Joe Anderson PhD - The 4th Circle: How we fall into stress, & how to climb back out

Why in the hell

wont these assholes do

what I tell them to do?

If you have peoplereporting to you, youve probably said the same; maybe even a more colorfulversion of it. I heard just such a rendition this morning from one of the bestCEOs I know. It was a thing of beauty, replete with the bluest prose andrambling flourishes of threat and invective. It inspired me to start this booktonight.

That, plus the fact thathe had a stroke and died right in the middle of his performance.

It makes you wonder ifauthority is dangerous to your health.

The facts tell us that thestress involved is gonna kill us, but first, its going to irritate everyonearound us.

Seventeenthousand, three hundred executives died last year, from the stress of trying tobe in control. Seventeen thousand.

Add to that their17,000 spouses and 35,000 kids suddenly orphaned and thats 70,000 folks whohad a very bad year because of work related stress. But thats smallpotatoes, compared to the following facts.

Before they died,those 17,300 executives crushed 86,500 employees. You know --- crushed ---publicly attacked, humiliated and belittled in a manner that kills the urge togive their best effort. Those folks had a bad year and probably a bad life aswell. Not much is worse than working for a fire-breathing, anal-retentivecontrol freak.

But wait. It gets evenbetter.

Those 86,500crushed individuals have 4 times more sick days than the non-crushed;

plus, when they arethere, theyre only about 57% as effective as the non-crushed --- becausetheyre busy keeping a low profile, staying out of trouble and making sure thatanything that goes wrong is someone elses fault.

But that stilldoesnt seem to help them, because their turnover rate is about 6 times higherthan for the non-crushed.

Just ponder that for amoment. Thats a lot of transition costs, training costs and ramp-up expenses. Notto mention, legal expenses.

Who do you think suestheir employer?

Take your time.

Everybody already knows.

Yep. Its the ones youtried to crush. Some of them fight back --- then youve got one heck of a messon your hands --- and your stress goes up yet again, and you end up crushinganother truck load of folks who just showed up for work today hoping for a fairdays wages for a fair days work.

And the parade continues.

Those 86,500folks who were crushed by the original 17,300 executives who are no longeramong the living --- they turned around and crushed 366,000 more ---because humans do not like to suffer alone. We pass along our misfortunes sothat we can have company in our misery.

If youve done the math,you can see that this means that stress grows by a factor of five, while mostinfections only grow by a factor of 2. So Im thinking that stress may just bethe most infectious scourge known to man.

The contagion often goeson for another iteration or two, but lets stop the process in its tracks andtake stock of the situation.

There are 452,500 crushedemployees, who emanated from the original 17,300 who died.. So What? Well

8,700of them will die from stress within the next 3 years

61,500will change jobs within 18 months

295,000of them have 4 times more absences than normal

452,500of them will be only 67% as productive as normal

Andheres the kicker those 17,300 hyper-controlling bosses who started thewhole process were only 70% as productive as other managers

Welose $13.6 Billion a year due to stressed-out, mismanaging bosses.

And thats just in New York City.

...

The actual cost of stress in America is in theTrillions.

Stress will kill you, myfriend.

But is doesnt have to bethat way. Despite strong evidence to the contrary, I cling to the belief thatit is possible to be in charge (of a firm, division, department,or work crew) without killing yourself in the process. In fact, I still thinkthat its possible to have a successful career and a rich, meaningful - andlong life, simultaneously. Thats what this book is about.

I serve as Consigliere toAmericas owners. Business owners. I am part business strategist, part shrink,part drill sergeant, and part pastor. In some respects I play Alfred to theirBatman. I get them ready for battle, and sew them back together afterward. Wedo it mostly via conversation. I was having one of those conversations thismorning, when everything spun out of control.

His name was Brad. He wasa fine man, and one of the shrewdest entrepreneurs it has been my pleasure toknow. Chairman of his church. Beautiful wife. Three great kids, two still inelementary school. And I failed to save his life today.

So instead, Im gonna tryto save yours.

Were going to do that byusing Drift Therapy. Well drift between fact, commentary and conversationwithout clear delineation. Im going to converse with Brad off and onthroughout this book. Some of it will be actual conversations weve had, someof it will be conversations Ive actually had with other CEOs, and some of itwill be conversations I should have had with either one. All of it will be aconversation I am having with you.

Heres the thing aboutdrift therapy, though. It doesnt actually pack itself into a nice neat 2-hoursession. Life isnt that sweet. Instead, the conversation reported here rolleditself out over many months during the first year of the Obama administration,when the world was in a massive recession and uncertainty lurked around everycorner.

It was a time of acutestress and anxiety, so the language here will be unfiltered and rough, becausethat is how life is lived, and talked about, in the stress-filled world. About10% of the CEOs I work with cant speak without obscenities. They put one inevery sentence, just to keep their tongue in shape. Another 30% will waxobscene, and creatively so, when they are under pressure. The bulk of CEOs,however, right around 50%, use it sparingly, as an exclamation point, just tolet you know when something is serious. And 10% are verbal teetotalers. Theynever swear. So we know that their inherent obscenity works its way out ineven more creative ways.

Obscenity is a languagelike any other, so when confronted with a native speaker I adopt the dialectmyself so that I can be understood. When you listen to its rhythm youll noticethat it is actually a 3rd party in the conversation.

Ive also left in theobscenity because I believe that folks say exactly what they mean.

v Brads last words could have been, How, inheavens name, do I get these ladies and gentlemen to help me in myquest?

v If so, they probably wouldnt have been his lastwords; because a man who speaks like that doesnt have the same level of stressas the guy who used Brads words. And he wouldnt have been struggling withthat extreme level of stress for the past year or two, and he wouldnt have hada massive stroke, and he wouldnt have died.