Cranfield School of Management
Interview: Clare Harris
Minimise Stress, Maximise Success
SM
Hello, welcome to the Knowledge Interchange Podcast. I am Steve
Macaulay from the Learning Services Team. I am interviewing
Clare Harris a Visiting Fellow at the Praxis Centre about her book
Minimise Stress, Maximise Success. Now Clare, you say in your
book in the 21st century business environment, stress has become a
way of life – an accepted occupational hazard. Does it really have to
be so?
CH
Well, I think it is that way, although we might all wish that it wasn’t.
The speed of communication is so great now, we are bombarded
with information every single day and we all live with corporate
imperatives to jump higher for less money, so I think that stress is
going to be in our workplaces every single day and the key thing is to
learn how to live with it successfully.
SM
I guess the first thing to do is to spot signs – what you call common
complaints of the stressed executive. So can you share some of
these?
CH
Yes, one of the commonest things that stressed people get going
wrong with them is their guts. I have lectured thousands and
thousands of people about stress, I always ask them is there
anybody here who has never had their guts upset by stress and so
far out of many thousands, seven people say they have never had
their guts upset, but of course people don’t talk about that, they don’t
share it with colleagues because it is private and it is embarrassing,
they just cope with it as best they can. And one can make a
difference to this, if you try some of the strategies in the book, they
actually make a physical difference to the way that your body
operates.
SM
Well, let's move on to that then. Under the heading How Can I Help
Myself, you give some very useful practical guidance on what to do
about these and looking at the marketing material at the beginning of
the book you talk about boosting your energy and resilience, putting
pressure in perspective, how to avoid energy and fatigue – now give
me some tips, and I don’t mean pick everything out of the whole
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book, because that is up to people to read it – but are there any tips
that particularly strike in your mind that would start to make a
difference?
CH
I think the key thing is to be willing to prioritise your own self care.
Usually energetic, robust people in the business world just get on
and try and achieve what it is they want to do and their own self care
comes bottom of the list. In fact timetabling, putting in your diary the
kinds of things which are suggested in the book are really a sort of
key to building a different kind of life, a life which more successful
and more stress free.
SM
So, if I book some time in my diary, what are the kinds of things that I
might do for a more stress free existence.
CH
One of the things that we do on courses here is very simple
meditation. Meditation tends to be regarded by people coming to
Cranfield as something that only wacko types do – in fact it is an
incredibly powerful technique for stress release, which is simple, but
not easy. So we begin peeling apart the skills that you need for that
and even five minutes a day of that makes a difference. I also feel it
is really essential that some kind of exercise or stretching or walking,
swimming, whatever actually appeals to you – something on a
regular basis needs to be timetabled and not cancelled when you are
under pressure. There are other things that are very, very
recommended, such as some kind of regular touch therapy. Most
people, in my opinion, live with a certain degree of touch starvation
and the right kind of touch is phenomenally relaxing, it really does
take the tension out of your body. So those would be three at least
of the things that I would prioritise myself on a regular basis.
SM
Thank you. Now there is a section in the book called quick fix
solutions that sounds very attractive – what are they and do they
really work?
CH
They are what I would call the sticking plaster solutions for when you
suddenly realise that you are under a lot of pressure in the moment
and the number one is always going to be your breath. When we
are under pressure we tend to breath very shallowly – it's one way
that we help to keep ourselves braced, ready for anything. What
you can do, even in the most tricky situation is to let that breath go,
breath out a long, slow breath, no one knows you are doing it and
then you take a decent breath in. And that actually releases some of
the tension, it also energises you with the good breath in, so that is
always the number one thing to do and there are quite a few other
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quick fixes in the book which do help.
SM
Give me one other example.
CH
Well another one is that when we are very pressurised we gather
tension in the body, particularly in the shoulders, we all do this and if
you check yourself at any given moment during the day it is likely that
your shoulders are slightly up which sends the message to your brain
I am stressed. So along with the breath that I have just mentioned, I
would suggest that on the out breath you just quietly drop your
shoulders – you will find they go down several inches and that
creates a kind of loop of relaxed shoulders, I am feeling better.
SM
Now, one of the things – and there are some very interesting ideas in
the book – one of the things I would be interested in is saying can
you give any examples where this actually works? This is the cynic
in me saying this all sounds very good, but is there anybody that
actually does do it?
CH
Well, as a matter of fact I was contacted by somebody who is putting
together an MA in a topic of which stress is a part. She contacted
me to involve me in this MA purely because her brother in law had
been on a programme here at Praxis, which included the stress
session and she saw that he had quietly transformed his life and so
she said, what is going on? How come you are a lot calmer than you
used to be, you know, you seem a lot happier and so he told her
about this and her contacting me was a direct consequence of that.
I have all sorts of other little stories from people who have come back
to me and my impression is that if people make even the smallest
changes, it is the thin end of a very good wedge.
SM
Well, that is certainly heartening. Now I would like to just draw the
threads together a bit and say if you were to leave people with a
central message form the book, what would it be?
CH
I think the central message is something like this – your response to
stress is biologically embedded in your body in the first six months of
your life. This comes from an excellent book called Why Love
Matters by a neuro scientist called Sue Gerhardt. Because this is
biologically embedded, it means that you are likely to go through life
always dealing with stress in the same way and reacting to the same
level of stress in the same way. Changing this can be done, as I
have said already, it is simple but not easy and if you work in a
committed way at changing your response to health, it is the case
that you will boost your immune system, your wellbeing will be
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tremendously supported, your long term health will be very much
improved, all of which leads to optimal performance. You will also
be happier.
SM
Great, well that sounds good news. Thank you very much.
CH
You are welcome.
Transcript prepared by Learning Services for the Knowledge Interchange
www.cranfield.ac.uk/som
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Produced by the Learning Services Team
Cranfield School of Management
© Cranfield University 2007