Pengantar LISREL

Pengetahuan dasar tentang bagaimana membentuk suatu model dalam lisrel, semoga dapat memberi sedikit gambaran mengenai Lisrel.




Notasi

Model LISREL dapat dijabarkan dalam bentuk delapan buah matriks, sbb :
- 2 mendefinisikan persamaan struktural,
- 2 mendefinisikan indikator atau konstruk ,
- 1 menyatakan korelasi dari konstruk variabel eksogen,
- 3 mendefinisikan error pengukuran persamaan terstruktur dan variabel endogen serta eksogen.

Notasi matriks selengkapnya dapat dilihat pada tabel sbb :

Tabel 1. Matriks dalam model LISREL

Subskrip pada tabel 1 mempunyai arti sebagai berikut :
m = jumlah konstruk eksogen
n = jumlah konstruk endogen
p = jumlah indikator konstruk eksogen
q = jumlah indikator konstruk endogen

Notasi konstruk serta variabel indikatornya pada tabel 1 adalah sebagai berikut :
ξ = konstruk eksogen
η = konstruk endogen
X = indikator dari konstruk eksogen
Y = indikator dari konstruk endogen

Contoh aplikasi :

Model LISREL sebagai berikut, misalkan terdapat 3 variabel endogen (Y) dan 3 variabel eksogen (X), Model diagram jalurnya adalah seperti gambar di bawah ini :

Gambar 1. Diagram jalur yang menyatakan hubungan kausal

Dari Diagram Jalur Kepada Notasi LISREL

1. Membentuk Persamaan Struktural dari Diagram Jalur
Langkah pertama adalah untuk menterjemahkan diagram jalur ke dalam persamaan struktural untuk setiap variabel endogen. Persamaannya sebagai berikut.



2. Menotasikan Indikator-Indikator dan Konstruk
Apabila persamaan struktral telah ditetapkan, pengukuran untuk tiap konstruk harus didefinisikan. Pada contoh di atas, setiap konstruk memiliki 2 indikator , seperti terlihat pada tabel berikut :

Tabel 2. Konstruk dan Indikatornya

3. Menentukan Model Persamaan Struktural dan Model Pengukuran LISREL
Berdasarkan diagram jalur dan indikator dari konstruk, maka dapat ditentukan persamaan baikbagi model struktural juga bagi model pengukuran.

Tabel 3. Model Persamaan Struktural

Berdasarkan indikator-indikator dari konstruk eksogen dan endogen, maka dapat dibentuk persamaan model pengukuran seperti berikut :

Tabel 4. Persamaan Model Pengukuran

4. Menentukan Korelasi Persamaan Struktural
Pada diagram jalur terdapat 2 korelasi matriks, yaitu Phi matriks yang menyatakan korelasi antar konstruk eksogen, yaitu konstruk 1-2. Pada konstruks endogen terdapat korelasi antara konstruks 1 dan 3, dinyatakan dengan matriks Psi.

Tabel 5. Matriks Korelasi Konstruks Eksogen (Φ)

Tabel 6. Matriks Korelasi Konstruks Endogen (Ψ)

5. Korelasi pada Indikator Model Pengukuran
Pada pembentukan model, antara indikator variabel dapat saja terjadi korelasi. Namun korelasi tersebut tidak dapat terjadi antara variabel indikator eksogen dengan endogen. Pada model LISREL contoh di atas, misalkan ditentukan terdapat korelasi antara variabel indikator X1 dengan X2, juga antara Y3 dengan Y4.

