Workplace Multiplier by Tola Akinsulire

September 8, 2026

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The invisible cost of an anxious leader

Howdy ,

Once upon a time, I had a rather interesting boss.

This was a boss who was a bit like the weather.

Let me explain.

There were days when it was sunshine. Everything was peachy. Conversations were easy. Ideas were welcomed. You could get on with your work.

Then there were thunderstorm days.

On those days, you had better have your protection on.

You just didn't know what was wrong or why this was an issue. The problem was not simply that the boss could be demanding. The problem was that you never quite knew which version was going to show up.

You just hoped the weather forecast for the day was good.

And whether we realised it or not, that uncertainty affected how we worked.

Every organisation has two systems running at the same time.

The first is visible.

Targets. Budgets. Dashboards. Meetings. Processes. Performance reviews. Strategy documents.

The second is harder to see.

It is the emotional and psychological weather in which people are trying to do the work.

Do people feel safe telling the truth early? Do they know that what matters this week will still matter next week?

Can they make a reasonable decision without first calculating how a senior person may react?

Do they believe mistakes will be handled proportionately? Can they disagree without paying an unnecessary political price?

That invisible weather has an operating cost. And senior leaders produce more of it than they realise.

Every executive creates an atmosphere.

Some lower anxiety. Others raise it.

This does not mean the best leaders are always calm, agreeable or comfortable to work for. In fact, some highly trusted leaders are exceptionally demanding.

They challenge weak thinking. They reject poor work. They insist on difficult standards. They say things others would prefer not to hear.

Yet people can still experience something I call Rest around them.

Rest is not ease.

It is steadiness. It is the confidence that the ground will not shift arbitrarily.

You know what the leader means. You know where you stand. You know that bad news may produce a hard conversation, but not an irrational one.

You know that standards will not suddenly change according to mood, politics or proximity.

That kind of predictability releases capacity.

People stop spending so much energy managing the leader. They use that energy to do the work.

The opposite is performance anxiety. A leader may believe they are creating urgency. The team experiences uncertainty.

A leader may believe they are demanding excellence. The team learns to hide anything imperfect until it can be made presentation-safe.

A leader may believe they are "staying close to the details." The team learns that independent judgment is risky because every decision may later be second-guessed.

Soon, apparently capable people start behaving strangely. They ask permission for things they should decide themselves. They copy the boss on everything.

They wait too long before escalating problems. Meetings multiply because no one wants to own the interpretation. People work hard but move slowly.

The organisation can look intensely busy while becoming less capable. This is why pressure without trust is expensive. You can force short-term output.

But the hidden cost appears elsewhere:

less candour, slower decisions, more politics, more escalation, less initiative, greater dependence on a few powerful individuals.

And the irony is that executives often respond by applying even more pressure. That completes the cycle.

The alternative is not lower performance. It is more trustworthy leadership.

A trustworthy Word, so people know what has actually been decided. Follow-Through, so commitments become evidence. Steadiness under Pressure, so truth remains safe when it matters most. Standards that are demanding but predictable.

Those behaviours create Rest. And Rest creates the conditions for courageous performance.

People can surface risk earlier because they are not spending the first half of the conversation deciding whether honesty is safe. They can move faster because they understand the decision rules.

They can accept harder feedback because they do not experience every correction as an unpredictable threat. They can take intelligent risks because the boundaries are clearer.

A leader's job is not to make everybody feel comfortable. A leader's job is to create conditions in which people can think, tell the truth, decide and act.

Sometimes that requires pressure. But pressure should sit on a foundation of trust.

Otherwise, the leader may still get the number. They may simply be paying far more for it than the dashboard reveals.

Looking back at that boss, the real issue was not the occasional thunderstorm.

Leadership will have difficult days. Pressure is real. The problem was never knowing what weather was coming.

And when people have to spend energy checking the forecast before they can do their work, leadership itself has become part of the operating cost.

So alongside the usual performance questions, I think every senior executive should regularly ask one more:

After people interact with me, are they clearer and steadier…or more anxious and uncertain?

The answer may tell you something your KPI report cannot.

Keep winning at work and in life

Tola Akinsulire

Your Strategic Workplace Mentor

P.S. If this piece made you recognise a pattern in your own leadership, I'm available for the conversation.