How do I deal with anxious team members?
January 31, 2025
Hi, Karyn.
It feels like we’re lurching from crisis to crisis at the moment and I feel like I’m spending way too much of my time trying to deal with anxiety in my team.
To be clear, I don’t think things in our organisation are any more unstable or uncertain than they’ve ever been. (We’re a medium-sized boutique consultancy in the environmental sector.) But for months now I’ve had a bunch of people sitting in my office in tears or requesting extra leave. They’re really fantastic people but I just have an overwhelming urge to tell them to snap out of it and get back to work.
I could understand it if we were cutting jobs or budgets but things are good, we have plenty of work and I think 2025 is going to be a HUGE year but I’m worried we’re going to start losing ground or at best missing opportunities if we can’t pull it together.
How should I be handling this?
Thanks,
SH
Dear SH
I’ve been having this kind of conversation with my clients quite a bit over the past year or more. On the surface things at work seem fine, but there’s an undercurrent of stress, anxiety and uncertainty it can be hard to locate the cause of.
I think it comes down to the fundamental truth that however much we’d like to be able to compartmentalise our work selves into neat, time-bound personas, we are whole human beings and we inevitably bring our whole selves to work. (Those 1970s power entreaties to leave your feelings at the door never did work for anybody.)
The first thing I’d recommend is you read up on burnout (you can find plenty of free resources on my website) and assess whether these really fantastic people of yours are overloaded, either because of their natural temperaments and drive to succeed or because of workplace factors outside their control.
If you’re confident burnout’s not the issue, here’s the other thing I’ve been working through with some of my clients.
There’s a shedload of uncertainty, fear and hostility in the world right now, and it can be hard for people to dissociate from it. This can be particularly true for those people we most love to work with — the all-round great performers who are always capable and dependable and competent and who are also always focused, self-motivated, generous and compassionate. One of the reasons they’re likely to be so great in their roles is their mastery of empathy — empathy with their leaders, with their colleagues, with their teams, with their clients.
They are also likely bringing that empathy to the situations they see outside of the workplace, and regardless how stable and positive their work environment is (and congratulations for that!), the global headlines around political instability, social division, climate crises and similar wicked problems can seem overwhelming.
Often people will carry this anxiety in silence, and for a long time. That can be useful for your bottom line in the short-term but just like the 24/7 high-performance stress that leads to burnout, it’s not sustainable.
I know it can seem like it’s chewing up a lot of your time supporting them, but honestly? This is your job. If you’re a leader of high-performing people, this IS your job. When your usually fantastic people go off the boil, there’s nothing more important than spending time with them to find out what’s going on and support them back into their best selves. Your emotional intelligence isn’t just a “nice-to-have” — it’s your leadership superpower.
You already have what it takes to help them. That gut feeling when something’s off with a team member? Trust it. That instinct to pause the agenda when someone needs to be heard? Follow it. Bring your patience, compassion and attention to these discussions and be prepared to spend the time you need for your team members to recalibrate*. The connection you’ll deepen with them in these moments will serve you both.
Small gestures can make the biggest impact:
– Start your meetings with, “How are you really doing?” and mean it. If you’ve noticed distraction or diminished performance, follow up that question with, “Is there something we can change that would make it easier to focus?”. The point is not to (immediately) fix the issue but to open up the space to talk.
– Create buffer time in 1:1s for the conversations that matter. And if you don’t need the buffer time, apply it to supporting your own resilience by taking an intentional pause between meetings or activities.
– Share your own moments of uncertainty, anxiety or concern (yes, it’s okay to expose your human “frailty”! I’d argue it’s essential for building trusting relationships).
If you’re worried you’re not equipped to handle this anxiety in your team — I’ve been there. It’s why I now help other executive women navigate these waters. If this resonates, let’s talk.
Every good wish,
Karyn x
* Okay, I need to put a caveat here: if you have a team member who is perennially chewing up your time with irrelevancies and attention-seeking behaviour, that’s a different case altogether and requires a very different set of strategies. And if you can’t tell which scenario you’re dealing with, book a call with me so we can sort it out.
