5 Ways for Executives and Managers to Combat Feeling Overwhelmed

updated 5/19/2025

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 you 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, Blockbuster, 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 have made over the last 12 months. Your ability to embrace change will help you find solutions to bandwidth challenges. Test out new technologies, embracing AI, 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 to 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 assigns a new task, they probably assume you have the capacity to complete it, along with any other previously assigned tasks. You know this is true when you are given a new task without being told to stop doing a different task. You are responsible for providing visibility into what you do, how long 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. However, it is essential 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 burned out because you were working beyond reasonable expectations.

Consult Peers

If others have a similar role to yours, 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 many best practices for prioritizing your time. One of the best is the Eisenhower Matrix. Another is Sally McGhee's approach to using Microsoft tools to plan and track work, 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 be completed.

2. Calendar Review: Review the calendar, examine what needs to be accomplished over the next 90 days, and add any incremental tasks 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 means it 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 and how urgently it 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 stakeholders 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 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 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.

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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 a lack of direction. He does this by assisting clients in tapping into their values, recognizing their strengths, and developing actionable strategies for growth.

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Create Performance Development Plans that Really Work

Developing people is one of the most critical responsibilities of a leader. Whether running a multi-billion-dollar retail company or a small local restaurant, a company's success is directly linked to its ability to help its employee acquire and master new skills. As the capabilities of employees increase, so do the organization's capabilities. When employees improve their technical and soft skills, they enhance their company's ability to generate revenue, cut costs and improve customer satisfaction. There is an old saying that a general goes to war with the army they have, not the army they want. While this is true, a leader's army tomorrow can be better than the army they have today if they invest time, focus, and attention in helping their employees develop.

Establish Trust

Trust must be in place to help your employee establish an effective personal development plan. Trust is essential because it enables you and your employees to be honest about short- and long-term goals and what is necessary for each of you to help others achieve their goals. The employee, boss relationship works best when it is mutually beneficial. When you take the time to show your employees that you care about them and that you are looking out for their best interest, they will be more likely to care for you and to look out for your best interest. Leaders build trust over time through small acts such as listening, showing concern, holding confidentiality, and providing support.

Commit to using the tool

Once leaders establish trust, they can work with their employees to create personal development plans. Personal Development Plans are a highly effective tool for defining the areas that an employee wants to focus on developing, along with what actions they are committing to take. Much like any tool, it is only effective if used as intended. Hours are wasted annually by employees and supervisors working on Personal

Development Plans that are talked about once and then put away and forgotten for a year. Developing Personal Development Plans and not using them is like purchasing a shovel to help you plant flowers and then keeping it in your shed for an entire year. At the end of the year, you will have a shovel but no flowers. For this reason, leaders should re employee's personal development plans need to be a living document that is reviewed monthly. During each meeting, the supervisor and the employee should discuss every year by

• What was the plan?

• What results were generated?

• What did you learn?

• What changes need to be made to the plan?

Developing the plan

As leaders develop a Personal Development Plan, it is important to clarify the goals of the plan. First, there must be clarity on what the employee needs to improve to best help their career and the company. Many times, there are areas of employee performance that leaders would like to see improvements in, that the employees are not aware of being an issue. Before a leader ventures into the developmental opportunities, start the conversation by talking about what the employee is currently doing well. This is an important step because it helps to build the employee's confidence. It will also help to put them into a positive state of mind. Studies show that people are more engaged and creative when they have a positive mindset.

Next, a leader needs to discuss the areas of development that would best help the employee reach their goals. As a rule of thumb, a leader should share three positive areas that an employee is doing well in, for every developmental area that is discussed. During this discussion, it is important to make the distinction between what development can help them to excel in their current role, in addition; to what could help them prepare for their next opportunity.

Note, some employees will communicate that they are not interested in career advancement. They may do this for various reasons including previous disappointment around not receiving promotions in the past, lack of confidence in their ability, or a host of other reasons. If a leader believes an individual has the potential for career advancement let them know you believe in their potential and encourage them to be open to taking on more responsibilities. A leader may see something in them, that they do not see in themselves. By the leader communicating belief, they can inspire the employee to consider possibilities that they previously could not imagine.

