Fear of Initiative at Work | High Functioning Anxiety in Leadership

Welcome And New Listeners

0:21 SPEAKER_00: This great story teaches us something about being evil.

0:25 SPEAKER_00: I'm Cheryl Paris and this is Work Stress Anxiety.

0:29 SPEAKER_00: Together, let's borrow a little wisdom from a story to help us navigate a very modern world.

0:42 SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to Work Stress Anxiety.

0:48 SPEAKER_01: Woo! Hope you're doing well today.

0:51 SPEAKER_01: If it's your first time here, welcome.

0:53 SPEAKER_01: If it's not, welcome again.

0:57 SPEAKER_01: I really do appreciate you being here.

1:00 SPEAKER_01: I want to say a particular thank you because I noticed a new listener this week.

1:06 SPEAKER_01: Well, actually, two new listeners from um I can't say the name, so I'm not going to because I don't want to butcher it, but they come from South Dakota.

1:18 SPEAKER_01: So I want to welcome anyone from South Dakota in the USA who started to listen to the podcast this week.

1:26 SPEAKER_01: Welcome.

1:28 SPEAKER_01: Today we are talking about um something that you may have noticed.

1:36 SPEAKER_01: Yes.

1:37 SPEAKER_01: I'm going to introduce you to Jamie, who's 32, a funeral doc a funeral director.

Meet Jamie And The Freeze

1:46 SPEAKER_01: And they they obviously because of the job they that they do, they use they're used to carrying responsibility um for what most people would rather not want to think about.

1:59 SPEAKER_01: You know, outside work, she loves writing poetry, she's mad about horror films, and she goes mounting biking quite a lot with her friends.

2:09 SPEAKER_01: At work though, something is bothering her.

2:14 SPEAKER_01: Her team check everything, avoid dis making decisions, and seem frightened of getting things wrong.

2:24 SPEAKER_01: And this is making Jamie very frustrated.

2:27 SPEAKER_01: She thinks, why can't they just use their initiative?

2:33 SPEAKER_01: And perhaps if you manage people, you have wondered the very same thing.

2:39 SPEAKER_01: You believe that you have been clear, they appear unwilling or unable to act.

2:47 SPEAKER_01: So the problem seems to be sitting quite neatly on their side of the desk.

2:53 SPEAKER_01: Now, as you can imagine, in funeral care, details matter because people being served are not having an ordinary day, are they?

3:03 SPEAKER_01: They may be grieving, um, they probably feel completely overwhelmed, and they're completely trusting of the team to carry out what they know they can't do on their own.

3:17 SPEAKER_01: Jamie wants each family to feel respected, supported, and safe throughout the entire process, a process they never wanted to need.

3:31 SPEAKER_01: And I can understand it because Jamie's standards, they're not petty, neither is her fear of getting something wrong.

3:40 SPEAKER_01: But wanting the right outcome and communicating how to reach it, I think are not the same thing.

3:49 SPEAKER_01: Good intentions can explain why a manager cares so much, they cannot make um an expectation visible though, and not the way that I see it, one ordinary task begins to show the difference.

4:10 SPEAKER_01: So Jamie asks a member of a team to prepare information for a bereaved family, you know, keep it clear, warm, and professional.

4:22 SPEAKER_01: The work comes back, and Jamie immediately starts seeing problems with it.

Words Without The Picture

4:27 SPEAKER_01: The tone, she thinks it's far too formal, the order feels wrong, one detail should have been emphasized, and another saved until later.

4:38 SPEAKER_01: She explains all of this with the weary certainty of someone who believes she has already explained it.

4:49 SPEAKER_01: So she's not she's not being very nice, okay.

4:53 SPEAKER_01: The employee now knows precisely what Jamie wanted, but several hours too late.

5:01 SPEAKER_01: And thank you, by the way, for listening and returning and sharing these conversations because it matters because moments like this are ordinary enough to be missed and costly enough to shape an entire team.

5:25 SPEAKER_01: It kind of reminds me of almost looking through the looking glass.

5:32 SPEAKER_01: You know, Humpty Dumpty tells Alice that a word means exactly what he chooses it to mean.

5:41 SPEAKER_01: Charming for an egg perched on a wall, rather less charming for the person judging your performance, right?

5:52 SPEAKER_01: Now words such as professional, sensitive, urgent, and use your judgment can feel perfectly clear to Jamie because each one arrives with a complete picture attached inside her own head.

6:08 SPEAKER_01: The employee receives the word, but not the picture.

6:13 SPEAKER_01: Jamie doesn't believe she is moving the goalposts.

6:17 SPEAKER_01: From where she's standing, they were always in the same place, but unfortunately everyone else discovers their position only after the whistle has been blown.