Tabel 7. Matriks Korelasi Pengukuran Error Indikator Eksogen (Theta-delta θδ)

Tabel 8 Matriks Korelasi Pengukuran Error Indikator Endogen (Theta-epsilon θε)

Proses penotasian model untuk keperluan estimasi sudah lengkap. Diagram jalur pada gambar 1, dapat diterjemahkan kedalam model persamaan struktural LISREL pada gambar 2., sbb :

Gambar 2. Notasi LISREL Model Persamaan Struktural

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Pengetahuan dasar Analisis Jalur / Path Analysis

Analisis jalur dikembangkan oleh Sewall Wright (1934). Tujuan dari analisis jalur adalah untuk menerangkan akibat langsung dan tidak langsung dari beberapa variabel sebagai variabel penyebab, terhadap beberapa variabel lainnya sebagai variabel akibat.

Untuk lebih jelasnya tentang pengetahuan dasar path analysis atau analisis jalur => Download Lengkap Gratis

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Trust Rules: The Most Important Secret About Trust

From Susan M. Heathfield,
Your Guide to Human Resources.

What Is Trust?

Trust. You know when you have trust; you know when you don’t have trust. Yet, what is trust and how is trust usefully defined for the workplace? Can you build trust when it doesn’t exist? How do you maintain and build upon the trust you may currently have in your workplace? These are important questions for today’s rapidly changing world.

Trust forms the foundation for effective communication, employee retention, and employee motivation and contribution of discretionary energy, the extra effort that people voluntarily invest in work.

When trust exists in an organization or in a relationship, almost everything else is easier and more comfortable to achieve.

In reading about trust, I was struck by the number of definitions that purportedly describe trust in understandable ways - but don’t.

The Three Constructs of Trust

Tway defines trust as, "the state of readiness for unguarded interaction with someone or something." He developed a model of trust that includes three components.

He calls trust a construct because it is "constructed" of these three components: "the capacity for trusting, the perception of competence, and the perception of intentions."

Thinking about trust as made up of the interaction and existence of these three components makes “trust” easier to understand. The capacity for trusting means that your total life experiences have developed your current capacity and willingness to risk trusting others.

The perception of competence is made up of your perception of your ability and the ability of others with whom you work to perform competently at whatever is needed in your current situation. The perception of intentions, as defined by Tway, is your perception that the actions, words, direction, mission, or decisions are motivated by mutually-serving rather than self-serving motives.

Why Trust Is Critical in a Healthy Organization

How important is building a trusting work environment? According to Tway, people have been interested in trust since Aristotle. Tway states, “Aristotle (384-322 BC), writing in the Rhetoric, suggested that Ethos, the Trust of a speaker by the listener, was based on the listener's perception of three characteristics of the speaker.

"Aristotle believed these three characteristics to be the intelligence of the speaker (correctness of opinions, or competence), the character of the speaker (reliability - a competence factor, and honesty - a measure of intentions), and the goodwill of the speaker (favorable intentions towards the listener).” I don’t think this has changed much even today.

Additional research by Tway and others shows that trust is the basis for much of the environment you want to create in your work place. Trust is the necessary precursor for:
• feeling able to rely upon a person,
• cooperating with and experiencing teamwork with a group,
• taking thoughtful risks, and
• experiencing believable communication.

How to Maintain Trust

The best way to maintain a trusting work environment is to keep from injuring trust in the first place. The integrity of the leadership of the organization is critical.

The truthfulness and transparency of the communication with staff is also a critical factor. The presence of a strong, unifying mission and vision can also promote a trusting environment.

Providing information about the rationale, background, and thought processes behind decisions is another important aspect of maintaining trust. Another is organizational success; people are more apt to trust their competence, contribution, and direction when part of a successful project or organization.

What Injures the Trust Relationship?

Yet, even in an organization in which trust is a priority, things happen daily that can injure trust.

A communication is misunderstood; a customer order is misdirected and no one questions an obvious mistake. The owner of a company that went through a bankruptcy, even though trusted on the “intentions” side of Tway’s trust model, was severely injured in the eyes of the work force, in the “perceived competence” aspects of the model.

In the first aspect of the construct, capacity for trust, even when organizations do their best, many people are unwilling to trust because of their life experiences. In many workplaces, people are taught to mistrust as they are repeatedly misinformed and misled.

