How Leaders Can Keep Anxiety at Bay

The most challenging thing about leadership is that doing it poorly often looks the same as doing it well.

Confidence can rally the troops, unless it's just covering up problems nobody has the nerve to discuss. Group activities can get you buy-in and cohesion—unless they’re just hollow gestures of ceremony and ritual. And expressions of vulnerability can truly humanize your organization—unless you're avoiding what’s really making you anxious.

That anxiety, and the struggle to address it, can do some real harm to organizations. Writing in the MIT Sloan Management Review in a piece titled "How Leadership Anxiety Derails Transformation," a pair of scholars from the business school Insead call this response "defensive organizing," noting that it can hobble a team’s performance and even lead to failure.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Associations Now.