“Good Stress” vs. “Bad Stress”
August 29th, 2008 by Cali & Jody
When we saw this story on MarketWatch, our reaction was: “Thank you, research people, for backing up what we’ve been seeing for years with research!”
One of the most popular ROWE Guideposts is Every day feels like Saturday. We were pleased to find similar language in the latest Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index findings:
[P]eople in high-quality jobs report weekdays that are similar to weekends when it comes to feeling treated with respect, feeling happy, few feelings of anger and stress and learning or doing something interesting. Conversely, those with low-quality jobs express significantly more anger and stress on weekdays, are less likely to express happiness, experience learning or being treated with respect.
But later on, the article notes that “[s]ome stress in life is good stress, necessary to motivate through deadlines and often a driver of success.”
We’ve heard this one before, especially from upper management. As we’ve transformed companies from a traditional work environment to a ROWE, some leaders have expressed the belief that “good stress” keeps people motivated, engaged and in general, on their toes.
At the same time, they also acknowledge (sometimes grudgingly) that there is ”bad stress” that saps people’s energy, makes them risk averse, increases the chance for mental errors, and decreases motivation and engagement.
Two things have always confused us about this argument.
1. How do you control the stress level to make sure that the “good stress” doesn’t become “bad stress”?
2. While management seems to believe in good stress, we’ve NEVER heard an employee say they were feeling a pleasant stress level that had them working at their best. Instead, we always heard them complain about how stress was ruining their personal lives and making work harder, not better.
Maybe we’re biased. And so we’re throwing this open to you, dear Readers.
Do you believe in “good stress”? And if so, how do make sure that the “good stress” doesn’t turn into “bad stress”? Or is all stress ultimately bad and it’s management’s job to eliminate it so people can do their best?
We look forward to your opinions.
For me, good stress means having targeted work outcomes and deadlines. The work needs to be challenging enough that I am engaged with it, without being completely impossible in the allotted time. I love being busy: bring it on!
A strong source of bad stress for me is trying to look busy when I’m not. The absence of proper work goals leaves me disengaged, lacking a sense of achievement and bored to the point of desperation.
Unfortunately, when I have asked for more challenging work in the past, I have been invited by my managers simply to double my output of routine tasks in the same time period. This is where good stress turns to bad stress and work becomes like a factory production line.
Furthermore, I’ve worked in situations where errors and disagreements beyond my control have resulted in personal pay cuts from my own commission cheque. Another example of really, really bad work stress.
Maybe what some employers are calling “good stress” is what I prefer to simply call motivation. We all need motivation, whether its knowing that doing our best will earn us a promotion which allows us more opportunity to do what we want to do, or just the knowledge that if I get myself out of bed earlier, I’ll be able to finish what I need to do earlier and have “free time.” “Good stress” is simply a task or set of tasks that need to be done in order for the desired outcome. If I didn’t have the threat of the bank taking away my condo, I wouldn’t pay my mortgage, either! So, while the thought of defaulting on my payment can cause stress, it motivates me to pay it each month.
We all do a cost/benefit analysis, even if its in a fraction of a second, on every decision we make. Without the “good stress” or “motivation” we wouldn’t make decisions, so in that sense, yeah… good stress is, well, good.
Bad stress happens when we have no control over the things in out life and that is bad. So, the question to employers is… are you giving your employees control over their work? If you are, then they probably have good stress… if you aren’t… its probably very bad indeed.
The word stress has a negative connotation. Lazarus’ term “Eustress” is probably what we’re looking for here:
“stress that is healthy or gives one a feeling of fulfillment.”
(Wikipedia)
As I understand ROWE, keeping commitments including deadlines and delivering measurable results are crucial and should be motivating. For a lazy, disorganized or underqualified employee however, this can be the source of bad stress.
There is a lot of good brain research on the impacts of stress. And yes, there is such a thing as “good” and “bad” stress. The best distinction I have come across is in John Medina’s book “Brain Rules”. Bad stress will have three criteria: 1) there must be an aroused physiological response, and it must be measurable to an outside party, 2) the cause of the stress must be perceived as aversive (in other words, would I avoid this situation if I could?), and 3) the person must not feel in control of the cause of the stress.
Additionally, our brains seem wired to deal with stress that is immediate but passing, not sustained.
Ultimately, when bad stress is sustained, studies show that people learn to be helpless. Which makes sense, if we perceive that we cannot control the stressor, then the only response I can think of is to give in.
The other important thing, and this is my opinion, that we can adapt to stress, much like our bodies adapt to exercise. In other words, if there is recovery time from stress, and I am assuming that we have control over the stress, then we will grow a greater capacity to deal with stress. But recovery and control are crucial to dealing with it. I imagine that even if we have control over stressors (our jobs and its various challenges) but do not build in recovery time, then we may not become helpless, but we will lose productivity and performance. Again to use an exercise analogy, it would be like overtraining.
The idea of “good stress” is just a bunch of apologetic and bio-sciences garbage to excuse the lack of responsibility on the part of task-assigners to properly plan (including ourselves indivually). I work in the architectural/engineering field, so my concept of stress is pretty straightforward - any external event or force that works against the designed system. In structural engineering, there is no such thing as “good stress” - you always design the structure to resist any stress placed on it. You can’t design a building in Minnesota based solely on the weight of materials used to build it - you have to account for snow loads (as well as other things).
Stress in the workplace, as related directly to the work we do, results from poor project planning and management. I think Guidepost #12 - ‘There are no last-minute fire drills’ - seeks to address that. Everyone knows we don’t work in Fantasy Land (apologies to any theme park workers who might) and there will be emergencies, but does that mean that EVERY task has to be one? Of course not. I personally would rather have a definitive plan of action and deadline set for a project than not know anything and be stressed out when all of the sudden it’s due in two days.
The only thing we should learn from stress is how to get rid of it as much as possible by proper project management.
If I might recommend, an excellent companion piece to Why Work Sucks is the book Married to the Job:Why We Live to Work and What We Can Do About It, by Ilene Philipson. It really helps to put ideas like “good stress” into perspective. I am only halfway through it, but it’s a definite must-read for those that enjoy WWS.
I think both Persephone and Matt are on to something - “stress” is what we feel when we’re motivated by fear and feel like we have no control over our situation. What people mean when they talk about “good stress” is the motivation (and the feeling of nervousness and excitement) that comes from being challenged by a new idea, project, position, etc. When people talk about “good stress” they’re talking about the feeling we get from being involved in something new and challenging, coupled with the sense that we actually have some control (and therefore responsibility) over the outcome and also the choice to be involved in the first place - which can still be nerve wracking, but in a really positive, fun (wow, could work actually be fun??), and fulfilling way. To me, that’s not “good stress,” because it really has nothing to do with “stress” at all - that’s something else entirely.