Several years ago, I spoke at a conference attended by 400 executive leaders of metalforming corporations. I asked the group how many of them still had fear in their organizations, despite all of their efforts to build trust. Every hand in the room was raised. As a consequence of sessions such as this, I have determined that trust is an issue, to one degree or another, in most organizations.

The Critical Role of the Leader or Supervisor in Trust Relationships

Simon Fraser University assistant professor Kurt Dicks studied the impact of trust in college basketball team success. After surveying the players on 30 teams, he determined that players on successful teams were more likely to trust their coach.

He found these players were more likely to believe that their coach knew what was required for them to win. They believed the coach had their best interests at heart; they believed the coach came through on what he promised. (Something to think about: trust in their teammates was hardly deemed important in the study.)

Del Jones of the Gannett News Service reports that in a March, 2001 Wirthlin Worldwide study of employees, 67 percent said they were committed to their employers. Only 38 percent felt their employers were committed to them.

In another study, by C. Ken Weidner, an assistant professor at the Center for Organization Development at Loyola University Chicago, findings suggest several implications for organizational performance and change.

Weidner found that a manager’s skill in developing relationships that reduce or eliminate distrust, have a positive impact on employee turnover. He feels that turnover may be a result of organizations failing to “draw people in.” He also found that trust in the supervisor is associated with better individual performance.

Specific Trust Relationship Building and Maintaining Steps

You cannot always control the trust you experience in your larger organization, but you can act in ways that promote trust within your immediate work environment. The following are ways to create and preserve a trusting work environment.
• Hire and promote people, who are capable of forming positive, trusting interpersonal relationships with people who report to them, to supervisory positions.
• Develop the skills of all employees and especially those of current supervisors and people desiring promotion, in interpersonal relationship building and effectiveness.
• Keep staff members truthfully informed. Provide as much information as you can comfortably divulge as soon as possible in any situation.
• Expect supervisors to act with integrity and keep commitments.
If you cannot keep a commitment, explain what is happening in the situation without delay. Current behavior and actions are perceived by employees as the basis for predicting future behavior. Supervisors who act as if they are worthy of trust will more likely be followed with fewer complaints.
• Confront hard issues in a timely fashion. If an employee has excessive absences or spends work time wandering around, it is important to confront the employee about these issues. Other employees will watch and trust you more.
• Protect the interest of all employees in a work group. Do not talk about absent employees, nor allow others to place blame, call names, or point fingers.
• Display competence in supervisory and other work tasks. Know what you are talking about, and if you don’t know—admit it.
• Listen with respect and full attention. Exhibit empathy and sensitivity to the needs of staff members.
• Take thoughtful risks to improve service and products for the customer.
• If you are a supervisor or a team member, set high expectations and act as if you believe staff members are capable of living up to them.

The Human Resources professional has a special role in promoting trust. So do line managers. You coach managers and supervisors about all of the appropriate roles described above in building trust relationships.

You also influence the power differentials within the organization by developing and publishing supportive, protective, honorable policies. You are influential in building appropriate social norms among people who are doing different jobs in your organization.

Engage in trust building and team building activities only when there is a sincere desire in your organization to create a trusting, empowering, team-oriented work environment. Engaging in these activities for any but honorable reasons is a travesty and a sham. People will know the difference, or they will find out, and then, they will never trust you.

Build a Trust Relationship Over Time

Trust is built and maintained by many small actions over time. Marsha Sinetar, the author, said, “Trust is not a matter of technique, but of character; we are trusted because of our way of being, not because of our polished exteriors or our expertly crafted communications.”

So fundamentally, trust, and here is the secret I promised in the title of this article, is the cornerstone, the foundation, for everything you'd like your organization to be now and for everything you'd like it to become in the future. Lay this groundwork well.

