How to Lead an Overwhelmed Employee

Leading an overwhelmed employee can be stressful for everyone involved.

Luckily, you’re a leader who will be able to navigate this situation using your key strength – thoughtfulness!

It’s easy to think “that person just can’t cut it” or “they’re no good”, but often there is more to the story.

In this post, I’ll take a look at how to handle an overwhelmed employee, so you can get them back on the right path.

First: Spotting the Signs of an Overwhelmed Employee

Spotting an overwhelmed employee may seem obvious and easy.

However, we know that everyone is different, so we can’t just assume that there is some single sign to watch for.

Here are some of the key things to pay attention to:

• Emotional outbursts. Shouting, frustration, crying, irritability… you know what these look like. They can be an obvious sign of overwhelm.
• Going quiet. If your team member withdraws and stops engaging with you or the team, they may be scrambling to keep their head above water.
• Working long hours. When someone works long hours and you don’t think they should need to, this may be a sign that they’re struggling to keep up.
• Mismatched body language. Sometimes people say everything is “fine”, but we see that their body language or tone doesn’t quite match their words. This can be a sign that they are struggling with something, but may not feel comfortable speaking up about it.
• Errors. An overwhelmed employee may be rushing to get things done. Rushing often means reduced attention to detail, and more errors.
• Complaints from other team members. A struggling employee can have a knock-on effect in the team, especially when people are relying on your overwhelmed employee to get their own work done. Paying attention to the dynamics of your team can help you spot overwhelm.
• Checking in too often. The opposite of going quiet can be when you have a team member checking in with you more than should be necessary. In this case, they may be so overwhelmed that the need to lean on you to make decisions, instead of making the call themselves.

It’s a pretty long list – being observant and attentive is one of your best ways to spot an overwhelmed employee.

Learn More:  Team Feeling Overwhelmed? Here’s How to Help.

Next: Understanding the Source of the Overwhelm

Once we’ve spotted the overwhelmed employee, the next step is finding out what exactly is causing the problem.

This is where some leaders jump to conclusions about the capability or attitude of their team members, which can be unfair.

If you’re going to succeed, you’re going to need your team members to succeed too, so we need to find out exactly what the problem is!

Here are some of the potential causes below.

1. Too much work

I know what you’re thinking… did I really have to include this one?

Well… yeah.

It might seem obvious, but it’s one of the most common issues that plagues our workplaces today.

And the problem with this one is that it can be hard to spot, because people sometimes keep quiet about their overwhelming workload until it’s too late.

But why is the person not saying anything, and taking on too much?

Good question! More on this later.

2. Insufficient skill

Sometimes overwhelmed employees don’t have the right skills (or level of skill) for the job.

You might see that they have the right qualifications and they’ve done the right training, but it may be that their skills aren’t good enough to do the amount of work required.

In other words, there is too much work for their skill level.

A more experienced or skilled employee may be able to do the work just fine, while your overwhelmed employee may struggle.

3. Lack of confidence

It may not be the skills that are the problem, but simply a lack of confidence with your overwhelmed employee.

A lack of confidence can cause tentative behaviour, where an overwhelmed employee may not be fully committed to what they’re doing.

Instead of giving it their all, they hold back in case they do something wrong.

Ironically, this holding back can mean that they make mistakes because they don’t really believe in the approach they’re taking.

4. Misplaced motivations

It’s important to understand the motivations of your people when you’re trying to support them.

People have many motivations, but to simplify: I find it often comes down to two things: people-pleasing and goal-achieving.

People-pleasing employees want to help. They want to help their team mates, and they want to help you, the boss.

As a result, you may find them taking on too much work, because they don’t want to be unhelpful by saying “No”. Before you know it, you have an overwhelmed employee.

Goal-achieving employees want to hit the target and succeed. They want to show that they can do the work, and do it well.

So when they receive too much work, guess what happens? They try to do it all, because “they’ve got this”.

It’s an admirable mentality, but it can result in stress, anxiety and yep – an overwhelmed employee.

Learn More:  Is Your Team Struggling? Understand Workplace Stress to Lead Better.

How to Help an Overwhelmed Employee

OK, so we’ve looked at some of the signs and causes, so how do we help our overwhelmed team member out?

First, it’s good to remember that an overwhelmed employee is often trying to do the right thing.

They want to take on the job and do their part. Their intentions are often positive, we just need to help them stay afloat.

