Managers can help to reduce anxiety at work

How am I going to control my budget? How do I tell employees they are being laid off? How can I reduce my community’s health expenditures? How will I reduce employee sick time? Such questions can trigger anxiety for anyone in a municipal leadership position.

Anxiety is a normal reaction to stress, and it can help us deal with a tense situation, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

“Anxiety varies in its intensity and comes and goes,” writes Jon Kabat-Zinn from the Stress Reduction Clinic at the UMass Medical Center in Worcester, in his book “Full Catastrophe Living.” “It is a temporary mental state, just like boredom or happiness.”

Generally speaking, a sense of anxiety can help one cope, according to the NIMH, “but when anxiety becomes an excessive, irrational dread of everyday situations, it has become a disabling disorder.” If you’re worrying all the time, you have crossed the threshold.

According to the NIMH, anxiety disorders affect about 40 million American adults in a given year. There are five major types: generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and social anxiety disorder.

While each disorder has its own symptoms, all five have common signs: excessive and chronic fear, worry, and dread. People may also suffer from anxiety attacks and/or panic attacks – episodes in which an individual may experience a short period of intense discomfort and fear for no apparent reason. While the cause is typically unknown, the symptoms can be misleading because some are similar to having a heart attack (chest pains, shortness of breath and dizziness).

Healthy fear and neurotic anxiety are two different things. Healthy fear will lend to the outstanding presentation a town manager will give to colleagues or to meeting a deadline on a big project at work. The thoughts that cause healthy fear are realistic, and they keep us mindful and alert. The thoughts that cause neurotic anxiety, however, are typically illogical and irrational, resulting in chronic worry or fear over something that will never happen.

“Unlike the relatively mild, brief anxiety caused by a stressful event, such as speaking in public, anxiety disorders can last at least six months and can get worse if they are not treated,” reports the NIMH.

Even the hardiest and most resilient people experience relatively mild and brief anxiety. Events that can trigger mild anxiety include job pressures, deadlines, tax season, and budgetary concerns. Not everyone can compartmentalize.

Personal life stress and cases of mild anxiety can encroach on one’s work life, making it very difficult to get through the day, focus on projects, and make critical decisions. This is where good leadership comes in.

Effective leaders learn to manage their own anxiety and to be comfortable with the angst that employees sometimes display. These leaders encourage employees and strive to increase their self-esteem through appropriate praise for work well done. This support and encouragement of employees can make a big difference in both their quality of work and in how effective the manager’s leadership is perceived.

Municipal managers can lead by example. They should encourage and empower employees to tap into activities that can increase their self-esteem, motivate them to do better, and reduce their anxiety and stress. Regular exercise and healthy nutrition gives people the confidence they need to do well in all areas, including at work, and puts them on the path of living healthier and happier lifestyles.

Participating in healthy lifestyle behaviors as a means to stay healthy and reduce the chances of developing a chronic condition, like generalized anxiety and various diseases, is much less costly to a municipality than treating the condition.

Leadership’s commitment to wellness serves both management and employees in the short and long term. Over time and with regular practice, healthy behaviors can actually reduce a municipality’s health care costs.

MIIA’s Well Aware program offers members of its Health Benefits Trust a variety of free on-site wellness programs to help employees stay active and well. These programs include: Relax, Renew and Rebalance, yoga, body conditioning, Pilates, and fitness fusion.

Elizabeth Berner is a MIIA Wellness Representative.