Anxiety

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• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  What Seppälä and Cameron describe as ideal is part peacemaker, part tough guy/gal when debate is necessary. It’s a terrific, balanced definition because playing the role of peacemaker can, if taken too far and motivated by an excessive desire to avoid conflict, lead to a good deal of emotional wear and tear and anxiety, especially from self-criticism. Quite a few people we interviewed who suffer from heightened anxiety told us they feel guilty about conflicts on their team or with their loved ones at home. It’s as if they have failed because they can’t create peace and tranquility in the lives of all those around them and solve everyone else’s problems. Another problem that occurs at work: Since they try so hard to get along, they can become dumping grounds for excess work. For instance, they may volunteer to pick up the slack from stressed-out colleagues, and this causes them even more anxiety. The great irony of many of the efforts of the conflict-avoidant to escape drama is that too often it intensifies anxiety for themselves rather than allaying it. Conflict aversion is often a symptom of an unhealthy preoccupation about what other people think of oneself and the belief, deep down, that you aren’t good enough or won’t be well liked unless you are seen as super congenial. All the more reason, then, for a leader to make sure every team member is encouraged to speak up, and that every opinion is valued. On the flip side to this are those overwhelming personalities on a team who can create tension through their force of will. These people seem to thrive on conflict. Big egos can’t be ignored (literally), and managers must intervene. They must set boundaries (such as no interrupting the speaker during a meeting), give others equal time, and be willing to cut time hogs off politely but firmly and redirect the conversation. It’s also important to hold one-on-ones with dominating personalities, to help them understand why the team needs to hear from everyone during debates, and also to let them vent now and then, to get all their thoughts and ideas out without taking up precious group time. Millennials and ConflictYounger workers especially can struggle with personal interaction and conflict resolution. Some younger people we’ve met admit they prefer to text someone they’re having a problem with rather than speak by phone or face-to-face. In-person is too personal for many of the rising generation. One millennial, who, ironically, worked in a smartphone store, told us, “I wish I could disable the phone on my phone.” Another interesting twist of the conflict discussion is that many younger workers can misconstrue firmness or disagreement as a reprimand, even when the other person hasn’t raised their voice and is not being bad-tempered. In our interviews, an employee showed us a fascinating text string between him and his forty-something boss to illustrate the point.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  Method 4: Use a Skill Development FlowPart of reducing anxiety is teaching about potential growth upward, but we must also help employees understand that moving up isn’t the only way to grow in a career. Says Mary Beth DeNooyer, chief human resources officer for Keurig Dr Pepper, “For a long time we thought about career paths as a ladder. It was all about how you move up. The imagery we’re moving to is a rock wall, where a person can move up, sideways, a little up, and a little sideways. Everybody can have their own destination. “The only thing you can’t do on a rock wall is just hang there,” she added. “You can’t be content. You’ve got to move. But how you move and how fast and how high is up to you. That helps people think about what skills they are building. What they want to experience on their journey.” DeNooyer explains that a ladder implies one person climbs at a time; on a wall there can be many people who get to the same place without competing. In other words, success is not a zero-sum game. We’ve found this type of attitude can greatly enhance inclusion efforts and help alleviate the worries of some people who may feel threatened by diversity initiatives because they think spots are being taken away from them. Organizations that do this effectively create a culture where one person’s growth doesn’t have to come at the expense of someone else’s. When we coach leaders, we encourage them to follow a simple process to develop new skills in their team members. It follows our Skill Development Model. In using this method, leaders can help people trying to progress on the wall chart their own way. And, best of all, the process allows managers to align the company or team vision with the vision of their people, reducing anxiety that can arise if team members feel they aren’t getting the growth they need. First, either the employee suggests a skill to get better at, or the manager suggests it. If it’s something that might benefit the team or organization, and the employee is on board to try, the employee begins to learn. If the skill is suggested by the employee and it’s determined that it’s not needed by the organization at this time, then it might be something the worker would pursue on personal time.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  Census Bureau, by May of 2020 more than 30 percent of all Americans of all ages were reporting symptoms of an anxiety disorder, including a remarkable 42 percent of people in their twenties. Lenny Mendonca is a prominent business owner and public official who in mid-2020 resigned from office after being hit by strains on his mental health. “I face a challenge one of every three people in America has: depression and anxiety,” he said. Mendonca had been chief economic and business advisor to California governor Gavin Newsom, and is owner of Half Moon Bay Brewing Company, which employs about four hundred people. He’s also a former senior executive of McKinsey & Company and a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In other words, the guy is a mover and shaker. He explained that well-meaning friends discouraged him from sharing his diagnosis, suggesting it would end his career. “While I respect their counsel, I categorically reject it. I talk about my mountain biking injuries and the metal plate in my left leg as a badge of honor. Why should I hide a similar injury to the most important—and yet vulnerable and least understood—organ in my body, my brain? What does it say about me that I have a mental health issue? It says that I am human.” Mendonca shared his story because he believes there are too few in business and public life willing to “discuss mental health, destigmatize professional shame, and protect against the resulting economic impact it can have on people’s careers and our economy as a whole. The conversation is overdue and urgent,” he said. The Cover-UpMendonca admits, “I have executive seniority that reduces the potential professional harm of speaking out. The majority of people suffering do not have these privileges.” He’s right—despite its prevalence, employees just don’t talk openly about their anxiety at work. The biggest challenge—one that makes it tricky to help employees—is that many with anxiety must cover it up, which all too often ends badly. Consider the case of a promising young employee we met in 2019. Chloe is the kind of worker most companies are avidly recruiting: smart and personable, comfortable with technology, and an uber-fast learner. She had graduated from college with a near-perfect GPA but admitted that keeping up with the work was a challenge. She would wake up early to get in extra study time before class and most nights had trouble getting to sleep, usually managing only a few hours.