The Career Refresh is your source for actionable insights to lead, thrive, and succeed in today’s workplace. Each episode tackles key topics like leadership, career strategy, confidence, burnout, team dynamics, and the 4Ps—perfectionism, people-pleasing, procrastination, and personalities. With years of experience helping thousands of professionals achieve their goals, elevate team performance, and embrace reinvention, this podcast is your career blueprint.
Jill Griffin, a former strategist and media executive, has been featured on Adam Grant's WorkLife Podcast. She's written articles for HuffPost, Fast Company, and Metro UK. And she's been quoted by leading media outlets like Advertising Age, The New York Times, Departures, and The Wall Street Journal. Follow her on LinkedIn and join the conversation. Read more at JillGriffinConsulting.com for more details.
How Your Anxiety Impacts Your Leadership Style, and What to Do About It
•Jill Griffin•Season 9•Episode 195
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00:00 | 18:40
In this episode, we explore how anxiety shapes leadership styles and decision-making. Learn how to manage anxiety with actionable tools and strategies for more intentional, collaborative leadership.
Key Takeaways:
Recognize common anxiety-driven leadership patterns.
Use mindset tools like pausing and journaling to stop overthinking.
Embrace collaboration with a power-with approach for healthier leadership.
Jill Griffin, host of The Career Refresh, delivers expert guidance on workplace challenges and career transitions. Jill leverages her experience working for the world's top brands like Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Hilton Hotels, and Martha Stewart to address leadership, burnout, team dynamics, and the 4Ps (perfectionism, people-pleasing, procrastination, and personalities).
Hi friends, this is Jill Griffin, the host of the Career Refresh. Today I'm talking about how anxiety impacts our leadership style. My hope is that, if you are impacted by anxiety, that shining a light on the issue will help you create the change that you want to ease any workplace-related anxiety. All right, let's jump in anxiety. All right, let's jump in. Okay, friends, if you are listening to this when this episode drops and you're human, I'm going to guess that there's a lot going on for you. And when you add in what's going on perhaps for you locally, nationally and globally, it can feel really overwhelming.
Speaker 1:
Many of us have experienced the joy of overthinking at some point in our careers and yes, I'm being sarcastic we fall into the trap of thinking, rethinking, churning, burning our mental energy as if somehow it will help us solve the situation, and we find ourselves moving faster because we need to solve it. But you're not making decisions, you're making more thoughts, and this can feel heavy, maybe a little bit of a depressed feeling. Or, if you're like me, when the anxiety hits, there's this constant, almost like electric hum in my body that tends to accumulate around my heart and in my chest region and then it flows up to my throat and it feels like a big knot in my throat, and because you've been ruminating about all the things for so long, it might feel like you are making progress. But overthinking is not a strategy, it is not problem solving. It's running the same formula through the system over and over again and you end up with the same answer. So now you add on the layer of leadership and you're responsible. How are you going to perform when you have anxiety, when you are under stress or anxiety right, we'll use those words interchangeably in this episode.
Speaker 1:
Our attention narrows. We tend to focus our efforts on one area of our responsibility, one area that feels controllable, so we end up ignoring the areas that feel or may be actually out of control. Stress, anxiety and fear narrow our attention. So once again, your brain is working the way it should. There's nothing to worry here. But listen in. If you've been a long time listener, then you know that your brain is doing what it's trained to do. Your body is responding to the harm, the danger, whether it's real or perceived. So your body is responding the way it's supposed to. It's going to keep trying to keep you away from harm, and what used to be running away from danger is now wanting to run away from an unhealthy workplace or an unhealthy workplace scenario. It's the old evolutionary biology when the zebra is running from the lion, it is not thinking about the food and the grocery shopping it needs to do to get for dinner right.
Speaker 1:
Single point of focus. Everything else that feels secondary gets moved aside. But is it secondary? And here's where our leadership style comes in. I'm not going to bury the lead here.
Speaker 1:
You need to be intentional and think about the things before they're. On upon you. You need to strengthen the muscle now. On you. You need to strengthen the muscle now. You need to plan a way to deflate and diffuse the anxiety. You need a strategy. So if you think about your personality or perhaps the environment you were brought up in, I want you to really think about that.
Speaker 1:
Some of us may sit in anxiety. It's like sitting in that dirty diaper, right. We may deal with it by eating or not eating, or drinking, or using recreational drugs, or binging on YouTube shorts or playing video games for hours. Any way you look at it, you're doing that action to avoid the feeling. You are definitely trying to not feel the thing that you're feeling. So you take these actions.
