If you’re a leader, you feel it in your gut: Stress is at an all-time high. No wonder. The uncertain economy keeps everyone, even those who work for successful companies, slightly off-balance.
Helping your organization manage excessive, chronic anxiety is your number one job. Why? Because it means ensuring that employees operate on principles rather than emotions. When people stay in low-grade panic mode, they can no longer think clearly, creatively and flexibly.
Of course, some anxiety in the workplace is normal and even desirable. It goes back to our primitive survival instincts. All organizations face threats, both internal and external, and anxiety is an instinctive response to any threat to one’s survival. But when the natural chronic anxiety in an organization rises to an excessive level, employees become like a herd of stampeding wildebeests. They start operating on “fight or flight” instinct rather than thinking clearly, creatively and in a flexible manner.
Furthermore, anxiety is contagious. What happens next is rarely pretty. Perhaps the anxious employees succumb to wildebeest-like group-think and run their company off the proverbial cliff. Or one person is unfairly singled out as a scapegoat. Or employees can’t take the stress any longer and start leaving the company. A common scenario is one where people are fired to “solve the problem,” which only reappears later with the new employee because the system that caused the problem hasn’t really changed.
Dismal as this scenario sounds, there is some good news. Rather than accepting the cost of excessive anxiety as a way of life, you can change your organization for the better. Following are some suggestions:
Strive to be a predictable leader. The least stressful companies to work for are those in which the rational system—the officially stated goals, values, policies, procedures, job roles and so forth—is a fairly accurate description of what actually transpires on the average workday. This means that the rational system and the emotional system are reasonably well aligned. What the leaders of such companies have in common is their predictability. If you want to guess what the leader will do in any given situation, check out the company’s mission statement, current objectives, policy manuals and reporting structure. The leader’s behavior is consistent with what the rational system of the company would lead you to expect.
Map the anxiety in your situation. Because anxiety feels uncomfortable, we tend to play “hot potato” with it: We dilute the pain by passing it on to someone else. When you understand this mechanism, it’s possible to figure out where your anxiety originated. Draw a circle that represents you and other circles labeled with the names of those around you. Use arrows to indicate where anxiety is coming from and where it is going. Once you’ve mapped your anxiety, you can use the following techniques to help you defuse it.
Learn to take an “I-position.” When you have to solve a problem, it’s tempting to worry about how your decision will affect the feelings of other people. Keep in mind that you’ll never please everyone. Trying to control the reactions of other people is anxiety-driven behavior and it results in only more anxiety.
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