All jobs have stress, risk, and drama associated with them. Television programs from the last decade (Deadliest Catch, Ax Men, Does Someone Have to Go? Kitchen Nightmares, and Restaurant Impossible, to name a few) have captured a number of different challenges employees and business owners face on a daily basis. However, business owners have more stress and anxiety than other employees. Entrepreneurs have the double-edged sword of having to deal with their own stress from being responsible for running the business themselves and having fewer resources to help their employees cope with stress. For example, most small businesses do not have human resource departments or employee assistance programs. Sometimes the pressure is small, and other times it is overwhelming. Read the following situations and think about how you would handle the pressure.....

Discussion Questions 

1. In these scenarios, your personal life as well as your business life are both creating stress. How can the situation in your personal life make the stress in your business better or worse?

2. For each of these scenarios, you’re definitely suffering a lot of stress. How might stress affect your attitude? What should you do to avoid creating a toxic work environment for your employees?

3. In some of these situations, the employees know things are bad and are likely feeling stressed and worried. What can you do to help employees cope with the situation? How can you keep your best employees committed and not jumping ship to other, more stable firms?

4. How, with all this stress, might you motivate yourself to keep going? How do you balance the need to escape or hide from problems with the responsibility of giving it your all to keep the business going?

5. Sometimes, a business will fail. According to the Small Business Administration, more businesses close each month than open, and more than half of all businesses won’t last 5 years (SBA. gov). If your business were to fail and close as in Situation 3, what would you do to cope with the stress and emotional turbulence from its closing? How could you turn such a negative experience into something positive?