Recession & The Stress Response

During these challenging economic times it is vital that businesses and individuals keep focused to steer themselves through the bad times. Part of this is about being alert to things that may throw us off course. For example, take the way people react to stress, commonly known as the fight, flight, freeze response, we can look at these reactions from and individual or an organisational perspective, see how we might behave if in their grip and then make sure that we take steps to avoid them.

Fight - Stress can lead us to want to fight our corner, square up to people who may be in competition with us, or raise our defences. There may be elements of these behaviours that are helpful and healthy but what about the possible implications in the long term of a less healthy win \ lose approach?

Flight - We may be tempted to move away from people or activities that we believe are 'costing us' in some way, or that we suddenly think are 'risky', for example spending time communicating with our staff and customers or doing ongoing maintenance to processes, systems or equipment. However we need to take care that these decisions are driven from a rational accounting place rather than from a knee-jerk stress response.

Freeze - Part of dealing with change is a tendency, however brief, to try and ignore what is happening. The danger is if we get stuck here. We may try to carry on as before, ignoring any signs that new actions or behaviours are needed. This too, may have its benefits but doing this out of fear rather than as a considered choice may be a mistake.

Remember - we react from emotion but respond through conscious choice.