Table of Contents
1 Introduction 1 What is Stress? 2
What Stress is Not: Common Misperceptions 3
Common Causes of Stress 4
Work-Related Stress and the Line Manager 5
Summary 9
References 9
2 Why managing stress is important: The business and legal reasons 11
The Business Case 11
The Costs of Work-Related Stress 12
Calculating the Cost of Stress to Your Business 19
What Should We Be Doing to Monitor these Costs? 23
The Legal Case 24
Legal Cases of Work-Related Stress 25
What Should We Be Doing to Comply with Legislation? 28
Summary 29
References 29
3 How to manage work-related stress 31
Prevention 32
Training and Development 35
Support 37
Organizational, Manager and Team, and Individual Level Interventions 38
What Should Our Organization Be Doing? 41
Where Does the Line Manager Fit In? 42
Summary 44
Reference 44
4 Developing a framework to promote positive manager behaviour 45
Rationale: The Need For a Stress Management Approach Focusing on Positive Manager Behaviour 46
Why We Took a Competency-Based Approach 49
The Research Underlying the Positive Manager Behaviour Framework and Approach 51
The Positive Manager Behaviour Framework 55
Evidence to Support a Positive Manager
Behaviour Approach 56
Useful Resources 64
References 65
5 Respectful and responsible: Managing emotions and having integrity (management competency 1) 67
Integrity 68
Managing Emotions 75
Considerate Approach 81
Summary 85
References 87
6 Managing and communicating existing and future work (management competency 2) 89
Proactive Work Management 90
Problem Solving 101
Participative/Empowering 106
Summary 119
References 121
7 Managing the individual within the team (management competency 3) 123
Personally Accessible 124
Sociable 132
Empathetic Engagement 137
Summary 144
References 145
8 Reasoning/managing difficult situations (management competency 4) 147
Managing Conflict 148
Use of Organizational Resources 157
Taking Responsibility for Resolving Issues 164
Summary 168
References 169
9 Overcoming barriers to positive manager behaviour 171
Personal Level Barriers 172
Individual Work or Job Level Barriers 176
Team and Relationship Level Barriers 182
Organizational and Wider Level Barriers 186
Reference 189
10 Supporting managers to change their behaviour 191
Behaviour Change Is Possible 192
Theories of Behaviour Change 193
Implementing Behaviour Change Interventions 195
References 207
11 Is stress management just good management? 209
Comparing Positive Manager Behaviour with General Management/Leadership Competency Frameworks 211
Implications for Practice 214
How to Do Your Own Mapping 215
How to Identify Missing Positive Manager Behaviour Elements 224
How to Integrate Missing Positive Manager Behaviour Elements 225
Valuing People Management Skills 227
References 230
12 The way forward 231
Where are You Now? 231
Starting Out – Understanding Positive Manager Behaviour and How It Might Be Useful 233
Deciding How to Use Positive Manager Behaviour 234
Gaining Buy-In 240
Applying Positive Manager Behaviour 244
Sustainable Impact 250
References 253
Appendix 255
Index 261
