We’ve been told that the best entrepreneurs are confident public speakers who show no sign of anxiety. However, a new study published in the Journal of Business Venturing suggests that anxiety doesn’t have to be a hurdle for entrepreneurs—instead, it can be a superpower.
In particular, the researchers found that when entrepreneurs making a pitch reframed their anxiety as passion for their project, judges evaluating the pitch performance were more likely to recommend them for funding.
To study this, the researchers designed a set of three experiments. In the first, they surveyed entrepreneurs on the techniques they used to cope with anxiety before pitching. Nearly half (49%) said they distracted themselves, while 41% said they tried physical techniques such as deep breathing, and 12% said they tried to reframe the anxiety in a positive manner.
In the second experiment, the researchers surveyed entrepreneurs and judges during the semifinals of a new venture competition at two business schools, with cash prizes of $100,000. The researchers asked the entrepreneurs what strategies they were using to deal with their anxiety, including if they were linking their anxiety to passion (for example: “Tell myself I’m anxious partly because I care about my venture so much”). The researchers also asked the judges to rank the entrepreneurs for perceived passion and anxiety. They found that the judges gave better rankings to entrepreneurs who linked their anxiety to their passion for their work.
In the third experiment, students were told to make a pitch for a cause that was important to them with the possibility of winning $75 for the cause. They were randomly told to either distract themselves from their anxiety or tell themselves that their anxiety was linked to their passion for the social cause. They were then videotaped giving their pitch.
The judges were more likely to see the students who reframed their anxiety as passion as more persuasive, and were also more likely to give them money. In addition, the researchers noted it was still possible to see anxiety in all the pitches—however, only when people linked anxiety to passion did it give them an advantage.
“Our findings indicate that when downregulation of negative emotions is not realistic or feasible, upregulating positive emotions provides an alternative path to improving performance,” the researchers wrote.