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well there's certainly been quite a lot
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of conversation lately about how anxiety
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is playing an increasing role in our
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lives the pandemic and now a softer
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economy with high inflation certainly
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ramping things up but now how do leaders
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deal with these issues in the workplace
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a new collaboration called Nano tools
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for leaders looks at fast and effective
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leadership tools that can be learned
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quickly and help the productivity of you
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and your team Marie Schweitzer is a
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professor of operations information and
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decisions here at the Wharton School who
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is part of this and he joins us right
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now Maurice great to see you again ah
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thanks for having me good to be back
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first let's start with the collaboration
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itself and and you think it's importance
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in terms of the workplace where we are
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now and and where we're headed
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well we're constantly collaborating
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across organizations and within
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organizations where we're reconstituting
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teams and we have high mobility in the
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workforce
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and so the challenge of affecting
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cooperation is extremely high and we've
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got to do that with often new new people
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so this one around anxiety it's
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obviously a much discussed topic right
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now how much is it do you think being
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discussed by employers uh by c-suite
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Executives by management level in the
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workplace right now
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I think it's under discussed that is
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people feel anxiety themselves but
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rarely vocalize it
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and I think if you were to ask your
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friends or co-workers
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how often do you feel anxiety I think
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what you'd find is that people are
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feeling anxiety almost all the time
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almost every day almost every hour there
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are times that create anxiety for us
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there are acute times we might face a
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presentation or a tight deadline
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where we feel intense anxiety but there
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are moments of anxiety that hit us
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almost all of us pretty frequently and I
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think you're right I mean kovid
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was an anxious time for so many people
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but their lingering effect some people
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worry about the economy they worry about
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their job security they were about
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paying rent there's so many things we
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worry about and then also our
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performance at work is a constant source
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of anxiety and so in this case it's
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important for both managers and
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employees to understand how to be able
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to handle anxiety better
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yeah I think that's exactly right that
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is we need as managers to anticipate
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that our employees are often feeling
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anxious and as co-workers we need to
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feel you know feel the sense that not
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just us who feels anxiety but the people
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around us are also feeling anxiety and
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that's going to impact how we
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collaborate and how we work with other
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people so you have a couple of action
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steps here uh that people should think
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about one being reframing anxiety as
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excitement explain this to us
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yeah so so if you think about emotions
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anxiety is what's characterized as a
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higher arousal High activation emotion
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it's like a heart is beating fast and so
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we think about our heart beating fast
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that's high arousal High activation
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it's generally negative so when we're
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feeling anxiety we're worried about
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things going wrong so think about going
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into a presentation I'm going to make
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this presentation and I'm thinking about
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all of the ways that things could go
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wrong
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and what I'm suggesting here is that we
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can instead think about the ways in
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which things might go right so imagine
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this presentation went great what would
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happen imagine this negotiation ended up
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better than I expected what would happen
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where it's high arousal High activation
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that is with excitement our heart can
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still beat fast we're now just focused
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on opportunities versus threats so it's
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easier than telling somebody you know I
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could say Dan hey why don't you just
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calm down right but now what I'm asking
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you do is take that High activation your
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heart rate's racing and I'm telling you
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well just calm it all down slow all the
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way all it all the way down and that
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turns out to be extremely hard for
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people so telling people take a deep
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breath and calm down that doesn't work
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nearly as well as saying hey get excited
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focus on opportunities
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and that's interesting because you know
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you remember the old line of counting to
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ten when you're stressed or you get into
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you get into a tough situation and while
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that's great in theory I don't know
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really how much it works in in actual
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you know in actual practicality so
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thinking about it in a different
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perspective
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it's probably new for a lot of people
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I think that's exactly right that is we
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are so ingrained to say hey just calm
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down
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or I say look I know you're anxious
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about this test or this deadline but
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it's no big deal it's fine
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um just you know take a deep breath calm
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down count to ten and yet when people
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have taken their deep breath count to
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ten that anxiety is likely to come
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rushing back and what I'm suggesting
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instead is let's focus on opportunities
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imagine this goes great imagine the
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presentation or the test imagine you you
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meet this deadline imagine this
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important meeting goes really well
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imagine that and get excited for it
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so kind of also a byproduct uh are are
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the health impacts that probably people
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uh will be able to deal with on a better
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fashion as well
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well I think that's an important point
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that is anxiety is not a great place for
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us to live and yet that is where most of
