Today medical experts at the Toronto Star report that aromatherapy massages are more effective at reducing anxiety and stress than plain ones. They also recommend you buy lemons, grapefruit, and peppermint tea at the grocery store, then stop at the drugstore for lavender lotion or spray, since scientific tests confirm the benefits of all these fragrant items. Apparently, lemons work as a relaxant (you could slice one into your bath water, perhaps), while peppermint can help you complete a must-do job when you can't focus by triggering alertness. Grapefruit's scent curbs hunger, and peppermint enhances the effect, so regularly eating half a grapefruit followed by peppermint tea or gum will help shrink your appetite. But the fact that really blew me away was that hospitals give anxious patients a whiff of lavender before sliding them into a narrow MRI tube, because it increases the percentage who get through the claustrophobic experience by a third. Wonder what would happen if employers spritzed their most stressful work areas with lavender . . . .
http://www.healthzone.ca/health/dietfitness/diet/article/1040238--you-docs-the-6-things-that-make-you-gain-weight
Showing posts with label job stress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label job stress. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
Manager Know Thyself
Last spring, after “The New York Observer” posted its congratulations to a big-time TV producer on her retirement and plans to launch a 2nd career as a guidance counsellor, they received over 200 comments on line. Most came from her former employees, claiming the story was bogus and that she was a “foul-mouthed, cliquish bully”, to quote “Psychology Today” reporter Carlin Flora.
Flora reports: “In his new book, “Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best … and Learn from the Worst,” Robert Sutton, Ph.D., catalogs [the] disproportionate effect that managers have on well-being. A meta-analysis found, for example, that ‘about 75 percent of the workforce reports that their immediate supervisor is the most stressful part of their job.’
"For the majority of managers, who presumably want to fall on the heart-attack-reducing side of the scale, Sutton shares a key insight: Good bosses know themselves. And yet, just being in power is a deterrent to self-awareness, making it especially difficult for leaders to correctly ascertain the impact their behaviors and policies have on their employees. ‘It turns out that followers, peers, superiors, and customers consistently provide better information about a boss’s strengths, weaknesses, and quirks than the boss herself,’ Sutton writes. …
"For the majority of managers, who presumably want to fall on the heart-attack-reducing side of the scale, Sutton shares a key insight: Good bosses know themselves. And yet, just being in power is a deterrent to self-awareness, making it especially difficult for leaders to correctly ascertain the impact their behaviors and policies have on their employees. ‘It turns out that followers, peers, superiors, and customers consistently provide better information about a boss’s strengths, weaknesses, and quirks than the boss herself,’ Sutton writes. …
“[He] suggests they consciously beak out of the power bubble by asking [these info sources] for direct input and feedback.”
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