Teamwork means everybody has an opportunity to work together. But what if everybody is stressed, together?

Leadership literature tends to look at workplace stress through the lens of the individual, the way personal and professional challenges erode a single worker’s engagement and well-being. Stress is a collective experience as well, though. When teams are facing the same kinds of stressors at the same time, productivity takes a hit and resentment festers. Anybody at an association who’s inherited a notoriously dysfunctional committee will recognize that dynamic.

In an article at the Sloan MIT Management Review, business scholars Allen Morrison and David Forster note how “most organizations still lack systemic approaches for managing stress across teams.” And their research suggests the main culprit isn’t so much the stress among the team members as it is the stress in the team’s leader. As they put it, leaders too often run teams in ways that exacerbate team stress, “undermining team cohesion and performance.” 

(And for better or for worse, the workplace is where a lot of our stress resides: A recent study found that Mondays are disproportionately more intense when it comes to general anxiety, and is the biggest day for heart attacks.)

Morrison’s research suggests that cases of disengagement and lack of trust are usually a function of a dysfunctional leader, “someone whose actions, inactions, or leadership style intensify rather than alleviate pressure.”

Remarkably, that anxiety doesn’t necessarily have to have anything to do with the current leader. It can be a function of processes, folkways, and lore that was established from leaders decades in the past. The make-work task that erodes the goodwill of a committee or even a board may be the ghost of mismanaged leadership five presidents ago. 

That doesn’t absolve the current leader from responsibility for a current team’s stresses. But that’s good news in the sense that the current leader can do something about it. The authors’ first prescription is that the leader take a good look at themselves: What are their stressors, and what are the negative reactions that might affect others? How can they reduce stress? How can they find support?

None of which is meant to suggest that it’s a leader’s job to eliminate stress; that’s an impossible task. But leaders can acknowledge it, and communicate it with the people they lead. Clarity about where people are at, and what their frustrations are, the authors suggest, can alleviate the anxiety and distrust that are adjacent to stress. “When employees are emotionally engaged, they don’t just complete tasks; they invest their full selves,” he writes. “They bring energy, commitment, and creativity to their roles. These individuals consistently go the extra mile, not out of obligation but from a genuine desire to contribute meaningfully.”

So it may be that your next team meeting should start with a temperature check for leaders and team members alike. It may be that a common challenge can lead to a common solution, or at least give leaders some knowledge they can act on. As they put it, “Stress doesn’t have to corrode culture — it can forge it.”