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  Few tend to consider that the ways in which they are managing their teams may not only be contributing to needless anxiety among their employees, but also sometimes the primary drivers of it. One CEO we discussed this with admitted, “Honestly, we have used pressure as a weapon to get people to perform better. We’ve cranked up the anxiety more than thinking about how we could alleviate it.” And yet in the same conversation, this bright leader bemoaned his company’s struggle to retain capable workers and said “the ability to get and keep great talent will be the biggest differentiator in the next decade.” There’s the rub. With so many employees experiencing heightened degrees of anxiety at work, leaders simply can’t afford to aggravate things further, or leave team members on their own to either “buck up,” “opt out,” or “calm down.” As a famous saying goes: “Never in the history of calming down has anyone ever calmed down by being told to calm down.” Too many managers buy into the old-school belief that it’s best to let anxious workers weed themselves out: They’re just not cut out for the job or I don’t have time to worry about everyone’s mental health, they’ll confide to us. But there’s simply no basis in fact that those who experience anxiety are less capable, weaker, or less valuable. In fact, it’s often the opposite. Those who produce the best results are often riddled with strong feelings of anxiety. One study found 86 percent of those with high anxiety were rated as uniquely productive in their jobs. Makes sense: Employees who feel worried about not being good enough often work harder to try to prove themselves. Research also shows a large percentage of highly intelligent people experience anxiety in greater numbers than the general populace. Mensa members have been found to suffer from anxiety disorders at twice the rate of the national average. The best leaders are beginning to understand that creating a healthy place to work can embrace those with anxiety—people who may be extremely capable and intelligent—while creating an environment that is more positive for everyone. And that can be a powerful accelerator of team success. Take the recent transformation of the England men’s national football (soccer) team. Previously, England’s players admitted they were so anxious about the media diatribe if they failed that it often became a self-fulfilling prophecy, as seen in 2016 when an England powerhouse team was knocked out of the European Championships by the tiny nation of Iceland. Manager Roy Hodgson stepped down at that point and a new coach was hired: quiet, unassuming former player Gareth Southgate, whose first focus would not be on tactics or fitness but on building a cohesive, positive culture.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  Greg Piper, worldwide director of continuous improvement for Becton, Dickinson & Co., holds one-on-one performance and development sessions every other week for thirty minutes with each of his team members, who are all remote and spread around the globe. “‘What do you want to talk about?’ is always the first question I ask,” said Piper. Stephan Vincent, senior director of LifeGuides, a peer-to-peer support network, says he begins each day with the same question. “Every morning my first message to everyone on my team is, how are you feeling today? Because today is probably different than yesterday.” These check-ins before diving in should not be rushed, and people should have time to tell their stories if they want to share. It’s up to a leader to dig below the “fine.” “The workplace of tomorrow will be much more human, and less transactional than it’s been,” Vincent added. “As we create deeper bonds, it’s ultimately going to benefit the company with more productivity, more collaboration, more innovation.” With all of this, note that it’s never appropriate to ask someone, “Do you have anxiety?” As Anthony explained, “That is a privacy violation and can make things worse. Instead, consider privately asking something such as, ‘I notice you are having a hard time in these specific stressful situations. Is there anything I can do to help?’” Evidence on the value of frequent check-ins comes from BetterWorks research, which found employees who meet and discuss progress toward goals with their managers weekly are up to twenty-four times more likely to achieve their targets. By providing constant reviews, managers are also able to give tough feedback when necessary and quell anxious feelings in many employees who are doing good work but are actually concerned about their performance. According to a Leadership IQ survey of thirty thousand people, only 29 percent of working adults know whether their “performance is where it should be.” Just as troubling, more than half say they rarely know if they are doing a good job. Tyler, a customer service employee we met, said he began to feel adrift after moving from a highly communicative manager to a new boss who was more tight-lipped. Not knowing what this new guy thought about his performance, or if he felt he could progress any further, Tyler finally pushed the boss for some feedback to lessen the uncertainty he was feeling. They sat down and the manager delivered some positives he had seen to date and also gave some things to work on. Tyler told us he found the improvement ideas “jarring,” and ended up obsessing over the negatives. He’s not alone. The human brain has a negative bias. There is a greater surge in electrical activity in our brains in response to down news than upbeat news. And it’s like Velcro when we hear bad things about ourselves—even if the good outweigh the bad by ten to one.