Module 7: Leading and Managing People in a Research Context

4.6 Caring for your staff as individuals

With deadlines to meet, problems to analyse, and competing demands on your time it is easy to overlook that the person who is late getting the data to you is also a person with their own life, feelings, and problems beyond the library or laboratory. Those parts of their life impact on their ability to work well. A new baby in the household, death of a loved one, or just confusion about their job prospects can all cause stress which undermines performance.

As research leader you should be aware of the changes in context of your staff, and take steps to help where possible. Some times that may just be a word of reassurance or support. But at other times you can use the university's policies to encourage staff to take a break or to change their working pattern so they can more easily balance their work and home pressures.

Sometimes such adjustments will have an impact on other members of the group – for instance, the communication process has to become more formalised so that information is still available to people who are not all in the same place at the same time. Other helpful practical steps could be scheduling meetings for the day that everyone is in, starting at a family-friendly time, and placing reports and updates on a website so staff can choose when they look at them. By looking after yourself (see Topic 4.5) you provide a sustainable model as a good researcher.

Handling stress

Stress is the body's physiological response to threatening events. If it’s allowed to persist for too long it progresses to a stage of mental and physical exhaustion. Be conscious about how increased and dysfunctional stress affects you and your relationship with your team. If you allow the stress to continue without addressing it then you may find you become irritable and short-tempered, and your judgement is affected. You need to take the same care of yourself as you do of the other individuals in the team (see Topic 4.6.).

Stress in the workplace can be damaging to researchers. At the extreme, stress can also lead to unsafe behaviours, such as alcoholism and drug-taking. There are two main variables relevant to how much stress researchers experience: the research environment and the researcher's personality type. Type A personalities are competitive, hard driving, impatient, and can be inflexible in their approach. By comparison, if you are a Type B personality you will have a more laid-back attitude to life and its challenges. Recognising your staff (and your own) personality style can help you to identify the stressors that are likely to affect them and coach them into more balanced behaviours.

The research environment can be made less stressful in a number of ways:

• Shorten working hours
• Grant or take special leave
• Assist staff to consider retirement if applicable
• Encourage an exercise program
• Clearly define the researchers' jobs.

Researchers themselves can contribute to managing their own stress by:

• Not creating artificial deadlines
• Don't personalise issues
• Inject changes in your life, such as listing the things you have to do, prioritising them, and completing them in order of importance
• Inject other changes such as regular entertainment or sport
• Discuss problems with others
• Perform emotional audits regularly and identify the pressure points in your life
• Relax away from the job
• Take up meditation.

In order to reduce stress you need to reduce the urgent things. This can be done by:

• Planning so the number of crises is reduced
• Have others review your work so that problem areas can be identified early and corrective action taken
• Build relationships with key people – these may provide assistance in the future
• If you are perpetually short of time analyse how you spend your time (if it’s in unwanted conversations maybe you need to eliminate a visitor's chair from your space and always hold meetings in a room you can walk out of).

Most universities offer a free and confidential employee assistance program so that staff can receive personalised counselling to assist stress management. As a leader you need to be aware of the services available.

Physical capability

It is commonly accepted that people will perform better, have fewer illnesses, and live longer if they:

• Don't smoke
• Indulge in only moderate drinking (NHMRC guidelines state no more than two standard drinks a day)
• Exercise for approximately 30 minutes at least 3 times a week
• Eat a minimum of saturated fats and cholesterol.