Speaker 1:
Some of us resort to what I'll call control, and this is not a good thing. We can be real dicks here. Some of us are sitting in anxiety and we try to wield our power over others Again, so we don't feel the thing that we're anxious about. We focus on something else. We might get stricter, we might micromanage, shorten the leech, tighten the timeline. We may even wield our power over our direct reports, and though this behavior is terrible and it's probably been modeled to us somewhere else in our lives like lying either like lying either intentionally or by omission, being rude, ridiculing, being short, taking on a tone, yelling Good luck to those that we live with and love, because they're also going to be subjected to this. All the people around us, whether it's in the workplace environment or outside the workplace, tend to be getting the brunt of this wielding of our power, and we know these types. I mean, I know these types.
Speaker 1:
It feels hostile, maybe a bit abusive, to be on the receiving end, and often I find that this type of leadership style can be standoffish and they're not going to help their direct report achieve the goal. Their direct reports are on their own. Another type of leadership style that I see emerge in stressful situations are the people pleasers. It's a different type of control. It's more subtle, it's more nuanced, but let's be clear, it's still control. They tend to put everyone else's need before their own or at least that's what it looks like and they're not being honest. They are doing what they're doing for you because they want something from you, but they can't be direct. They can't just ask. There's a little bit of passive aggressiveness and it's manipulation. It's really a lie Again. It may look nicer, but it's not. It can come with a smile, wanting to make sure everyone's okay, but did you get this done? They burn out fast and this type of leader can feel well if you're on the receiving end. It can feel really icky and passive, aggressive because nothing is what it seems.
Speaker 1:
And the last anxiety sufferer style I see is those that lean towards hope and possibility. They still feel the anxiety. However, when they're in this place of possibility, they're less likely to seek control over others. They tend to have a more open approach. They look at the individuals in front of them as actual people, versus pawns or tasks. They tend to be collaborative. They tend to ask other people to weigh in with their opinions. They have tools in their repertoire to get their own anxiety down. They tend to pause, maybe breathe through it when they're anxious.
Speaker 1:
Do you recognize yourself in any one of these leaders? Have you worked for any one of these leaders? Or maybe at certain points in your career you've been any or all three of these leaders I know I have? Look, there are things in our control, but pandemics, wars, elections, the loss of your top account, downsizing, budget cuts, goals being doubled, targets being increased exponentially I can go on and on. These situations are not in your control. You may have accountability, but it's not all on you, and this is what I mean by being intentional, regardless of what department you work in or what job title you hold. I'm going to guess that there's some level or God help us, should be some level of annual planning.
Speaker 1:
There are cycles to business and whether you work on a calendar or a fiscal, you want to start to get to learn the patterns. On a calendar or a fiscal, you want to start to get to learn the patterns. Business is lost in one. People quit or get laid off. We're overworked, budgets are cut, funding doesn't come in, timelines are shortened, goals are doubled, we're given a huge OKR with very little staff. This is all normal Okay, I should probably not say normal, this is all common. This is common. It's work, not a hobby. This needs to happen.
Speaker 1:
So how do you support your well-being, knowing that these things are always going to be in the queue? The business cycle can be quarterly, yearly or every three years, but as a leader, you need to be ready with your mindset and prepared, which is skills training. You need to prep now, not then. So what do we know about anxiety and leadership? Is that if you work in a less supportive environment, the feeling that you're going to have or the outcome that you are trying to create, it's going to be tougher and you may feel like any mistake you make is going to be greater because it feels like it's all on you, because it is. Or you can work in a place where they acknowledge your challenges and effectively say to you don't drop it, which is sort of like the helicopter parent who sees the child carrying the glass of water and says be careful, don't drop it. I'm not going to help you, I'm just going to lay out some words that hopefully get the outcome that I want as the leader, but guess what? It's still passive, aggressive.
Speaker 1:
I recall a time I shouldn't laugh. I recall a time where we won a piece of business and then an executive leader told me that I was not going to get the staff listed on the scope. But don't tell the client, you're smart, don't worry, you can figure it out. So it meant that everyone, including myself, was always stressing to try to fill the hole in our bucket, and I would say this went on for about three months and it was really unsustainable. I don't know how we did it. I mean, I think we were all in total burnout and exhaustion and they told me they appreciated my efforts.
Speaker 1:
This is not supportive. This doesn't settle nerves and this certainly this type of style, isn't like gonna hit you on your performance review where they're gonna say like, hey, great job there, because it's all on the down low. So look, this is a shitty scenario and since we have the job, it's important that we don't fall into the overthinking or the thought loop or the churn on the situation in front of us. I get it Scream. If you want to, then manage your mind. If this keeps happening, maybe you want to find a new job, maybe this isn't the right environment for you, but if this over thinking keeps happening at the same time. You need to figure it out. You're going to have to fix it.
Speaker 1:
When I'm in a place of frantic thought, hustle and worry, I know that I shouldn't be taking action unless I'm running from like a burning building. I don't know anyone who's produced sustainable and real results from a place of frantic, anxious hustle and worry. I just know that they've damaged their relationships and their wellbeing from that place. I like to say that the universe's will is never urgent. My will is urgent and at some point we realize we are in this obsessive mindset because we can't think clearly. But we know we need to fix it. We need to fix the thing and then our brain says we can't stop this. This is what I do. I just get anxious like this. I get it. I've been there. But we can stop it.
