Before you stop reading – this is not an ad for Viagra! But you may need a glass of red wine after you have read it. This is for all of the wonderful working women out there – the candidates, employees, leaders, small business owners overwhelmed by advice or expectations on what we should do, say, know and achieve in our working week.
Getting up in the morning to go to work has never been more confusing, complicated, pressured, demanding and exhausting. It’s a minefield of performance expectations. There is a wealth of contradictory information out there that tells us how to present for an interview, what we should and shouldn’t say, what skills we need, what to highlight, what not to mention and how to answer behavioural interview questions.
How to act, speak and even sit being always mindful of our body language, use eye contact but not too much, use or not use humour, be personable, don’t highlight weaknesses, don’t call them weaknesses, be careful explaining gaps in your work history (apparently just telling the truth is a huge NO NO) and the list goes on.
Then there is the CV or is it résumé? When writing CV’s, don’t use first or third person, instead use a ‘no person’ approach, “a results driven professional”, or try a human voice in your résumé (yes, that’s a first person approach). Pad it out, dumb it down, impress don’t intimidate, demonstrate capability not over qualification, highlight your soft skills, only highlight your achievements, use keywords, be confident but don’t come across as arrogant.
Does this all sound familiar? And then you arrive at work. Time to deliver results, meet KPI’s, empower staff, motivate the team, develop employees, cut costs, meet budgets, stay positive, influence management, focus on the goal, innovate, continuously improve, learn and develop, solve world hunger, stop global warming and that’s all before the mid-morning coffee run.
It’s all achievable of course because we have aggressive goals and hard earned rewards or was it because we didn’t set aggressive goals that were too hard to meet? Quickly slurp your coffee because then it’s back to work as we need to make people the priority or is it KPI’s, or service delivery, no it was the customer, maybe training and development, deadlines…no that’s right, the budget takes priority.
Actually back it up a little; The State of the Global Workplace report recently released by Gallup found that only 24%, of Australian and New Zealand staff were “engaged” in their role. So maybe that’s the priority?
Along the way don’t forget to be a great communicator, real but not too real, funny but not inappropriately so, approachable but not too familiar, open but don’t give too much away, informative but not verbose, succinct but clear, consistent but innovative, solutions focused but not opinionated, flexible but not malleable and focus on results, focus on people, focus on the customer, focus on the bottom line.
Let’s not forget the HR metrics, performance appraisals, health and safety, engagement surveys, data analysis and reporting that we need to participate in, in an engaging, motivating, empowering, positive, results driven and purposeful way. All whilst harnessing the power of emotional intelligence, embracing our feminist beliefs, reducing stress and keeping a work/life balance.
Phew….is it lunchtime yet? No time to leave the office for lunch so eat at your desk but don’t forget to stay active and focus on your health and wellbeing. It’s now time to be productive, have fun at work, garner respect, build relationships, be the best leader that you can be, improve morale, manage performance issues and the mother of all time chomping activities; read and respond to those emails that keep pouring in.
When you consider all of this is it any wonder some of us are suffering from performance anxiety? Actually, is anyone not suffering performance anxiety? It seems that, for the most part, gone are the days where you could just be yourself. Now you have to be everything to everyone in every situation at every time; juggling work commitments whilst being (or appearing to be) the perfect mother, partner, domestic goddess, employee, business owner, friend, sibling, daughter.
So where does all of this information and expectation overload come from? Many places no doubt but for some – myself included — it’s a tad self-inflicted. I subscribe to a myriad of e-newsletters on HR, IR, women’s issues, business, innovation and the list goes on and; all bursting with articles on the how, what, where and why.
And these publications are great; they provide informative, helpful and insightful articles that inform, intrigue, and inspire. After all that’s what they are there for and staying informed and challenging and stretching yourself is an important part of one’s life journey.
But the conflicting information and opinions out there can appear to be overwhelming at times. You may run the risk of being sucked into the vortex; coming out the other end with no idea who you are, what to focus on, who you need to be, how you should behave or what to believe.
So what is the answer? How do we make sense out of it all? As someone who has been afflicted with this ‘performance anxiety’ from time to time all I can suggest is that we just try to be true to ourselves and not get too caught up in it all. We can be our own worst enemies sometimes so maybe we need to learn to cut ourselves some slack now and then.
If you head off the path and into the bushes, then stop, take a deep breath, filter the information overload and try to remember why you got up this morning and what you wanted to achieve. Then, get back on the path and try again. Oh…. and try not to take it all too seriously. Well that’s one way you could tackle it but if that’s no help then hang in there as there are plenty of e-newsletters, websites, whitepapers and articles out there that might help clear it up for you.