I must admit Halloween is one of my most favorite holidays! Yes, it is true. I definitely like chocolate. In fact, Julie often says if I just stopped eating chocolate, I would only weigh 80 pounds. I am not in a position to deny this fact.
I thought Halloween was fun as a child, but it became much more enjoyable as a parent, and now as a grandparent, it is truly spectacular. If you are a “Toy Story” fan, you may enjoy the latest looks of Woody and Buzz Lightyear.
It turns out that Halloween is not the only scary night for most people. You may have noticed that in the past few weeks, there’s been a lot of articles written about “Sunday Scaries”. It turns out that more than half of all workers on Sunday evenings are dealing with anxiety about the work week to come.
My latest article for Forbes Magazine discusses why the Sunday Scaries are spreading and four ways leaders can quell them:
-communicate more, not less during uncertainty
-remember “the cube”
-Uphold the two commitments: do the right thing and do the best you can in the time you have
Here is the link to the article, and the entire article is shown below:
The weekend is changing. What used to be a time of relaxation, reflection and reconnection is ramping up into a cycle of anxiety, culminating in the Sunday scaries. According to one survey, more than half of workers are dealing with anxiety about the workweek to come, compounded by increased job pressures and fears about job security.
The Sunday scaries are real. When I polled students in one of my executive MBA classes recently, 100% of them said they had either heard of this phenomenon or experienced it personally. With so many people being impacted, the Sunday scaries are a leadership issue. For the sake of their teams, as well as themselves, leaders need to find ways to help quell the worry, fear, pressure, anxiety and stress that people are experiencing more frequently these days.
What’s So Scary About Sunday?
The first step for leaders is to understand why Sunday has become so scary. “Pre-Monday dread” is not new, The Wall Street Journal observed. However, an escalating pace of change and increasing workloads are pushing Sunday from a traditional day of rest into the workweek. The need to catch up or get ahead is also bleeding into Saturday.
“It used to be I’d do a little work on a Saturday morning or make a list of what I needed to address on Sunday night. The rest of the time was for family and relaxation. Not anymore!” one of my executive MBA students explained.
The consensus from my class is that Monday morning now starts on Sunday afternoon. The reason? People are feeling overwhelmed by the amount of work to do and anxious about layoffs. For example, one of my students said that his company has laid off more than 1,000 people in the last two months alone, while another said 1,500 people at his firm have been let go this year. Not only do layoffs trigger worries about job security, but those who remain need to pick up the slack when teams shrink but the workload doesn’t.
AI is supposed to help, but so far few have seen a productivity benefit. A recent Korn Ferry Workforce 2026 report found that more than half of those surveyed say AI tools have actually increased their number of expected tasks.
To top it all off, there is often a lack of information from leaders about what is happening within companies. As another MBA student observed, “I am constantly worried because I don’t know what is going to happen next.”
Four Ways Leaders Can Calm Fears
1. Communicate More, Not Less, During Uncertainty.
It’s the pattern in many organizations. When things are going well, communication flows with updates, plans and expectations. During tough periods and times of uncertainty, however, the opposite happens. Leaders often reduce communication because they don’t have all the information. The prevailing thought is, “We don’t want to tell people anything until we know everything.” What these leaders fail to realize is that people in the organization already know what’s happening. They see the sales declines and the higher inventories. They’re already talking about the possibility of layoffs because they remember what happened the last time there was a slowdown.
My advice to leaders: the tougher things are, the more you need to communicate. During my tenure as CEO of Baxter International, I followed three simple rules for communicating, especially when things were uncertain. First, tell people exactly what you know right now. Second, tell them what you don’t know as yet and why you don’t know it. Third, tell them when you will get back to them with more information and how frequently you will update them. This is how leaders can build credibility, foster more trust and derail the rumor mill.
2. Remember “the Cube.”
Most of us started our careers in a cubicle. I can remember working in a small space with a desk and a filing cabinet that I hit my head on if I moved my chair back too far. My cubemates and I had clear roles, but what we couldn’t figure out was what our boss, or our boss’s boss, was doing. Leaders seemed to spend a lot of time in meetings talking to each other, but not so much engaging with customers, suppliers and people within the company.
What might sound nostalgic is actually a call to leaders: remember the cube! People on the front lines have their fingers on the pulse of what’s happening in the marketplace, with competitors and along the supply chain. They have insights to share and are waiting to contribute them. The more information flows in both directions, the more people feel engaged, not disconnected.
3. Uphold the Two Commitments.
Over the years, and especially when I led a $12 billion healthcare company, I was frequently asked how I handled worry, fear, anxiety, pressure and stress. My answer then is the same today. No matter how serious the challenge or urgent the problem, I focus on two commitments: to do the right thing and to do the best I can in the time I have. This is not a platitude, but an attitude that leaders need to embody. When people know there are genuine commitments to do the right thing and the best that can be done, that’s when anxiety decreases and creative problem-solving increases.
4. Respect the Weekend.
As tempting as it is to blur the boundaries between work time and personal time, whether to complete projects or get a jump on the week ahead, the weekend needs to be respected. For leaders that means thinking twice about sending their team emails or text messages that can wait until Monday morning. Is a phone call so urgent that it needs to interrupt family or personal time? This isn’t just being nice. If leaders want to preserve productivity and retain valuable talent, they must encourage people to protect their downtime and pursue life balance. And that lesson is best conveyed in leaders’ actions, not just with words.
The Sunday scaries may not completely disappear, but they can be reined in. By communicating openly, listening to their teams and respecting personal time, leaders can help reduce anxiety and enable people to welcome Monday with greater confidence and energy.
Finally, and most important, please do me a favor and vote on November 3 or in early voting. I would really encourage you to take the opportunity to vote seriously for several reasons.
— I believe we are truly blessed to be citizens in one of the few representative democracies in the world. Many of our forefathers, including my grandfather, father and father-in-law served in the military to preserve our opportunity to vote. We owe it to them to never forget that.
— One of my frustrations in the current environment is that almost everybody complains about the lack of choices we have for our senior government leaders. I find this to be true whether you are a republican, a democrat or an independent. I always ask a simple question: if you don’t believe that the people running for office are the best possible candidates, why don’t you encourage someone to run that you believe is a worthwhile candidate, or maybe run yourself?
— Let’s never forget that when we’re looking for people to change the world, people are usually looking for a group of people called “those guys”. I always try to remind my students that we are those guys (the men and women who can make a difference if we so choose).
— As someone who teaches values-based leadership, I believe we could come up with much better candidates if more of us took the time to vote. I was amazed to find that less than 15% of registered voters vote in the primaries. Is it any wonder that we often end up with extremists at the left and the right that truly don’t represent where most of us are in the middle?
In summary,I believe if more of us took the time to vote for people we truly believe are values based leaders, the country in the world would be much better off.
A critical topic right now. The federal government is always a bit perplexing; but it is impacting municipal government, too.…