"i'm going to answer 3 every time because if i say 4 or 5 i am worried and anxious that you're going to fire me."

Welcome to impostor syndrome!

It's not just imposter syndrome. Theres reasonable concern that a company doesn't want to have to deal with illness/someone that cant hack it. I personally wouldn't want to make myself an outlier with this question, so I too would answer 3.

I guess you could approach it that way. I definitely treat job interviews that way (e.g. try not to be negative about a previous employer, even if it is justified).

If I were in a situation where I felt like I needed to approach interactions with my manager this way lest they try to screw me, I don't think I'd be interested in staying in that kind of environment. I guess some folks have overriding priorities where they are willing to endure antagonism and gotchas like that, but sheesh.

I wouldn't say it's antagonism or anything like that, just as you aren't antagonistic towards the gear in your alarm clock. Nevertheless if the gear started playing up, you'd get rid of it without a 2nd thought.

Obviously this is filtered through (emotional) humans, and job roles have differing fungibility, but the corporation doesn't really care about you except perhaps where it benefits itself.

I don't grant the validity of that analogy. People aren't gears of a clock and, when you say they are to a corporation, you are giving them a pass that is built on assumptions of an agency which they lack. Maybe legally you cannot pierce the veil, but ethically and morally a corporation is just other people making decisions and doing things.

If someone is treated this way, a whole cadre of other >people< had to be the ones to enact it. My previous statement stands - maybe there are overriding reasons to do business with people like that for some, but to me that's a hard pass. If you can't trust somebody to even be a decent human being, what can you trust them with?

"What can we do to bring it down to a 2?"

The number doesn't matter as much as doing anything one can to help.

eg, imposter syndrome. It has a cure. But being okay bringing it up and asking for help is required steps. This doesn't have to be with a manager. It can be with a therapist. People care, and if they don't, is it worth working in an environment like that?

Good point.

One way I could try to pre empt this is to say: "nobody was ever fired for answering 4 or 5 to this question"

But I'm not sure how effective that would be.

That question (and all variations of it) give me stress just thinking about answering lol.

I immediately begin to micro-analyze what the likely outcome would be for each scenario. Does these get recorded, and reflected upon to judge my ability? Will it spread? What will the 1on1 manager think of me? If I answer 4-5 am I not capable? If I answer 1-2, are they going to think I'm more capable than I am, and overwork me?

etc etc. Probably not a fault of the question / approach.. just how I operate. Every move in life is a chess move.. and it's stressful.

You'd think I'd be further along in life with that attitude. Yet, it's a fairly recent (~10years) adjustment.

I Am Declaring War on STRESS! Denholm The IT Crowd | Series 1 Episode 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZTvMYQSl_w

We had someone answer 5 because they had just had a family member die... I asked him if he wanted to apply for bereavement leave.. he declined because he wanted to immerse himself in work.

I kept up with him until he felt at around a 3 and then I asked him to take bereavement then... he kept sending me pictures of his WoW Classic character doing quests during his vacation... love that guy.

I'm afraid I wouldn't believe you.

With rare exceptions, management wants to hear 'no problem' and that 'everything is fine'.

The next thing to do is a PowerPoint chart for the 2nd level managers showing names and stress levels over time with trends.

> With rare exceptions, management wants to hear 'no problem' and that 'everything is fine'.

This makes me so sad. As a manager (formerly an engineer), I want to hear about problems as soon as possible! I can help! It's my job to clear roadblocks, to help find interesting projects, to keep the team working well together for the long term.

It doesn't do me, the engineer, the project, or the team any good to hide problems. Such a bummer when managers push for short term results over the long term health of the team.

I should be more clear. When I say 'management', I'm really referring to 2nd level managers and up. From my experience, line managers are either the member of the technical staff who tells the lords and masters that everything is fine (and are mostly fighting fires or pushing a chunk of hardware through a pipeline) or they have three ring binders full of yearly company-supplied HR stuff. In neither case is there enough power to really 'run' things. Heaven help you if there's a completely separate creature known as the 'project manager'.

OTOH, directors/VPs (and other intermediate levels in larger firms) are not only the people that senior technical staff will run to for various reasons, but also are the folks who love to hear 'no problem' and that 'everything is fine'. Bringing them things to worry about is best done cautiously. In the final analysis, the worker bees are ERUs.

YMMV (very much so) of course. I can speak only for about a dozen companies. The world is a big place.

Companies loose more when people run into burnout and become sick or leave the company. If the company doesn’t care about your wellbeing, leave.

Also you should leave when there is more middle management then people who do real work.