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  There’s actually quite a lot that team leaders can do to encourage inclusion; for instance, looking carefully for anyone on the team who may seem to be left out (all the more important when some or all of a team works remotely), which person is regularly cut off during group discussions, who is regularly chatting with whom, and who doesn’t seem to be interacting with anyone. By watching, a manager can gain awareness and insight. But regular one-on-ones are probably the best way to understand what’s really going on: asking about people’s interactions with others on the team and if they are having challenges with any specific personalities. At FYidoctors, doctors and team leaders follow what they call a Ten-Ten Commitment in their optometry clinics, labs, and home office departments. “For the first ten minutes of each day, leaders walk around and ask their team members how they are doing with a friendly hello and no other agenda but a welcome to the day,” said president Darcy Verhun. “It’s incumbent on the leaders to do this to demonstrate visible leadership and caring. It’s ten minutes at the start of the day, and another ten minutes at the end of the day to see how everyone’s day has gone. I’m amazed at the power of a simple check-in.” Verhun added, “These check-ins are not so that the team can hear the leader’s story, but so the leaders can hear their team members’ stories and connect. We have received such positive feedback from the team on this leadership commitment and have found it reduces anxiety.” But even if managers pick up on exclusion, they still need specific approaches to help their people move from feeling isolated to connected and accepted. We are not necessarily suggesting dragging everyone out for karaoke or starting a potluck Friday, but a few ideas that can help immediately include: Ensure that all team members can contribute in meetings and have their voices heard in a calm, organized manner.Buddy new hires up with more seasoned employees who they might form a connection with (friendly seasoned employees, that is).Spend time in every meeting recognizing the contributions of individuals as well as those of the group as a whole.Go out of the way to make remote workers feel fully accepted—e.g., even though some people may be working in the office, now and then ask everyone to join meetings via electronic means. Also bring remote people into the workplace on a regular basis. What follows are a few more methods used by leaders we’ve interviewed and worked with to enhance inclusion and strengthen bonds in their teams to great effect.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  Anthony explained the young man’s response to the first message: “In texting, a period can mean bad news, and in this case came across as ‘end of discussion.’ But the biggest problem was he simply didn’t say ‘thank you’ or ‘good work getting it in on time.’ There was no feedback at all.” As to the boss’s second text, it was even worse: “What was that ominous ellipsis all about? What in the world was going to happen after the weekend?” asked Anthony. “Without any nonverbal context to frame the punctuation, an anxious reader can easily interpret ambiguous parts of a message as disapproval.” He continued, “Being reprimanded doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with volume. It’s feeling, ‘You’re talking at me, and not with me.’” We encouraged the young employee to have a conversation (in person) with his boss about the texts, and he reported back that his manager had seemed to sincerely appreciate the feedback and said that he had no idea his texts could be interpreted that way. Indeed, if anything he thought he was being encouraging to the young guy for hitting his deadline. The boss promised to update his texting awareness in the future. Linda Gravett, a Cincinnati-based psychologist, notes that “companies can best help millennials—and all staffers, for that matter—by treating generational issues such as this as a matter of workplace diversity. . . . Age, education, communication style” are dimensions of diversity, and we need to think about them in that way. Deb Muller, CEO of HR Acuity, notes that many young workers place a high value on harmony and want to work in a place that feels good. “Couple a lack of in-person communication with a high desire for harmony and you have an entire group of people who are largely, many believe, extremely conflict-averse.” She suggests leaders try to help their team members understand why conflict can be a necessary instigator of change for the better. “Any employee who verbally voices concerns or properly navigates conflict situations should be encouraged and applauded.” We’ve seen managers reward such acts publicly and encourage them as well. For instance, if they aren’t getting anyone on the team to step up and challenge the status quo, they’ll ask an employee or two to serve as foils during meetings and speak up and argue with the boss, to show that debate is encouraged. Finally, it’s imperative that managers lead by example in this process by being open to new ideas and willing to accept challenges themselves. Yet Dr. David B. Peterson, former head of executive coaching and development for Google, told us, “If you are not genuinely curious and not willing to change your mind, people will figure it out. Why ask us for our opinions?

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  We’ve seen this as a major issue in the overload of workers in health care. If you want to hear a medical professional curse, ask them how many hours they waste a year entering every detail imaginable into a patient’s electronic health record, or the forms they have to fill out to renew their medical licenses, hospital privileges, drug-prescribing authority, and so on. Even before the COVID-19 crisis, the risk of burnout in this profession was acute. We’ve found one of the best ways health-care organizations are helping their staff to gain control over exhaustion is to change the situation that is causing it—reducing digital demands. There are typically things all managers can do to reduce red tape, which can be remarkably empowering for their team members; for instance, conducting formal kaizen events with company approval to streamline processes in their team or assigning necessary paperwork to a person who likes doing it (which suggests the need to get to know what employees are motivated by). While Job One for a leader is doing whatever is possible to bring workloads into alignment with realistic expectations for productivity, we appreciate that in many cases making substantial changes to workload simply is not feasible. If by this point you are thinking that this just isn’t going to work in your firm, then we offer below a set of methods for helping your people better cope with workload expectations. Method 1: Create Clear RoadmapsOne way to help reduce employee anxiety regarding overload is to decide upon clear, achievable goals for everyone on the team. Yet rather than this being a top-down doling out of assignments, we’ve found more leaders are doing this collaboratively with feedback from their people. It is rare for us to find team members working from good, understandable roadmaps that can be referred to again and again, providing clarity on what needs to get done in what timeframe (week/month/year). Yet in an interview with Mary Beth DeNooyer, chief human resources officer for Keurig Dr Pepper, she said their twenty thousand employees operate daily from personalized frameworks that provide clarity and help reduce anxiety. In addition to specific individual work goals and targets on these roadmaps, “they include our Vision: What are we trying to achieve from a macro perspective,” she said. “We also include Company Values, how our teams work together; and Competencies, which are how an individual succeeds.”