Once there is alignment around the areas of focus, it is important to make sure there is a shared understanding of the urgency that opportunities should be addressed. As a leader, it is important to be clear with employees about the areas of their performance that need urgent attention. If an employee has a critical deficiency that is negatively impacting the company, and potentially putting their employment at risk this should be clear to the employee. There should be no ambiguity when it comes to performance deficiencies, and those should be handled through performance management conversations. When it comes to Personal Development Planning, the urgency should be driven by the employee. A leader can frame up the benefits of them moving fast, for example, if a promotion opportunity is coming, and it is in the employee's best interest to learn a new skill to qualify for the opportunity. But in general, the employee should own the pace of implementation of the plan.

As you conduct the personal development plan conversation with an employee, it is always good to ask them what areas of development they would like to work on. Many times, employees will demonstrate more energy and in persistence working on items they have selected on their own. For this reason, consider swimming with the current, and leveraging their existing energy towards achieving a developmental goal. As a leader discusses with them the items they would like to work on, it is beneficial to help them to understand how working on those items will help their career. For example, if a leader has a salesperson that would like to work on building on presentation skills, they can discuss how developing these skills will help them in their current role, in addition to helping them in future roles. This will help to give more incentive to pursue developing those skills.

Once a leader understands what the employee believes they should be focusing on developing, it is time to share with them the developmental areas that they believe could add value to their career. As a leader does this, it is important to communicate to them the benefit that they believe this developmental action will have on them in both the short and the long term. Going back to the example of the salesperson, if this individual has the desire to be a manager in the future, then one of the skills that they will need to develop is coaching and training skills. As the leader is talking with them about potential areas for growth. They can tell them that training others is a key skill for leaders to develop. The leader can encourage them to reflect on what makes them good at selling and ask if they would be interested in developing training for new hires. In developing this training, they would have the opportunity to work on putting together presentations, in addition to gaining experience training others. In this way, you are killing two birds with one stone. The employees get an opportunity to work on developing their presentation skills, while also gaining new experience in training others.

As a leader conducts personal development conversation, it is beneficial to identify 4 potential areas of development. One aspect of human nature that is universal is a desire for control. By a leader working with an

employee to identify multiple areas of development to work on, they empower them to choose where they want to focus their attention. As a leader and employee discuss the 4 potential areas, they should rate each on two variables. The amount of effort believed necessary to build the new skill or behavior and the amount of value it will generate.

The effort here is a very broad term. Effort should be considered in proportion to the time, money, and resources required to make progress on the desired skill or behavior. For example, if the employee decides that they want to improve their coaching skills, they could consider doing this by becoming a certified coach. It would be important to understand that the process generally takes a year, can cost over $15,000, and requires around a 180-hour commitment. Clearly defining the amount of effort required can help the leader and the employee discuss any constraints that might get in the way of the employee reaching their goal. This will help both parties determine if the effort required is worth pursuing.

When it comes to value, it is important to discuss the predicted value that will be added to the individual and to the company through the development activity. Value can be determined in many ways, but revenue growth, time savings, and improvements to customer experience are great places to start. For

example, if an employee is already very competent in developing presentations, they might want to take a new course on building power points. This course might be fun and interesting for the employee but may provide little incremental value to the company. It is important to discuss with the employee what value will be generated by the employee pursuing the activity.

Once the leader and employee have discussed the amount of value and effort related to each potential area of development, they can now work with the employee to prioritize which development opportunity to pursue first. The prioritization activity should help to guide the employee to identify what focus area would benefit them the most. Since this is not a perfect science, the leader and employee should not get stuck feeling like they have to execute the items that are low effort and high return. Logic would say the employee should focus their energy on these items, but the reality is that humans are not logical beings. Emotions drive behaviors. If an employee is dead set on doing an activity that falls in one of the other quadrants, don’t fight it. The most important thing is that the employee is growing professionally. Leaders frequently get stuck trying to get employees to develop in areas that they have limited interest or motivation to work in. When this happens time and energy are wasted trying to influence change vs accepting the employee for who they are and leaning into their strengths and passions. Follow the natural energy the employee has towards the areas they want to develop. This will allow the leader to help the

employee develop, while also building additional trust. There will always be another opportunity to revisit other developmental opportunities.

