First things first, writing things down helps. You structure your thoughts and ensure clarity. Storytelling and writing things down takes the pressure off. A few words are enough. If you write down your situation or your emotions in a few words, it becomes clear “what is actually stressing me out right now”.

If you add a number between 0 and 10 to your stress situation, you are also documenting your current stress level.

Writing down your stressor takes you away from a vague idea or the unspecific feeling of being stressed and towards more clarity. You can think about options for action. In concrete terms.

If you improve your skills by writing down your stress situation, you will have a documented basis from which to start dealing with stress more effectively.

•  Your awareness of recognizing stress and countering your stressors at an early stage will change.
• Your ability to deal with stress will lead to a much more balanced life with an improved work-health balance.
• Your actions will change because you will have a different view of your stressors.

If you share your stress issues anonymously on the platform, you will also see that you are not alone with your problem. You can be confident that many other people have the same or similar challenges. You have listeners and supporters who not only share questions, but also their own solutions. This creates a high level of trust and security; the solutions have already worked well. They engage in the tried and tested method of changing perspectives.

Registration is necessary to ensure trust and security. We pay particular attention to the communication culture. The platform is moderated and experts from a wide range of specialist areas provide support in finding solutions.

Empowerment and self-efficacy are particularly important to me, after all, this is about you and when you are under stress, you are particularly vulnerable.

The cultural level concerns all stressors that fall into the interpersonal sphere, such as the corporate culture, the way people interact with each other in the company, or the communication and meeting culture. Here too, individual approaches, such as changing individual attitudes and beliefs, will only get you so far.

Many conflicts originate at the cultural level of cooperation. Supervisors, teams or team colleagues can only be chosen to a limited extent, values and attitudes clash, yet cooperation must function ideally if you want to have fun at work.

This is where I particularly contribute my international experience in lateral leadership. International teams are always heterogeneous, and it has always been particularly important to me to put what unites us before what divides us. Leading international projects to success is only possible if the motivation in the team is high and everyone sees the purpose of their task as a contribution to the big picture.

In initial pilot projects, the current meeting culture was significantly improved because the anonymous postings suddenly made it transparent and clear that the communication style in meetings was perceived more as issuing orders and only the ideas of a few people were appreciated. A few changes towards an appreciative meeting culture are now driving the innovative strength of the entire company.