Anxiety as a Leadership Superpower

Sue Bethanis  0:04
Welcome everyone to WiseTalk. This is Mariposa’s monthly podcast where we provide perspectives on leadership. Today we’re excited to welcome Morra Aarons-Mele. Morra is the host of the Anxious Achiever, a top 10 management podcast that helps people rethink the relationship between their mental health and their leadership, Morra founded Women Online and the Mission List and award winning digital consulting firm and influencer marketing company dedicated to social change. She did that in 2010 and sold her businesses in 2021. She helped Hillary Clinton log on for her first internet chat, and has launched digital campaigns for President Obama, the United Nations, the CDC, and many other leading figures and organizations. She is the author of the new book, The Anxious Achiever: Turn Your Biggest Fears into your Leadership Superpower that’s a compelling guide to managing the anxiety that comes with succeeding and leading. Morra has degrees from the Harvard Kennedy School and Brown University and lives outside Boston with her family and her many animals that sounds like yes, how many animals do you have?

Morra Aarons-Mele  1:18
Right now? Only four.

Sue Bethanis  1:23
Cats, dogs, chickens?

Morra Aarons-Mele  1:25
Three cats and a dog.

Sue Bethanis  1:27
Okay, no chickens.

Morra Aarons-Mele  1:28
Not right now sadly, miss my chickens. Do you have chickens?

Sue Bethanis  1:33
No, but I have a friend who has chickens and ducks. And you know, in the city, it’s sort of funny to have that. But so, um, well, thanks for being with us. And tell us about your personal story. I read your bio. But what influenced you to write this book particularly?

Morra Aarons-Mele  1:48
You know, I’ve been really sort of obsessed with mental health at work for almost, well, for two decades, actually. It really came from my own experience, you know, as someone who manages mental health challenges, and really hoped to figure out how a new way to work, and back then, you know, this is two decades ago, there weren’t really available mentors. We didn’t talk about this stuff. We still don’t talk about it a lot. 20 years ago, definitely not. And yet, for me as someone who has, you know, chronic anxiety and bipolar two disorder, you know, my mental health traveled with me everywhere I went pretty much every day doesn’t go away. Right? So I really had to figure things out. And as I got older, and I studied workplace redesign, actually, in graduate school, I was pursuing my master’s in social work, really trying to figure out how do I become a workplace therapist, because this is what I really care about. Life actually didn’t take me in that direction. I, as you mentioned, ended up founding a company that was really a marketing company, rooted in social change, and women’s issues. But work has remained my passion. And I kept blogging and writing and speaking and launching podcasts. And when I would talk about my anxiety, people would light up, they would want to talk about it too, you know, I thought, there’s an outlet for this. There’s so many people like me, who are really high achieving, but who manage clinical anxiety. And that was really the genesis of the podcast, the Anxious Achiever in 2018.

Sue Bethanis  3:34
Well, not only are there people that are clinically anxious, but there’s a lot of people that are just anxious, not necessarily clinically anxious, but there’s just there’s a lot of anxiety.

Morra Aarons-Mele  3:43
A lot of anxiety is part of the human condition, right? Anxiety has kept us alive.

Sue Bethanis  3:49
Yeah, yes, yes. Well, we talked about how worry is from the stress, we will want some stress, obviously, because it helps us be successful, and it helps us achieve. But when it when it becomes too much, it does translate into worry, and how do you see that, that sort of formula, that sort of demarcation of stress and worry.

Morra Aarons-Mele  4:14
I mean, anxiety shows up as worry for a lot of us, right? Because it’s something that our brain can do, when we’re anxious and worry feels productive, even though it’s not, but it feels productive. So our brain learns, oh, I’m gonna worry because that’s good when I’m anxious, I worry. And that makes me feel like I’m doing something so I’m not anxious. You know, it’s one of these sort of tricks that our brain does. And stress is interesting. You know, I think we tend to use stress and anxiety interchangeably, but I find it helpful actually not to think about them interchangeably because stress is external. And we can live under a tremendous amount of stress and not be anxious. Yeah, that’s hard to do I’ve never mastered it, but it is possible because stress is an external burden. And anxiety is an emotion.