This seems appropriate when talking about optimizing stress levels:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZTvMYQSl_w

Another angle is to declare from the start wanting improve the situation whatever their stress level is, and ask what your efforts should be directed at.

If they don't have much to complain about it will be low priority items, if they're in a 4-5 situation it will be a longer discussion. At least they might be more open to explain heavy stuff if they know you're there to solve them and not just analyse.

"...because they all understood intuitively that they would be fired if they ever did. Also, past performance is not indicative of future results."

So it would be zero effective. Employees cannot trust their employer to act ethically, at any level of management, ever. Full stop. Every measurement that could be used to influence management will be gamed. The employee can't know whether their manager is asking out of genuine concern, or due to a top-down directive to identify stressed workers, probably so they can be fired first.

If you want to know if the employees are stressed or unhappy, ask via an anonymizing third-party, such as their union rep.

Holy crap this is so true. Anyone who's been on the receiving end of "wow, if you are so miserable here, maybe you'd be better off somewhere else" knows what I'm talking about :P. Being quite frustrated cuz work shenanigans makes shenanigan makers quite uncomfortable.

That's why you should ask "From 1 to 5 except 3" and "from 1 to 10 except 7" because these values are "always" used as the default "I don't really care" answer.

I mean, what if I'm actually totally fine though and in a good place.

In my 20's I would have told you the truth. Now I would lie to you, because I've worked in places that used this sort of thing against their employees.

If it's a 1 or 2 I will assume you want to push it to 3 as well.

It's not great, of course, but there is huge potential downside to being honest.

Exactly. HR is never your friend. Join a union if you want peer support. Actually, just join a union.

It usually depends who you're being honest to. For example, it's usually a good idea to be honest with your manager, since you being successful makes them more successful. But anyone else who doesn't stand to gain from your fortune, you're right it's probably not a good idea to come across as vulnerable.

I get that this comes from a good place, but unless you have a lot of trust with your team then you might get a lot who will lie.

If I didn't trust my lead to not potentially think less of me (consciously or not), or even worse, to use my answer against me somehow (toxic environment) ... then I definitely would answer "2 or 3" even if I was a 5.

If your team doesn't have enough trust to answer this question there are bigger problems in your company.

That said, I've managed people who have mental health problems that results in high anxiety from answering these types of questions. As a manager / lead you have to know your employees and work with each of them as an individual.

Is it a mental health problem or just human nature?

This is great.

But the real problem comes when the stress is caused by the team lead!

at least they can do something about it!

An honest answer to that question requires the employee having a high degree of trust in the team lead. If they won't answer, the lead can't fix it, and the employee may feel more stressed by having to gloss over their feelings. That said, it's a great question to be asking if the trust is established first.

What if the stress is mostly from outside the job?

Some of it could be "solvable" (better pay, better hours, ...), but some of it may not (family problems, health issues, ...).

Is it taken into account or addressed?

A friend had some issues with things outside their work that were impinging on their work, and this was eventually brought up in an HR meeting. HR mentioned that their health insurance provides a number of therapy sessions for free with no co-pay, so they accessed that, and found it really helped them. They also agreed a work-from-home scheme. A few weeks later, my friend was doing significantly better both in work and outside it.

Trying to help with non-work-related things directly is a minefield, but ensuring that the employee has access to everything they need to succeed should be table stakes.

A good 1:1 allows the direct report to share personal information, because the personal stuff affects the work. Take into account: yes, because turning a blind eye stunts your ability to manage your team to success. Addressed: during work hours, only insomuch as official company policy and built-in supports apply to the person's situation. Individuals are free to offer whatever other support they feel is appropriate outside of work context (although a good manager will also take into account how this will affect their team now and in the future)

I think trying to solve personal (e.g., non work related) problems is a minefield. I would not, as a team lead, go there beyond a generic offer to talk. Most companies likely have standard policies for health and similar personal issues and trying to make your own policy on any serious issue there can backfire badly.

But job-related stress is there and is often solvable (e.g., a developer may be stressed if he committed to a a week's worth of work done in 2 days, etc.). My 2c.

I was never stressed before becoming a parent. My job pressure is the same but the combined stress is what hurts.

Flexible work hours, remote work and a strictly never-over-40-hours work week has been absolutely essential to be able to cope and still be a good parent (hockey practice weekdays at 4 twice a week for example).

One example of solving an unsolvable problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Wolpaw#Personal_life

Engineering manager here.

Solving stress out of work is not reasonable. But knowing about it and being flexible is. One key reason to understand this is that many people recommend vacations to people who are stressed. If stress is coming from outside then this has a negative effect and work may be an escape from whatever other issues.

