Picture this

The phone rings, a customer cancels a contract that Tom thought he had secured. He frowns, reaches over to a pen to cross tomorrow?s meeting out in his diary and he hits the tea cup; tea with milk and sugar spills over the papers on the desk. Tom swivels around in his chair and runs over documents he has safely placed on the ground to be posted today. He growls and hits the on-button of the printer and the printer starts up with ongoing unnerving rattling, when the phone rings again. The voice is soft at the other end: the printer is so loud, Tom can barely hear, he starts feeling hot, agitated, he yells into the phone, the line drops out and all he hears are some faint sounds ?.

Time for action: Tom jumps up and starts yelling at the printer.

Interventions

Assessment of Status Quo

Tom knows he is quite challenged at the moment. He knows he needs regular breaks. He knows his resilience is not too high. He knows he has not slept well last night.

Knowing and acting...

Knowledge alone does not help.

Here are a couple of actions that could have diffused the amounting stress.

1) Learning that a contract falls through is painful and disappointing. STOP!

Walk away to sort your feelings.

2) Spilling tea over paperwork is distressing and causes aggravation. STOP!

Clean up, fetch a rag, understand the signs and make another cup of tea, which you drink it in peace and quiet before you return to your work.

3) A document is due today, it is stuffed up in the last minute. Well, let?s face it, it is not going to be the end of the world, if the document is a day late.

The chain reaction could have been interrupted here by: assessing the mess, facing the fact that it may be too late for the document to be re-printed, and cooling off before further actions are taken.

What was missing in the process? Awareness and the right action.

? 2006 Copyright Astrid McCormick