Number 1 Cause of Employee Stress

[Transcript] Hello, my friends. My name is Andy Core, and I’m a stress and productivity expert. I thought today I would give you a little clarity around what stresses employees the most. When I go in and interview my clients, CEOs, leaders, managers, h.r., the whole across the whole board, one of the first questions I ask them is, what do you think stresses your people the most? It almost always goes like this. They say, “oh, it’s compensation.” I mean, salary can be very contentious and stressful. It can, but it’s not the most stressful. They said it’s leader employee relationship. Then I said, yeah, leader, employee, manager, employee relationship when that’s off. Huge stress, but not the most. They said that it is definitely company culture. And that really can be stressful. If you come into a toxic culture or are not the right fit for a company’s culture, or the company culture is in transition. can create massive stress, but it’s not the most stressful. What stresses employees? Unclear job expectations. Coming from a stress expert, I’m like, yeah, that makes total sense, but a lot of people that get this wrong, they wouldn’t have guessed that. Actually, this data came from a 2015 survey. Do you think the importance of clarifying job expectations has gone up or down since? I know it’s way more important. I mean, especially if you think about the last year or so when so many people have had to do remote work. And now we’re communicating virtually. I mean, how much harder is it to have a good distraction-free, one on one conversation with someone to get to job expectations and truly connect? You know, it’s tough. Sometimes this virtual pane of glass can be a separator between us. And how much easier is it to miscommunicate in a virtual environment? It’s easier. So I believe that clarifying job expectations have huge benefits and it’s more important now than ever. Yeah, and that’s good news because clarifying job expectations is typically easier and less costly than those other three potential issues. So I’m going to give you one of my top tools, strategies to improve job expectations, clarity. OK, I think it’s best if we do this, we go to the whiteboard. OK, so here’s the question that I want you to integrate into your training programs, into your any conversation, any strategy meeting that is many times. And as many places as you can. OK, here’s the question. What’s the win? I’ll give you an example of why I know this is so important. And helpful. I did a presentation. They said that stress info’s good. Would you mind meeting with our VP of sales and our CEO? They have stress and contention. And I said, sure, I met with this VP of sales by himself. And I said, a lot of contention, yes. I said, OK, here’s my question for you. So are you clear on what you could do that would be a win in the CEO’s eyes? His response? I have no idea. It seems like they change week to week, the goal posts are always moving, and that shows a real lack of clarity in job expectation and in the big wins. So then I went to the CEO. And I said, hey, do you think your VP of sales knows what he could do to show a real win in your eyes? Yes, of course. We meet every week, you know, so even to really successful, conscientious, these two guys were friends, even can get off because they assume the other person knows what the win is. And that can create some real issues. So I want you to incorporate this question of what’s the win in any situation you can. I’m going to give you one of my favorite places to put this idea? Can you guess it before I finish writing it? All right. Performance reviews, performance reviews are a perfect time to have this a what’s the win conversation. Because you come in with the context of just an overall performance review. And then you can reach that person at one point and say, you know, may I ask you a question? Do you know what you could do that would show a real win in your boss supervisor leader’s eyes? Do you know what that is? And don’t let them off the hook. Keep asking until you get them to have a specific response. And I think what you’ll be shocked to find there is a significant opportunity for improvement. So this what’s the win idea, I know I’m just glancing over it, but it’s important. It’s helpful. I’ve seen it work in many situations. And if you would like to chat with me, no charge about implementing this, email me. And here it is. Andy at AndyCore dot com, That’s it. I’d love to hear from you. And until next time, be safe and clarify those job expectations.