Coping with the stress of uncertainty in COVID times | Dr Jaspreet Ahluwalia | Group HR Head | KBPL (Coca Cola FBO)

Get back to basics and deliver value. Focus on what you can control. How can you perform better, faster, or smarter to deliver on the promise of excellent service? What matters to the organization’s mission or vision? How can your team contribute to that? Once you’ve focused your team on delivering value and started to explore what’s possible, you’re prepared to move forward with a discrete set of priorities. What projects can your team execute in 30, 60, or 90 days that will benefit the organization regardless of which direction the strategy takes?

Cultivate Emotional Steadiness, as ambiguity pushes you out of your comfort zone. It requires that you be calm, transparent, and steady, while painting a vision for the future. Acknowledge your emotions and talk to a peer or your boss. To demonstrate emotional steadiness, share your own emotions and acknowledge those of your team in productive ways. Let team members know that what they feel is okay. Ask them to follow you in avoiding stress responses, frustration, rumors, or other nonproductive behavior.

Practice self-compassion, i.e., being willing to look at your mistakes or failures with kindness and understanding — without harsh criticism or defensiveness. A dose of self-compassion when things are at their most difficult can reduce your stress and improve your performance, by making it easier to learn from your mistakes. Thus, remember that – to err is human, and give yourself a break.

See your work in terms of progress, not perfection. Have a “Get-Better mindset”, where the focus is on developing your ability and learning new skills, i.e. how well are you doing today, compared with how you did yesterday/last month/last year? When you think about what you are doing in terms of learning and improving, accepting that you may make some mistakes along the way, you experience far less stress, and you stay motivated despite the setbacks that might occur.