Creative Reaction

This sobering Harvard Business Review article discusses the link between management and employee health, contrasting good and bad bosses, and the implications are startling.

Poor management practices can adversely affect otherwise healthy employees, raising blood pressure and increasing the level of stress hormones, setting the stage for heart attacks and strokes.

On the other hand, “a present and active manager, providing structure, information and support, counteracts destructive processes in work groups, thereby promoting regenerative rather than stress-related physiological processes in employees.”

There are  three specific behaviors you can exhibit to both reduce stress and lower the risk of heart disease in your employees:

1. giving information and sufficient control to employees in relation to their responsibilities
2. thoroughly explaining goals and subgoals and
3. effectively pushing through and carrying out changes

Read these carefully. Your management skills quite literally make a life or death difference.