Category: Workplace Mental Health

WHEN WORRY COMES TO WORK A Seven-Part Leadership Series What Leaders Can Actually Do About Workplace Anxiety After all the theory and research, executive leaders eventually arrive at the practical question. What do we actually do? When I first wrote about leadership and workplace anxiety, I approached that question from the perspective of someone trying…

WHEN WORRY COMES TO WORK A Seven-Part Leadership Series How Good Leadership Can Lower Workplace Stress If relationships matter, the next question is whether research gives us any reason to believe they actually change how workplace stress is experienced. It does. The evidence does not allow us to say that strong Leader-Member Exchange relationships treat…

WHEN WORRY COMES TO WORK A Seven-Part Leadership Series How Leadership Trust Develops One Interaction at a Time Trust rarely arrives because someone has a leadership title. It develops through experience. Leader-Member Exchange theory provides a useful way of thinking about that development. Graen and Uhl-Bien (1995) described three stages in the development of a…

WHEN WORRY COMES TO WORK A Seven-Part Leadership Series Why Leader-Member Exchange Still Matters Organizations spend a great deal of time talking about leadership. We talk about strategy, vision, competencies, accountability, performance, influence, culture, and results. Employees often experience leadership much more personally. They experience whether their supervisor answers the question. Whether the leader listens.…

WHEN WORRY COMES TO WORK A Seven-Part Leadership Series Looking at Workplace-Related Anxiety Through a Leadership Lens We often talk about employees bringing stress into the workplace. Sometimes we need to ask whether the workplace is creating some of it. Research into workplace-related anxiety has explored situations where anxiety becomes specifically associated with work itself.…

WHEN WORRY COMES TO WORK A Seven-Part Leadership Series What Anxiety Can Do to Thinking at Work Have you ever worked with someone who was highly capable and normally dependable but suddenly seemed unable to make a relatively straightforward decision? Perhaps they repeatedly asked for reassurance after expectations had already been explained. Maybe they overprepared,…

WHEN WORRY COMES TO WORK A Seven-Part Leadership Series Why Anxiety Belongs in the Leadership Conversation Stress and anxiety are not unusual experiences in the workplace. They show up in boardrooms, offices, job sites, virtual meetings, team conversations, performance discussions, organizational changes, and ordinary Monday mornings. For some people, anxiety is temporary and connected to…