Sue Bethanis  5:10
And how do you differentiate between fear and anxiety?

Morra Aarons-Mele  5:13
I mean, fear and anxiety are very close cousins. Fear again, I think technically is that sort of time delimited external factor, right? I always say like you’re driving on the highway and a truck cuts in front of you. You slam on the brakes. That’s fear. Very legitimate, right? Yes, anxiety would be the next time you get in a car, thinking, Oh, my God, this is going to happen again. And an unmanaged anxiety disorder would be I can’t drive because I’m gonna get run over by a truck. Right. So again, it feels really similar fear, anxiety and stress. Physiologically, they feel similar, but their origins are different.

Sue Bethanis  5:59
I love that analogy. It’s painful, but it’s a good one. It’s very simple. I hope that was No, no, it wasn’t triggering for me. Thank you for asking. Although I do have a fear of heights, cliffs actually, specifically. So yeah, actually it’s interesting, because whenever I go on the cliffs where I live in Hawaii, and or the cliff here in Half Moon Bay, I always think, Okay, this is how people who are anxious more of the time feel a bit of panic. Yeah, no, it is. No, it’s definitely anxiety. But my point is, is that I don’t typically feel panic that much, except in those instances. So that helps me actually be more empathetic. You know, because I’m like thinking, gosh, if people feel like this, a lot of the time, I can see why it can be quite troublesome because it’s scary.

Morra Aarons-Mele  6:53
100% You know, and I think what you’re saying is really instructive because everyone experiences anxiety. We’re all anxious about something, right? And so it really helps to build that empathy muscle, right? Where if you had if you had a colleague or co-worker, really going through a bad time, you know, having that empathy of, I hate how I feel when I’m on a cliff. That’s a terrible feeling. I feel so bad for this person. I want to help them, you know, that can be instructive.

Sue Bethanis  7:22
Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, it is. Okay, so you wrote this book, I assume that, I mean you talk about how it came from your own experience, I think it’s great. So what are some of the things you did in terms of interviewing people, research, that kind of thing to sort of decide how you put the book together? And so the impetus of this will be where you organized it and stuff like that?

Morra Aarons-Mele  7:46
Yeah, I mean, it was my second book. So it was a little bit easier this time around in terms of knowing the process. But the book really had its genesis in my podcast, the Anxious Achiever, because one of the things that’s so amazing about a podcast is that you get qualitative research every time you talk. So I had lots of episodes, and lots of people I’d spoken with, including some of the world’s leading experts, everyone from Esther Perel, to Dr. Judd Brewer to Amy Edmondson, you know, lots of really amazing people who can address anxiety and difficult emotions at work, Susan David, but then also lots and lots of leaders who are anxious achievers, you know, and so my podcast is kind of my living lab, I really do think of it as a lab, because I learn every week. And then what’s really great about it, I’m sure you experienced this too, is that people message me afterwards, and they share their stories. And then I have new people to talk to it’s fantastic. So that was really the meat of the book. But I wanted the book to not at all feel like a shaming thing. I actually wanted people to want to read it. One of the things that I am most proud of on my podcast is it’s funny, like we’re humorous, we talk about really serious stuff, but I think there’s so much anxiety around talking about mental health. And we don’t like to think about mental illness. It’s not something nice to think about. So the more we practice talking about it in a neutral and even humorous way, the better.

Sue Bethanis  9:22
I think that’s great. So let’s talk about being an anxious achiever. And what are the pitfalls of being an anxious achiever? As hard as anxious achiever is hard to say. Say it slowly. And how you can you turn those gifts into success at work?

Morra Aarons-Mele  9:40
Yeah, I mean, I think that like any difficult thing, when we have patience, when we work through things, when we learn from them, we build strength, you know, it’s really just that simple and I’m definitely not one for toxic positivity and like, Yay! My anxiety is fabulous. And it’s, you know, part of my journey. I don’t embrace that some people feel that way. I actually sometimes feel that way. I feel like my struggles with all this stuff have been so formative for me. But I definitely don’t want people to think, Wait, what she’s telling me is that my anxiety is a superpower, I hate my anxiety. No, that’s really legitimate. But when you manage your anxiety, and you develop the tools and the skills, you can really, really become a much more powerful leader, much stronger, more empathetic, better at communicating, better at bringing people together and creating strategies. And so it’s really, really instructive. And my hope is that people who stick with me, will start building that toolkit, although the book is definitely not a replacement for therapy and treatment. And I always say to people, if you’re suffering, please get professional help.

