Tips for stress management revealed by experts

BPW presents itself as the largest association for high-level professional women in the world and is addressing a major cause of breakdowns in the working population and a source of headache for HR managers.

“Stress and burnout cost economies between 3 and 4 per cent of their GDP every year,” announces Pauline Burgener, president of the Lausanne branch of BPW. “What we want to understand is what factors contribute to this situation and if anything can be done about it,” she says.

The objective of the discussion is also to determine whether women respond differently to stress than men.

As founder and president of a company that supplies the watch and jewelry industry with close to a million haute couture microfiber gloves, cases and cloth covers a year, Babette Keller is a self-made woman who won the prestigious Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman of the Year award in 2009.

As a mother of four and employer of 28, she currently faces the additional stress of working in an area deeply hit by the economic crisis.

“I actually need a certain level of stress to push me forward and make me feel good,” says Keller. “I’m sure that I am like a lot of women.”

Keller is convinced that women experience a different kind of stress to men. “One of our problems is that women cannot segregate their working lives from home. Whenever they are in one, they are thinking of the other,” she says.

Her own company hires only women, preferably divorced women, who tend to be extra motivated. “They are ready to give you all they have,” Keller says. But because the greatest source of tension for most working women is their children, schedules have been adapted and mobiles for urgent calls are allowed.

“Sometimes simple measures can help limit stress,” Keller believes. She also organizes for a masseuse to come in once a week “but don’t put the massage chair just outside the director’s office,” she says in reference to a flop in another company.

Frédérique Deschamps was a high level athlete when she experienced complete meltdown. She has since become a senior work coach, a profession that appears to be directly related to the growing number of people who can no longer cope.

“There are as many women as men who experience burnout, but I observe that the causes and responses are fundamentally different,” reckons Deschamps.

“Men tend to succumb to pressure that is performance and organization related. They respond with cynicism and a form of denial."

“Women on the other hand are more affected by negative work relationships. They experience complete emotional exhaustion,” Deschamps observes.

The common trait is loss of confidence. In order to preserve or regain a sense of purpose, the coach feels that work environments should make people feel useful, with each employee pitching in towards a common goal or cause.

She also underlines the importance of work codes of conduct (charts) that allow to determine who may be “off-side”.

Using the analogy of physical performance, the man who trains the phenomenal 18-year old skiing champion, Lara Gut, uses weight as a metaphor. With the help of graphic lines on charts, Patrick Flaction shows the breaking point beyond which stress injuries may appear in an athlete.

Flaction is the inventor of Myotest, a personal performance measuring system, no larger than an iPod, that supplies athletes with this valuable information.

“It’s the same thing with workloads,” he says. “As a trainer for elite performers, I need to be constantly on the lookout for the fine dividing line between good and bad stress, the small changes in behavior that might be indications of over-load.”

“A discussion too many is better than one too few,” Flaction stresses.

Professor Ronaldus Stoop, who works in the department of physiology of Lausanne University and the Centre for psychiatric neurosciences at Cery Hospital is studying the physiological effects of stress and anxiety on the human body and brain.

“We are now certain that stress affects the immunity system and lowers resistance,” Stoop explains.

His current research concentrates on the potential use of oxytocin, a hormone released by women to ease labor and breastfeeding, and that has been found to suppress the neurotransmitters that excite anxiety.

Pulling a nasal spray out of his pocket, Professor Stoop shows a form of medication with immediate effect that can be useful in situations of great stress. For example, when giving a talk before a crowd.

The general consensus is that the only sure way to avoid dangerous levels of stress is to learn to disconnect. “Why do you think there are so many golf players in high managerial positions?” asks Keller.

“I have learned to drop everything and clear off for a few days when the going gets too rough,” Keller declares. “I just hop on a plane and leave”.

Deschamps believes that it is also important to learn to de-dramatize certain situations by modifying one’s perception. “To give up Hitchcock for Disney,” she explains, can help people gain the objectivity that they put into hibernation when they lose control.

“The notion of control is very important when it comes to analyzing the factors of stress,” Stoop emphasizes.

Recent research suggests that the human brain is programmed to predict the future in order to exert control on the environment. “We lose this control when we can no longer dynamically interact,” he says, confirming that neural damage can set in when stress levels are too high over long periods.

“But the good news is that the damage does not appear to be irreversible since we now know that even brain cells can regenerate,” Stoop explains.

Keller reminds us that “running companies is no different than organizing a family. You need the same sense of fairness, dialogue, stimulation and incitement.”

She then adds that because times are changing, governments should learn to manage society like “you run a company, leading by example”. That’s the only way to obtain positive performance, she concludes.