Understanding Leadership Anxiety in Managers and 5 Ways to Manage it

As you sit at your desk at work looking at all the critical decisions you must make for your team, do you feel a rising restlessness and your heartbeat increasing? Even though you’re capable and skilled, do you doubt yourself and your capabilities? Do worries about what could go wrong overwhelm you and almost engulf you, making it difficult to focus on anything else?

If something like this often happens to you or is starting to happen on some more minor levels, you have reached the right place.

A manager is responsible for caring for and supporting their team members, especially their health and well-being. A manager is expected to assist team members to overcome challenges proactively. But what about the challenges that managers face themselves? Today, we will discuss one such challenge, i.e., Leadership anxiety, and how managers can overcome it.

Anxiety is something we all go through on some level. It is our body's natural response to stress. It is that feeling of worry, fear, and apprehension about what will happen.

You may ask why we must focus on it if it is a common thing that everyone has. First, prolonged anxiety and stress can lead to several physical and mental health issues, and we want to prevent it by spreading awareness. And secondly, anxiety is something that can be quickly passed on without even doing anything. And that is very likely to happen if you are a manager or leader yourself. Your anxiousness can easily be transferred to your team members subconsciously and can impact the whole team.

Difference between stress and anxiety

Stress and anxiety are often used interchangeably by many of us. However, we must understand the difference between the two. Let me give you two situations.

1st- You and your team are putting your best foot forward in completing a task, and you can see things happening. But you still worry that the outcome won't be good or that there will be too many mistakes. This makes you tense and also disturbs your sleep and food cycle. However, once the task is completed, you feel fine and can bring your sleep and food cycle on track.

2nd- As a manager, you often feel you cannot be a good leader for your team. You spend a lot of time preparing for any meeting or discussion. You often feel restless and get headaches. All this makes you struggle with making decisions and aren't able to concentrate on work.

Can you figure out which situation is an example of stress and which describes anxiety here?

Look at the picture below for the difference between stress and anxiety, and check if you are right!

So, the first situation here is stress since there is an evident external pressure that makes you worry, and you can get back as soon as that pressure is gone. At the same time, the 2nd situation is that of anxiety because its source seems to be internal, and it is a prolonged state of worry that stays with a manager despite the changing conditions.

How does anxiety manifest?

Feeling anxious in a managerial role is understandable. Instead of being an individual responsible for your limited tasks, a manager is the face of the team, and that means enormous responsibilities. Taking on a new role is bound to give you some first-time jitters. Sometimes, these first-time jitters tend to stay with us longer, and we somehow get trapped into the cycle of continuous anxiety.

Now, to help you break free of this cycle, let's take you through some anxiety symptoms to help you understand how anxiety manifests in your everyday life as a manager. It is essential to know these symptoms because to manage anxiety, you must first know that what you are experiencing is, in fact, anxiety.

• Excessive worry, which stays regardless of the changing situations at work.
• Wanting everything to be perfect and spending more time on a task than stipulated.
• Spending a lot of time preparing for any upcoming meeting or discussion (Even if it is informal).
• Physical symptoms like changes in appetite or sleep cycle, constant restlessness, sweating and palpitations, etc.
• Not being able to communicate your thoughts clearly with your team.
• Having difficulty in navigating through tough situations (conflicts, disagreements).
• Difficulty in making quick decisions for your team.

What can you do as a leader to manage anxiety?

• Know and accept that you can't be perfect: As a manager, you lead a whole team. You try to listen to them, help them grow, and achieve better things. But sometimes, you also have to be strict and assertive and often have to say no to many things. This is bound to upset a few people, and you have to be okay with that. You cannot cater to everyone. Yes, you are the leader, but you also need individual contributions to make real changes happen.

• Self-awareness: Begin by accepting that you are experiencing anxiety and must focus on managing it. The next thing is understanding the specific situations or thoughts that trigger stress. Knowing what makes you anxious will make you better prepared for dealing with it. For this, you can use journaling, wherein you write and keep track of what makes you nervous and how you behave and feel in that citation. This will help you identify any recurring patterns.

• Stress-reduction techniques: We often speak about how we need to take care of our health and take out time for exercise, meditation, hobbies, etc. But with a busy working life, it gets tough to do that. Instead of taking out separate time for anything, try to include that in your lifestyle. For example- you can take the stairs whenever you can, take small meditation breaks during the day to practice breathing exercises, or take 5 minutes. When done regularly, these will help you relax during a hectic day.

• Look for ways to develop your skills: Several small skills help you manage your everyday life easily. Skills like time management, effective communication, and delegation are essential to a manager. Look for ways to learn and develop these skills to handle your responsibilities without feeling overwhelmed.

• Ask for help: Last but not least, ask for help. Asking for help can be a difficult thing to do, but it's also necessary. Contact your mentors, colleagues, and mental health professionals for guidance and support. Speaking to a professional will feel scary, but believe me, it will do wonders for you.

Well, working on your skills and health will only make you better with time, and there is no shame in asking for help in doing that. And if nobody has recently said this to you, let me say it- it's okay not to be okay, and it's okay to ask for help if you're not okay!

As a manager, you think about your team and how to help them grow. However, I understand that personal career and growth are and should be your top priority. Therefore, take this as a reminder for you to think about yourself and give yourself the time and space you require to work towards your professional success. A bonus of understanding and working on yourself is that you automatically become more equipped to help your team improve. Win-Win!