Speaker 1:
And I'll tell you, one of the greatest gifts that I didn't realize I was giving myself was the training to manage my mind. You know, I had a head injury and as a result of that, I studied everything I could do to get my hands on the brain and begin to test and try what worked for me from different environments to different thoughts, to nutrition, to tips. Trust me, I still have moments of overthinking Just ask my husband but I will tell you I can catch it faster today than when I first started doing mindset work. It doesn't mean I can always get myself out of a hole right away, but what I do know is that I'm doing it to myself, meaning I'm able to see okay, jill, this is just where you are today. You know what? This is probably not the day to make decisions. This is probably not today to call that person back. This is probably the day to get what you need to do done the chop wood, the carry water. But you know what? You're not going to be strategic today if you keep doing this to yourself.
Speaker 1:
There's the thought, and then there's me watching the thought. I had to learn how to pause and watch my brain. I had to build the muscle so that it was there when I needed it. So I'm going to give you a couple of tips which work for me. They're not all going to work for you. Try one, find one, share one. I'd love to hear from you. Tell me if any of these, or if you have one of your own to get your brain out of the anxiety because, again, it impacts who you're being as a leader and therefore impacts others.
Speaker 1:
So the first thing I do is I talk to myself as myself and I say things like thank you for sharing. It's like there's the me and then there's my thoughts, and when I pause and watch my very clever brain throw all the obsessive thoughts at me, I just keep saying thank you for sharing. And this gives my brain a chance to pause and look. If I'm not in a place where I can get curious meaning I'm in a meeting, I'm with a client I'm presenting, or I'm in a meeting and I get triggered by something that someone else has said. I can check in later with how my body is feeling. I can feel the sensation of that feeling in my body and allow it versus resist it, and I know that can feel scary, but allowing it tends to only go on for 90 seconds is what they tell us right From an evolutionary biology. That sensation of that neurochemicals moving through your body is only about 90 seconds and then when it stops, then you have the opportunity to think again. But you can't be in that sensation, that negative feeling, that sensation, and also be strategic. One has to stop in order for the other to start.
Speaker 1:
The next thing I do is separate story from fact. This is sort of like getting everything in my head down on a piece of paper. I might divide the paper into two, write the facts, write the story, and if I don't put it down on paper, I can't see all the things that might be hidden there. There might be sneaky thoughts that are still causing some of my unproductive thinking here. Right, it's like trying to solve calculus or long division in your head. I don't know about you, but I need to write it down, get it down and look at what you're really thinking and then decide okay, it might be true, but is it helpful? So what do you want to do instead? How do you want to be intentional instead?
Speaker 1:
There's also a series of questions I'll ask myself. I might say is this thought true and can I prove it? 100% proof, without a doubt. I usually can't. And what would I do if this wasn't true and it was just a thought? That last question is the one that always gets me out of overthinking and into action. So if I say to myself okay, okay, jill, what would you do right now if this wasn't true, if this was just a thought. What actions would you take? And then I'm usually able to come up with the answer, because it gets me into a different mindset.
Speaker 1:
There are two other questions that I think about and I say to myself what do you think has gone wrong here? Or I might ask what do I really want out of this situation? Then I can throw myself into the classic how important is it? Question, where I might say how important is this going to be in two minutes, two weeks, two months, two years? Then from there I tend to again it catches myself and I can decide the priority order and what I want to put against this effort. Right, is it a major priority? Going back to fear, anxiety and stress narrows our focus. When I ask myself how important is this, I can then broaden my focus. When I ask myself, how important is this, I can then broaden my focus. And then the next is like how can I handle the situation in advance? Who are my internal allies? Who are my external allies? What do I need to do and have ready?
Speaker 1:
In this scenario that I gave you above, where I was promised staff that I wasn't actually getting, I started well, first we started to work and realize that it was unsustainable. And then I found a colleague internally who had a different work cycle, meaning they had a different seasonality, so we were able to pool some of our resources and figure out our own workflow. That worked. And yeah, it was all in the down low, all behind the scene, but we were able to find a way that we were still working through it. Low, all behind the scene, but we were able to find a way that we were still working through it. Yeah, everyone was still overworking. It definitely sucked, but it was less of a suck because we had a team to sort of share the balance, which meant people were only overworking a couple of hours a week versus like 20% overworking.
Speaker 1:
Friends, anxiety is going to impact your approach to leadership and don't get caught without being prepared. Do that scenario planning. Now I'm going to suggest that you do it quarterly and let me know what works for you and how you get yourself out of anxiety and back into leadership. You can always email me your questions at hello at jillgriffincoachingcom. I hope you try some of these tips and let me know how it goes. All right, I'll see you next time.
