When Caring Becomes Carrying: What Anxiety Is Telling Us About Leadership

From Anxiety to Agency | Part 1 of 3

I’ve been thinking a lot about anxiety lately. Perhaps it’s because the world seems to be offering us an endless supply of things to worry about. Political uncertainty, rapid changes in how we work, increasing expectations, and the relentless pressure to do more with less. Or perhaps it’s because anxiety has been a companion of mine for as long as I can remember, and I’ve become increasingly interested in how it shapes the way we move through the world, particularly when we’re responsible for leading others.

I was an extraordinarily sensitive child. I cannot remember the first time someone called me a “worrywart,” but I certainly remember my mother’s name for my episodes of overwhelm: my “tizzies.” As a little girl, I wanted nothing more than to stay close to my mom, thumb in mouth, safely tucked away from a world that often felt too big, too chaotic, and too unpredictable for my young body and psyche to navigate. Venturing out into that world, particularly going to school, could send me into such a state of distress that I’d feel physically ill.

Although anxiety certainly didn’t disappear from my life, my relationship with it evolved. I’ve spent a lifetime learning to recognize anxiety, both my own and the anxiety circulating around me, and I’ve become adept at noticing its presence and adjusting accordingly.  Of course, recognizing something and responding wisely to it are two very different things, a distinction that continues to offer me plenty of opportunities for growth.

Which brings me to leadership.

In my recent work with executive leadership teams, I’ve been struck by how much anxiety is prese even among incredibly accomplished, capable, and thoughtful leaders. These are people who care deeply about their organizations, their teams, and the outcomes they’re responsible for. They’re navigating significant change, making consequential decisions, balancing competing priorities, and trying to create environments where their people and organizations can thrive. And underneath many of these conversations, I keep noticing a remarkably similar pattern: the very things we care most deeply about can become the things that trigger our least helpful leadership behaviors.

What if anxiety is a signal that we care?

We tend to approach anxiety as something to manage, minimize, or overcome. We want to become less anxious, more confident, more decisive, and more resilient in the face of uncertainty. And certainly, prolonged or overwhelming anxiety deserves our attention and care. Nobody can sustainably perform, much less lead, from a constant state of alarm. But what if some of the anxiety we experience at work is actually a natural response to something meaningful? What if it’s telling us that something we value is at stake?

We care about the success of our teams and the impact of our work. We care about delivering exceptional results, protecting important relationships, honoring commitments, making sound decisions, and not letting people down. We care about the future we’re trying to create, even when we can’t see exactly how it’s going to unfold. Of course we feel anxious sometimes! We’re human; it comes with the territory. Anxiety can arise precisely because something important is happening and we cannot entirely control the outcome.

During a recent leadership retreat, I invited a team to consider a different question. Rather than asking, “How do I get rid of this anxiety?” what happens when we ask, “What can I learn from the anxiety I feel?”  Instead of treating anxiety as an unwelcome intruder that needs to be eliminated, we can begin to explore what it might be revealing about our values, our commitments, our sense of responsibility, and sometimes our fears.

While anxiety can be a useful signal that something matters, it isn’t necessarily a wise advisor about what to do next.

When caring becomes carrying

I know my own response to anxiety quite well. I over-function. When things feel chaotic or uncertain, I put my head down and start doing EVERY damn thing I can to make the situation better. I organize, solve, anticipate, produce, and take responsibility, sometimes for things that nobody actually asked me to take responsibility for. And if I’m being particularly candid, I sometimes do all of that so I won’t have to stop and feel what’s happening.

I recognize versions of this pattern in the leaders I work with, and perhaps you will recognize some of it in yourself. We step in because we care. We solve because we know how. We take something back because it’s faster. We absorb uncertainty because we want to protect our people, and we make ourselves endlessly available because we don’t want anyone to struggle. These behaviors often emerge from the very best of intentions, and many of us have built successful careers by being exceptionally good at them. We’re reliable, capable, responsive, and people know they can count on us. But at some point, the behaviors that made us successful can become the very behaviors that limit our effectiveness.

When we continually carry what belongs to others, we unintentionally deprive them of the experiences that would help them grow. They miss opportunity to exercise judgment without seeking permission, to navigate an unfamiliar challenge, to make a difficult decision, to recover from a mistake, or to discover their own resourcefulness. Meanwhile, we become increasingly burdened by responsibilities that might be better held elsewhere, leaving less capacity for the strategic thinking, relationship building, and leadership responsibilities that genuinely require our attention.

In a recent leadership conversation, we explored how easily a leader can move from supporting someone’s development to doing the thinking for them. The leader sees the gap because they’ve seen it before. They recognize the potential mistake, understand the implications, and know they could solve the problem in a fraction of the time. From their perspective, stepping in is an expression of care, competence, and responsibility. And sometimes, of course, stepping in is exactly what the situation requires.

But sometimes the most important outcome isn’t the immediate solution; it’s the capability someone develops by finding their own way to that solution. This doesn’t mean abandoning people to struggle or withholding expertise when it’s genuinely needed. It means learning to discern when our involvement creates capacity and when it creates dependency. It means becoming curious about what is driving our impulse to intervene, particularly when we feel the familiar urgency to fix something, make it better, or take it off someone else’s plate.

Am I responding to what this person actually needs, or am I trying to relieve my own discomfort with their uncertainty?

That’s a question worth sitting with, especially for those of us who have become exceptionally good at being the person everyone can count on. Both responses can feel like caring, and both may come from a genuine desire to help, but they don’t necessarily produce the same result.

I’ve come to believe that one of the great developmental challenges of leadership is learning to care deeply without automatically assuming we must carry everything we care about. We don’t need to become less invested, less compassionate, or less committed to excellence. We need to become more discerning about what our caring is asking us to do and whether that response truly serves the people and outcomes we value.

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Anxiety may be telling us that something matters, but it doesn’t have to determine what happens next. We can learn to recognize the signal, get curious about what it’s revealing, and make a more intentional choice about how to respond. And perhaps the most important question isn’t whether we care enough.

It’s whether the way we’re expressing that care is creating more possibility for the people around  us.

Interested in reading more? This blog is the first in a series.