Sue Bethanis  10:55
Of course, of course. And that, I think, is a hard one to kind of decide cause I think for many of us, through COVID, I mean, if you were anxious before COVID, you were more anxious. Most likely, unless you were a true introvert, and then probably you are happy. But, if you weren’t as anxious before, I mean, I think certainly COVID triggered many, many people in terms of their anxiety. So, what are you noticing about any differences there? Like, have you noticed that in the last few years? How has anxiety shifted or?

Morra Aarons-Mele  11:38
Yeah, it’s so interesting. I mean, it’s funny because there’s data that show that people who manage anxiety actually are great in a crisis. And anecdotally, a lot of us who are, you know, very anxious did better during COVID because we had been practicing for that dress rehearsal, and so we’re very able to step up in times of total uncertainty and fear, which is what COVID was. But yeah, I mean, when you look at the data, young people, middle-aged people, old people, we’re all suffering. And the question I get most is, okay, so it seems like everybody’s anxious now. Rates are off the charts. Is that is, are we just instantly now more anxious? Or have we always been anxious? Now we just talk about it. Right. And I don’t have the perfect answer for that. All the experts I’ve spoken to have said is probably both, which I think is good and that we can talk about. It’s, again, anxiety is human nature, and it’s been with us for the millennia. But, you know, I think that there’s an acknowledgment right now that many of us are suffering. And of course, we bring that into work, and work makes us suffer.

Sue Bethanis  12:55
So, what are you seeing as the sort of goal? The evidence, let’s say, of that, like, how have you seen it show up at work?

Morra Aarons-Mele  13:09
I mean, again, it’s showing up in data, it’s showing up in employee surveys, it’s showing up in CDC and public health data. It’s showing up in the rates of people taking anti depressants, I mean, it’s showing up everywhere. So we have really, unfortunately, we have good hard numbers. And I think that what’s interesting is that there’s now a lot of surveys and research showing how much work actually contributes to poor mental health, and that the vast majority of Americans feel their work is negative in terms of driving things like anxiety and depression, and so companies are sort of having to face this. They don’t want to and it’s very challenging, but most companies at this point, understand that they have to deal with employee mental health. You can’t sweep it under the rug.

Sue Bethanis  14:06
Right. And what are you seeing as some good ways of how employers are dealing with it?

Morra Aarons-Mele  14:15
I mean, employers at the basic level, need to provide health benefits. You know, I think my friend Kelly Greenwood from Mindshare Partners always says that’s table stakes, right. So, again, and for smaller employers, it’s a little bit different. But if you work for a good size employer, right, they should have as part of your health care package access to therapy, access to employee assistance programs, so you know, the basics are access to care. And then I think a lot of employees are creating business resource groups, right, where people who identify and want to talk about their mental health can come together. Companies are creating programming around mental health, usually it’s part of DENI or it’ll come out of HR, again, wellness. And then the really good companies are teaching people how to talk about it, equipping managers with skills and asking their leaders to talk about it. Because that’s really where the rubber meets the road. You know, as we know, from years and years of kind of trying to create inclusive environments, less toxic environments, flexible environments, you can have all the policies in place there are, but if your leadership doesn’t walk the walk, it doesn’t mean anything. Right. And so I think that’s where people are sort of feeling the squeeze, especially in these economic times, and managers are just feeling I think, under resourced in every way. And so it’s really challenging to think, Oh, God, now it’s part of my job description to talk about mental health, my mental health is terrible. I have no resources as people are getting laid off. So we’re sort of in a pivot point about whether companies are really going to commit or not.

