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As Stress Awareness month comes to a close, we’re reflecting on some of the tools that can help to alleviate the tensions of everyday life. Fatigue from the past year means that self-care is more important than ever right now in maintaining balance and energy as well as reducing stress. There is a lot of information out there and we can become overloaded with what we think we should be doing, and possibly frustrated when it doesn’t seem to be impacting in the way we had hoped. So let’s pause for a moment, and consider that true self-care looks different to everyone. The only way to work out what meaningful self-care might look like is to understand more about our personality type – what drives us, motivates us and what causes us stress. Whilst the idea of signing up for a rigorous exercise challenge might leave some feeling overwhelmed, for others it will help to return mental balance to others. Our D-styles (Dominance) tend to be so focussed on moving forwards and achieving results that they can forget to take care of themselves and stop to breathe and celebrate their accomplishments. Since they tend to draw their energy from being active and sitting still can be a source of frustration, activities which provide a challenge and that they are passionate about will tick the box and leave them that much needed stress relief. Here are some ideas for D-styles: • Taking some action towards long term goals • Diving into something that ignites your passion! • Sign up to an exercise challenge • Take part in a competitive sport With i-styles (Influence), they thrive on making connections with people, like new adventures and don’t like to be restrained by rules and regulations. In this age of working from home, isolation can be a major source of stress for the i-style, and self-care will need to factor in spending time around people and freedom and flexibility of routine. Here are some ideas for i-styles: • Make small connections with other people every day – make friends with your local barista! • Go out for a walk with no particular destination in mind • Plan a trip to somewhere you haven’t been before – even if you can’t go yet! • Attend a group exercise class S-styles (Steadiness), by their nature, often forget to take care of their own needs as they are so focussed on putting the needs of others first. Therefore self-care for them really needs to be planned in to make sure that it doesn’t fall to the bottom of the pile. For them, personal connection is also important and spending time with those they really care about is important. Here are some ideas for S-styles: • Journaling and writing down feelings • A 1-2-1 walk with a close friend • Setting boundaries • Write down one thing every day to do for yourself For C-styles (Conscientiousness) , being around people a lot can drain energy levels and spending time alone plays an important part in self-care for this style. They tend to have a logical and analytical approach to life and researching and learning about new things that interest them is truly rewarding to this style. Here are some ideas for C-styles: • Make sure alone time is carved out – especially if you live in a busy household! • Do something which appeals to your logical mind – puzzles etc • An alone day which has structure and a plan • Lego! By understanding your personality style or blend of styles, you can start to customize a routine that really works for you and restores balance and reduces stress. If you would like to find out more about your personality style, why not get in touch for a chat and see how we can help.

According to a recent survey by Wiley, 12,000 employees were surveyed about their experience of conflict in the workplace. Here’s what they found: • 70% of managers said that interpersonal conflict negatively impacted the efficiency of their work place • Managers spend an average of 13 hours each month dealing with workplace conflict • 40% of workers said they have left a job as a direct result of unhealthy interpersonal conflict Depending on the level of management, it doesn’t take much to work out that it’s a very expensive use of time – both in terms of time spent in resolving issues, but also the time that is not being spent on doing something more productive! Based on these stats, around £3,000 would be attributed to direct costs of conflict for a manager on a £40,000 salary, which is estimated to be only a quarter of the overall cost which includes the hidden costs. The cumulative effective of this across an organisation adds up to big money! As part of Wiley’s research, they asked participants to say the first word that they could think of when it came to conflict. Drama, petty, tension, gossip, stress, arguments. These are a selection that repeatedly came up – it’s clear to see that the responses were overwhelmingly negative! In fact, 90% of all responses were a negative word. So what is workplace conflict? Tension over a deadline, different approaches to work or maybe conflicting personalities, some workplace conflict is inevitable. In fact, another multi-country piece of research suggests that 49% of all workplace conflict is down to ‘personality clashes’. What is worrying about this, is that it’s not actually anything to do with work itself, so is highly unproductive. If these differences are handled poorly, efficiency can be negatively impacted very quickly and if left to fester, make an unpleasant working environment! Conflict in the workplace can result in: • Poor morale and staff retention • High levels of absence • Wasted time • Poor communication • Divisive culture • Complaint, grievances and tribunals The positive outcome of ‘personality clash’ conflict, is that we can do something about it! Here are some steps to addressing conflict: • Set ground rules: clear frameworks and policies for decision making as well as clearly defined job roles can help make expectations clear • Keep calm: avoid brining emotions into the conversation and ensure that all communication is respectful, in context and not a personal attack • Tackle the issue head on: it’s easy to avoid conflict, but being proactive in dealing with conflict early on will avoid resentment from building up and productivity decreasing • Adopt empathy: see the side of both parties; find commonalities to help find a compromise As we know, ‘personality clashes’ account for the majority of workplace conflict. The good news is that we can do something about it! By recognising that conflict can actually be productive, if approached in the right way, we can begin to remove some of the negative connotations that are associated with conflict. Conflict can make our ideas better, enables creative problem solving and increase efficiency. Organisations need to create a safe space for productive conflict, where communication is respectful and focussed on work and tasks. So what steps can we take to achieve this? As always, self-awareness is the first step to challenging how we respond to different situations, and we can look to DiSC to help with this. Different DiSC styles will have different approaches to conflict. Some will see it as a challenge and others will avoid at all costs. If you know your DiSC style, you will already be aware of how you might respond in certain situations, and applying this to conflict can help focus on curbing destructive behaviours and choosing productive behaviours instead. By taking a step back and understanding how other styles might react in conflict, we can begin to adapt our styles to disarm situations and result in an outcome that benefits everybody. Focusing on productive conflict has many benefits that will enhance the overall efficiency and profitability of your business. To learn more about DiSC and Productive Conflict, contact Discovery People for a conversation today.