Dealing with the Anxiety That Comes from Leadership
Anxiety is perhaps the most natural response to tension and change. I witness it when I encourage my kids to practice their instrument, or try to get someone to spend time on my project, or ask people to give money to a cause. They almost always react with some level of resistance and anxiety.
Leadership and influence are rarely easy.
How do you deal with the anxiety swirling about when others are resisting your leadership and influence?
We’ve all experienced it. If you’re trying to offer any level of leadership and positive influence around you, people will get uncomfortable. With any idea that risks a loss of time, money or reputation, with any proposed discomfort, pain or extra energy, anxiety increases. Over time, anxiety leads to things like:
- Avoidance
- Isolation
- Partisanship
- Recurring conflict
- Blame
These symptoms of chronic anxiety are also contagious, often spreading to the person doing the leadership and influence!
For example, let’s say you’re raising money for a charity. You reach out to a particular family because they have attended events hosted by your organization in the past and you believe they are high-capacity donors. This family, however, is experiencing financial pressures at the moment and didn’t intend to give money to your organization. Despite this reality, they agree to attend your annual fundraising event because they have friends attending and feel bad declining your invitation.
After the event, your follow-up calls and emails are unreturned. In fact, privately, they are complaining about your aggressive fundraising tactics. They finally write you an email requesting to be removed from your outreach.
Confused and put off by their “strange” communication pattern, you respond with an overly friendly and apologetic email. Internally, though, you’re ruminating on what you might have done wrong and why this couple is so frustrating.
This example, which could be exchanged for thousands of similar stories unfolding every day with different details, is rich with anxiety on all sides:
- The family accepts the invitation despite not having the interest or capacity.
- They avoid follow-up attempts rather than just politely decline the first outreach.
- They blame the fundraiser for their discomfort.
- You passive-aggressively respond with an apology when you’re actually upset.
- You repeatedly dwell on your confusion, hoping that by making sense of it you will alleviate your anxiety.
Why is all of this important for leadership influence?
Because the parties in this example all have substantially limited ability to lead and influence when they are operating out of anxiety. It’s nearly impossible to build trust-based leadership influence when you are fighting, flighting or freezing!
This is why the great author, psychologist, and executive coach Edwin Friedman contends that the most important attribute for demonstrating leadership influence is being a “non-anxious presence.”
Like the famous poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling begins:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too
This is the beginning of leadership influence — to remain a non-anxious presence. Said another way, it’s to be non-reactive. A non-anxious, non-reactive person does not adjust their values, preferences or approach as a way of powering up, shutting down or avoiding responsibility.
A non-anxious, non-reactive person does and says the hard, helpful thing. They stay the course, they hold onto themselves, they remain solid and flexible, as Dr. David Schnarch beautifully describes.
Even if the other person fights your idea, pushes back, resists, avoids, or blames you, it’s important to take a deep breath, remind yourself of who you are and how you got here, and proceed in a calm, thoughtful way.
Where do you need to be a non-anxious presence in the coming days?
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