How to Lead When Your Team Is Drowning, Work Keeps Increasing and You Feel Stuck

[This episode will also be available on all major podcast platforms as of Sept. 30, 2022. Follow the podcast to get notified as soon as new episodes drop: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts]
‍

When I did my market research for this show, several managers told me about their struggles with the ever-increasing workload, caused by new regulation, shifting client demands or industry trends like sustainable investing. In some cases, teams are drowning in work, and things seem to be getting worse before they get better. In a situation like this, it’s easy for teams to lose motivation. As today's guest on the show says:
‍

"Teams that are overwhelmed and hopeless, they just don't care anymore. They're going to do the work, and they're going to show up, but they don't care whether they win or lose because they're convinced they're going to lose. It's a real kind of dispirited feeling."

It’s also hard for the manager. Sometimes it seems like there's nothing you can do about it. I mean, there’s no way to alleviate the workload, right? Even if you had the resources to hire new people, where can you find them in a labor market like this? And with work this complex, it would take ages to get new people up to speed or to build a system to replace them. In the meantime, the team is complaining, and more work is being added constantly – if you are the manager, it can really make you feel hopeless.

Joining the show today is Tom Henschel. Tom is an executive coach, based in Los Angeles, and the host of The Look & Sound of Leadership, one of the longest running coaching podcasts in the world.

In this episode, Tom shares his process for helping managers of overstretched teams get unstuck. You’ll learn how to share bad news with your team, how to ask for more resources, what not to say when you are feeling hopeless and why it’s so incredibly important for managers to ask for help and to take care of themselves.

Links to people, resources and concepts mentioned:

• Tom's LinkedIn profile and the website of his coaching practice Essential Communications.
• Tom's excellent podcast, The Look & Sound of Leadership, via Apple and Spotify.
• My episodes with executive coach Michael Bungay Stanier on how to be more like a coach when leading investment teams, with NN IP's head of Multi Asset Ewout van Schaick on how to deal with disruptive change and with Jorik van den Bos on how he struggled with ESG during his last ten years as an investor.
• This article on resilience in times of crisis might also help. "Resilient people are more willing to make decisions because they believe they have a real impact on their situation and are not afraid to influence it," writes business psychologist Merete Wedell-Wedellsborg.
• And here's another HBR article by management coach Elizabeth Grace Saunders. "Finding yourself in a season where the work has increased but your staff hasn’t is uncomfortable, but it can be managed."