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us reside a lot of the time we feel
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anxious about all kinds of things and if
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instead we can take some of the most
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acute moments and get excited not only
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maybe maybe feel better but in studies
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Studies have shown that we actually
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perform better so people get excited
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before a math test the excited before
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they sing they're excited before they go
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perform something they're more likely to
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do a better job and we have data
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suggesting that you also talk about the
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element of thinking about it as a ritual
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yes yeah so I I think one thing that's
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important to recognize is that we use
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rituals
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in many occasions to Mark transitions or
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otherwise stressful events so you can
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think about around death we have rituals
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around mourning around a burial we think
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about transitions in power we have
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rituals around those
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um when we when people get married
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they're sort of Life transitions we tend
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to have rituals and these rituals help
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us in the big moments
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and also in the small moments so think
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about athletes so whenever the place
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stops in a sporting event all eyes turn
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to one person so you can think about in
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basketball the free throw shooter that
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dribbles the ball a certain number of
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times and Spins it before they shoot
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their free throw shot or the tennis
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player that balances the ball a certain
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number of times before they serve it
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these are rituals and these rituals help
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people when they feel anxious they give
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us a sense of control
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and they calm us down so rituals can be
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a really important part
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of our toolkit to help us navigate
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anxious times and one thing that we
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found in our in our research is that we
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can create rituals that is
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it might be nice
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to have a ritual that's been around for
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hundreds of years that many people do
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with us
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in synchrony but even if we invent our
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own rituals those rituals when we do
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them in a certain kind of way we feel a
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sense of control and Mastery and sort of
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like that tennis player before they
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serve they move us to a place that's
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more Serene than that anxiety we might
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be feeling so you tried this out in a
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case study maybe if you can give us some
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backstory on on how this played out and
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and what the results were
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yes so we did this in a few different
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ways but I'll tell you one of my
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favorite ones we had people singing in
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uh and we had we used a Wii karaoke
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machine to score their singing
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performances
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and uh so we had them in a in a room
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we told them that we were going to pay
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them based upon their score
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um on the machine and it's a function of
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how accurate and sort of loud uh they
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are and uh we had them sing the song
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Don't Stop Believing
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um you might you could have a few cars
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Dan oh yeah
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stop stop believing yeah that's all I
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got Maurice I'm horrible to be honest
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yeah well so so we gave participants uh
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uh the words
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um and then of course the background
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music and uh and then we had them sing
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and when you ask people to sing
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um with you know sort of people like you
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as the exception I think you're so used
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to being on on microphone but most
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people find that to be an anxious time
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and we gave people we invented a ritual
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for people to do
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we told them to draw how they felt to
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sprinkle salt on it
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um you know to rip it up
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um we we gave them a ritual and we told
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them this is a ritual
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uh in other cases we didn't give people
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a ritual to do we just gave them time to
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sort of you know sit sit quietly another
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group we told them just to calm down
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and then we scored their performance
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and and what's interesting is we did
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this across many different things we
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gave people math tests and but the
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singing is the most fun and you see that
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people are singing better
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and we also we also measured we measured
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their heart rates
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telling people to calm down doesn't
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diminish your heart rate
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but going through a ritual does
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what's the challenge then for a leader a
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manager in a company who may have to
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deal with his or her own anxiety but
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then also have to be aware of and maybe
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act upon the anxiety of employees as
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well
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yeah so I think the first step is to
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recognize how prevalent anxiety is and
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to recognize our own anxiety
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the second thing to recognize is what
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are the triggers what kinds of things
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are triggering anxiety if we can name
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those that can be quite helpful hey I'm
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anxious about this deadline I'm anxious
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about this meeting
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and then to think about reframing that
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recasting that
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I think as managers what's really
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important is for us to recognize our own
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anxiety but also recognize how anxious
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the people are around us
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and so
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it might not be the case that we need to
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make deadlines more Salient to people
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uh you know it's not that's not what's
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going to motivate them it could be that
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people are on the other side of this
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that is they're so anxious that if we
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could diminish their anxiety they might
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perform better
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and so sometimes to figure out ways for
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us to take the temperature down
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and to make people less anxious to help
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them perform better
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Maurice great to have you with us today
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thanks for your time all the best with
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Nano tools thanks again oh thank you
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Marie Schweitzer who's a professor of
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operations information and decisions
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here at the Wharton School
