
The stress response can be contagious - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/31/stress/you-can-catch-stress-through-a-tv-screen
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kator
Interesting, about 20 years ago my dad stopped consuming all news media. He
said "It's all negative, it's killing us all and if anything important happens
I'll find out anyway."

I've not been brave enough to totally "check out", but I do avoid
sensationalized news and try to pay more attention to valuable information
rather than "drama".

Meanwhile at work I always remind my team "Hey we are not curing cancer,
relax, slow is fast, fast is slow."

I tell my teams my job is easy because as a manager I only have four things to
do:

    
    
      1) Provide Air Cover (reduce stress)
    
      2) Provide resources
    
      3) Provide direction
    
      4) Get the F* out of the way
    

I find that #1 is harder than it sounds, but as this article points out stress
is infectious and can really slow a team down. I've had more than one stressed
out employee come into my office and explain how we're missing some deadline
or whatever and I always say "Yup, ok we'll get through it, we're not curing
cancer here." we both laugh and they walk out with a lighter step to their
walk.

That said I believe in accountability and we try to pick these things up in
retro's and figure out how to avoid them in the future.

I like to say "I like originality in mistakes, big massive mistakes are fine,
just learn and try not to repeat them."

~~~
paulddraper
TV news is just terrible. Other sources are too, but TV news seems to excel at
reporting on the same three stories with the same information for weeks.

I lived in Florida, and it's great to know when a hurricane is coming, but you
gotta turn it off after the first ten minutes because after that it's just
hype without substance.

------
dvanduzer
I've noticed this in office situations. A bunch of people having a
conversation are suddenly more stressed out than they have any reason to be.
Why? It's just that time of year when everyone's on a deadline.

------
Ocerge
I've always thought this was the case. I quit a job last year, and a large
part of it was the 8:30 AM standups where our CTO would stress us out with
customer woes and deadlines not entirely relevant to the current sprint.
Instead of moving these issues through a process that resulted in better-
defined deadlines and requirements, it just felt like we were perpetually
behind, and it happened every single morning. Many technical leaders are
stressed, but it makes everything worse when your anxieties leak in to your
team every day.

~~~
kator
I heard Gene Kranz[1] talk one day on the Apollo 13 mission[2]. And most
people came away with the famous take away "Failure Is Not an Option" but I
came away thinking how Gene was the calmest person I've ever met. I imagine in
this high stress situation the best thing he did was keep people calm and
focused. Too many managers fail at that task, it's hard to do right, but very
valuable when it's done properly.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Kranz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Kranz)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13)

