Teams are stressed. Is your leadership draining or sustaining them?
When depleted and stressed, priorities can get muddled and worsen exhaustion. Proactive steps by leaders can help.
Someone on your team is working late tonight, even thought it’s not required. Their depletion is costing them and you. Here’s how to help.
While your organization grapples with an evolving workplace, your team is on the frontlines of change. They’re producing, problem-solving and likely overworking to show their value today in the hopes it’ll secure their position tomorrow.
Half of U.S. professionals describe themselves as feeling “a lot” of stress at work. As many as 43% of female professionals and 45% of managers are feeling especially taxed.
Being under persistent stress is cognitively “expensive.” Your responses, behaviors and communication as a leader also have impact.
How can you be sure you’re buffering your team – and not adding to their burden?
Assess Meetings for Opportunity Cost
Meetings are infamous time wasters. Teams can get in the habit of meeting simply because they always have. During high-pressure seasons meetings can and should be assessed for the attention and time investment they demand.
Simply assessing their purpose and utility demonstrates respect for your team and their time.
If held, insist on a tight agenda and actively manage over-explainers who can sabotage momentum.
If they’re an accountability tool, consider other check-in methods like email updates or propose their cancellation if deadlines are met.
This gifts your team with a nonrenewable, priceless resource: Time.
Communication: More Frequently, More Transparently
Over time, stress taxes the mind, the memory and can lead to growing negativity bias: We see threats, poor outcomes or negative intent more frequently than we would in a replenished state.
Direct, transparent communication can help. Supportive check-ins can prevent duplication of work, confirm expectations and prevent damaging assumptions.
Even if you think every member on your team is clear, validate they’re focused on the right priorities and you’ll all benefit.
If your team is asking questions you don’t have an answer for, respond with honesty. This may take courage, but your reply – “a decision hasn’t been made yet” – demonstrates transparency and reinforces trust.
Back-Up Expectations
Top performers. You know who they are. You may not have the budget to reward their performance, but acknowledging their contributions and positive impact costs little. Research suggests it can boost engagement and commitment in a meaningful way.
On the flip side, follow-up with performers who are falling short.
Holding a hard line with accountability matters to team morale, long-term performance. Teams know who’s driving progress and who’s dragging the group down.
Have honest conversations with those who are missing the mark and protect your top performers from resentment or slipping engagement. They’re paying attention.
Prioritize and Deprioritize — Together
As discussed, persistent stress does more than tap energy. It can muddle thinking and make everything feel urgent.
Without clear guidance, your team may take on additional low value work by default, instead of pausing to weigh its true level of importance. This expends mental energy and accelerates burnout.
Proactively engage and elicit input: What do they see as priorities? What deliverables are demanding more time and energy than expected?
Re-rank tasks together and be clear in downgrading what’s less important and can be postponed or shelved
Clarity about what is NOT a priority is as crucial as defining what is.
Invite Openness and Build Psychological Safety
In high-pressure times, it’s not unusual for high performers to fall back on old patterns of coping. This can look like poor boundaries, overwork, or isolation.
What worsens these patterns?
Teams withholding when they’re struggling or barely keeping up; not asking questions because they fear embarassment; not highlighting problems because they don’t want to be blamed.
Psychological safety takes time, but small steps can help foster more trust. Open meetings with a temperature check – What’s working well? What’s gotten in the way? – and then be quiet and listen without judgement. Practice curiosity (rather than criticism) when outcomes aren’t ideal..
As a leader, you influence the tone and pace of work within your team. Fostering openness and safe exchanges can be the difference between a crisis averted and one that’s felt with damaging after-effects.
Manage Your Own Stress and Recovery
High-pressure seasons test your team’s resilience and yours, too.
Teams often mirror the affect, pace and energy of their leaders. So among the most powerful ways you can protect your team is by being intentional in how you lead, respond and communicate.
Whether you’re calm and focused or overwhelmed and spinning, they’re likely to follow.
By reducing distractions and depleting activities, clarifying priorities and expectations and managing your energy, you’re setting the foundation for a workplace where sustainability is possible – even in tough high-pressure periods.
We’ll be sharing strategies for leader replenishment in the coming weeks.
This week, take a new step: Cancel a meeting that’s non-essential, have one honest conversation you’ve been avoiding, or praise a top performer and point out the difference their work has made.
Your team is stressed and working hard. Use your position to ensure their investments are valued -- and sustainable.