Trust is telling the truth, even when it is difficult, and being truthful, authentic, and trustworthy in your dealings with customers and staff. Can profoundly-rewarding, mission-serving, life- and work-enhancing actions get any simpler than this? Not likely.

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How to Change Your Culture: Organizational Culture Change

From Susan M. Heathfield,
Your Guide to Human Resources.

Changing your organizational culture is the toughest task you will ever take on. Your organizational culture was formed over years of interaction between the participants in the organization. can feel like rolling rocks uphill.

Organizational cultures form for a reason. Perhaps the current organizational culture matches the style and comfort zone of the company founder. Culture frequently echoes the prevailing management style. Since managers tend to hire people just like themselves, the established organizational culture is reinforced by new hires.

Organizational culture grows over time. People are comfortable with the current organizational culture. For people to consider culture change, usually a significant event must occur.

An event that rocks their world such as flirting with bankruptcy, a significant loss of sales and customers, or losing a million dollars, might get people's attention.

Even then, to recognize that the organizational culture is the culprit and to take steps to change it, is a tough journey. In no way do I mean to trivialize the difficulty of the experience of organizational culture change by summarizing it in this article, but here are my best ideas about culture change that can help your organization grow and transform.

When people in an organization realize and recognize that their current organizational culture needs to transform to support the organization's success and progress, change can occur. But change is not pretty and change is not easy.

The good news? Organizational culture change is possible. Culture change requires understanding, commitment, and tools.

Steps in Organizational Culture Change

There are three major steps involved in changing an organization's culture.
1. My earlier article discusses How to Understand Your Current Culture. Before an organization can change its culture, it must first understand the current culture, or the way things are now. Do take the time to pursue the activities in this article before moving on to the next steps.
2. Once you understand your current organizational culture, your organization must then , and decide what the organizational culture should look like to support success. What vision does the organization have for its future and how must the culture change to support the accomplishment of that vision?
3. Finally, the individuals in the organization must decide to change their behavior to create the desired organizational culture. This is the hardest step in culture change.

Plan the Desired Organizational Culture

The organization must plan where it wants to go before trying to make any changes in the organizational culture. With a clear picture of where the organization is currently, the organization can plan where it wants to be next.

Mission, vision, and values: to provide a framework for the assessment and evaluation of the current organizational culture, your organization needs to develop a picture of its desired future.

What does the organization want to create for the future? Mission, vision, and values should be examined for both the strategic and the value based components of the organization.

Your management team needs to answer questions such as:
• What are the five most important values you would like to see represented in your organizational culture?
• Are these values compatible with your current organizational culture? Do they exist now? If not, why not? If they are so important, why are you not attaining these values?
See the first necessary components for organizational culture change. Next, you ask:
• What needs to happen to create the culture desired by the organization? You cannot change the organizational culture without knowing where your organization wants to be or what elements of the current organizational culture need to change.

What cultural elements support the success of your organization, or not? As an example, your team decides that you spend too much time agreeing with each other rather than challenging the forecasts and assumptions of fellow team members, that typically have been incorrect.

In a second example, your key management team members, who must lead the company, spend most of their time team building with various members of the team on an individual basis, and to promote individual agendas, to the detriment of the cohesive functioning of the whole group.

Third, your company employees appear to make a decision, but, in truth, are waiting for the "blessing" from the company owner or founder to actually move forward with the plan.

In each of these situations, components of the organizational culture will keep your organization from moving forward with the success you deserve. You need to consciously identify the cultural impediments and decide to change them.

However, knowing what the desired organizational culture looks like is not enough. Organizations must create plans to ensure that the desired organizational culture becomes a reality.

Change the Organizational Culture

It is more difficult to change the culture of an existing organization than to create a culture in a brand new organization. When an organizational culture is already established, people must unlearn the old values, assumptions, and behaviors before they can learn the new ones.

