5 Ways for Executives and Managers to Combat Feeling Overwhelmed

During recent discussions with clients and former colleagues, the topic of feeling overwhelmed has frequently emerged. It seems that everyone is feeling the pressure of trying to put 10 pounds of work into an 8-pound bag. It makes sense for you to be overwhelmed. Economic uncertainty is driving many employers to pressure employees to be more productive. Companies are reducing staffing levels but demanding higher levels of service and revenue growth. If you want to combat feeling overwhelmed, you need a plan. This article will provide 5 steps you can take this week to reduce your stress and anxiety around your current workload.

Five tips for overcoming the feeling of being overwhelmed?

1. Embrace Change

2. Align on Expectations

3. Consult Peers

4. Develop a Methodology for Prioritizing

5. Going Beyond Urgent and Important

Are your feeling overwhelmed at work?

• Yes
• No
• Occasionally

Embrace Change

The first thing to do is accept that companies constantly seek ways to improve their productivity. You should be nervous if you have been doing the same thing at your job for the last three years, with very little change. Companies must change to stay competitive, and those that fail to change put themselves at risk of going out of business. Companies like Radio Shack, Blockbusters, Toys R Us, Palm, and Compaq could not change as quickly as their competition, resulting in once-strong companies virtually disappearing. Alan Deutschman famously wrote the book Change or Die, and changing has been the choice many companies made over the last 12 months. Your ability to embrace change will help you to find solutions to bandwidth challenges. Test out new technologies, and experiment with new processes. New hacks are developed daily to help you prioritize, simplify, and be more productive.

Align on Expectations

The second thing you need to do to manage your workload is align with your supervisor on expectations. Your manager likely does not understand everything you do. Even if they know all of the tasks you complete, they likely do not understand the time and energy required to do them. As your manager assign a new task, they probably assume you have the capacity to complete it, along with any other previously assigned tasks. You know this is when you are given a new task without being told to stop doing a different task. You are responsible for providing visibility to what you do, how much time it takes, and your ability to take on a new assignment. If you feel overwhelmed by your current workload, you should ask your supervisor to help you understand how to accomplish everything. During that conversation, you and your supervisor might be able to identify tasks you currently do that no longer need to be completed. Or the leader might be able to teach you quicker ways of doing existing work. Fear of being vulnerable may prevent you from having these types of conversations. This fear is likely rooted in previous experiences or stories you have heard. But it is important to remember that your performance is evaluated based on your leader's expectations. It is better to have a difficult discussion at the beginning of a project than to suffer in silence, only to have a difficult conversation later when you cannot perform to expectations or become burnout because you were working beyond what was reasonable.

Consult Peers

If others have a similar role as you, chat with them to see how they manage their workload. Often, your peers will devise innovative ways to simplify tasks or do things quicker. There might be a new app or other technology that you can employ to be better organized or execute tasks faster. Identifying best practices for improving efficiency is a great way to handle an increased workload better. They might also be able to guide you on managing expectations with your boss. Through your conversations, you can also identify tasks others have stopped doing. Divesting low-value activities can be another way to free up bandwidth.

Develop a Methodology for Prioritizing

There are a lot of best practices around prioritizing your time. One of the best is Franklin Covey's version of the Eisenhower Matrix, taught in their time management workshops. Another is Sally McGhee's approach to using Microsoft tools to plan and track work which is discussed in her book Take Back Your Life. Below is a system combining those two methods.

1. Do a brain dump: get out a sheet of paper or use an electronic device and begin to write down all the tasks that need to complete

2. Calendar Review: review the calendar, look at what needs to accomplish over the next 90 days, and add any incremental task to your list

3. Email review: review inbox messages, and identify if there are any tasks from critical stakeholders that are not already listed; if so, add them

4. Assign importance rank: give each task a value between 1 and 4. One meaning this task is of great importance, four meaning the task is insignificant

5. Assign urgency rank: give each task a value between 1 and 4. One means it needs to get this done today; four meaning is not necessary when this task gets done

6. Define tentative priorities: add the two numbers together and rank priorities with the slowest numbers at the top of the things-to-do list

7. Bucket things to do list: put the task into four buckets

   1. Do it now

   2. Plan to do it

   3. Delegate or Outsource

   4. Delete

8. Calendarize: begin to calendarize tasks so there is clarity as to when tasks will be completed. Make sure to include who will be responsible for completing the task.

This approach works because it lets you see everything that needs to be done. By slowing down to evaluate how important each task is, along with how urgently the task needs to be completed, you can determine which task needs to be completed first.

