Owning (or working for) a small business is stressful. In Carol’s latest post on the Nextiva blog, “5 Ways to Reduce Small Business Stress Through Positive Thinking,” she shares some simple suggestions for boosting positivity, and communicating more effectively to help yourself and your employees stay balanced and productive. Carol begins:
“Part of the exhilaration of owning a small company is the flurry of unpredictable activity needed to satisfy customers and grow the business, typically with limited human resources. Unfortunately, with an eye on the prize, you see value in these experiences, but your employees only see the stress.
Frequent changes in direction and focus are necessarily the rule in most small businesses, but change is known to be a top-stressor for most individuals. If you can’t effectively ease the tension, your employees are likely to burn out, assuming that they don’t flee to more relaxed positions at other companies.
Positivity is a natural enemy of stress, so the right mindset can instill your entrepreneurial spirit into your employees. Here are five suggestions that can help them embrace the bedlam that helps build a dynamic company.
#1. Communicate positive goals
When talking to your team, you have to tell them what they need to do, but do you regularly tell them outright what their work means to the company?
Telling employees that you need 20 orders packaged and ready to go in two hours provides stress with no psychological reward. But, telling them that getting the orders out is going to bring in 20 major customers and create financial security identifies the importance of their work to the business. Assuring them that the exercise will help to improve the process and make future rush orders effortless would be even better.
#2. Celebrate every success
Reaching any ultimate goal typically involves multiple intermediary steps — sometimes so many that the final goal seems unreachable. Employee frustration increases when they never seem to see the light at the end of a long tunnel.”
You can read the rest of the post here.
