Anxiety@work - and the vital need to beat it

MINNOWS Iceland beat mighty England at Euro 2016. Steven Gerrard, the erstwhile captain of the England football team, blamed the "culture of fear" for the embarrassing defeat. The players were too engrossed in thinking about the consequences of defeat rather than focusing on winning the game. He said the team essentially lacked a winning culture.

Playing to avoid losing, rather than playing to win, is as much a corporate culture that is based on an overriding sense of anxiety induced by the leadership that in itself is driven by the fear of losing. The internal beliefs and assumptions of the executives make it difficult to break free from the shackles of self-doubt and the pressure of negative thoughts.

Anxiety can generally be defined as any feeling or state where there is inner turmoil and that's also accompanied by nervous behaviour, uneasiness, rumination and, in severe cases, somatic complaints. As Harvard researchers Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey put it, anxiety is the most important and least understood private emotion in public life.