Heavy Workloads

DAN MCGINN: Welcome to Dear HBR: from Harvard Business Review. I’m Dan McGinn.

ALISON BEARD: And I’m Alison Beard. Work can be frustrating but it doesn’t have to be. We don’t need to let the conflicts get us down.

DAN MCGINN: That’s where Dear HBR: comes in. We take your questions, look at the research, talk to the experts, and help you move forward.

ALISON BEARD: Today we’re talking about heavy workloads with Amy Jen Su. She’s an executive coach and the author of The Leader You Want to Be. Amy, thanks so much for coming in.

AMY JEN SU: Thanks for having me.

ALISON BEARD: So in your work as an executive coach, how often do clients come in with their struggles of having way too much to do and not enough hours to do it in?

AMY JEN SU: Alison, I feel like, honestly, that’s the number one thing I’m hearing. That mantra of, there’s never enough hours in the day and, I have more on my plate than what I know what to do with.

DAN MCGINN: And what do you do to help people cope with that?

AMY JEN SU: I think, first, just giving them space and permission to acknowledge that they’re feeling under the water and to bring some compassion to that. And then for each person, it really becomes about how do we reset, redefine, and get them back into the driver’s seat.

ALISON BEARD: Because you can’t ever really tell your boss, I have too much work, please don’t give me any more.

AMY JEN SU: I’m not sure that I would advise anyone to say that to their supervisor or their manager.

ALISON BEARD: [LAUGHTER] Right.

AMY JEN SU: And so instead, it really becomes about, again, how do I take back my life and prioritize, set my teams up differently? How do I level out my focus, my resilience, to really be effective?

DAN MCGINN: On the idea that you can’t push back on your boss about having too much to do, does that ever come up?

AMY JEN SU: When I said don’t push back, I don’t mean just say, hey I can’t do this, but instead, for this given request, let’s talk about the need. Let’s talk about what conditions for success look like and where does this fall on the priority list.

DAN MCGINN: Dear HBR: I started a new role as a human resources business partner about two months ago. I’m completely overwhelmed. My boss, a 24-7, high-functioning VP is not impressed by my work product so far. I want to succeed and I’m putting in as much effort as I possibly can in the hours I’m working and also by taking the feedback I’m receiving and keeping it top in mind. But I’ve been experiencing some panicky mornings. I find myself ruminating quite a bit about messing things up. I’m already employing some destressing tactics by working out regularly, meditating most mornings, being mindful about time with my family and pets, and playing music on the off time I have. What am I missing here? Is there another tactic I can employ to build some self-efficacy and get some wins under my belt? My leader is not mean nor demanding, my leader is not mean nor is he demanding an unreasonable standard. Although there are high expectations for sure, I believe I can meet them eventually. I’m guessing you’ve heard about or experienced some of what I’m feeling; imposter syndrome, fear, anxiety, etcetera. What can I do to help me focus, pay more attention to details, multi-task when I have several moving projects, be able to spot and solve problems more quickly, and ultimately improve my performance?

AMY JEN SU: My first reaction to this letter writer is definitely one of compassion. We’ve all had a new role where we’re onboarding into something bigger or different or with a new boss, and when that outer game or context changes or grows, it really puts us in that vulnerable spot that the letter writer described. And so very often, you see the coping mechanism that he’s described here where we make the faulty assumption to say, let me just jump in and put in more hours in terms of days and time instead of saying, wait a minute, let me pause and think about this new role and what’s really my highest value add here.

ALISON BEARD: I think what’s interesting is that he does seem to be very knowledgeable about what to do to destress, but he’s focused on a lot of things that he can do outside the office rather than the things he can do inside the office, you know, like, prioritizing and talking to his boss about how he should be doing the work.

