Does your anxious ambition make you difficult to work with-- even if your intentions are good?

So many of us act out our anxiety in ways that frustrate our colleagues. We micromanage, or we overwork, or, as my guest today points out, we’re inconsistent in our attitude and feedback, which can send our teams into a rollercoaster of uncertainty. Micromanaging, inconsistent feedback, overwork: All of these are traits no one wants in their manager!

My guest is Danny Bernstein, formerly of Google and now at Microsoft. Danny is doing a lot of work on how he manages. And he’s remarkably open and vulnerable about how his anxiety and his own drive may have not just scared-- but confused-- past teams.

A couple years ago Danny challenged himself with this question, “How do I keep reinventing myself and innovating in a very competitive way while not acting out my anxiety and alienating those around me?”

This is a question many of us should ask ourselves (raises hand). 

Sometimes when you have big feelings or when you feel anxiety or imposter syndrome, you can take it out on other people.

Danny told me he was often “a terror as a manager.” He’s done a lot of work but, he says, “I wouldn't say that I'm completely over that hump yet. I'll be honest. There are some moments where I have an energy level that I can't necessarily temper. I think I could call myself a bit of a Tasmanian devil at times. When you operate with a bit of anxiety in a corporate environment, how that spills over is that you're concentrating on certain interactions and really trying to have an outsize impact on those interactions. So, as a result, you might over-prepare, over-engineer, over-analyze.”

Danny could push his team “to over-prepare and [hold] myself and the team to sort of this unrealistic standard. And as a result, people would be sort of looking at me like, "Haven't we reached a point of diminishing returns on this? What new insights are we really gleaning?" It's really hard to walk the fine line between what is a resilient process or a thorough process between one where you sort of turn into a terror as a manager, and I would continually not get that right.”

Danny’s other anxiety a-ha was that he was inconsistent in how he showed up as a leader: Would he be the Tazzy Devil, or calm? Now, Danny focuses on his consistency in interactions and especially when he’s giving feedback.

I find this so, so difficult when anxiety roils me. I’m not feeling consistent, so how can I expect to act neutral and calm?

How can you learn to put your anxious feelings aside and not act them out on your team?

At times you may choose to share your anxiety with team members. We’ll talk about that in an upcoming newsletter! And other times, you need to dig deep within and calm yourself. Cultivating mindfulness in your reactions-- taking a beat to reflect before you react-- can be so useful here.

So I’m going to offer an act of mindfulness from the meditation teacher that I just love. Sharon shared this with me in a recent interview.  It’s something you can do as many times a day as you want. And it centers around sending email, or a Slack or instant message. Because after all, that is how many of us are communicating right now at work. What better way to practice being a more measured manager?

A lot of our imagined urgency behind responding quickly to email or Slack is driven by anxiety. Imagine the positive changes you could create-- for your whole team-- by understanding and stopping the urge to instantly reply!!

Breathe. First ask yourself: Do I need to send this email? Do I need to send it right now? Should I schedule it instead?

If the answer is yes, Sharon told me, “I take the time not to just press send right away. And to take a few breaths and then read it again and then think, do I actually want to send it in this form? Put yourself in the recipient’s shoes and try to see the email through their eyes.

Sharon notes, email is “such a strange form of communication. You can sound so terse and you didn't mean it. And so I rewrite it in some way and then I press send, and just sort of taking the time in those ways has really been a delight actually.”

If your digital communication is created more mindfully, you’re practicing consistency right away!

PS: In this recent New York Times interview with Yale professor Laurie Santos, learn about Catherine Price’s W.W.W test for spending time on social media. I think it’s a super helpful heuristic when it comes to asking, “Should I send this email?