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  What he did was open the door to a second church—what we today call the Lutheran church—but more important, by doing this he did something else again: he opened the door to a veritable infinity of churches, and to much else. This is because the door Luther dared to open was not merely one through which the truth could come but was a door through which anything at all could come. It was a door through which Luther hoped to welcome Jesus back into Christendom, but it was this same door through which many demons would come too. Luther’s critics were right in seeing this, and it is the most compelling reason for their efforts to stop him. Prominent churchmen of this time—Erasmus and the Dutch pope Adrian VI among them—well understood that the church had tremendous problems. Correcting them was vital, and they hoped to do just that. But what they opposed was Luther’s seemingly mad idea of blasting away at the church’s very foundations. That could surely end in toppling the whole edifice and, God forbid, might cause many to fall away from Rome altogether and perhaps even start a new, false church. Luther’s critics correctly saw that once the pope and the church’s authority was openly challenged, lies and confusion would be given a free hearing along with the truth. How then would the truth prevail and order be maintained? What guarantees would there be toward these ends? Once this extremely dangerous step was taken, couldn’t any fool establish his own interpretation of things and create his own religion and delude millions—leading them all to eternal perdition? In the centuries since Luther, we have seen precisely that, and many times over. Innumerable heresies and cults and false churches have arisen and led millions away from the truth. The Free Market of IdeasWe must ask then, why did Luther not fear these things as others did? For one thing, he firmly believed that the devil’s horse was already out of the barn. In his view, the Catholic church, which of course he felt was not being Catholic at all, was already leading many to everlasting perdition. This troubled him so much that he felt almost anything must be risked. So for him the only way forward was a scorched-earth policy to fight for the truth, come what may. He hadn’t thought much about how this would open the door to every other competing ideology. That is indeed the problem of pluralism, and it is a very real problem. But these initial steps toward our modern world of pluralism form the principal and foundational part of Luther’s legacy.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Luther’s mistrust of Henry VIII later damaged discussions about England joining the Schmalkaldic League, which would have strengthened both the league and the evangelical party in England. Melanchthon, more pliant, but unable to agree to a royal divorce because of Luther’s stalwart opposition, seems to have entertained the idea that Henry might commit bigamy, marrying Anne Boleyn without repudiating Catherine, a solution that had the additional merit of not disinheriting Catherine’s daughter Mary. 48 Henry, however, was in distant England; Philip of Hesse, the leading Lutheran prince, could not be evaded when he asked for advice about his own unhappy marriage in 1539. Rather than continue in a life of “evil and whoredom,” the syphilitic landgrave had set his eye on the seventeen-year-old Margarethe von der Saale, whose mother would only agree to a union if they married. 49 As the case was presented to Luther, Philip, tortured by his conscience, and racked by sexual desire, was unable to receive Communion and wanted to know how to make his situation acceptable to God. As he explained: “Since I am of such a temperament, as the doctors know, and it often happens, that I have to be away at League and Imperial meetings, where people live it up, take physical pleasures and so forth. How I can manage there without a wife, since I can’t always take numbers of court women with me, is terrible to think.” 50 His wife, however, had been faithful to him, so divorce was not an option. Even had she sued for divorce—and a Lutheran marriage court would certainly have granted her one given the patent adultery—Philip, as the guilty party, would (like Henry VIII) have been prohibited from remarrying. The landgrave’s position in the sacramentarian dispute had always been that of mediator, and although he had officially taken Luther’s side he had never repudiated the Zwinglians. Indeed, he had been careful to distance himself from Luther’s line at Augsburg, never accusing the south Germans of heresy and insisting on their protection, and when he drew up a new Church ordinance in 1538 it had been to Bucer, not Luther, that he turned first of all. 51 This meant that the Wittenbergers could not afford to alienate him; and Philip knew this full well; in the letter asking for advice, he cannily pointed out that he might even be forced to seek a papal dispensation if the reformers would not help him.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  27 But while he seemed to be putting his life in God’s hands, he was at the same time working out how far he should go before putting himself in mortal danger. Luther had no reason to trust Cajetan, who was an Italian and a member of the papal court; rumors were circulating that the cardinal had been instructed by the Pope to get emperor and princes to unite against him. Not for the last time, therefore, Luther came up with a cunning ruse: He would avoid going to Augsburg by requesting safe conduct from the Elector, which he knew Spalatin would get Friedrich to refuse, thereby giving him an excuse not to travel. But it turned out to be a miscalculation. Spalatin rejected the suggestion out of hand, for both he and the Elector trusted Cajetan and were anxious for the meeting to take place. 