6:33 SPEAKER_01: Once this happens repeatedly, the team adapt, they ask about small details, they wait for approval, they copy Jamie into every message.

6:46 SPEAKER_01: She never wanted to receive.

6:56 SPEAKER_01: Umce this happens repeatedly, the team adapt.

7:25 SPEAKER_01: Now, Jamie sees dependency, they may be practicing risk management.

When Care Turns Into Control

7:33 SPEAKER_01: So if the correct answer appears only after they choose the wrong one, asking Jamie first becomes the safest option, right?

7:44 SPEAKER_01: And that caution doesn't remain tidily inside that staff meeting.

7:53 SPEAKER_01: People avoid mistakes, right?

7:59 SPEAKER_01: And when you're avoiding mistakes, you have less attention for warmth, judgment, and what's more important, I think, human connection.

8:12 SPEAKER_01: Now, Jamie wants her values to reach bereaved families through the actions of her team, yet the thing is fear may be travelling more readily than compassion.

8:27 SPEAKER_01: So before she sends everyone another confidence, I don't know, what do you call them?

8:37 SPEAKER_01: It's completely gone out of my e-learning course.

8:41 SPEAKER_01: I think there is a harder question.

8:46 SPEAKER_01: What if some of the behavior worrying her has been learnt around her?

8:55 SPEAKER_01: That question I appreciate is uncomfortable because I'm not trying to make Jamie the villain her villain here at all.

9:04 SPEAKER_01: Her behavior may make sense when we remember the work that she's doing.

9:13 SPEAKER_01: A mistake could affect a bereaved family on a day they will remember for years to come.

9:21 SPEAKER_01: She may feel responsible for protecting the family, her team, and the reputation of the service.

9:28 SPEAKER_01: And when the stakes feel that high, control can begin to look remarkably like care.

9:37 SPEAKER_01: Now, Jamie races ahead mentally, imagines what could go wrong, and builds a very detailed picture in her mind of what a safe outcome looks like.

9:50 SPEAKER_01: But by the time she delegates, that picture feels obvious to her.

9:57 SPEAKER_01: The problem is that something can feel obvious to you and remain entirely unavailable to someone else.

10:07 SPEAKER_01: It may feel quicker to say, just put everything together and correct it later.

10:13 SPEAKER_01: Jamie is busy, the phone is ringing, and everybody entering the funeral direct um the funeral um parlour directly.

10:44 SPEAKER_01: Jamie's is busy, the phone is ringing, and nobody enters a funeral directing because they yearn for longer um conversations, yet naming the standard before asking someone of her.

11:04 SPEAKER_01: I think she has to slow down and decide what genuinely matters and allow another competent person to approach the task in the way that they would choose, i.e., differently.

Reflection On Leadership Effects

11:20 SPEAKER_01: Now correcting it afterwards restores her certainty, but unfortunately, I think the team pays for that with a certain amount of anxiety because the more Jamie corrects details they couldn't have known, the more cautious people will naturally become.

11:42 SPEAKER_01: The more cautious they become, the more convinced she is that they lack the initiative that she needs.

11:50 SPEAKER_01: And so each side supplies evidence for the each and so each side provides the evidence for each other's fears.

12:06 SPEAKER_01: You know, underneath that cycle, maybe the belief that a good manager should hold the whole picture, spot what other people have missed, and prevent anything from falling down.

12:18 SPEAKER_01: It's a familiar bargain, I think, for capable women.

12:23 SPEAKER_01: If I am dependable, especially if I'm in a management position, perhaps I can keep everyone safe.

12:32 SPEAKER_01: But when leadership becomes, I must hold everything.

12:37 SPEAKER_01: Communication can start shrinking into fragments, and Jamie's experiencing that herself, her team experience her as unpredictable.

12:49 SPEAKER_01: So both realities can exist at once, which is inconvenient but rather important because her intention may be protection, but the effect may still be hesitation, overchecking, and people gradually losing trust in their own ability and judgment to do their job.

13:14 SPEAKER_01: This is where I think the ABGW principle of reflection earns it play its place, right?

13:25 SPEAKER_01: Professional reflection is not just about staring in the mirror, okay, and deciding every work page difficulty is your fault.

13:35 SPEAKER_01: To me, that's not insight, that's blame, and uh I'm not interested in that.

13:41 SPEAKER_01: To me, reflection is about asking what pattern am I part of?

13:48 SPEAKER_01: What effect might my behaviour be having?

13:52 SPEAKER_01: And what evidence could challenge the story that I've been telling myself?

14:00 SPEAKER_01: It asks Jamie to consider that the locus of this problem may not be entirely external to her.

