Opinion: Business leaders, is your anxiety apparent?

Lance Coffman

Take a deep breath. There is a decent chance you might be anxious right now. A recent poll from the National Alliance on Mental Illness found the percentage of employees feeling “very stressed” is on the rise. This feeling is especially true for those leading organizations. Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workforce reports that 46% of leaders experience high levels of stress in the working day. Looking at the numbers, it is fair to assume that there are several people walking around your workplace with high anxiety right now. You might even be one of them. If angst is a prevalent part of office life, knowing how to best deal with it is essential.

For many people, the default response to anxiety is something called surface acting, aka faking it. You can pretend nothing is wrong, but you know the project is over budget or that your unread messages continue to climb. It is natural to try and project confidence when situations are stressful. No one wants to be seen as incompetent. The desire to seem in control of your working environment is summed up well by the adage “fake it till you make it.” Faking it, however, doesn’t usually fool the people you work closely with. On top of that, several studies show it can have detrimental side effects on both job satisfaction and personal well-being. If pretending the anxiety doesn’t exist is not a good option, what is a solution? How much does it hurt to just show the anxiety you are feeling in the workplace?

A study recently published in Personnel Psychology examined how expressing anxiety in the workplace affects others in the office. Researchers found that honestly showing that stress might not harm a person’s reputation in many cases. Displaying disquiet could cause other employees to empathize and want to help. It is important to note what the researchers meant by expressing anxiety.

The study did not include oversharing, spilling the tea, vibe checks or anything of that nature. The authors also excluded acting with aggression or extreme behaviors. Subtle giveaways of stress were the focal point: nonverbal cues like furrowed eyebrows, visible tension or restlessness. Sighs, stammering and vocal pitch can also be tells of trouble. These unintentional exhibitions of unease are things that faking it can’t always mask.

The researchers looked at two distinct reactions to registering unrest in others. The first path proposed employees empathize with the distressed coworker. Recalling times they have been behind on a proposal or buried in updating the books, others relate to the person’s circumstances. For this reaction, the anxiety in question is viewed as being caused primarily by external circumstances. Sometimes, this empathy reaction leads to helping the distressed coworker. In other cases, it might lead to giving the person extra space. In either outcome, the honest expression of anxiety does not lead to negativity toward an individual.

A second reaction examined in the study was the possibility that showing stress might lead to others viewing the person as incompetent. This view suggests that the underlying cause of workplace anxiety is someone taking on a job they were not capable of. If the person was competent, our sales would not have gone down last quarter, and we wouldn’t need to worry now. This reaction assumes that the person is responsible for causing their own angst. The authors propose that if coworkers start to view the person as incompetent, they will be more likely to ostracize that individual in the workplace.

Which of these two possible paths was supported by the study? Put another way: Is it OK if your actions admit your angst? The study found support for both the empathy and incompetence reactions, but in different cases. In general, the study showed that observing anxiety in a coworker leads others to relate and want to help. Recalling an experience of our own, we tend to empathize with the troubled coworker. There is no lasting mistrust prompted by the expression.

The authors also found that the expression of anxiety leads to the coworker being viewed as incompetent in some cases. This was especially true when there was a strong rivalry between the anxious individual and the coworker observing the effects of angst. The rival gains a sense of superiority from viewing the anxiety as incompetence.

So, should you be honest about anxiety in the workplace? If you are in an environment riddled with rivalry, expressing anxiety might do some harm. In most cases, it might be better to be honest. Faking it does not mask most of the subtle tells anyway. You might be more likely to gain favor from non-rivals on your team. No matter how you choose to express the stress, it never hurts to start with a deep breath.

Lance Coffman is senior program manager of strategic initiatives at Missouri State University’s Efactory. He can be reached at lancecoffman@missouristate.edu.