Going Beyond Urgent and Important

You will likely have items that carry the same prioritization score. When this happens, you must go a step further in deciding which task you will complete first. As a rule of thumb, go after low-hanging fruit first. Low-hanging fruit is a task that can be completed quickly and will give a good return. As you evaluate which tasks to tackle first, you should pick the ones from the "do it now" box that will take the smallest amount of time to complete. This will ensure that you deliver the most value possible quickly.

Another tactic for determining importance is considering the stakeholder that completing a task will impact. You should complete the tasks that best support the culture you want to build within your organization. Others look to you to help them define priorities. The functions you prioritize should send a message to others about what is most important. Review your company's mission, vision, and strategy to determine which task will provide the most long-term benefit to your company.

Summary

Being overwhelmed at work is becoming the new norm, but it does not have to be. In a recent HBR article, Executive Coach Rebecca Zucker shared these five tips for How to Deal with Constantly Feeling Overwhelmed

1. Pinpoint the primary source

2. Set Boundaries on your time and workload

3. Challenge your perfectionism

4. Outsource or delegate

5. Challenge your assumptions

Being less overwhelmed requires you to slow down, analyze your things-to-do list, prioritize, and take action. Company expectations are not going to change anytime soon. To succeed, you must continue to adapt, prioritize, build new skills, and seek ways to do more with less.

---

Thank you for reading this blog

Dorian Cunion is an Executive Coach and Business Consultant with Your Path Coaching and Consulting. He is a former retail executive with over 20 years of experience in the retail industry. He is a Co-Active coach who focuses on helping professionals and small business owners overcome insecurities, knowledge gaps, and lack of direction. He does this by assisting clients to tap into their values, recognize their strengths, and develop actionable strategies for growth.

Have you been trying to improve your career or business on your own but are not seeing success as fast as you desire?

Book a free discovery call to discuss your goals and how I can help you accelerate.

Talk with Dorian

Have Feedback? Send me a note at

Email: dcunion@yourpathexecutivesolutions.com

For daily tips on leadership and professional development, follow me:

LinkedIn

Facebook

The Umbrella Principle: How to influence employees to execute company strategy

A company’s success is dependent on two things. One, the company’s strategy. Two the company’s execution. When it comes to the latter, many times companies struggle because they are unable to get their employees to align and commit to the strategy. When it comes to leadership, one of your key roles is to define the company’s strategy and to gain buy-in around executing of that strategy. Over the last 15 years I have taught business leaders the umbrella principle which provides employees with a metaphor that demonstrates the benefits of executing within the company's strategy.

The umbrella represents the company strategy. If you stay under the umbrella, meaning inside of the company’s strategy you will have a different experience than you would by going out from under the umbrella. The umbrella provides both shade and protection. By being under the umbrella your movements might be more restricted, but you know rain or shine that you have something between you and the elements. If you decide to venture beyond the parameters of the umbrella, you may enjoy the benefits of sunshine (positive results) but you also open yourself up for the risk of being rained on (failure). When the weather is good, the need for an umbrella is lower. Delivering great results can provide its own layer of protection which will afford you some forgiveness if you are not strictly adhering to the strategy. But if your results no longer are meeting expectations, you are going to be in a lot better situation if you are under the umbrella of the company's strategy when question start raining in.

What I love about this analogy is the visualization of risk and reward. Going a little outside of the umbrella carries some risk, but not as much risk as leaving the umbrella at home. In addition, having a little sprinkle of rain fall on your head (having a small failure) is significantly different than a major down pouring (a big failure). In reality, there are scenarios that are similar to hurricanes where your adherence to the strategy will matter little because of the severity of the event. Things can be so bad that being under the umbrella (executing the company's strategy) will not make a difference to how you are treated. But in most cases if you are executing the company's strategy, and results are not coming, you will be in a better situation than if you had poor results and are also off strategy. By exploring this analogy with employees, you can help them to think more globally about the benefits and risk associated with going off strategy.

If your employees have never been in a board room, they likely are not aware of how much time and energy goes into debating a company’s strategy. Literally hours are spent by CEOs, CFOs, CMOs, senior executives and their direct reports, reviewing data, analyzing trends, and studying marketing conditions all with the goal of defining what is the “right” path for the company to pursue. Because so much time is spent developing strategy, those involved are typically deeply invested. For this reason, the company’s strategy is worth being followed provided that it is ethical and legal. It is important to help employees to understand that they were specifically hired with the purpose of executing the plans that leadership has developed. Everyone

within an organization has a role. Leadership generally defines what needs to be done, and they expect managers and employees to figure out the how to do it. If employees have significant objections to the company's strategy, they should voice their concerns. Great organizations excel at listening to the voices that are closest to the customer and leveraging their insights to inform strategy. But once a decision is made around what needs to be done, it is expected for employees to execute the strategy. If your employees are unable or unwilling to do so, they should consider finding a company to work for that has a strategy they can get behind. People do their best work when their values and principles align with their employer. Many times, employees stay in a job they do not enjoy out of comfort or fear of the unknown, not realizing that their life would improve if they found a place to work that better aligned with the work that they want to do. If they are consistently at odds with the company's leadership, they should ask whether their time and energy would be better served someplace else.

