Friday, August 26, 2011

Stress Response

The world is becoming more cosmopolitan and we are all influencing each other. The fashionable corporate high of fast-track leaders—eyes shining, excess nervous energy, multi-tasking, dynamism personified—is achieved at the expense of a tissue-destroying ‘fight or flight’ response. These individuals do not manage to have ‘rest and repair’ periods between emotional hijacks. No one can be on a constant ‘fight or flight’ high and not destroy themselves.

A fundamental shift in leisure time and spending priorities has taken place in recent years. This includes higher budgets for movies, personal fitness, meditation, holidays, adventure sports and fine arts. You have a much better chance of doing what you love as an artist, sportsman, musician or film maker today than ever before. You do not have to be a bean counter negating your soul for a few rupees more.

It involves no great commitment to adopt global taste in food, clothing, entertainment, eating and experimenting with music or dance. There are no safe, stable jobs any more. The constant need to upgrade your skills to keep your job is challenging and stressful for those who cannot cope with these changes. The decentralised ‘knowledge-worker model’ where there are no manuals and where people have to individually respond to challenges and adopt to them without bosses to guide them or head office to provide instructions, is here.

Along with the above perceptible changes, there will be non-perceptible changes in the type of leadership systems and attitudes which will complicate the individual’s lifestyle in the approaching decades. Leaders today need to deal with others in a much more difficult, participatory way.

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