Sue Bethanis  16:06
Well, I think that we’ve been talking about stress for a long time. So the question is, do we formalize it more? And use the term mental health, obviously, perfectly happy to use, but I’m just I’m just wondering, like, in our practice we make stress management, the old term, I guess, a part of every situation we work with, it might be a small part of it, but work life balance. I talk to people about sleep, but you know, I’m not playing psychologist, but I’m certainly just checking in on those things. And I also check in and give them the tools to be able to ask the questions of their folks. So most people have one on ones that, you know, most do. So the question is, can you devote- so let me see what you think about this? Can you devote 10 minutes out of that 30 or 50 minutes out of that 45? Or whenever you’re meeting with somebody to just ask how they’re doing, how people are doing? Yeah, I think that alone would help. I don’t even think that happens that much. I think it’s work, work, work. And so just this sort of, you know, sit down and if you’re saying like a third or a quarter of that, whatever it is, half an hour an hour is devoted to development, and stress management, and mental health. Great. But I think that most people are still in the performance conversation, what are we getting done? I think that that’s shifted, for sure. I don’t know what the percentages are like, maybe it’s 10%? I don’t know. But it’s because we’ve had to because everybody feels like shit. So what are you noticing about that? Are managers asking those questions more? Are they willing to delve into it? Of course, and they don’t know what necessarily to ask after the first initial question, but what are you noticing about that?

Morra Aarons-Mele  18:00
I really depends. It’s such a it’s such a manager specific, team specific thing. You know, I think that at the corporate level, companies are understanding that managers need resources, and they need to learn how to have conversations, but not feel like managers have to become the office therapist, which is not their role. But unfortunately, I hear from many, many managers who feel like they have been given this burden of being an employee assistance program, but don’t have adequate training don’t have adequate time, right? They don’t, that stuff takes time and it’s hard. And yeah, people cross boundaries. And it’s really difficult.

Sue Bethanis  18:44
And they cry. And like, you don’t know what to do with that.

Morra Aarons-Mele  18:48
And the worst thing is when you know, and this is my saddest part, when I go in and meet with organizations and teams is, we just, I don’t even think we have the resources to change this. Like, I don’t see any way to change this. Because our budgets have been caught or culture is so toxic. I spoke with a government agency, and they said, you know, one of the leading sources of stress and anxiety is that our systems are so outdated. And we can’t do anything. They’re literally the things they need to do work every day. And they we’re like, so we can talk about this all we want, but what people really need is like, a database that works.

Sue Bethanis  19:34
We talk about AI.

Morra Aarons-Mele  19:36
Right? Well, I mean, AI is a source of incredible anxiety, incredible anxiety, because uncertainty makes us anxious, right? So I’m not, I don’t mean to be all doom and gloom. There are what a manager can do as a manager, maybe can’t say I’m gonna get you all new software. I’m gonna get us three new full time hires manager can say hey, I get it. You’re stressed. This is really hard, here’s what I can do. Right. And I think that’s really important.

Sue Bethanis  20:07
Well, I think that caring just the act of caring alone, quell some of the anxiety. Yeah, and giving people time. I think what’s happened lately, well, there’s been two things that have happened in the last, let’s say six months that have sort of popped the anxiety back up to the, to the top, which is one: I think that CEOs or whomever is deciding, it could be HR, deciding that we have to have people at the office, and there’s going to be a some sort of hybrid, I don’t think that anyone’s going back full time. I’ve not heard of anybody going, especially in tech, to five days a week, I haven’t heard that at all, maybe some financial services are, but I haven’t heard that. So let’s say that they’re going back three times a week or twice a week, that has caused a lot of consternation with people and a lot of anxiety, and then also chat GPT, while on the surface, it has a lot of potential for lots of the automation is gonna now help people’s work, frankly, it also has anxiety producing around, you know, is it gonna take my job? And it’s also the fear around that. And both these things are about change. And so that, of course, that causes anxiety. So, what are you noticing about what’s happening? Because I think those two things are really significant, both of them. And so we can’t make people go back to the office, but we are so.

