it more challenging is the sheer amount of chaos every time someone contacts our team for suspected breaches, data leaks, and the occasional DDOS attacks.

We're supposed to be calm and calculated during these times, but it just seems like the office thrives on chaos. 

I get emails and Slack messages every five minutes from senior and middle management who over promise results to our clients and then pressure the team downstream to keep those promises! What's worse is we have some team members who are expert blame shifters who know no accountability.

Makes me want to pull my hair out!

Here's my question Blog Squad:

How does one stay focused  while in the middle of chaos central?"

Thanks, Ike. 

It seems you are sort of like a music director working with a choir that just can't stay in tune. 

We get it.

Every job has its stress. Some are more compounded than others.

Sometimes it is the work itself.

Sometimes it's the high expectations people have of each other. And sometimes, it is the people.

The co-worker or manager who seems to drag each meeting out to an hour when it should take half an hour. The customer that thinks yelling is an effective way to get things done. 

The boss that marks every single email as "URGENT", even the one about their dog's birthday.

It's nothing new really.

Businessman Malcolm S. Forbes once said, "If you have a job without any aggravations, you don't have a job."

Forbes wasn't wrong.

With the prevalence of work stress (in and out of the office), the problem isn't just how to deal with it, because it isn't going anywhere.

The question is, how do we stop it from ruling our lives?

A Couple of Ways to Help

You can't always avoid a stressful work environment, but you can avoid letting it get to you.

Try taking a two minute vacation. If you feel stress creeping up on you, take a short break to collect yourself.

This could mean going to the break room to get a drink, grabbing some food, or standing up and stretching for a moment. It can help to clear your head and stop you from being so worked up.

Listen to some calming music, if possible.

If your workplace allows for it, use some soft music or ambient sounds to drown out any stressful noises around you. It can help to have some noise to fill your head with, rather than the other distracting sounds that might be around you.

You might also like this article as well:

Feeling Overwhelmed? 7 Simple Habits to Lower Stress and Boost Self-Esteem

A Couple More Things 

Remind your eyes to take a break.

Every twenty minutes or so, give them a rest by looking at something else for twenty seconds. This can reduce eye strain and help take your mind off of something stressful.

And last, but not least,

Take a slow steady breath.

When your body begins to tense up, take a steady, slow breath in through your nose and out through your mouth.

Let the out breath be a little slower than the in breath, and repeat until you feel relaxed. It can help to interrupt the stress response your body is having, so that you can remind yourself to not let it happen again.

A Few Thoughts 

One of my favorite metaphors for dealing with stress at work is to think of the workplace as a choir.

Some people sing a little too loudly, some people hardly at all, and some seem to try and make up their own song entirely. But a song is a song, and somehow, they all make one together.

Now imagine trying to fix every single person in the choir.

You might start by singing louder yourself, to drown out the loudest singers. You could try to convince some to sing softer, or try and guide the ones that insist on making up their own part to sing something else instead. But eventually, no one is singing anything at all.

Work can be a lot like that, really.

You can't change other people's attitudes or bad habits, you can only change your own. And by doing that, you can affect the whole group, without trying to control anyone else.

Harmony Is Everything 

Harmony, according to the Roman historian Sallust, is "...that by which small things are augmented and great things decay."

It's an important thing to strive for, and not just in music.

Harmony in the workplace doesn't mean everyone will always agree all the time, it just means they are willing to accommodate each other to get things done.

There will still be bad days, of course.

But you won't have nearly as many stressful ones if you stop trying to conduct everyone else's business and focus on your own instead.

After all, every choir has a few people that aren't very good at singing.

Let them try and convince you to stop doing what you're doing, but don't let them stop you.

Work stress is EVERYWHERE, you just need a plan to deal with it. 

So, what's your plan?

Let's chat about it in the comments!

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