28 Again Luther set out on a journey on foot, walking another three hundred miles to Augsburg, accompanied once more by his fellow brother and student Leonhard Beyer. It was Luther’s choice to walk when he could have traveled by wagon—as he had eventually done on the journey to Heidelberg—but he was determined to travel as a humble mendicant. Even at an average rate of about twenty miles a day, though, the journey would have taken longer than a fortnight, so he may have taken the odd ride on a passing cart. Years later, Luther began his account of the meeting in the preface to his collected Latin works with the words, “So I came to Augsburg, afoot and poor.” He had been given a mere twenty guilders by the Elector to cover his expenses, and his early biographer Johannes Mathesius reported that along the way he had to borrow a cassock from his old friend Wenzeslaus Linck. When they passed through Weimar, the provisor at the Augustinian monastery warned him: “Dear Mr. Doctor! Those Italians are learned folk, by God. I’m worried that you won’t be able to beat them. And they’ll burn you for it.” Luther, making light of it, retorted that nettles he could bear, but fire would be too hot, a jibe at the “nettling” of the scholastics who were attacking his work. 29 Luther was an observant traveler who loved nature, and he would have passed through one distinctive landscape after another, such as the forests, gravel, and sandy soil around Nuremberg. His route was punctuated by the imperial towns, with their big half-timbered houses, imposing town halls, guild houses, and workshops where craftsmen produced outstanding metalware, fabrics, and scientific instruments. 30 The journey that allowed Luther to get to know the country’s rich south probably also strengthened his profound sense of being “German,” first imprinted on him during his trip to Rome in 1511. The two travelers reached Nuremberg on October 3 or 4, and they finally arrived at their destination on October 7.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  None of the team members could keep up with demand. They were incredibly frustrated. Despite that, however, the team achieved high marks for the quality of their work. The employees told us how appreciative they were of their team leader, who was effective in relieving anxiety about keeping up on the expectations for speed. She coached her workers to accept that the system was what it was, and other regions of the country weren’t any faster. She encouraged her people to redirect their attention to accuracy. She absorbed any flack from above, and helped her team focus on what they could get done each day. She helped them establish workable timelines and motivated them to deliver; and at the end of each week they celebrated quality successes. She said, “What we can control is our work ethic, the quality of the product we deliver, and how we treat each other and our clients.” What this boss had her people practice is called “emotional acceptance.” She didn’t try to quash feelings of stress with positive thinking, which often just makes things worse. Instead, she restructured their to-do lists to give emphasis to what they could realistically master. Unfortunately, vague or unrealistic goals aren’t uncommon nowadays. Unreachable or ambiguous targets are often used to push teams to their limits. But when no one ever reaches the mark, it can lead to burnout, disengagement, and intense anxiety about missing expectations. This leader was able to explain how each person was making valued contributions, and it made all the difference. One way to do this is to redistribute employee to-do lists to ensure that each item contains an action verb, e.g., “Return phone calls within one hour.” If you can’t find a concrete action verb for a goal, it’s a sign that the action is beyond a person’s control and is likely to cause undue stress. As one example, a goal of “good phone habits are essential” is vague and will most likely cause more stress for team members. Method 5: Have a Bias to Action “To help our people self-regulate their anxiety, we show them how to accept risk and have a bias to action,” explained Stan Sewitch, vice president of Global Organization Development for the WD-40 Company. “One of the best stress relievers—proven to be useful in reducing the sympathetic nervous system enervation—is movement. That can include intellectual movement as well as physical.” With a team-wide bias to action, employees become less afraid to make decisions and move forward, even in the face of uncertainty. In these cultures, people don’t spend days, weeks, or months debating if their approach is the only logical one; they do things and realize not everything will be perfect. They are also not afraid of being held accountable for making a poor decision.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  It was clear that many jobs would be lost in the fallout of COVID-19, and those who kept their positions would be under great pressure. Data we were about to present would show that levels of anxiety at work had been steadily rising well before this; and we predicted that things were about to get a lot worse. When we stepped onto the stage, at least half the audience members had their heads in their phones, yet by the end of our hour together, all of us were fully engaged in a discussion about the real issues that were happening right then to their people. These leaders grasped that they needed to be more informed about the nature of anxiety and how they could best help their team members cope. In the airport that night, after scrubbing our seats with the Clorox wipes we’d been lucky to score, we talked about the important role managers play in employees’ lives. We were gratified that many leaders had already shared with us keen insights about how they’d assisted anxiety-ridden employees in our research for this book. We noted that if anxiety levels had been rising before this pandemic, we could only imagine what was going to happen now. A Growing Issue For some time, we have been concerned about the increasing problem of workplace anxiety and the need to provide managers realistic and useful guidance. We began researching and writing this book because in most companies we worked with, we were hearing mounting frustration and bewilderment of leaders about this issue. Research told us they had good reason to be concerned long before the pandemic. In a 2018 survey, 34 percent of workers of all ages reported feeling anxiety at least once in the previous month, and 18 percent had a diagnosed anxiety disorder. And yet very little about the problem was being talked about in their companies, despite a significant economic impact. Harvard Medical School research claimed on-the-job anxiety “imperils workers’ careers and company productivity.” Anxiety is leading to increased employee errors, growing burnout, workplace rage, more sick days, and poor employee health. Concerned? Us, too. Worry, stress, and resulting anxiety at work can cause employees to lose focus and withdraw, working at a reduced capacity and rebuffing attempts by fellow team members or managers to help. As a quick education, people sometimes use the terms “worry,” “stress,” and “anxiety” interchangeably. While they may travel together, they are different. Worry is a mental process—including repetitive, nagging thoughts—usually focused on a specific target like losing a job or wondering if you’ll get sick.