Or "The Straw That Broke the Camel's Back"

This article is presented by my colleague, Phil Yalden, from the Work Life team.It's a very thought-provoking piece and will, I'm sure, strike a chord with many of us.

Some situations in life, and especially work, are clearly large causes of stress and anxiety. It’s reasonable that most people will have some stress (probably a lot of stress) when facing redundancy, or some disciplinary action at work. What is less obvious are the more commonplace work situations that still seem to cause lots of stress and anxiety. These are “the little things”.

Little things like: the irritation you feel when your boss reads their emails while you’re discussing a problem with them; the anger felt when your comments at a meeting are ignored; the frustration when a colleague doesn’t give you eye contact.

These little things are what researchers call “micro-inequities”.

These micro-inequities are the subtle, often non-verbal, signals that we pick up on – a gesture, a glance at a watch, a tone of voice, body language and so on. These subtleties are often more powerful than the words they accompany.

Ok, so someone ignoring you isn’t in the same league as being made redundant but the cumulative effect of these micro-inequities is that you can be left feeling marginalised and under-valued, particularly if the offending person is your boss or another person in a position of power.

So what can you do if you find that you’re the “victim” of such micro-inequities at work? How can you rid the workplace of these behaviours?

Well, as they say, why not start with your own heart? Are you “guilty” yourself of any of the same behaviours? Could you give out more positive signals yourself? Does your gaze fall away when someone’s talking to you? Do you glance at your watch or your emails when someone approaches you?

If so then you could be having quite a negative impact on your colleagues, even more so if you’re their supervisor.

What about other people’s behaviours – well you can’t change these directly, but by using assertiveness skills and giving out more positive signals you can influence other people’s behaviour, and reduce the unnecessary stress in work relationships. If you’ve built up a solid working relationship then it may be possible to have an open discussion about “the little things” – perhaps your boss is unaware that he/she keeps glancing at emails. Micro-inequities are fascinating, but keep them in perspective – don’t read too much into every gesture. Often people’s quirks are unintentional habits and are quite innocent. Most people want to reduce unnecessary stress in the work place - they want to concentrate on the big things, not the little things.

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