The Anxious Leader – ElPropósito3 min de lectura

The contradiction between leadership and anxiety

Ironically, at one of the best moments of my career, I was living a parallel life of severe anxiety and panic attacks. Very few people knew, perhaps only my wife, my psychologist and my psychiatrist, three wonderful people who stood by me and gave me all the support I needed to get through that serious crisis. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, and if you’re going through it, I urge you to act now. Wellbeing and freedom are two treasures we can always keep, or win back at any time.

The Royal Spanish Academy defines anxiety as "a mental state marked by great restlessness, intense agitation and extreme insecurity." Those are serious hurdles in a world of constant change that floods and overwhelms us. Anyone who sees themselves as a leader knows their attention must stay on the moment at hand, whether a conversation, a meeting or something they’re reading. When anxiety takes over, that attention drifts, and the leader’s ability to unlock their full potential shrinks.

Leaders have many tools, and two of them, used strategically, lift a leader to a higher level and a broad sense of wellbeing: managing yourself and managing your relationships with others, what Daniel Goleman calls Emotional Intelligence (EI). A leader’s emotional intelligence is made up of self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. Both are vast worlds, and cultivating them takes time, constant feedback and plenty of practice.

Anxiety weighs heavily on a leader’s growth and on the leadership role itself, so it’s a subject we have to face. The first step, I believe, is awareness. Anxiety is dead weight that keeps us from moving at the speed of change, unlocking our own potential and supporting others as they unlock theirs to meet this century’s challenges. The second step is finding a way to lighten that load, and I believe the word HELP is where the solution starts. Asking for help is part of managing ourselves, and offering it means reading other people’s needs (empathy).

Whatever path we take to solve this challenge, it will open new and better opportunities, above all the ability to rise to the moment. Any vision, mission, purpose, strategy or goal of an organization, team or person is reached far more slowly with anxious leaders, and often never at all.

Warm regards and all my appreciation,

Rodrigo Baccaro

P.S. This week’s VELA:

• What I’ve been Viewing: How Einstein helped me become a scientist. My takeaway: "People graduate from university with a good education that would have let them thrive and live in the 1950s".
• What I’ve been Listening to: Rapamycin’s effects on cancer, cardiovascular disease and neurological degeneration. I’ve taken a special interest in understanding cancer, and I came across this fascinating podcast about the discovery of a drug that affects many different conditions.
• What I’ve been Reading: College students just want normal libraries. My takeaway: 92% of the university students surveyed said they prefer printed books to electronic ones.
• What I’ve been Learning: Voices in opera. A fascinating resource for learning all about opera. This time I wanted to learn the different types of voices in this wonderful world of music and drama.

Author: Rodrigo Baccaro

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