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  Sometimes seized with anxiety from the pressure of all she had to get through, she would slap a smile on her face and keep moving, because, as she said, “that’s what you’re supposed to do.” Secretly she had wondered why she had to try so hard to appear chipper when everyone else seemed to be that way naturally. All of Chloe’s hard work paid off when, after graduation, she landed a good job at an investment bank in Seattle. She moved there from her hometown across the country and quickly impressed her boss and colleagues. They considered her a surefire rising star. Outwardly, Chloe oozed confidence. But inside, she felt out of her element. She began to doubt herself. Her young peers at the bank seemed to have more experience. Most had gone to more prestigious schools. They talked about their amazing internships. They seemed to get more recognition. “Every morning, the company sent out this mass email about someone else’s accomplishments,” she recalls. “It was this nice thing from HR, but to me it felt like taunting. Everyone around me was so smart, doing such cool things. I wanted to be just as wonderful as they were.” What’s more, judging by social media posts, her friends back home seemed much happier than she was. They were going to parties and concerts, hanging with family, relaxing, and having fun. As for Chloe, she worked every day past dark, went back to her apartment, and crashed. She didn’t even have time for a cat. Chloe gathered her courage and mentioned to her manager that she was feeling a little overwhelmed. The manager’s response: “Ah, that’s what it’s like around here. You’re doing fine. Try not to stress.” She resigned herself to feeling this way because that was just how things were. But soon, every night, Chloe felt a looming dread about the next day. Sunday evenings were the absolute worst, when she would exhibit all the signs of a full-blown panic attack. Before long she could hardly get out of bed. At work, she began scrolling through the web pages of graduate schools. She daydreamed about travel. Maybe she’d take a year off and backpack through places like Nepal. Even though she’d put in a lot of work and had been doing well in her job, one day Chloe simply had too much. She “ghosted.” She didn’t show up at work and didn’t call in sick. When her boss sent a text to ask where she was, she ignored it. Chloe never went back, and she never even communicated with her manager or anyone else at the company again. A star in the making just blinked out. From her manager’s standpoint, we can imagine this was incredibly frustrating.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  After all, being the “only” in any group can be lonely and isolating, especially when no one speaks up for you, when no one believes the challenges you face every day. “As more and more companies attempt to build more diverse and inclusive workforces, one of the dynamics that fundamentally needs to shift is who speaks up on matters of belonging,” said Burke of HubSpot. Who is that? The leader. Real Leadership Rosabeth Moss Kanter, professor at Harvard Business School, said, “It takes courage to speak up against complacency and injustice while others remain silent. But that’s what leadership is.” The sad truth is we expect people who are underrepresented to speak up for themselves about injustices. Often, colleagues and managers don’t believe them. Worse, they get combative. As leaders, we don’t spend nearly enough time thinking about how to address the microaggressions that happen every day in our workplaces that affect marginalized people deeply. As a definition, microaggressions are biases that reveal themselves in often subtle ways and leave people feeling uncomfortable or insulted. They may range from the offensive—a Black man notices a lone White woman flinch when he steps into the elevator, or a woman tries to speak up in a meeting but can’t get a word in with her male colleagues—to the bizarre—a gay man is told that he must love a certain musician, or a person in a wheelchair is jokily told to “slow down, speed racer.” We had a young friend explain that during her time as a teaching assistant at a local university, her professor would introduce her to the class with comments such as “I want you all to enjoy the lecture, so here’s a pretty face.” She knew it wasn’t meant to be harmful, but the comments ratcheted up her anxiety considerably and made her unsure of her abilities. She was, in fact, a qualified researcher and lecturer, but the professor’s comments framed her first as a thing to ogle. Instead, think of how engaged our friend would have been if the professor had bookended her lecture time with glowing comments about her research and educational accomplishments. This kind of death-by-a-thousand-cuts behavior is brushed off too frequently with those on the receiving end being termed “overly sensitive.” Yet research shows that microaggressions can take a real psychological toll on the mental health of recipients, may lead to anger and depression, and can lower work productivity and problem-solving abilities. One study at Marquette University provided strong evidence that microaggressions lead not only to elevated levels of depression and trauma, but thoughts of suicide in those affected. What follows are a few methods offered to us by powerful voices in marginalized communities and their allies to help those who feel on the outside become valued and included in any team. Method 1: Listen Up “If someone is brave and courageous enough to share their unique experience and perspective with you, honor it.