Morra Aarons-Mele  21:42
Yeah, I mean, I would add just a couple layers. And then I want to share what I think the most powerful thing a manager can do is, and it’s free. You know, I think there’s lots of layers, mental health is intersectional, like everything in life. So there’s all these team based factors, right, which is, I don’t get along with my manager, we don’t have enough resources, I’m working too hard. There’s corporate factors, are they going to lay off people? Are they going to implement AI? They’ve said 30% of the jobs are going to be used by AI. And then there’s social and systemic factors, right? So I’m a person of color in an office that’s mostly white and people treat me like an imposter. They treat me badly, I feel anxious because I’m facing racism every day, right? There’s all the same social factors that exist in society exists in organizations and companies. So this stuff is so multi layered. And then of course, we bring ourselves to work, we bring our own personal histories, our baggage, our mental illness, the things that make us feel very vulnerable and raw. And so all of these feelings are happening at different levels. And I think that it’s important that companies acknowledge that, like, what the company should not do is say, Here’s your telehealth therapy subscription, go cure yourself, right? Because that’s, as you know, you know, this, but I’m just on my soapbox. But, I think that what I’m seeing and what I think, is the most powerful thing, and this has a lot to do with remote work as well, is that most people are really bad at communicating clearly.

Sue Bethanis  23:21
And that’s why we exist, that’s why I have a job.

Morra Aarons-Mele  23:24
That’s why you exist, right? And that creates so much anxiety, because people don’t know what’s expected, like expectations, when there’s a mismatch of expectations, or we don’t know what expectations are of us, we get anxious when we are called to meetings, and we don’t know why, we get anxious, right? So the one thing that you can do to help your team and your company feel less anxious is communicate effectively and fill in those vacuums because, you know, anxiety –

Sue Bethanis  23:56
Just fill in the blanks. Yeah. Don’t make – Sorry, go ahead.

Morra Aarons-Mele  24:03
No, no, no, that’s it.

Sue Bethanis  24:04
Well, I was literally gonna say that when people ask me, what is the most important thing a leader can do? You know, it’s like, clarity would be the most important thing. Yeah. So if you had to pick one thing that you do as a leader, and do nothing else, that would be it. Just be clear, be clear in what’s expected. Be clear in your vision and be clear in feedback, you know, just be clear in how you’re caring for somebody. So I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think anyone’s gonna disagree with us. I think that what is lacking is practice. And practice, I mean, we weren’t used to being remote. And now we have to, and most of us are still remote. And it takes a different kind of communication, and it takes practice, and we’re obviously better at it now than we were. And now we’re going to be doing both and so now. How do we manage that now navigate that? There’s gonna be people on the Zoom calls there some are remote, some aren’t. So how do we manage that? Now those companies that were remote already before COVID are better at that, because they’ve been practicing it. You know, they’ve had people from other countries on these calls for a long time. So it’s no big deal to them. But for a lot of companies, that’s not the case. So there’s practice. And, and there’s intention, like I think that what we don’t want to do is how people come back to the office and then everyone’s on Zoom.

Morra Aarons-Mele  25:35
No, what a waste of time. What a waste of time.

Sue Bethanis  25:39
Right, right. I mean, maybe some of the day, but most of the day should be like having in person meetings, having team meetings, having collaboration sessions, having brainstorming sessions, that has to be planned out. You know, like, I’m really an advocate of like, Okay, everybody, on this team is coming in the office on Wednesdays. Okay, great. So everybody agrees fine, or Tuesdays or whatever, probably Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday? And that seems, to me, seems pretty easy.

Morra Aarons-Mele  26:05
Yeah. I mean, one of the one of the most common complaints I hear and I, so empathize with it, because it’s exactly why I left corporate America is, you know, I don’t feel actually like I have any control of my time. And I’m expected to be on zooms for eight straight hours. And then I get to my email inbox, it’s a nightmare. You know, I’m expect to sit. I mean, this sounds silly, but like, I’m a very wiggly person and the notion of having to conform my body to a small square all day.

Sue Bethanis  26:36
For a day, eight hours. Yeah.