Understand the Weight of Unstated Expectations

I think many people in the world of work don’t really understand how powerful expectations can be.

And amongst the most powerful are the unspoken expectations.

These are the things that leaders expect without really saying them out loud. As thoughtful leaders, we need to be very careful about these.

One of the main expectations that I find leaders have is that people will say something if they have too much work.

This is not always the case, because there is another nasty expectation (and an assumption) going on here too.

Your employees may believe that if you gave them all that work, you must expect them to be able to complete it all!

But the reality is, we never really know how much is too much work, because many tasks are complex or have a degree of ambiguity.

As a leader, your position holds some status. It can be uncomfortable saying “no” to someone in a position of authority.

This might have your team members staying quiet, when they really should speak up.

That’s why we always need to be aware of what our unspoken expectations might be, as well as the assumptions or beliefs that underpin them.

Give Your Overwhelmed Employee an “Out”

You don’t want your overwhelmed employee to break.

So we need to reduce the pressure of our expectations in a few ways.

First, we can open up about the possibility of failure.

And I don’t care what anyone says – failure is always an option, and a possibility.

But we also need to reframe failure for our people too.

Being given a ridiculous workload and then not completing all the work is not failure. The failure began at the first step, which was the allocation of the work.

Giving your people an “out” means allowing them to speak up about workloads that are too high, or work that is too complex or difficult. 

It also means allowing them an opportunity to save face, instead of feeling like they have to put on a brave face.

Encourage them to raise their opinions, including what alternative approaches might be available. There might be a better way to do the work, for example.

This can reduce the unspoken expectations in your team, and open up the communication channels.

Be Available and Present

One of the factors that kills many workplaces is that leaders simply aren’t available.

“I’m in back to back meetings all day” is a common phrase.

This creates a situation where leaders aren’t able to support or observe their teams properly. Throw in the rise of remote and flexible working, and it gets even harder to see how your people are doing.

And when you can’t observe your people, you have less chance of spotting overwhelm.

I’m also surprised when I hear that many leaders don’t have 1-to-1 meetings with their employees.

1-to-1 meetings are one of the best ways to build trust and engage with people on a personal level, rather than just asking for the latest status update.

To find out how to make your 1-1 meetings better, read this post: 1 to 1 Meetings: Let’s Make Them Better.

Find the Cause of the Overwhelm, and Fix It

We covered some of the causes of overwhelm earlier.

To find out which causes might be impacting your employee, you need to start a conversation.

A good place to start is by letting them know what you have observed.

Then, you can state what you’d like to see instead.

And finally, you can discuss how to improve the situation, and get their ideas.

There are many causes of overwhelm, but some of the common ones can be addressed by:

• Providing training, where there is a lack of skill
• Buddying your overwhelmed employee up with a more experienced person, to provide support
• Cutting the workload, by helping your overwhelmed employee push back (and you might have to push back on your boss, too)
• Explaining how “sucking it up” or staying silent is not really helping the situation
• State your expectations out loud. This might mean saying you expect them to come to you if there is too much work, and that they don’t need to be a miracle worker
• Meeting with them more often to check in and provide support; while also
• Reducing the fear factor: restating that you’re trying to support them, not micromanage or “performance manage” them.

Keep in Touch With Your Stakeholders

If you only rely on your own observations of your team, you may be missing out on some key information.

However, it’s common for employees to need to collaborate with other teams and leaders to do their work.

As such, keeping your networks strong can be useful.

Firstly, it gives you another way to receive feedback about your team. If you have trusted colleagues who can keep a look out for you, then you don’t need to be everywhere at once.

Second, it means you can enlist support from other teams, and also clarify expectations with them.

If you feel as if your overwhelmed employee is being flooded with requests from another team (not uncommon in complex workplaces), then you need to be able to monitor this communication channel so you can keep the work at a reasonable level.

It’s not unusual for internal teams to provide support to multiple other teams, so you should make it a priority to be able to see what work is coming from where, so you can manage the situation.

Reduce the Overwhelm in Your Team

The biggest takeaway for me over the years has been the unspoken expectations that hang around our workplaces.

When people make assumptions about what we want as leaders, we can unintentionally create an environment that can lead to overwhelm.

So get on the front foot, and clarify your expectations, before people make up the story for themselves.

What do you do to help your overwhelmed employees? Let me and all the thoughtful leaders know in the comments below!