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  Each of these groups has faced unique oppression in the world at large, and it is mirrored in the workplace with significant implications on their productivity and engagement and our organizational success. Understanding, as leaders, how to be allies with all individuals and foster a diverse and inclusive conversation is the beginning of change. In writing this chapter, we did not wish to speak over voices within these communities and the insight they have. What we’ll present here will be eye- opening information about the real ways that discrimination can lead to significant anxiety in the workplace for marginalized groups. And we will highlight the thoughts of those who belong to some of these communities to best help leaders understand better how to help these individuals thrive. Not All Anxiety Is Equal Mental health issues do not care about your race, gender, or identity; anyone can experience the challenges of anxiety. But socioeconomic disparities—such as exclusion from health, educational, social, and economic resources—often contribute to rates of psychological distress in minority communities. For instance, according to Dr. Thomas Vance of Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Black people are 20 percent more likely to experience serious mental health problems than other groups. Yet only 30 percent of Black adults with mental illness receive treatment annually, compared with the US average of 43 percent. According to Vance, the increased incidence of psychological difficulties in the Black community is related to a lack of access to proper resources for treatment; prejudice and racism in the daily environment; and issues related to economic insecurity, violence, and criminal injustice. Equally eye-opening are the mental health challenges of people of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, plus (LGBTQ+) orientations, which must also be considered by leaders. It was not until 2020 that the U.S. Supreme Court offered a minimum level of protection by ruling that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protected gay, lesbian, and transgender employees from discrimination based on sex. That’s one heck of a long time for anyone to wait for legal protection, let alone a group that makes up an estimated 5 percent of all working adults. “Stigma-related prejudice and discrimination experienced by LGBTQ people constitute chronically stressful events that can lead to negative health outcomes,” said Cathy Kelleher of the Technological University Dublin. Her research has found that bias-related stress has been linked to psychological distress among gay men and lesbian women.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  One CEO we discussed this with admitted, “Honestly, we have used pressure as a weapon to get people to perform better. We’ve cranked up the anxiety more than thinking about how we could alleviate it.” And yet in the same conversation, this bright leader bemoaned his company’s struggle to retain capable workers and said “the ability to get and keep great talent will be the biggest differentiator in the next decade.” There’s the rub. With so many employees experiencing heightened degrees of anxiety at work, leaders simply can’t afford to aggravate things further, or leave team members on their own to either “buck up,” “opt out,” or “calm down.” As a famous saying goes: “Never in the history of calming down has anyone ever calmed down by being told to calm down.” Too many managers buy into the old-school belief that it’s best to let anxious workers weed themselves out: They’re just not cut out for the job or I don’t have time to worry about everyone’s mental health , they’ll confide to us. But there’s simply no basis in fact that those who experience anxiety are less capable, weaker, or less valuable. In fact, it’s often the opposite. Those who produce the best results are often riddled with strong feelings of anxiety. One study found 86 percent of those with high anxiety were rated as uniquely productive in their jobs. Makes sense: Employees who feel worried about not being good enough often work harder to try to prove themselves. Research also shows a large percentage of highly intelligent people experience anxiety in greater numbers than the general populace. Mensa members have been found to suffer from anxiety disorders at twice the rate of the national average. The best leaders are beginning to understand that creating a healthy place to work can embrace those with anxiety—people who may be extremely capable and intelligent—while creating an environment that is more positive for everyone. And that can be a powerful accelerator of team success. Take the recent transformation of the England men’s national football (soccer) team. Previously, England’s players admitted they were so anxious about the media diatribe if they failed that it often became a self-fulfilling prophecy, as seen in 2016 when an England powerhouse team was knocked out of the European Championships by the tiny nation of Iceland. Manager Roy Hodgson stepped down at that point and a new coach was hired: quiet, unassuming former player Gareth Southgate, whose first focus would not be on tactics or fitness but on building a cohesive, positive culture. Two years later, in 2018, on the biggest stage—the World Cup—England finished in the top four, the country’s best outcome in fifty-two years.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  Title : Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done Author: Gostick, Adrian,Elton, Chester ASIN : B08F7SKGQK [image file=Image00002.jpg] [image "image" file=Image00000.jpg] [image "image" file=Image00001.jpg] DedicationTo Anthony Gostick This book is dedicated to one of its authors by the other two. Without Anthony, this book would not exist. His research and writing were foundational, but it was his never-ending passion for positive mental health that inspired us to create something that we hope will make the world a better place. ContentsCover Title Page Dedication 1 The Duck Syndrome Creating a Healthy Place to Work 2 How Anxiety Fills the Gap Help Team Members Deal with Uncertainty 3 How to Turn Less into More Help Team Members Deal with Overload 4 Clear Paths Forward Help Team Members Chart Their Way 5 How “It’s Not Perfect” Can Become “It’s Good, I’ll Move On” Help Team Members Manage Perfectionism 6 From Conflict Avoidance to Healthy Debate Help Team Members Find Their Voice 7 Become an Ally Help Marginalized Team Members Feel Valued and Accepted 8 Transform Exclusion into Connection Help Team Members Build Social Bonds 9 Turn Doubts into Assurance How Gratitude Can Help Team Members Build Confidence Conclusion The Semicolon: Before and After Acknowledgments Notes About the Authors Praise Also by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton Copyright About the Publisher 1The Duck SyndromeCreating a Healthy Place to WorkIt is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, it is the one most adaptable to change. —Charles Darwin (paraphrased by Leon Megginson) In early 2020, we were in Scottsdale, Arizona, to give a speech to the leadership team of a manufacturing company. We’d originally been scheduled to address the group at the end of the day, but the organizers kept moving our start time up. They wanted to end the day early because of the flood of fast-breaking news about the spread of the coronavirus. Concentrating on the event proceedings was nearly impossible for the attendees with everyone constantly checking their phones for the latest news and texts from loved ones. Employees at the company’s factories were asking if they should go home. Within a few days, hand sanitizer and toilet paper would inexplicably disappear from shelves, and within weeks, tens of thousands of people would be sick. In the back of the ballroom we were huddled over our presentation, frantically changing it in real time. The material we’d been asked to share on culture and employee engagement didn’t seem nearly as relevant anymore. We decided we would instead unveil research we’d been compiling about the growing problem of workplace anxiety, which was going to be even more urgent heading into a period of great uncertainty. It was clear that many jobs would be lost in the fallout of COVID-19, and those who kept their positions would be under great pressure.