AMY JEN SU: I think, Alison, you’re spot on there where he’s doing a lot of good things at home to take care of himself. So kudos, and he should take a victory lap and celebrate that, and now really turn the attention inside to the organization. So the first step is really sitting down with his boss to talk about how do we define contribution and value add in this role. And so if we were to sit down with this letter writer and ask, hey, as you think about your job, what is your highest and best use? What are, like, the three most important things you need to deliver this year? And then sit down with your boss and ask that same question. And because he’s an HR business partner, sitting down with his business unit that he supports and gather their needs assessment will be really critical here as well.

DAN MCGINN: So two months is not a long time and I wonder whether he can try to get some more candid feedback from the boss about whether this is a fairly normal experience curve or whether there’s already doubt about whether he’s going to be successful in the job. I mean, that’s really what it comes down to here.

AMY JEN SU: That’s a great question and discussion to have with his manager. So anytime you start a new job, that’s a conversation to have at the outset. So how much are you expecting to see in terms of the knowledge and expertise and experience I bring and how much of this onboarding period is about observation and learning?

ALISON BEARD: So given that this boss is a hard-charging guy who just wants him to get up to speed quickly, isn’t there a risk in him coming to him saying, oh hey, what are our expectations, how should I operate differently? What if that just annoys him more?

AMY JEN SU: I do think there’s a point where there can be too much of that. Right? Especially if your boss is a hard charger, and so then it becomes about showing up with more gravitas and more confidence. And so as you’re engaging with folks in the organization or putting wins on the board, there’s also a dimension of this of letting your boss know about a good impact and the good connections you’re making throughout the organization.

ALISON BEARD: And less of a, what do you think I should do, and more of a, I’m going to do this, do you have any concerns?

AMY JEN SU: Right. I would hold that balance. There’s some part of the conversation that’s around seeking to understand, but there’s another part that’s around, hey, now that I’m two months in, I’d also love to share some observations and what I feel like I’m hearing from our constituency within the organization.

ALISON BEARD: The good news is he says that his manager isn’t mean, he’s just asking for more from him and saying, I don’t, I’m not happy with your current performance, I want you to get from here to there. I think shifting, as you said, Amy, from this idea that, I’m going to immediately perform to this idea that, I’m going to get better every time. And Eva Linsky at Brandeis has written about this for us. This growth mindset is so important. When you feel overwhelmed, when you feel stressed, you need to measure yourself and hopefully get others to measure you by how much you improve, not by those wins that you put on the board.

AMY JEN SU: I completely agree with that. I think sometimes when we start a new job or we’re feeling the pressure, we often ask ourselves the question, am I doing this wrong or right, which is just going to lead to rumination and stress. A great distinction a teacher gave me years and years ago was, rather than feeling the pressure to be the expert, how can you be the expert learner in this case, which opens up a whole new world of possibilities than when we feel that pressure to prove ourselves.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah.

DAN MCGINN: We talk about how he could have some conversations with his boss. I wonder if he should also be having some peer with conversations to try to understand the performance expectations in general. I’ve worked at organizations where a significant number of new hires were unsuccessful and it was expected that there were going to be some flameouts. I’ve worked in other organizations where the hiring process is really slow and meticulous and there’s an expectation of a fairly slow ramp-up period. Those are two very different kinds of cultural norms and trying to understand from his peers which one applies here might be useful. It might not be comforting if it’s the organization with a lot of flameouts, but that would be useful information.

ALISON BEARD: I think that’s a really excellent point. I think that he can look to role models. Who is knocking it out of the park?

AMY JEN SU: People do underestimate the power of their peers and the allies and the relationships we can build. So part of this period for this letter writer is also around, who is going to be my network of support beyond my manager? You know, who are the folks who are going to be helicopters who help pull me out of the weeds and provide a broader and richer perspective of the organization and the culture, as both of you have mentioned. Who are my sausage makers so that when I need to test out an idea or brainstorm or bat something around where they can help pressure test before I walk into a meeting with my boss or with the executive team? And really for all of us, who are the cheerleaders and safe harbors that we can turn to for support for that, attagirl or attaboy, in those moments where we need a dose of motivation?

DAN MCGINN: Alison has always been my cheerleader.

