Have you ever gotten into a routine that felt old and tired, or just felt like you were barely making it through your “to do” list, let alone plan for the future and strategize on more efficient ways to run your division or company? We’ve all felt the stress of a monotonous routine, email overload, and some of us, even job burnout. In those moments, it’s important to reflect on the work we’re doing and the ways we can maintain our mental resilience. In doing so, we can learn to manage the stress of an increasingly hectic work life.
Recently, I read an article from the Harvard Business Review that outlines five key tips to help combat those feelings of stress and burnout through more mental training practices leading to more mindful work. You can read the full article here, but one of the pivotal quotes has to do with how we make mindfulness a priority. The author writes, “Implementing multimodal learning and skill development solutions — including a combination of mobile learning, onsite training, webinars, and peer-to-peer learning networks — promotes the greatest chance for mindfulness to become a core competency within an organization. Participants report statistically significant improvements in resilience, and say that mindfulness tools and content delivered in these ways are highly useful for managing stress, improving collaboration and enhancing well-being.”
To me, NACD is the perfect example of this type of “multimodal learning.” Whether it’s at our ChemEdge conference in two weeks or our monthly webinars or in our executive education courses like the Emerging Leaders program, peer-to-peer learning takes place throughout the year and fosters growth for all stages of careers and all types of responsibilities.
This year is an important year at NACD. We are celebrating the 25th anniversary of NACD Responsible Distribution® and the commitment all our members have taken over the years demonstrating their efforts to continuously keep their workers and communities safe. I’m sure that many of you – whether you’ve been with us since 1991, when Responsible Distribution launched, or whether you just joined NACD – have felt stress around leading your companies while also going through the verification process for Responsible Distribution. The good news is that we have exactly the types of tools and resources to help you that are mentioned in the quote I mentioned above. You are not in this alone. There are people, programs and advisers in place to not only help you be more mindful in your approach but to allow you to tap in to these multimodal opportunities as you see fit.
Being mindful about the work we do and finding ways to manage stress in our professional lives is critical to ensuring we perform our jobs in the best possible way. We must take time to think about how we, and how our staff, can combat the feelings of professional stress to make sure the safety and security of our workers and communities remains a top priority.