Willpower and self control, or stress and burnout, what do your staff display?

Willpower – the motivating force to accomplish, or finish a task. The strength of will to carry out one’s decisions, wishes or plans, versus Stress – physical, mental, or emotional strain or tension. All businesses experience either situations at various levels.

In business today, whether it be Wide Format printing, or selling Ice Cream, without willpower we will basically amount to less than our full potential.

At this time of year, lack of willpower is often associated with New Years resolutions. I’ve never been one to make them, but plenty do. Statistically though, 88% of all resolutions end in failure. Ever wondered why?

Shane Drew has been involved in the sign industry since 1992.   Before that he had a very successful career in sales, winning several Sales Awards before deciding on a career change in his early 30’s.   Shane has been writing freelance articles since 2002 and is a sign industry mentor for sign shops both in Australia and Europe, is a regular contributor to Europe’s biggest sign industry forum, and is well known in local circles for his passion about the Australian Sign Industry.   Shane is Managing Director of Drews Sign It Pty Ltd, a family business who are supporters of several major charities and not-for-profit organisations. A recent highlight is his appointment as a Green Guardian for his support of Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, on Queensland’s Southern Gold Coast

Jonah Lehrer of the Wall Street Journal, in the article ’Blame it on the Brain’ likens willpower to a bicep muscle. It can only exert itself for so long before it runs out of steam.

We shouldn’t forget either, that willpower and self control are closely linked, which may go someway in explaining why giving up smoking or losing weight are two of the most failed resolutions every year.

Lehrer goes on to relate an interesting experiment led by Prof Baba Shiv at Stanford University.

‘Several dozen undergraduates were divided into two groups. One group was given a two-digit number to remember, while the second group was given a seven-digit number. Then they were told to walk down the hall, where they were presented with two different snack options: a slice of chocolate cake or a bowl of fruit salad.

The students with seven digits to remember were nearly twice as likely to choose the cake as students given two digits. The reason, according to Prof. Shiv, is that those extra numbers took up valuable space in the brain—they were a "cognitive load"—making it that much harder to resist a decadent dessert. In other words, willpower is so weak, and the prefrontal cortex
[of the brain] is so overtaxed, that all it takes is five extra bits of information before the brain starts to give in to temptation.

This helps explain why, after a long day at the office, we’re more likely to indulge in a pint of ice cream, or eat one too many slices of leftover pizza. (In fact, one study by researchers at the University of Michigan found that just walking down a crowded city street was enough to reduce measures of self-control, as all the stimuli stressed out the cortex.) A tired brain, preoccupied with its problems, is going to struggle to resist what it wants, even when what it wants isn’t what we need.’

Further, the article goes on to say ‘in a 2007 experiment, Prof. Baumeister and his colleagues found that students who fasted for three hours and then had to perform a variety of self-control tasks, such as focusing on a boring video or suppressing negative stereotypes, had significantly lower glucose levels than students who didn’t have to exert self-control. Willpower, in other words, requires real energy.

In another experiment, Baumeister and his colleagues gave students an arduous attention task—they had to watch a boring video while ignoring words at the bottom of the screen—before asking them to drink a glass of lemonade. Half of the students got lemonade with real sugar, while the other half got a drink with Splenda. On a series of subsequent tests of self-control, the group given fake sugar performed consistently worse.

The scientists argue that their lack of discipline was caused by a lack of energy, which hampered the performance of the prefrontal cortex.

Since the most popular New Year’s resolution is weight loss, it’s important to be aware that starving the brain of calories—even for just a few hours—can impact behaviour. Skipping meals makes it significantly harder to summon up the strength to, say, quit cigarettes.’

About now you are probably wondering what this has to do with running a sign shop.

Well, to be honest, not a lot. It is more to do with how we handle our staff.

Willpower and self control are integral in life, not just at New Years.

If we are constantly disappointed by staff members, if they make stupid mistakes, or if they lack discipline, have no willpower or self control, perhaps we may have to consider our business may be partly to blame.

If, for instance, we burden our staff with too much responsibility, heavy  workloads, impossible deadlines….if we exceed their brains “cognitive load“ , it may  eventually cause a problem. Brain overload may result in accidents, loss of productivity or the staff member may see no alternative to reduce the stress but resign. In the worse case scenario, I’ve heard of some businesses having workplace stress claims which go on for months. Some ending up in expensive court cases. Job satisfaction and productivity, through reduced willpower and self control, will quickly be overtaken by stress and burnout.

Introducing stress and burnout into the workplace could be as simple as not ensuring our staff have sufficient time to relax and eat lunch, or take breaks. Some dedicated staff may even willingly give up a lunch breaks to get jobs completed, but this really is something we need to discourage.

All too often we ignore the obvious, because we either can’t afford to acknowledge it, or we are oblivious to it. And it affects not just the production staff. Office staff are no less immune to these mental stresses either, and can often result in various stages of burnout.

The acknowledged 3 stages of burnout are recognised as emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment.

Not forgetting of course that we shouldn’t overlook or ignore our own health. Burnout can affect business owners just as easily as it can the staff. We need to be aware of the symptoms.

Jeff Standridge in his article ‘Employee Burnout – Five tips for solving work/life crisis makes the following points;

 Half of the battle against employee burnout is emotional in nature.
 Many times work/life balance is destroyed by irregular hours, and long workdays.
 Relationships are the key to a high quality life.
 Work depression can develop because employees feel trapped in their current jobs, often due to the demands of consumer debt and other financial obligations.
 One of the best ways to overcome burnout and depression is to get the focus off of you and onto someone else.

Clearly, running a business and employing staff is harder than it ever was. Workplace Health and Safety, although supposedly a ‘no blame’ system in Australia, does penalise businesses that have claims against them in the form of increased fees. It definitely pays to take staff management and health seriously.

Any business though that really appreciates the effort that their staff put in, need to repay that effort with minimising the health risks they expose their staff to. Unfortunately, most small businesses that employ staff generally worry about the staff’s physical wellbeing, and most do this very well, but the mental health of the staff is never considered. We need to remember that it is equally important if we want to maintain a good balance between productivity and staff down time.

Any experiences? Let us know at [email protected]

Shane Drew
http://www.dsi.net.au/