We all have periods of work stress and life stress. When life stress increases a manager can choose to find ways to decrease an employee’s work based stress.

As a manager I’d consider tools to use might include paid time off, temporary re-assignment to work that is more rewarding/less demanding.

Even simple things like showing concern by following up to find out how those life stresses are coming along and being an ear to listen can go a long way.

If it is I imagine you do what you can to help offset it at work, but ultimately if there's nothing you can do officially I guess you just have to offer your support in whatever way they will accept.

You can also take this the other way. If they say 1, you can ask " What can we do to take it up to 3?".

Or if you work for a company that puts life insurance on you to profit from your death: "What can we do to take that to a 6?"

> If my teammate says 4 or 5, I ask what we can do to bring it down to a 3.

Why not 1? Is the only way to work effectively to be moderately stressed?

Taking small steps to solve big (especially personally existential) problems can be significantly less daunting that solving the world in one go. Obviously, getting everyone's stress level down to 1 would be best, but improving even a bit to get it down to 3 is a (gigantic) first step.

That makes sense. I guess I read it as '3 is the goal' rather than '3 is a step in the right direction.'

Actually, yes.

https://www.google.com/search?q=stress+productivity+curve

I use a 1 to 5 scale and every time the respondent turns it into a 1 to 10. I always get 3.5 or 4.5. I dont get it, what is that 1 to 5 is not fine enough?

Assuming that 3 is "meh" and 5 is "CATATONIC WITH AWFULNESS", that only really leaves 4 for what feels like quite a large continuum, if I feel at all below par. Having 4 options to fill the "below average" part of the scale, rather than 2 feels necessary to me.

It's the net promoter score all over again.

I don't know if there are inventories for depression, but every time someone tells me I'm a bit talkative I take the Young Mania Ratings Scale. It's a wonderful, wonderful tool:

https://psychology-tools.com/test/young-mania-rating-scale

Seems like an odd thing to complain about... I mean you are asking someone to boil down (often) and entire year into 1 of 5 numbers. I don't find it shocking that with such rough granularity people opt for smaller intervals than 1.

Are you trying to justify arguing that they're not actually at a high stress level? That doesn't seem very nice. 3.5 and 4.5 are perfectly within 1 to 5 so I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

1-5 with half increments has 9 possible scores which is basically the same as 1-10. I think this is what is meant, not "people say 4.5/5 but nobody is really that stressed, they must be thinking 4.5/10".

Really wished my lead would ask this. I might suggest it!

Why don't you be proactive and suggest it anyway to your lead? I mean what's the downside!

He goes from a 5 to a 6

My company does this. Everyone's answer is always either 2 or 3. Anyone who answers 4 or 5 is going to get a talking-to and special attention and that's the last thing they want unless they're genuinely on the verge of quitting.

It's not a meaningful KPI where I work, since everyone's basically bullshitting all the time to keep the number low.

That sounds like a terrible place to work. I'd be looking for a new job.

Surely everyone who ever gets asked these sorts of questions just says what they think the person asking wants to hear?

That is an interesting question. How do you check its plausibility?

I was in a high pressured project for about 3 years and saw many engineers leave the project due to it. My fear that for the engineers still in it after 2nd year, their stress level of 4-5 has become the new stress level of 3. It has essentially masked the problem.

You sound like an excellent team lead!

Asking that question is the simple part. I am more curious what he actually does afterwards to reduce the stress..

I wouldn't dismiss the effect of simply asking the question. Often the boss can't do anything about it. But it's helpful for many employees to be at least heard.

I find that, almost all the time, in all of the places I have worked, I feel worse when a higher-up tries to make myself or the group feel less stressed. They have always, almost universally, tried to make it sound like it is not bad. Or they say, "Take time off, and do not respond to emails." And if you do that, the rest of the team gets crushed, and then you have an insane amount of work when you get back, which pretty much wipes out the time off (in 2 days or less).

Why would you respond to emails on vacation? If the rest of the team gets crushed when someone takes their allotted time off, there are bigger issues at play.

Exactly. Unless it is a temporary stressful time of the year (like a big ship date coming up), then coming back from vacation shouldn’t be resulting in the rest of the team getting crushed or you getting swamped on your first days back. In which case, i would personally postpone the vacation. I know that work shouldnt dictate personal vacation plans, but luckily it never feels this way for me, because big ship dates and crunch periods are so damn rare on my team. Worst case scenario i just postpone my vacation until the next month (my own choice), and then i go fully stress-free.

