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. Linden and Muschalla (2007) found that some individuals experienced workplace-related anxieties that were connected to their work environment rather than appearing consistently across the rest of their lives.
That is an important distinction for leaders.
The workplace is full of conditions that can create stress. Outcomes can fail. Expectations can conflict. Employees may have responsibility without authority. Resources may be limited. Social relationships may be difficult. Roles can change. Job security can become uncertain. Some occupations also involve genuine physical or psychological risk.
Stress, then, is not always something the employee brought with them.
Sometimes it is a reasonable response to what is happening around them.
Linden and Muschalla (2007) described how workplace anxiety can impair social integration, productivity, and participation. Other research has connected workplace anxiety with avoidance, strained relationships, and challenges in occupational functioning (Anxiety & Depression Association of America, 2006; Muschalla & Linden, 2009).
This raises an uncomfortable leadership question.
What if the employee is not simply struggling with the workplace? What if the workplace is struggling with how it treats the employee?
I have worked in environments where expectations changed quickly and communication did not always keep pace. I have also been part of leadership teams where people assumed that everyone understood a decision because the leaders had spent weeks discussing it.
The problem was that everyone else had not been in those meetings.
Leaders live with decisions long before employees experience them.
By the time an organizational announcement is made, the senior team may have processed the change, debated the alternatives, considered the risks, reviewed the numbers, and become accustomed to the new direction.
Employees often receive the result in a thirty-minute meeting.
Then we wonder why they need time.
For someone who already struggles with uncertainty, the difference can be significant.
Workplace stress can also grow when employees believe they have little control over how work is completed. Research examining leader-member exchange and employee experiences has connected greater participation, negotiation, and social resources with lower psychological distress and greater well-being (Martin et al., 2005; Rousseau et al., 2008).
That does not mean every role can be redesigned around individual preference.
It does mean leadership should pay attention to how much unnecessary powerlessness exists in the way work is structured.
Sometimes employees are held responsible for outcomes while lacking access to the information, resources, decision authority, or leadership support necessary to produce them.
That is stressful for almost anyone.
For someone already experiencing significant anxiety, it may become much more difficult.
The social environment matters too.
Work does not occur only through tasks. It occurs through relationships.
An employee may know exactly how to complete a technical assignment while remaining uncertain about how their supervisor will respond if something goes wrong.
They may understand the strategic objective while wondering whether asking for clarification will be interpreted as weakness.
They may know what is expected while feeling isolated from coworkers who could help them accomplish it.
That is why leadership relationships matter.
The question is not whether leaders can create a workplace without stress. They cannot.
Some stress comes with responsibility. Some comes with change. Some comes with learning. Some comes with doing difficult work that matters.
The better question is whether people have enough clarity, support, influence, resources, and relationship around them to work through that stress.
Healthy workplaces do not remove every difficult experience. They make difficult experiences possible to work through.
This is where my original research started to connect workplace anxiety with Leader-Member Exchange theory.
If uncertainty, limited control, social isolation, and lack of resources contribute to workplace stress, then perhaps the relationship between the leader and employee deserves more attention.
Not because a good relationship treats an anxiety disorder.
It does not.
But because good leadership can change the conditions surrounding how work is experienced.
That is what we will consider next.
Reflection
Which workplace pressures are genuinely unavoidable, and which ones are being created by the way your organization leads?
References
Anxiety & Depression Association of America. (2006). Workplace stress & anxiety disorders survey.
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
Martin, R., Thomas, G., Charles, K., Epitropaki, O., & McNamara, R. (2005). The role of leader-member exchanges in mediating the relationship between locus of control and work reactions. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 78(1), 141–147.
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.
Rousseau, V., Aubé, C., Chiocchio, F., Boudrias, J.-S., & Morin, E. M. (2008). Social interactions at work and psychological health: The role of leader-member exchange and work group integration. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 38(7), 1755–1777.