Stressed employees are not the best, most effective employees. If you and your staff are undergoing major changes, a busy business cycle, end of the year budgets or other stressful events, you may want to know that new research puts a new light on the age-old idea that all people respond to stress with the “fight or flight” response. Until rather recently 90% of the research on stress has been done with men. Women, it turns out, have an additional response to stress. Researchers have termed it the “tend and befriend” response. According to a landmark study conducted by four women researchers at UCLA, a chemical named oxytocin is released in women who are in stress.  This chemical buffers the fight or flight response and encourages a woman to tend to her children and/or befriend others. As she does those activities more oxytocin is released and more calming occurs. Oxytocin is not released in men in stressful situations. 

So while men may respond to stress by  raising their voice or holing up somewhere until they become calmer, women can calm themselves by 

checking in with family and hanging out with other women. Creating these social ties is one way that women  learn to live more easily and calmly in stressful times.

Smart managers may want to encourage some of this social networking during stressful times since the study shows that 83% of Americans feel stressed and 46% feel overwhelmed at least once per week  Allowing employees a few minutes each day to talk about things other than work may actually increase the effectiveness of female employees. But what if your staff members are both male and female?This “yakking” about the problems may annoy the men and make them more stressful! Allowing whoever wants to be included in these sessions to do so is a perfect way to allow men to opt out of the “gab-fest”.  But smart supervisor may want to allow a certain amount of “chit chatting” to go on knowing that it is soothing to women and keeps then calmer and more focused in the long run. 

References: http://www.johnupdegraff.net/pdf/TKLGGU-00.pdf  to read the research paper. Best Friends: The Pleasures and Perils of Girls’ and Women’s Friendships (Three Rivers Press, 1998) 

I invite your comments. What do you do to reduce your own and your employees’ workday stress?     

Tags: Management Skills //