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High anxiety rates among younger employees are now having a major impact on both the feedback managers give to teams, and how it's received, a leadership specialist says.

In a book published last year, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt makes an "utterly compelling case" for how 'phone-based' as opposed to 'play-based' childhoods have influenced people born after 1995, The Change Company director Paul Donovan tells HR Daily.

Writing in The Anxious Generation, Haidt highlights how counselling demands skyrocketed when these students reached university, Donovan says. Suddenly, people were being offended and traumatised by statements and lectures that had never previously caused problems.

That anxious cohort is now taking on management roles, Donovan says. These leaders themselves are anxious, and they're worried about upsetting others who they perceive as similarly "fragile".

Because good management requires courageous conversations, Donovan says he and many of his peers are experiencing strong demand for coaching in this space, and realising that certain understandings and skills, which once were assumed, increasingly need to be taught...