When an employee decides to pursue an action that does not align with the company strategy, they dilute the organizations focus and resources. Most companies hire highly compensated executives, MBAs and consultants to help them to identify ways to get the most out of the company’s resources. When your employees deviate from the strategy, they are basically telling leadership that they know better than leadership what should be done. In some situations, they are correct, but they should evaluate how to manage these situations. Leadership is not always right, and being highly compensated or highly educated does not automatically mean that you have all of the answers. But what it does mean is that a lot of money and trust has been invested into you, and the expectation is that you set the direction for the company and take responsibility for any successes or failure. It is important for employees to consider the different roles and responsibilities within the organization. The role of leadership is to define the strategy, and the role of the workforce is to execute the strategy. This is similar to the relationship between a head coach and a team. One is responsible for drawling up the plays, the other is responsible for executing the plays. Once the play is called, members of the team have the ability to innovate and do what they need to do to be successful, but the expectation is that the play that is called is run. Organizations work best when each member plays their role. It is important to help employees to understand that there can be multiple correct answers to the same question, but organizations are stronger when everyone is aligned and pursuing the same answer.

Early in my career I struggled with professional maturity. I frequently struggled with aligning myself around company strategy. I ran stores within an urban environment, and frequently pushed back on the company strategy because I believed that individuals within headquarters did not under the complexities of running stores in the inner city and asked us to do things that would result in lower operating earnings. For example, we were required to keep items on the sales floor that were frequently stolen such as health and beauty aid products. Instead of working with leadership to find creative solutions to the theft issues, I would direct stores to keep these items behind the counter. Keeping products like these behind the counter is inconvenient for customers and generally leads to lower sales. The impact of my decision to go against strategy resulted in lower sales within those categories.

In my mind, what I was doing was the right thing because my actions were leading to overall increase in profitability because fewer items were being stolen. From leadership’s vantage point, I was taking actions that reduced sales. This was especially troublesome to leadership because part of our strategy was to be a convenient alternative to pharmacies and grocery stores that also sold these products. What felt right to me, and the stores I supported was not what was right for the organization at large. When the topic of lower sales came up, because I was not executing the strategy, I was rained on. The organization had called a play, and they needed me to run it. My failure to execute the strategy left leadership with uncertainty around the type of sales that would be generated if I had just done what they asked.

How could I have handled the situation differently? First, I could have recognized that growing center of store sales was a key part of our company’s strategy. That revenue goals were set based off all stores following the recommended merchandising schematics. Leadership understood that some stores would have elevated theft as a result of this strategy and that they were taking a calculated risk that there was more benefit to having everyone execute the same strategy versus having a different approach in every store.

In fact, by individuals like me not following the recommended strategy an illusion was being created. Stores in urban areas did not experience elevated theft because they were not putting products on the sales floor. As a result, there was no data to confirm our statements that putting those items on the sales floor would result in higher theft. My failure to ask the right questions resulted in me taking action at the store level, that was ultimately hurt the company's ability to collect good information, and make informed decisions based off of facts. My thinking was short-term and local, while leadership was thinking long-term and global. In the end I was the loser because I was delivering the desired result that leadership wanted. The good thing is that I learned from the experience and got better about following strategy.

Fast forward five years. Through hard won wisdom, I learned that sticking to the company’s strategy gave me the opportunity to increase my level of influence within the organization. When employees execute the company's strategy at a high level, leadership pays attention. With this attention, employees can gain greater access which they can leverage to influence future strategic initiatives. It is a big counter intuitive, but the best way to fight against a strategy you disagree with is to execute it at a high level, and then to provide feedback on how it could be improved. This is because leaders tend to care more about facts than feelings. When employees say they feel that something might not work, there is always room for leadership say they are wrong. When an employee can present facts that a strategy does not work, they are in a better place to champion for change. One key call out here is that employees must execute the strategy to the best of their ability. Halfhearted execution will not give you the creditability needed to influence leadership.

