Lately, I’ve been feeling a little overwhelmed. There’s a number of changes occurring at work which are creating new pressures and stresses. It’s been a challenging time, and I’ve thought more than once will this ever end.
As a leader, you try to manage your stress so it doesn’t create further and unnecessary stress on your team. I’m reminded of the story about a duck that’s calmly sitting on the water, but their little duck legs are going double time under the water, just to stay afloat.
Overwhelm tends to sneak up on you – you can feel stress rising and the pressure of deadlines getting closer and next thing you are totally overwhelmed and can’t see any light at the end of the tunnel.
If you have transitioned into a leadership role, it’s very normal to feel overwhelm. Even if you’ve been in your leadership role for some time, there may be periods of overwhelm that you need to overcome.
Feeling overwhelm can actually be good for you, because it can force you to address issues you’ve been avoiding.
Here’s what I’ve needed to remind myself of lately to overcome overwhelm.
Recognise and acknowledge your overwhelm
The first step is to be honest with yourself and accept that you’re feeling overwhelmed. Once you acknowledge how you are feeling you can take proactive action to move forward.
Identify what is driving your feeling of overwhelm
Try to pinpoint the cause of the overwhelm. Be specific and narrow down the cause. You may believe there are a number of reasons causing overwhelm, but use the 5 why’s to try and drill down to what may be the potential root cause.
Negative thinking
Catch and stop any negative thinking. I know it can be easy to let that little voice in your mind start saying thing like “you aren’t cut out to do this job” or other things of the like. You need to catch yourself when negative thoughts creep in.
Stop disruptive behaviour
Often when we feel overwhelmed, we can sabotage ourselves with disruptive behaviours that creates additional overwhelm. Stop Procrastinating! My go to disruptive behaviour is spending extra time on social media under the pretence of “de-stressing”, which sucks time away from doing what I should be doing. Then you feel guilty and the disruptive cycle continues. Recognise your behaviours and take action to overcome these.
Team goals
You may be trying not to stress your team by keeping things to yourself, but they will know you are stressed or under pressure. Be transparent and communicate issues that affect the team. Collectively develop team goals to get through together.
Get into motion
For me, one big strategy to stop the feeling of drowning is to get into motion. Action creates clarity. Get intentional about what needs to get done and start doing it. There’s a great article on the blog about getting into motion – you can find it here:
As a new leader, don’t let overwhelm stop you before you really start. We’ve all felt like we’re drowning at times. You are not along. Overwhelm is not something that just new leaders experience, we all experience it at different times in our careers. Put in place these practical strategies and you will start to find your way through.
You got this!