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 a particular event. For others, it becomes something much more persistent.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder, or GAD, is characterized by excessive anxiety and worry about multiple events or activities over an extended period. Symptoms can include restlessness, fatigue, irritability, muscle tension, difficulty concentrating, and disrupted sleep (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).
Canadian research has demonstrated the significance of GAD within the population. Watterson et al. (2017) reported that approximately 2.4 million Canadians would experience symptoms consistent with GAD during their lifetime. Anxiety disorders also have broader social, health, and economic consequences, including effects on healthcare use, occupational functioning, and workplace participation (Watterson et al., 2017; Wittchen, 2002).
None of this makes clinicians out of executive leaders.
We should not diagnose employees, provide treatment, or make assumptions about someone’s mental health based on behaviour we observe at work.
But neither can leaders pretend that anxiety stops at the office door.
People bring their whole human experience into work. A person who has slept poorly because of persistent worry still has to make decisions the next morning. Someone experiencing anxiety may still need to present to the board, supervise staff, meet a deadline, resolve a conflict, respond to uncertainty, or make sense of organizational change.
Research has connected anxiety disorders with reduced occupational functioning, difficulty participating in workplace activities, strained relationships, avoidance, and longer periods away from work in some circumstances (Linden & Muschalla, 2007; Muschalla & Linden, 2009; Wittchen, 2002).
Much of the research I originally explored for this topic came from an earlier period in my own leadership career. Looking back now, what interests me most is not whether leaders can somehow remove anxiety from the workplace. We cannot.
What interests me is the environment we create around people who are already carrying it.
Does our leadership reduce unnecessary pressure, or quietly add to it?
That question is more complicated than offering a wellness program or adding another resource to an employee portal.
Leadership affects how people experience their work every day.
We establish expectations. We decide how clearly roles are communicated. We determine how accessible leaders are when problems emerge. We shape whether employees feel able to ask a question, admit uncertainty, raise a concern, or acknowledge that they are struggling.
We also influence how uncertainty is communicated.
Few leaders can eliminate uncertainty. Markets change. Funding changes. strategies change. technology changes. People leave. New people arrive. Plans fail. Customers change their minds. Governments make decisions. Competitors respond.
The challenge is separating the uncertainty that leadership cannot control from the uncertainty leadership unnecessarily creates.
An employee should not have to wonder what success looks like because their manager has never clearly explained it.
They should not have to interpret silence because a leader avoids difficult conversations.
They should not discover significant organizational changes through rumours.
They should not have to guess whether asking for help will damage their reputation.
These are leadership issues.
Clinical care remains essential for people experiencing anxiety disorders. Wittchen (2002) emphasized the importance of recognition and appropriate clinical treatment. Leadership relationships and workplace practices do not replace professional care.
They can, however, influence the environment in which someone works while receiving that care.
That distinction shaped the question behind my original research: could the quality of the relationship between a leader and an employee help reduce some of the workplace stress that contributes to anxiety?
Before considering that question, it helps to understand something about how anxiety can affect the way a person experiences uncertainty, worry, problems, and difficult emotions.
That is where we will go next.
Reflection
When people become anxious in your workplace, what does your leadership environment add to their experience?
References
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Desk reference to the diagnostic criteria from DSM-5. American Psychiatric Publishing.
Linden, M., & Muschalla, B. (2007). Anxiety disorders and workplace-related anxieties. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 21(3), 467–474. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2006.06.006
Muschalla, B., & Linden, M. (2009). Workplace phobia: A first explorative study on its relation to established anxiety disorders, sick leave, and work-directed treatment. Psychology, Health & Medicine, 14(5), 591–605.
Watterson, R. A., Williams, J. V. A., Lavorato, D. H., & Patten, S. B. (2017). Descriptive epidemiology of generalized anxiety disorder in Canada. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 62(1), 24–29. https://doi.org/10.1177/0706743716645304
Wittchen, H.-U. (2002). Generalized anxiety disorder: Prevalence, burden, and cost to society. Depression and Anxiety, 16(4), 162–171. https://doi.org/10.1002/da.10065
Watterson, R. A., Williams, J. V. A., Lavorato, D. H., & Patten, S. B. (2017). Descriptive epidemiology of generalized anxiety disorder in Canada. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 62(1), 24–29. https://doi.org/10.1177/0706743716645304