The two most important elements for creating organizational cultural change are executive support and training.
• Executive support: Executives in the organization must support the cultural change, and in ways beyond verbal support. They must show behavioral support for the cultural change. Executives must lead the change by changing their own behaviors. It is extremely important for executives to consistently support the change.
• Training: Culture change depends on behavior change. Members of the organization must clearly understand what is expected of them, and must know how to actually do the new behaviors, once they have been defined. Training can be very useful in both communicating expectations and teaching new behaviors.

Additional Ways to Change the Organizational Culture

Other components important in changing the culture of an organization are:
• Create value and belief statements: use employee focus groups, by department, to put the mission, vision, and values into words that state their impact on each employee's job. For one job, the employee stated: "I live the value of quality patient care by listening attentively whenever a patient speaks." This exercise gives all employees a common understanding of the desired culture that actually reflects the actions they must commit to on their jobs.
• Practice effective communication: keeping all employees informed about the organizational culture change process ensures commitment and success. Telling employees what is expected of them is critical for effective organizational culture change.
• Review organizational structure: changing the physical structure of the company to align it with the desired organizational culture may be necessary. As an example, in a small company, four distinct business units competing for product, customers, and internal support resources, may not support the creation of an effective organizational culture. These units are unlikely to align to support the overall success of the business.
• Redesign your approach to rewards and recognition: you will likely need to change the reward system to encourage the behaviors vital to the desired organizational culture.
• Review all work systems such as employee promotions, pay practices, performance management, and employee selection to make sure they are aligned with the desired culture. As an example, you cannot just reward individual performance if the requirements of your organizational culture specify team work. An executive's total bonus cannot reward the accomplishment of his department's goals without recognizing the importance of him playing well with others on the executive team to accomplish your organizational goals.

You can change your organizational culture to support the accomplishment of your business goals. Changing the organizational culture requires time, commitment, planning and proper execution - but it can be done.

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How to Understand Your Current Culture

From Susan M. Heathfield,
Your Guide to Human Resources.

Are you ready to take a look at the culture that exists in your organization? Your assessment of your culture may make you happy; your assessment may make you sad. Whatever your culture assessment teaches you about your culture, though, your culture is what it is. To change your culture, to enhance your culture, to benefit from your culture, you need to see and understand your culture. Take the first step.

It is difficult for people to assess and understand their own culture. When people are at work on a daily basis, many of the manifestations of culture become almost invisible. Assessing your organizational culture is a lot like trying to tell someone how to tie their shoes. Once you've been tying your own shoes every day for years and years, it is hard to describe the process to another person.

How to Observe Your Current Organizational Culture

You can obtain a picture of your current organizational culture in several ways.
To participate in the assessment of your organizational culture, you must:
• Try to be an impartial observer of your culture in action. Look at the employees and their interaction in your organization with the eye of an outsider. Pretend you are an anthropologist observing a group that you have never seen before.
• Watch for emotions. Emotions are indications of values. People do not get excited or upset about things that are unimportant to them. Examine conflicts closely, for the same reason.
• Look at the objects and artifacts that sit on desks and hang on walls. Observe common areas and furniture arrangements.
• When you observe and interact with employees, watch for things that are not there. If nobody mentions something that you think is important (like the customers), that is interesting information. It will help you understand your organization's culture.

Assess Your Organizational Culture

You can assess your current organizational culture in several ways.
Participate in a Culture Walk: One way to observe the culture in your organization is to take a walk around the building, and look at some of the physical signs of culture.
• How is the space allocated? Where are the offices located?
• How much space is given to whom? Where are people located?
• What is posted on bulletin boards or displayed on walls?
• What is displayed on desks or in other areas of the building? In the work groups? On lockers or closets?
• How are common areas utilized?
• What do people write to one another? What is said in memos or email? What is the tone of messages (formal or informal, pleasant or hostile, etc.)? How often do people communicate with one another? Is all communication written, or do people communicate verbally?
• What interaction between employees do you see? How much empotion is expressed during the interaction?