ALISON BEARD: Ah. And you have been mine, Dan. Thank you. [LAUGHTER] He does ask for some very specific advice. He wants to learn how to pay more attention to details, multi-task when he has several moving projects, spot and solve problems more quickly. Anything you can offer on those particular things, Amy?

AMY JEN SU: It is time, I think, for this letter writer to reboot his operating system. It’s really important as he thinks about moving up in his career even, and in this role, that he thinks about things like what are my power hours? What are the times of day where I have my clearest and sharpest thinking and make sure that that’s blocked on his calendar? And then when you are engaged in a work block, how do you stay present? How do you, maybe you need to turn your email notifications off and work offline.

ALISON BEARD: And what about that juggling multiple projects?

AMY JEN SU: Juggling multiple projects is always going to be part of the game, so the key is not to split attention. Often times while we’re working on one task, we’re beginning to think about something else. So it’s more around, in the half an hour that I have, how do I get into a flow on one task, complete or push it forward, and then when I have to move to something else, how quickly can you context shift and bring your presence to the next thing on the plate?

DAN MCGINN: He mentioned specifically the issue that he’s ruminating quite a bit about work and about messing things up.

ALISON BEARD: And even getting panicky.

DAN MCGINN: Yeah. There have been times in my life when I tend to be a ruminator and I think that’s true for a lot of people that they get home from work and they just can’t stop obsessing about what’s going on in the office. Alison Wood Brooks from Harvard Business School, who has been on the program before, she studies anxiety and how it intersects with work, she likes to say that it’s great to be anxious about a presentation or a sales call or something two weeks beforehand because you can use that two weeks to productively prepare and rehearse and get better. If you’re panicking and anxious about it, you know, ten minutes beforehand, that’s probably not going to help your performance.

ALISON BEARD: When you said, Alison, I totally thought you were just going to tell a story about me being panicky about something at work [LAUGHTER] and I was like, oh my gosh, what is he about to say?

DAN MCGINN: You’re always calm and cool and collected at work.

ALISON BEARD: Outside maybe, not inside. But I think that’s an important point. All of us suffer from these moments where we think, how on earth am I going to get any of this done? Why am I terrible at everything? And then you do have to say, that stress is good, that stress is my body telling me to get up and go, and then put it aside and just get down to work.

AMY JEN SU: That’s right.

DAN MCGINN: Does HR have any role to play in this?

ALISON BEARD: He’s in HR, though.

DAN MCGINN: Yeah, that’s true.

AMY JEN SU: And he’s in HR, right. [LAUGHTER] So there is, that’s a good point.

ALISON BEARD: He is the guy who is supposed to solve these problems for other people and he’s having the problem himself. That’s hard.

AMY JEN SU: It is really hard. I work very closely with a lot of terrific HR professionals and I think the tension for that particular function is that you have the business coming at you.

DAN MCGINN: Yeah, those are probably pretty messy roles.

ALISON BEARD: And reactive, necessarily reactive roles, so it makes it that much harder to focus and prioritize. But then how does he figure out how to get all the work done that he needs to get done while also responding to what’s coming at him?

AMY JEN SU: I think the key is to not have the person feel like you’re turning them, personally, down. Right? So when someone walks into your office and says, hey, I have this request, I need this right now, I need you, I need to interrupt you, it’s really important to pause and, first, make a connection to the person; hey Alison or hey Dan, it’s really great to see you and I’m really hearing the urgency in your needs so let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about when you need it, what it is, and let’s think about who from the team is best able to support this and the timing for that.

DAN MCGINN: Because it’s not going to be me. [LAUGHTER]

AMY JEN SU: It’s not going to be me and it’s not going to be now. But you show the graciousness and loveliness of first making a connection to the person before then having the negotiation around how you proceed.

DAN MCGINN: That’s a great tip.

ALISON BEARD: So Dan, what are we telling our stressed-out HR manager?