As the leader and employee finalize the Personal Development Plan, it is important to discuss what activities will come off the plate. Leaders have the tendency of working with employees on identifying what new actions, behaviors, or skills they want to see a person develop but walking away prior to getting into a discussion around divesting activities. Employees only have so much room on their plates, and leaders provide a great service to them when they help to prioritize what they should and shouldn't be working on. Employees' things-to-do lists are like full plates at a cookout. There are a lot of good things on them, but before you can add more, you have to take something off. If an employee’s plate is full, a leader should help them to decide how to make some space. Space can be made in three ways. They can make room by eating some of the food, which means working on their current task. Once they end a current

project, they will have space to add another. They can give some food to someone else, by delegating some of their tasks. Or they can throw some food away, which means just walking away from a project. Depending on the importance of the task on their plate to them and to the company a leader can help to determine how best to make room.

Leaders give a great gift to employees when they help them with personal development. Employees trust their leaders with their careers. The better able a leader is to develop talent, the more successful they will be in attracting great leaders, and delivering against their own professional goals.

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4 Tips for Creating a Culture of Recognition

In 2021 the Pew Research Center surveyed over 6000 workers and identified low pay, lack of opportunities for advancement and feeling disrespected as the top 3 reasons for employee turnover. As a middle manager, you do not have autonomy to address the first two reasons for turnover in the short-term, but you do have the ability to have influence with the third. A desire for respect is a universal human need. Every day employees show up to work and do their jobs and as a leader you play a key role in showing your employees that you appreciate what they do.

Showing employees that you appreciate them is easy to do, but you must be purposeful. It is well documented that individuals are more likely to acquire new behaviors when they establish them as goals. If you want to show your employees you appreciate them, review the four actions below and set a goal for yourself to practice these over the next 21 days.

1. Write a note to your employee. Most communication is either verbal or digital. It is rare for us to receive or give positive written communication outside of performance review cycles. As a leader your words matter to you employees. By taking the time to write a thank you note to your employees, it shows them that you genuinely appreciate what they are doing. In addition, it gives them something that they can keep as a reminder of the excellent work they have completed. Make sure the note is specific, add the date and your signature. Pro Tip- develop branded thank you notes with your name on it. Just having these at your desk or in your work bag will encourage you to use them.

2. Praise your employee on social media. LinkedIn and other social media platforms are a great forum to show your employees appreciation. With more workers being remote, shifting to virtual recognition is a great way to provide public praise. By praising your employee in a social media post, you can recognize them in front of their peers, which makes a profound impact especially with extroverts. Pro Tip- connect with your employees and co-workers on social media platforms to maximize the reach of recognition post.

3. Give them a small token of appreciation. Little things matter especially when they are a surprise. Something as simple as a recognition pin, a gift card for coffee, or a candy bar can go a long way in showing someone that you appreciate what they do. The key here is to give the employee something they will appreciate. Take some time over the next week to poll your team on what types of recognition they feel would be impactful. Pro Tip- if the individual you are showing appreciation to has a family, the gift could be for them. Families of employees make sacrifices to support their career, showing them appreciation goes a long way to make the entire family feel valued and respected.

4. Surprise thank you call. Making an unexpected call to an employee to thank them for the work they are doing can go a long way to showing appreciation. An unprompted recognition call gives you an opportunity outside of one on ones, and performance reviews to energize an employee and let them know that their work matters. Pro Tip- if you are a manager of managers, ask your direct reports to provide you with the name, phone number, and reason for recognition of their direct reports. Skip level recognition can be impactful because the employee does not interact with you frequently, and likely see you as a powerful and influential person.

Leaders have a direct influence over the culture of their team. By role modeling recognition, you help to develop a culture that shows respect and appreciations. All businesses have limits on employee compensation, and advancement opportunities but there are fewer constraints on the amount of recognition you can give employees. By providing your employees with better and more frequent recognition, you demonstrated that you appreciate and respect the contribution they provide to the organization.

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Dorian Cunion is an Executive Business Coach with your Path Coaching and Consulting. He specializes in coaching service for managers, executives and small business owner.

For tips on leadership and professional development follow me:

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If you are interested in working with me as a coach, contact me at

• Email: dcunion@yourpathexecutivesolutions.com

• Phone: 804-220-5771