By Jeffrey Miller

If you’re a leader, you feel it in your gut: Stress is at an all-time high. No wonder. The uncertain economy keeps everyone, even those who work for successful companies, slightly off-balance.

Helping your organization manage excessive, chronic anxiety is your number one job. Why? Because it means ensuring that employees operate on principles rather than emotions. When people stay in low-grade panic mode, they can no longer think clearly, creatively and flexibly.

Of course, some anxiety in the workplace is normal and even desirable. It goes back to our primitive survival instincts. All organizations face threats, both internal and external, and anxiety is an instinctive response to any threat to one’s survival. But when the natural chronic anxiety in an organization rises to an excessive level, employees become like a herd of stampeding wildebeests. They start operating on “fight or flight” instinct rather than thinking clearly, creatively and in a flexible manner.

Furthermore, anxiety is contagious. What happens next is rarely pretty. Perhaps the anxious employees succumb to wildebeest-like group-think and run their company off the proverbial cliff. Or one person is unfairly singled out as a scapegoat. Or employees can’t take the stress any longer and start leaving the company. A common scenario is one where people are fired to “solve the problem,” which only reappears later with the new employee because the system that caused the problem hasn’t really changed.

Dismal as this scenario sounds, there is some good news. Rather than accepting the cost of excessive anxiety as a way of life, you can change your organization for the better. Following are some suggestions:

Strive to be a predictable leader. The least stressful companies to work for are those in which the rational system—the officially stated goals, values, policies, procedures, job roles and so forth—is a fairly accurate description of what actually transpires on the average workday. This means that the rational system and the emotional system are reasonably well aligned. What the leaders of such companies have in common is their predictability. If you want to guess what the leader will do in any given situation, check out the company’s mission statement, current objectives, policy manuals and reporting structure. The leader’s behavior is consistent with what the rational system of the company would lead you to expect.

Map the anxiety in your situation. Because anxiety feels uncomfortable, we tend to play “hot potato” with it: We dilute the pain by passing it on to someone else. When you understand this mechanism, it’s possible to figure out where your anxiety originated. Draw a circle that represents you and other circles labeled with the names of those around you. Use arrows to indicate where anxiety is coming from and where it is going. Once you’ve mapped your anxiety, you can use the following techniques to help you defuse it.

Learn to take an “I-position.” When you have to solve a problem, it’s tempting to worry about how your decision will affect the feelings of other people. Keep in mind that you’ll never please everyone. Trying to control the reactions of other people is anxiety-driven behavior and it results in only more anxiety.

To take an I-position, you need to make a principle-based decision rather than one based on feelings and personalities. It’s true that taking an I-position may temporarily cause anxiety to rise. In the long run, however, the entire system will be able to calm down.

“Detriangle” yourself. Any relationship between two people seeks to stabilize itself by pulling in one or more third parties. This process is called “triangling.” Suppose you have a conflict with a coworker (let’s call him Mike). Because the two of you can’t reach an agreement, anxiety builds up. You decide to draw in a third coworker (let’s call her Mary) to get her “on your side” and relieve your anxiety. You have created a triangle: you and Mary against Mike.

Triangles are perfectly natural, but they can sometimes create even more anxiety. You can “detriangle” yourself. Here’s how:

1. Look for the objective cause of the anxiety that has led the triangle to rise.
2. Take sides with issues, not with people. Take an “I-position” and state it clearly.
3. Maintain an independent one-on-one relationship with each of the other members of the triangle.

Correct an overfunctioning/underfunctioning relationship. Overfunctioners take over responsibilities that belong to another person. Underfunctioners allow this to happen. It is a reciprocal relationship—neither can exist without the other—and both parties are reacting to anxiety.

Either party can break the cycle by taking the I-position. If you are an overfunctioner, realize that you are not responsible for someone else’s success or failure. On the other hand, if you are the underfunctioner, you must realize that your long-term passive approach serves to maintain the other person’s overfunctioning behaviors (micromanaging, controlling and so on).

Taking responsibility for yourself—giving up the need to blame or control others—actually requires a tremendous amount of courage. That’s the stuff leaders are made of. And when enough people are able to manage their anxiety and find this kind of courage, that’s the formula for a stunningly successful organization.

Author: Jeffrey A. Miller is certified as a Level III Organizational Engineer. He is the author of The Anxious Organization, 2nd Edition: Why Smart Companies Do Dumb Things (Facts on Demand Press, January 2008).