Morra Aarons-Mele  26:39
Right. That’s terrible. And I feel when that all happens, I feel like, my company doesn’t care about me. They don’t value my agency, autonomy, how I like to work. And so, you know, just putting people in remote work is definitely not high performance. It’s just putting people behind a screen. And so I think companies have to now get to a place of, you know, what do our people want? And there’s compromise here. But I think that being on Zoom, I did a TED talk about this and it was it’s so funny, it was really popular because it basically acknowledged the fact that being on Zoom is work, beyond the fact that we’re working and having a meeting, but literally just being on Zoom.

Sue Bethanis  27:24
It takes energy, a certain kind of energy. I think I said, I think that we’re much more well practiced now, because we’ve been doing it for three years. But at first, it certainly was very difficult for many people. And I work with people, like doing interviewing, like interviewing is hard, you got to get to know somebody, in the first few seconds like, how do I get to do that? No, it takes a lot of practice to do that. Well, so what else? I mean, we did a couple more minutes here. Just want to pick your brain a little bit about like, what else you’re seeing and what else managers can do to help every achiever, but especially anxious achievers, what are some things that you can point to?

Morra Aarons-Mele  28:06
You know, I always like to say, managers and leaders are people too. And there’s a lot of gender differences here, right? There’s data that shows that women, during the pandemic, were leaned on much more heavily in for emotional support than men, another added burden, right. And so, I think taking stock of where your own anxiety is at, how you’re doing as a leader, you know, I think that one of the things that I really encourage people to embrace is that, we may not all have chronic anxiety, but we all get anxious, it’s part of the job as leaders and times right now are very anxious. And so we got to kind of get in touch with that. And then most importantly, notice how we respond and react when we’re anxious. Because, again, you know, part of the reason why I would assume you exist is because people feel like their managers are toxic. People feel like they micromanage. People feel like they’re not respected. People feel like their boss is controlling. A lot of that stems from anxiety, these are anxious behaviors that we act out. And so it is such a gift to you to people you work with, your family, when you can get in touch with what’s making me anxious, and how am I reacting?

Sue Bethanis  29:25
Right? What’s your reaction to the anxiety, and what is my anxiety reacting to other others anxiety? Because you’re right, most people who bring us in, most of what we’re talking about, I mean, I don’t know what the stats are on that because it’d be impossible to figure it out. But I would say let’s say 80% of what we’re talking about people about is about other people’s anxiety. So then you can’t control their anxiety? No. So what is it? So most of it comes down to, so then of the 80- 90% of that is about how to control your own anxiety about their anxiety?

Morra Aarons-Mele  29:54
Yep. I mean, literally, that is it right? Kind of therapy 101 right? You can’t control other people, you can’t stop the triggers. But the power that you have is in how you respond, right? And that’s why mindfulness is so important, right? Because so many of us, I mean, I talk a lot in my book about family systems theory. And, we come to work, and a lot of us, we reenact our family system. And so maybe, this is so me, you know, I grew up in a family where I felt that I had to take care of everything. I was an over-functioner, and I bring that to work. And I just go ahead and do things, and I don’t ask people to help me, right. And I just say, Oh, just give me that. I’ll finish it. And I say, you know, where’s that report? I want to see it and I smother people with my over functioning, and I don’t even know that I’m doing it. It’s what I’ve been doing all my life, and I’m making everyone around me really anxious. And so, you know, it’s such a gift, although sometimes a painful one, when you can get in touch with how you’re acting and what your anxiety is bringing up for you.

Sue Bethanis  31:00
Yeah, yeah, this is great. I really enjoyed our time and I want to definitely start listening to some of your podcasts. That’s great. Your website is www.morraam.com and also theanxiousachiever.com.  You’re obviously on LinkedIn. And we can get the book obviously on Amazon and other places, I’m sure. Any last words?

Morra Aarons-Mele  31:32
Um, you know, I just, I want to share I was just nominated for the Thinker’s 50 shortlist for leadership. And it’s been a bucket list goal, but to me, it was so affirming because it was a recognition that talking about mental health has a frim place in leadership and management, and I take that as an honor but also a real vote that we’re ready to talk about stuff.

Sue Bethanis  31:59
I love it. I love it well I’m glad we got to talk about it. And I appreciate your time very much and have a great rest of your evening. You too. Okay. Bye.