LinkedIn Presents

I'm Maura Aronsmeli and this is the Anxious Achiever.

We look at stories from business leaders who've dealt with anxiety, depression, or other mental health challenges,

how they fell down, how they pick themselves up,

and how they hope work will change in the future.

It's easy to see how our workplaces can become boiling cauldrons of anxiety.

We bring our own anxiety to work, of course, but work itself makes us anxious for so many reasons.

Maybe a job doesn't pay well enough or doesn't provide benefits.

Maybe your boss disrespects you, takes away your autonomy.

Or the company demands punishing hours and requires

an always-on presence. And so, we may micromanage, we may assert our smarts and try to prove our

worthiness by jockeying for power or taking up a lot of space and meetings. Or we may simply

drive towards inbox zero, because that gives us a sense of control.

All of this may make us unpleasant to work with, but here's the thing.

Many workplaces reward anxious behavior.

And since anxiety is contagious within systems, when the anxious leader gets rewarded,

teams copy their leader's

anxious behaviors. And guess what happens then? Everyone becomes anxious. Today's guest studies how

work works. He's a work designer. And he's learned systemic tweaks that help environments

become less stressful and stop rewarding those anxious behaviors. Aaron Dinan is founder of the Ready and organizational transformation and coaching practice.

He focuses on how to prioritize adaptivity and autonomy over efficiency and control,

which you can pretty quickly extrapolate into upsides for your mental health at work.

...