Our recent blog regarding the Jet Blue incident was more popular than we had anticipated.  Last week we wrote about the bizarre behavior of Steven Slater, the now infamous Jet Blue flight attendant who decided to grab two beers and take the short cut home from work.  (If you need a quick refresher on what happened, here is a quick video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mNRhlrBqOc)

Feedback we received shortly after our posting suggests that frustration is gaining momentum in the Real Estate industry as well.

Here is one of the responses we received:

"I have noticed frustration, anger and impatience toward other agents, clients, staff, and managers.  Deals fall apart frequently, obsessive agents hound each other to try and keep a deal, disputes are abounding, and rudeness seems to be a daily dose of medicine." 

Clearly this outlandish display of immaturity by Slater is somewhat of a "cannery in the coal mine" when it comes to today's stress in the services industry sectors.  So, if you can at all sympathize with Slater's frustration or have experienced some growing frustration toward clients, other agents or managers, it may be time to take a deep breath, and really try to figure out what is causing your stress and what you can do about it, before you have your own Jet Blue moment.

Psychologically if you have been more irritable and angry on the job, it can mean a variety of different things, as these are symptoms and could be completely personal in origin.  But, when it happens to an entire culture it points to something much more general in nature regarding stress from factors that are probably inherent in the culture itself.  Instead of delving into factors such as economic conditions, changing customer solutions, change in lifestyle related to the above, etc… I'm going to address the consequences of these stressors and the solutions to reducing stress by reframing your current condition.

The research on resilience tells us there are two potential outcomes when it comes to responding to today's economic stressors:  Either you’ll become stronger and more successful, or you’ll become weaker, less mentally healthy, and less likely to do great things in the future.

Which outcome best describes you?  The answer to this question will depend on how you’re able to handle job-related stress and whether you can become a resilient person.

Management consultants, Salvatore Maddi and Deborah Khoshaba, conducted a 12-year study of the Illinois Bell Telephone (IBT) company staff who were enduring almost constant organizational change during the de-regulation changes in the telephone industry.

Every year for 12 years, 450 IBT employees (including supervisors, managers and executives) were interviewed, evaluated, given psychological tests, and given medical examinations.  While everyone in the organization was feeling stress, almost 50% of those sampled lost their jobs.  The purpose of the study was to research how people under job-related stress handled these difficult conditions. 

The research revealed that the employees reacted to the stress in two distinct ways:

• 65% of the employees suffered additional serious stress-related events in their lives such as divorce, heart attack, depression, anxiety, and drug/alcohol abuse.
• 35% of the employees thrived under the stress. If they stayed at IBT, they rose to the top of the heap. If they left, they either started companies of their own or took strategically important employment in other companies.

When the data started to show a distinct difference between the two groups of employees, the researchers then attempted to quantify what caused a person to be part of the second group.

In their book, Resilience at Work, the researchers outlined their findings.  A “resilient person” is someone who possesses and embraces the following:  commitment, control, and challenge.

“As times get tough, if you hold these attitudes, you'll believe that it is best to stay involved with the people and events around you (commitment) rather than to pull out, to keep trying to influence the outcomes in which you are involved (control) rather than to give up, and to try to discover how you can grow through the stress (challenge) rather than to bemoan your fate.”

In short, a steadfast commitment allowed the resilient employees to engage more fully in the job at hand (or with a new opportunity for those who lost their jobs).  This helped them to understand and interpret the events that were having an impact on them.

Their sense of control empowered the resilient employees to consider ways that they could proactively influence the changes that were affecting them.  Their less resilient colleagues tended to passively withdraw effort, believing there was little they could do to impact what they believed was their fate.

Furthermore, the resilient employees interpreted the stressors and changes as a challenge, and tended to look for the potential opportunities that change would bring about.  They took the outlook that change is an inevitable part of life.  It didn’t mean that these people enjoyed the stress, but the positive outlook they took positioned them to keep an eye open for new opportunities.

My hunch is that Steven Slater didn't view his stress in this way.  The brain simply can't sustain any problem solving when your fight or flight response is firing as if your being chased by a saber tooth tiger. You have two choices:  remain frustrated and take it out on yourself and everyone else, or GROW!  Anyone can act like they have their act together during good times, but only people who want to develop great strength of character will respond well when times are tough.

In the next blog I'll write more on the characteristics of resilience.