It never feels like i have to plan my vacations around work, and my previous manager was very strictly insisting on no emails or comms while you were on vacation, and i loved how it actually worked out.

Yeah, being a hero can hide the real issues.

Totally. For most humans the feeling of being listened to is already a huge step.

An inappropriate neck massage usually reduces the stress..

I actually had a boss who did this for me back in the 90s at a small startup... was definitely appreciated!

Relatedly, I've heard that in Helsinki they have some mobile saunas which are parked in front of businesses which are available for stressed out employees... not sure how true it is.

Would it be ok for you to share :

    - common sources of stress
    - common tricks to solve them

I think other comments in this thread have done a great job of pointing to some common sources and their resolution. I'll mention a few things I've found interesting in discussing the question over the years:

1. I am often the source of unexpected stress.

Sometimes it's something I said (or didn't say). It may be something that gets interpreted in a way I didn't expect. Simply clarifying what I meant or discussing the matter further usually resolves the more serious aspects of the issue.

2. It's frequently a great way to address issues that improve performance or productivity.

This is not the point. But a lot of times I'll have a developer, especially a younger developer, say something like, "I'm really stressing out over this user story I'm working on." Then we have a higher level discussion on design or scope or something else that's blocking them.

I also learn important business-related stuff I might not have known otherwise. "Wait, you're working on that? Why are we working on that?" Or, "Oh, cool, I didn't realize we we're doing that." And then we discuss that with the goal of taking the stress out of things.

3. Personal issues do come up.

Occasionally my teammate will ask something like, "Are we talking about stuff here in the office or home, too?" I'll usually respond anything goes but note that my ability to help is largely constrained by things I can control here in the office. But that includes, as other have suggested, a more flexible schedule, days off, or referrals to others that may be better qualified to help. A manager's ability to assist is going to depend to a certain extent on the culture and policies of the organization. But as others have pointed out, sometimes the most important thing for the person you're talking to is just being heard out.

I'm a little surprised by the level of skepticism exhibited in the response to my original comment. I mean I understand it. But if your response to your manager asking this question in a 1-on-1 is to immediately question your manager's motives, I'd recommend looking for another job. I'm not saying it will be easy to find one, especially one with an organization or supervisor who is necessarily any better. But as this thread shows, they are out there. And if that is your reaction and you're not exploring your options, I think you're ignoring a huge signal regarding your wellbeing.

I'd also say if this is a question you think it would help to discuss with your manager and you're not sure how to bring it up, maybe ask them the question.

Finally, my point in mentioning this is to hopefully encourage more leads and managers to ask this question or some variant of it and pay attention to the issues raised in this thread. If your reports are unduly stressed out, you're not getting your best performance out of them. You're not really doing your job.

And to clarify this isn't an official metric in any sense. It's really just an icebreaker to get to underlying issues that may affect performance and wellbeing. 3 is a step on the way to 2. 2 is optimal in my view. But if someone is a 1 and they're getting their work done, all the better!

I'm hoping it's a corrective to a lot of the braindead KPIs and metrics and just generally toxic practices that are out there. But, yes, something like that IT Crowd clip is a potential unintended consequence of this question in the wrong organization. To the extent you can make things better for yourself and others, please do so.

If I can help anyone, you can probably guess my gmail address. Feel free to drop me an email.

Maybe you could start by not framing the entire world in terms of numbers?

Is 0 a red flag also? :)

On a scale of 1 to 5, 0 is definitely some color flag.

If 5 is red, 1 must be violet. So I guess 0 is an ultraviolet flag.

Automatic drug test, no doubt.

I understand your intentions, but you should try to be clear with your directs that the stress you are talking about is work related only, and even more specifically, work related stress not caused by you directly.

Non-work stress can certainly intrude on work life, and you can help out with that as long as you tread very carefully.

Years ago, I noticed one of my reports had been performing uncharacteristically poorly, often late to work, making sloppy mistakes etc. I dug into it a bit in one of our one-on-one meetings and turns out he had a lot of things going on in his personal life, his girlfriend had been laid off from her job, there was an illness in the family etc.

All we did as a company was give him two weeks off work so he could focus on dealing with things, and he was back to normal, and went on to have a long and successful tenure at the company.

This worked only because we were a very small company, and he and I had a pretty good personal relationship and hung out socially outside of work, so he felt comfortable enough to confide in me given the opportunity.

yes i agree but this same thing can cut both ways. Source: have spent many years building healthy teams with many directs and direct managers. There is a way to broach the subject of personal stress in a 1x1 but an internet comment box is not the right place to suggest it imho.

Only down to a 3? lol. That makes it sound like your goal is to always have some fire under them.