These are just a few of the questions to answer when you observe and assess your organizational culture. Take a culture walk frequently to observe organizational culture in action.

Culture Interviews: Another way to understand the culture of your organization is to interview your employees in small groups. It is just as important, during these interviews, to observe the behaviors and interaction patterns of people as it is to hear what they say about the culture.

Since it is usually difficult for people to put into words what the culture is like, indirect questions will gain the most information. The following are examples of indirect questions you can ask during a culture interview.

• What would you tell a friend about your organization if he or she was about to start working here?
• What is the one thing you would most like to change about this organization?
• Who is a hero around here? Why?
• What is your favorite characteristic that is present in your company?
• What kinds of people fail in your organization?
• What is your favorite question to ask a candidate for a job in your company?

Culture Surveys: Written surveys taken by people in the organization can also provide information about the organizational culture. It is important to create or select the survey using the information collected during the culture walk and the culture interviews.

You can either purchase or custom design a survey. An off-the-shelf survey may have interesting questions on it; it may also have questions which are not relevant to your organization. It has been used in a number of other organizations, though, so the questions may be reliable and validated.

These are ways in which you can observe and understand your organizational culture. The results of your assessment of your organizational culture will tell you what to do more of, less of, stop, or start.

The results from your organizational culture assessment will either confirm the efficacy of the culture you have or provide the encouragement you need to change your organizational culture.

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Six More Characteristics of Culture

From Susan M. Heathfield,
Your Guide to Human Resources.

• People Shape the Culture. Personalities and experiences of employees create the culture of an organization. For example, if most of the people in an organization are very outgoing, the culture is likely to be open and sociable. If many artifacts depicting the company’s history and values are in evidence throughout the company, people value their history and culture. If doors are open, and few closed door meetings are held, the culture is unguarded. If negativity about supervision and the company is widespread and complained about by employees, a culture of negativity, that is difficult to overcome, will take hold.

• Culture is Negotiated. One person cannot create a culture alone. Employees must try to change the direction, the work environment, the way work is performed, or the manner in which decisions are made within the general norms of the workplace.

Culture change is a process of give and take by all members of an organization. Formalizing strategic direction, systems development, and establishing measurements must be owned by the group responsible for them. Otherwise, employees will not own them.

• Culture is Difficult to Change. Culture change requires people to change their behaviors. It is often difficult for people to unlearn their old way of doing things, and to start performing the new behaviors consistently. Persistence, discipline, employee involvement, kindness and understanding, organization development work, and training can assist you to change a culture.

More Characteristics of Culture

Your work culture is often interpreted differently by diverse employees. Other events in people’s lives affect how they act and interact at work too. Although an organization has a common culture, each person may see that culture from a different perspective. Additionally, your employees’ individual work experiences, departments, and teams may view the culture differently.

Your culture may be strong or weak. When your work culture is strong, most people in the group agree on the culture. When your work culture is weak, people do not agree on the culture. Sometimes a weak organizational culture can be the result of many subcultures, or the shared values, assumptions, and behaviors of a subset of the organization.

For example, the culture of your company as a whole might be weak and very difficult to characterize because there are so many subcultures. Each department or work cell may have its own culture. Within departments, the staff and managers may each have their own culture.

Ideally, organizational culture supports a positive, productive, environment. Happy employees are not necessarily productive employees. Productive employees are not necessarily happy employees. It is important to find aspects of the culture that will support each of these qualities for your employees.

Now that you are familiar with this visualization of organizational culture, you will want to explore additional aspects of organizational culture and cultural change. In this way, the concept of culture will become useful to the success and profitability of your

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Central Concepts about Culture

From Susan M. Heathfield,
Your Guide to Human Resources.

Professors Ken Thompson (DePaul University) and Fred Luthans (University of Nebraska) highlight the following seven characteristics of culture through my interpretive lens.