The purpose of an organization is to bring a group of people together to accomplish a shared goal. There are multiple paths to accomplish any goal. Organizations function best when there is alignment around their strategies. The higher you are within an organization, the more influence you have on the organization's strategy. During the early stages of employee's careers, it is important to help them to understand that their primary role within the organization is to execute the task that they are asked to do, and to provide feedback

on what they learned from executing those tasks. As they move up the career ladder, and prove their ability to execute, they will gain more influence on the overall strategy. Over the course of this journey, they will learn how important it is as to a leader to have employees that they can trust to execute strategies. They will learn about the burden of leadership. How no one is perfect, everyone makes mistakes, and that good intentions sometimes lead to bad result. When results are weak, it is a lot easier to learn, grow and course correct if there is clarity on what is causing the poor performance. Employee adherence to executing a company's strategy helps leaders to have clarity. With this clarity, leaders are better positioned to execute their role which is to set direction and ensure that the organization is moving closer to its overall vision.

LinkedIn post of the week: Business in good times (6) Post | Feed | LinkedIn

Instagram post of the week: Your Path Coaching and Consulting (@your_executivecoach) • Instagram photos and videos

Youtube video of the week:

Should I stay at my company following a layoff?

Your company just went through a layoff. The good news is that you were not let go. The bad news is that you are now concerned about your company's financial health. You also know that things will get more difficult in the near term. The work that was previously done by others will be reassigned. You will be asked to do more, and there is little chance of you getting incremental compensation despite the extra effort.

You are asking yourself, do I want to stay here? Part of you wants to be loyal to your company and peers, put your head down, and help to turn things around. Another part of you is scared if you will be next and wonders if this is the perfect time to seek employment elsewhere

.

Things to consider before leaving your company after a layoff

1. Do you enjoy your job?

This is the most critical factor to consider because if you don't like what you do, you will not perform at a high level. Think about what aspects of your job make you happy and what aspects make you frustrated or bored. If the positives outweigh the negatives, you might want to stay and see how things evolve. You might want to seek something more fulfilling if the negatives are too overwhelming.

2. Do you believe the company can turn things around?

Layoffs are usually a sign of financial trouble, but they can also be a strategic move to restructure and improve the company's performance. If you trust the leadership and vision of the company, and you see signs of recovery and growth, you might want to stick around and be part of the solution. If you doubt the company's future and direction and you see no evidence of improvement or innovation, you might want to jump ship before it sinks.

3. Will you have the potential to grow by staying?

Layoffs can create new opportunities for those who remain, such as taking on more responsibilities, learning new skills, or moving up the ladder. If you see a clear career development and advancement path within the company, you might want to stay and seize those opportunities. If you feel stuck or stagnant in your current role and have no prospects for growth or change, you might want to look for other options that can challenge and reward you.

Things to do after a layoff at your company

1. Journal about your feelings.

Writing down your thoughts and emotions can help you process what happened and cope with the change. It can also help you identify what you liked and disliked about your job, what you are learning, and what you want to avoid in the future. Journaling can also boost your self-esteem and confidence by reminding you of your strengths and achievements.

2. Define what you want from your career.

After your company lays off workers, you may feel tempted to accept job offers from other companies, but this may not be the best option for your long-term satisfaction and growth. Take some time to think about what you want from your career, such as the type of work, the industry, the culture, the values, the benefits, and the salary. Create a list of the top 10 things that are important to you, and evaluate how your current role is fulfilling your needs.

3. Define career options.

Once you have a clear idea of what you want from your career, you can start researching and evaluating different career options that match your criteria. You can use online resources such as job boards, company websites, industry blogs, or professional networks to learn more about the current trends, opportunities, and challenges in various fields. You can also contact people who work in careers that interest you and ask them for advice or feedback. This can help you determine if you would be better off staying or pursuing employment elsewhere.

Summary

Deciding whether to leave an organization after a layoff is a difficult decision. You have to evaluate your values, options, and long-term career plans. By taking time to explore your feelings about your

• company

• current job

and the knowledge you have of

• the economy

• your industry

• your long-term career goals

you can find the right answer to whether you should stay or leave. Every decision allows you to learn more about who you are and the world around you. If you stay centered on your values, use your strengths, and pursue your long-term goals, you will end up exactly where you are meant to be.

---

Thank you for reading this blog

Dorian Cunion is an Executive Coach and Business Consultant with Your Path Coaching and Consulting. He is a former retail executive with over 20 years of experience in the retail industry. He is a Co-Active coach who focuses on helping professionals, and small business owners overcome insecurities, knowledge gaps, and lack of direction. He does this by assisting clients to tap into their values, recognize their strengths, and develop actionable strategies for growth.

Have you been trying to improve your career or business on your own but are not seeing success as fast as you desire?

Book a free discovery call to discuss your goals and how I can help you accelerate.

Talk with Dorian

Have Feedback Send me a note at

Email: dcunion@yourpathexecutivesolutions.com

For daily tips on leadership and professional development, follow me:

LinkedIn

Facebook