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, revisited the same issue repeatedly, avoided a difficult conversation, or became unusually unsettled when plans changed.
Leadership usually sees the behaviour first.
We see indecision, avoidance, irritability, repeated questions, declining concentration, missed deadlines, or someone withdrawing from the team.
The danger is assuming that what we see explains everything that is happening.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder [GAD] involves persistent anxiety and worry and can include restlessness, fatigue, irritability, muscle tension, difficulty concentrating, and disrupted sleep (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).
Again, leaders should not diagnose what those behaviours mean.
We can, however, become more informed about what someone experiencing anxiety may be dealing with.
Dugas and Koerner (2005) identified four important components within their model of GAD: intolerance of uncertainty, positive beliefs about worry, negative problem orientation, and cognitive avoidance.
These ideas are worth understanding because organizational life contains plenty of opportunities for all four.
Intolerance of uncertainty describes difficulty responding to situations that are ambiguous, unpredictable, or not fully defined (Dugas & Koerner, 2005). Research reviewed by Behar et al. (2009) connects intolerance of uncertainty with persistent worry and with interpreting uncertain situations as threatening.
Think about the uncertainty created by ordinary organizational life.
A restructuring is announced, but the details are incomplete. A supervisor asks to meet tomorrow without saying why. Responsibilities shift. A strategy changes. A decision is delayed. A senior leader resigns. A new system is implemented before everyone understands how it will work.
One employee may think, “We will know more when we know more.”
Another may experience the absence of information very differently.
Anxiety can also become connected to beliefs about the usefulness of worry. Dugas and Koerner (2005) observed that people may believe worrying helps them prepare, prevent problems, motivate action, or manage difficult emotions.
This can be easy to reinforce at work.
We sometimes celebrate people who think through every possible problem. We value leaders who anticipate risk. We praise preparation.
There is nothing wrong with thoughtful preparation.
The difficulty begins when worry itself starts to feel responsible for keeping bad things from happening.
If I stop worrying about this, I might miss something.
When feared outcomes do not occur, the belief can be strengthened. The person may conclude that worrying helped prevent the outcome (Dugas & Koerner, 2005).
That can lead to repeated checking, excessive preparation, reassurance seeking, or difficulty moving from analysis into decision.
The third element involves problem orientation.
Dugas and Koerner (2005) describe a negative problem orientation in which a problem begins to be experienced as a threat. The individual may have the ability to solve the problem, yet anxiety interferes with their confidence and ability to engage the resources available to them (Behar et al., 2009).
This distinction matters in leadership.
A capable person can know how to solve something and still struggle to think clearly when anxiety becomes attached to the problem.
Pressure may make that worse.
“Just decide.”
“You already know how to do this.”
“Why are we still talking about this?”
Those responses may be understandable, particularly when leaders are under pressure themselves. They may also add another layer of threat to an employee who already feels overwhelmed by the problem.
Sometimes a better conversation begins by making the problem smaller.
What do we actually know?
What remains unknown?
What decision needs to be made now?
What can wait?
What resources are available?
What is within your control?
The fourth element is cognitive avoidance. Dugas and Koerner (2005) describe attempts to avoid, suppress, or redirect distressing thoughts and the emotions associated with them.
We see versions of avoidance all the time at work.
The email remains unanswered.
The conversation gets postponed again.
The difficult task keeps moving down the priority list.
A decision receives more analysis even though enough information already exists.
Someone becomes unusually quiet.
Avoidance still needs to be addressed. Understanding behaviour does not mean removing accountability.
It means we can approach accountability with more curiosity.
What is making this difficult to engage with?
That question may reveal something that a demand for compliance never will.
One of the things I have learned from revisiting earlier leadership experiences is how easy it is to assign meaning to behaviour before understanding the person experiencing it.
A request for clarity is not necessarily resistance.
Repeated questions do not necessarily mean someone was not listening.
Avoidance does not always mean laziness.
Indecision does not necessarily mean incompetence.
Sometimes there is more happening underneath the behaviour than leadership can immediately see.
Our job is not to diagnose it.
Our job is to remain curious enough to find out what we can.
Reflection
When someone’s behaviour frustrates you, how quickly do you decide what that behaviour means?
References
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Desk reference to the diagnostic criteria from DSM-5. American Psychiatric Publishing.
Behar, E., DiMarco, I. D., Hekler, E. B., Mohlman, J., & Staples, A. M. (2009). Current theoretical models of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD): Conceptual review and treatment implications. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 23(8), 1011–1023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2009.07.006
Dugas, M. J., & Koerner, N. (2005). Cognitive-behavioral treatment for generalized anxiety disorder: Current status and future directions. Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy, 19(1), 61–81.