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  We want an advocate in our boss, not someone who is tolerant of the issue.” Peter Diaz, CEO of the Workplace Mental Health Institute, points out that managers can “have a default to [refer everyone to an] EAP,” which often leaves employees with wrong impressions. Imagine you have a best friend with anxiety, Diaz says, “and you say: ‘Why don’t you talk to someone else.’ Or, ‘Go take medication.’ How long would they be your friend? People need to have a good relationship with their manager.” He adds that leaders convey a counter- productive message when the only means of assistance they offer is sending their people away from the company. The message is: Work is toxic; you need to get the heck out of here to heal. Why, he asks, would anyone come back to your team or company if they think it’s the problem? Diaz isn’t suggesting that people suffering from heightened anxiety shouldn’t speak to a therapist; he fully endorses therapy. But he argues that managers must take responsibility and do what they can to alleviate some of the strains work life is placing on so many of their people. “It’s like we are blaming the individuals for having issues,” he says. “What about us? Are we supporting them? Am I approachable as a manager? Am I scared of the issue?” There’s the heart of it: Are managers willing to be present with an employee as that person makes sense of their mental health issue? Do they know how far to help without it becoming a counseling session? This is vital knowledge for managers these days. At Kraft Heinz Company, Shirley Weinstein, head of Global Rewards, says if the global pandemic of 2020 had one heartening result, it was the realization to managers at all levels that anxiety is a real business issue. “They’re home with family, feeling the additional pressures and the need to stay connected with their teams. They experienced it; a realization that mental well-being is a real concern,” she said. Weinstein added, “We want our leaders to help with their employees’ anxiety and emotional well-being, which is compounded with today’s uncertainty. However, there’s still this lingering stigma on mental health. Do I raise my hand and say, ‘I need help’? When you look at EAPs, utilization is not increasing even in the midst of the pandemic. There is a concern: ‘If I tell my manager, how will they react? What are they going to do?’ And have we properly coached our managers on what they should do?” To help address this very real issue, one of the leadership principles at Kraft Heinz is “Empathy and Care.” Weinstein says that managers must learn to understand and diagnose what their employees are facing, “whether that be workload, work-life balance, mental health, stress, burnout, anxiety, or reduced energy levels.

• From A History of God (1993)

  6 The God of the Philosophers D URING THE NINTH CENTURY , the Arabs came into contact with Greek science and philosophy, and the result was a cultural florescence which, in European terms, can be seen as a cross between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. A team of translators, most of whom were Nestorian Christians, made Greek texts available in Arabic and did a brilliant job. Arab Muslims now studied astronomy, alchemy, medicine and mathematics with such success that, during the ninth and tenth centuries, more scientific discoveries had been achieved in the Abbasid empire than in any previous period of history. A new type of Muslim emerged, dedicated to the ideal that he called Falsafah . This is usually translated “philosophy” but has a broader, richer meaning: like the French philosophes of the eighteenth century, the Faylasufs wanted to live rationally in accordance with the laws that they believed governed the cosmos, which could be discerned at every level of reality. At first, they concentrated on natural science, but then, inevitably, they turned to Greek metaphysics and determined to apply its principles to Islam. They believed that the God of the Greek philosophers was identical with al-Lah. Greek Christians had also felt an affinity with Hellenism but had decided that the God of the Greeks must be modified by the more paradoxical God of the Bible: eventually, as we shall see, they turned their backs on their own philosophical tradition in the belief that reason and logic had little to contribute to the study of God. The Faylasufs, however, came to the opposite conclusion: they believed that rationalism represented the most advanced form of religion and had evolved a higher notion of God than the revealed God of scripture. Today, we generally see science and philosophy as antagonistic to religion, but the Faylasufs were usually devout men and saw themselves as loyal sons of the Prophet. As good Muslims, they were politically aware, despised the luxury of the court and wanted to reform their society according to the dictates of reason. Their venture was important: since their scientific and philosophic studies were dominated by Greek thought, it was imperative to find a link between their faith and this more rationalistic, objective outlook. It can be most unhealthy to relegate God to a separate intellectual category and to see faith in isolation from other human concerns. The Faylasufs had no intention of abolishing religion, but wanted to purify it of what they regarded as primitive and parochial elements. They had no doubt that God existed—indeed they regarded his existence as self-evident—but felt that it was important to prove this logically in order to show that al-Lah was compatible with their rationalist ideal. There were problems, however.