14:11 SPEAKER_01: That doesn't mean that she's bad, okay?

14:13 SPEAKER_01: I'm not interested in labels like that.

14:16 SPEAKER_01: It means leadership has effects as well as intentions, and honest leaders are willing to do something that a lot of people aren't, and that's to examine both sides.

14:32 SPEAKER_01: You know, Jamie may notice that people work confidently when they procedure it is explicit, but hesitate when success depends on them interpreting her preferences.

14:45 SPEAKER_01: Perhaps two different employees might have the same supposed mistake or do the same supposed mistake.

14:54 SPEAKER_01: Perhaps she hears herself saying, This isn't what I meant, rather more often than this isn't what I said.

15:04 SPEAKER_01: Now, none of this proves that every problem uh belongs to her because skills can be missing, you know, we've all had a skills audit, or most of us would have had a skill audit when we started a job.

Make Standards Visible Early

15:19 SPEAKER_01: But you know, because standards can be ignored, but circumstances can genuinely change.

15:27 SPEAKER_01: But a change requirement is different from behavior, and behaving as though today's requirement was clearly communicated yesterday.

15:38 SPEAKER_01: One asks people to adapt, the other quietly rewrites history and calls the result accountability.

15:48 SPEAKER_01: So what does that mean?

15:52 SPEAKER_01: For me, I think Jamie doesn't need to become softer.

15:57 SPEAKER_01: No.

15:57 SPEAKER_01: Families still deserve thoughtful, reliable care, and her team still need to meet genuine standards.

16:07 SPEAKER_01: The shift, I think, is from standards that are held privately and enforced afterwards to standards that are made visibly clear so that everyone in the team knows what success looks like.

16:25 SPEAKER_01: When the purpose, boundaries, and useful outcomes are shared, the team can then focus on the family rather than scanning Jamie's face for signs of whether they've chosen badly.

16:40 SPEAKER_01: And the best thing is Jamie gains fairer evidence too, because she can distinguish between didn't know from new and didn't do, right?

16:53 SPEAKER_01: Clear boundaries do not have to crush initiative, they can make initiative safer.

17:04 SPEAKER_01: Oh, what does this remind me of?

17:08 SPEAKER_01: It kind of reminds me of and it if this has brought a particular workplace moment to mind, or perhaps a particular person to for you, you might want to share this episode with them, not as a passive-aggressive parcel, no, okay.

17:28 SPEAKER_01: This is definitely about you.

17:31 SPEAKER_01: As tempting as that may be, but no, no, please don't do that, but as a way of opening a fairer conversation about what clear expectations actually require.

17:43 SPEAKER_01: Sometimes a shared piece of language helps people discuss a problem without beginning through accusations, and I think about Jamie now, the central point is not that she cares too much or expects too much, it's that care and standards can only travel through a te through to the team when people can see what they're being asked to carry.

18:15 SPEAKER_01: Now, Humpty Dumpty could make words mean whatever he chose because he sat above the conversation on that wall.

18:25 SPEAKER_01: Leadership asks much more of us, I think.

18:29 SPEAKER_01: If Jamie wants confident, sound judgment and compassion to lead and to reach those bereaved families, those standards must be possible inside the team as well.

18:46 SPEAKER_01: And professional reflection is not asking, how can I blame myself, it's asking what am I creating and what is now within my influence to create differently.

19:01 SPEAKER_01: You know, you don't have to lower your standards, you simply need to make it visible before you use it to judge the people who are trying to meet them.

19:13 SPEAKER_01: So for today, what I'd like you to do is choose one task that you're about to delegate to a team member, and I want you to write down one sentence.

19:25 SPEAKER_01: Done will look like dot dot dot.

19:32 SPEAKER_01: Then say it aloud to the person doing the work before they begin.

19:37 SPEAKER_01: You don't have to repair every single misunderstanding or redesign your entire management style.

19:45 SPEAKER_01: What I'm asking you to do is just make one important standard more visible a little earlier than you normally would.

19:55 SPEAKER_01: And remember this: if your team are frightened of getting it wrong, do not inspect their confidence, inspect the conditions in which you are asking them to use that confidence.

20:16 SPEAKER_01: Now remember this: every step you take, no matter how small, is a step towards a brighter, more balanced future.

20:25 SPEAKER_01: Trust in your journey and remember, progress is progress no matter the pace.

20:32 SPEAKER_01: Bye for now.

20:35 SPEAKER_01: I hope today's episode gave you something useful to carry into your week.

20:40 SPEAKER_01: Now finish your coffee, take a breath, and remember progress is progress no matter the pace.

20:49 SPEAKER_01: Until next time, bye for now.