• Culture = Behavior. Culture is a word used to describe the behaviors that represent the general operating norms in your environment. Culture is not usually defined as good or bad, although aspects of your culture likely support your progress and success and other aspects impede your progress.

A norm of accountability will help make your organization successful. A norm of spectacular customer service will sell your products and engage your employees. Tolerating poor performance or exhibiting a lack of discipline to maintain established processes and systems will impede your success.

• Culture is Learned. People learn to perform certain behaviors through either the rewards or negative consequences that follow their behavior. When a behavior is rewarded, it is repeated and the association eventually becomes part of the culture. A simple thank you from an executive for work performed in a particular manner, molds the culture.

• Culture is Learned Through Interaction. Employees learn culture by interacting with other employees. Most behaviors and rewards in organizations involve other employees. An applicant experiences a sense of your culture, and his or her fit within your culture, during the interview process. An initial opinion of your culture can be formed as early as the first phone call from the Human Resources department.

• Sub-cultures Form Through Rewards. Employees have many different wants and needs. Sometimes employees value rewards that are not associated with the behaviors desired by managers for the overall company. This is often how subcultures are formed, as people get social rewards from coworkers or have their most important needs met in their departments or project teams.

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What Is Organizational Culture?

From Susan M. Heathfield,
Your Guide to Human Resources.

People in every workplace talk about organizational culture, that mysterious word that characterizes a work environment. One of the key questions and assessments, when employers interview a prospective employee, explores whether the candidate is a good “cultural fit.” Culture is difficult to define, but you generally know when you have found an employee who appears to fit your culture. He just "feels" right.

Culture is the environment that surrounds you at work all of the time. Culture is a powerful element that shapes your work enjoyment, your work relationships, and your work processes. But, culture is something that you cannot actually see, except through its physical manifestations in your work place.

In many ways, culture is like personality. In a person, the personality is made up of the values, beliefs, underlying assumptions, interests, experiences, upbringing, and habits that create a person’s behavior.

Culture is made up of the values, beliefs, underlying assumptions, attitudes, and behaviors shared by a group of people. Culture is the behavior that results when a group arrives at a set of - generally unspoken and unwritten - rules for working together.

An organization’s culture is made up of all of the life experiences each employee brings to the organization.

Culture is represented in a group’s:
• language,
• decision making,
• symbols,
• stories and legends, and
• daily work practices.

Something as simple as the objects chosen to grace a desk tell you a lot about how employees view and participate in your organization’s culture. Your bulletin board content, the company newsletter, the interaction of employees in meetings, and the way in which people collaborate, speak volumes about your organizational culture.

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Berteman Dengan Stres

Pada saat kita sedang stres, tubuh kita secara otomatis akan menghasilkan hormon adrenalin dan cortisol. Kedua hormon tersebut akan mengakibatkan jantung

Hampir semua orang pasti sudah mengalami keadaan yang disebut stres. Tidak hanya peristiwa buruk yang bisa menyebabkan stres. Semua perubahan yang berhubungan dengan fisik dan psikis seseorang dapat menyebabkan stres.

Anda stres? Jangan kuatir karena sebenarnya, stres adalah akumulasi dari reaksi tubuh terhadap situasi atau lingkungan sekitar yang tampak berbahaya atau sulit. Stres membuat tubuh memproduksi hormon adrenalin yang berfungsi untuk mempertahankan diri. Jadi, sebenarnya stres merupakan reaksi tubuh yang alami, hampir sama dengan reaksi spontan tubuh lain, seperti reaksi tubuh saat menghindar dari panas, misalnya.

Stres dibedakan menjadi dua macam, yaitu stres ringan (good stress) dan stres berat (bad stress). Stres yang ringan berguna karena dapat memacu seseorang untuk berpikir dan berusaha lebih tangguh menghadapi tantangan hidup. Sebaliknya, stres yang berat dan berkelanjutan, akan berbahaya bila tidak ditanggulangi. Tidak hanya berpengaruh pada psikis, tetapi stres juga akan memengaruhi kesehatan.

