Help an Anxious Team Work Better

Is an anxious team just a group of individuals who feel anxiety? Yes and no. An anxious team creates collective anxiety and acts it out in daily communication and workflow.

An anxious team pings worry back and forth. Team members act out their anxiety on each other, in subtle and major ways. The anxiety constantly gets recycled so it stays present. It’s happening a lot right now.

Some teams are anxious because they don’t trust each other and they feel low psychological safety. This affects communication (imagine constant, instant reply-alls to email and Slack), collegiality (think constantly second guessing each other, or over-managing and tracking deliverables), and productivity (all that time worrying about what others think is very distracting!).? It really hampers innovation and growth, because an anxious team is a team that avoids idea-sharing, difficult conversations, and honest feedback.

Harvard Business School’s Amy Edmondson calls this the interpersonal anxiety zone. She told me , “It keeps us in a little cage of our own making, where we feel unable to express ourselves or to get the help we need.” It’s “where performance standards or performance expectations are really high but psychological safety is low.”?

Some teams are anxious because things are really tough right now, everyone’s burned out, and the world is very uncertain.?

No matter why your team is anxious right now, you can take steps to lower the volume of anxiety and reduce reactivity. (PS: These are also fundamental, great leadership skills!)

Take Perspective

Edmondson says that approaching others with curiosity and a desire to learn what it’s like in their shoes is a great way to lower team anxiety. It’s “an awareness of self as having a valid point of view, but always missing something. I'm not right. I don't see reality as it really is, and you don't. If I can shift my brain to that more collective, collaborative, humble learning oriented wise way of being, then I don't have to go out of my way to create a psychologically safe environment. That's just going to happen naturally. So how you show up matters.”

It’s powerful when a leader stops instantly working from her own perspective and pauses to consider how team members experience life. Knowing that a colleague is receptive to your perspective can really help reduce anxiety.

A simple trick: Before you send an email off hours, pause and imagine what kind of reaction that’s going to elicit in the sender.?

Ask Good Questions and Practice Great Listening

Edmondson told me that asking good questions of your team makes people feel “invited in”-- as if their feedback matters. When we feel our feedback matters and we feel safe sharing it, anxiety goes down a lot.??

As we all know, good listening is an art. Edmondson notes that when people are honest and outspoken, there will be things we hear that we don't like. “We want to always have the following two ingredients in how we respond,” she says: “appreciation and forward looking.”?

In anxious times, listening more and talking less is key. Sometimes anxious thoughts don't have a quick fix, or they aren’t rooted in reality. Listening and then forming an empathetic-- not shaming-- response can help.?

Imagine you’re meeting with a colleague whose quarterly sales are down. Instead of opening with the numbers and asking why they’re down, you could start with: “How are things for you right now? I know it’s a difficult and unpredictable time.” Simon Sinek has a great video on this.

Defuse Anxiety by Being Vulnerable

The social psychologist Amy Cuddy says we need leaders who exhibit both vulnerability and strength. “Most leaders today tend to emphasize their strength, competence, and credentials in the workplace, but that is exactly the wrong approach,” she writes. “Leaders who project strength before establishing trust run the risk of eliciting fear, and along with it a host of dysfunctional behaviors.”?

Nothing establishes trust more effectively than the emotional connection fostered through empathy and shared humanity.?This also lowers team anxiety.

This is why being open about your own anxiety can be so powerful. Admitting “I’m anxious today” or “I didn’t sleep well” or “Wow, did you see the news?” lets everyone else in the room breathe a little easier, because they know the tension isn’t their fault, and if they’re also feeling anxious, they're not the only one. And remember, you don’t have to share details; just share the state you’re in. A little vulnerability goes a long way!

PS: Chester Elton and Adrian Gostick have more great tactics for managing an anxious team