Stres Bermula dari Kondisi Psikis

Banyak sekali hal yang dapat menyebabkan stres. Semua hal itu dapat menyebabkan tekanan pada pikiran yang akhirnya berbuah stres. Jadi, sebenarnya stres lebih bermula dari keadaan psikis seseorang.

Pada saat kita sedang stres, tubuh kita secara otomatis akan menghasilkan hormon adrenalin dan cortisol. Kedua hormon tersebut akan mengakibatkan jantung berdetak secara lebih cepat daripada pada keadaan normal. Darahpun akan mengalir dengan lebih cepat. Keadaan ini tentu menguras tenaga karena kadar gula dalam darah akan terkuras cepat. Otot pun menjadi tegang, terutama otot di sekitar mata dan kepala.

Keadaan itu juga akan memengaruhi peringai seseorang. Orang menjadi menjadi mudah tersinggung, cepat marah, agresif, dan cenderung berlebihan defensif. Karena kadar adrenalin makin tinggi, kadar gula dalam darah pun semakin naik. Hal tersebut membuat kebutuhan akan zat gula makin tinggi. Jika tidak terpenuhi, maka orang akan mudah lelah, sukar berkonsentrasi, jantung sering berdebar-debar. Selain itu, tanda yang paling sering menyertai stres adalah sakit kepala dan gangguan pencernaan. Jika kita membiarkan keadaan ini berlarut-larut, maka sistem metabolisme tubuh akan terganggu. Selain memperparah kondisi kesehatan orang yang sedang sakit, stres juga dapat mengakibatkan daya tahan tubuh kita menurun. Tidak mengheran jika banyak komplikasi penyakit yang salah satunya disebabkan oleh stres.

Tip Mengendalikan Stres

Stres tidak bisa diobati. Beberapa dokter terkadang hanya memberi obat penenang sejenis chlordiazepoksida, diazepam, dan nipam, jika penderita mulai mengalami gangguan mental dan tidak bisa tidur. Jenis obat-obatan tersebut sekedar mengurangi intensitas detak jantung, mengendorkan otot tegang, dan mengurangi ketegangan syaraf. Nah, cara yang paling tepat adalah dengan “berteman” dengan stres. Ada beberapa hal yang bisa diperhatikan agar kita dapat terhindar dari stres atau setidaknya, mengurangi akibat stres.

• Temukan penyebab perasaan negatif dan belajar untuk menanggulanginya. Jangan memperberat masalah dan coba untuk sekali-kali mengalah terhadap orang lain.
• Pandanglah permasalahan hidup secara positif.
• Bersikaplah realistis terhadap kemampuan diri dan jangan terlalu terforsir dalam melakukan sesuatu.
• Buatlah daftar prioritas pekerjaan yang mesti dikerjakan.
• Sedikitlah bersikap terbuka dengan men-sharing-kan permasalahan Anda dengan orang yang Anda percaya.
• Jaga kesehatan dengan makan yang baik, tidur cukup, dan latihan olahraga secara teratur.
• Luangkan waktu untuk berekreasi.
• Ada baiknya Anda mencoba metode meditasi dengan teknik pernafasan untuk sedikit memberi kelegaan.
• Menangis dipercaya sebagai salah satu obat stres karena dengan menangis, hasil reaksi kimia dalam tubuh dapat keluar. Menangis juga dipercaya dapat mengendorkan otot-otot di sekitar kepala.

Tekanan hidup memang tidak akan pernah berhenti. Kualitas pribadi seseorang menjadi tampak saat bagaimana dia menghadapi permasalahan dan menangani stres. Satu yang tidak bisa dilupakan adalah faktor keimanan kita pada penyelenggaran Tuhan. Berserah pada kehendak Tuhan adalah sikap dasar dalam menghadapi stres.

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Thanx To

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