DAN MCGINN: Well, we think he’s doing a great job when it comes to self-care. We do think he needs to focus more attention on what’s going on at the office and what’s the best way to manage the anxiety that comes from this rocky onboarding. We think a lot of what he needs to do is communicate with his boss in an effective way to get a very clear sense of what the expectations are, the things he can do to add value, specific measurable targets and goals that he can try to meet. We think that his peers might be able to also help him understand the culture and the expectations and performance standards of the organization. He needs to think about focusing on ways to stay productive, to find the times of day when he can get the most work done, to turn off his email, to think about the most important meetings and the places at work where he really adds the most value. We think he needs to communicate with the boss but to be careful not to appear too needy or insecure, to make sure the boss is aware when he does achieve some early wins, and to project an air of confidence around those.

ALISON BEARD: Dear HBR: One of my coworkers gets very stressed out throughout the day and externalizes her stress on everything and everyone around her. She snaps at people who ask her questions and can be very rude in her responses. On occasion, she throws tantrums, slamming objects down on and even kicking her desk, yelling about her frustrations, and just generally causing disruptions. We’re close in age and experience and I consider her to be a friend as well as a coworker; however, anything I’ve done to try to interrupt her negative reactions only seems to make things worse. I’ve talked with her privately about her behavior and how it affects me as well as looping in our HR manager. I don’t want to complain to the point that she’s fired, but my work suffers when she acts this way. What can I do? Wow. Amy, what do you think?

AMY JEN SU: Well, I have to admit, my first reaction to this was, is she really a friend? [LAUGHTER] You know? Why is she still your friend? But you know, more seriously, just thinking a little bit about the boundaries here, especially when somebody’s negative energy telegraphs and it feels like it leaks all over us. And so I did wonder, for this letter writer, she probably has very high EQ, so somebody who is naturally empathetic and sensitive to the feelings of others, and I would encourage this person to say, how do you build more emotional ownership and say, wait a minute, this isn’t about me, this is about somebody else’s behavior and so how do I be a spectator of her show but not become part of the drama or get on stage with her?

DAN MCGINN: Yeah, you wonder what’s caused her to behave this way and, you know, you sort of wonder what the backstory is to all this.

AMY JEN SU: Absolutely. You definitely wonder you know, what’s causing her stress? What’s wrong? It almost felt to me like a child having a tantrum. And for the letter writer, when kids are throwing a tantrum, they know which parent they can get the attention of and which one really does not give into it.

DAN MCGINN: So we don’t know exactly what’s causing this coworker to throw tantrums, but our listener does say that it’s caused because the coworker is very stressed out throughout the day and she’s taking this stress out on everything and everyone around her. So it partly a workload question.

AMY JEN SU: I think this point around workload being a root cause is really important to highlight. When you look at the writings of Christine Porath and her work on mastering civility, her book shares that sometimes our poor behavior and our incivility toward others really is coming from heavy workloads. And so that’s a great hypothesis of what could be happening here.

DAN MCGINN: So Amy, Alison and I have sat next to each other for almost 10 years now and I can tell exactly when she’s stressed out.

BEARD: What do I do?

DAN MCGINN: You are hyper-focused on your screen and there’s almost a sign over your head that says, don’t even think about talking to me. [LAUGHTER] Can your colleagues tell when you’re stressed and what signals are you quietly sending out to them?

AMY JEN SU: Oh boy, I’m not sure it’s quiet. So I think my team would tell you that there’s definitely a sense of agitation in my voice and I start to talk really slowly because I am desperately trying to get a hold of myself, even though it’s really difficult. And to be perfectly candid, there’s always the secret hidden candy bar in my drawer for, and I know that’s a terrible coping mechanism but there’s nothing like a bite of a Snickers bar when I’m starting to feel really stressed just to, like, kind of get it all together.

DAN MCGINN: That’s your tell, huh?

ALISON BEARD: Dan doesn’t convey stress that often.

DAN MCGINN: Yeah, I think that’s true. When I’m stressed at work, my family sees it, like, my kids and my wife would tell you that I’m, I go through periods where I’m totally short-tempered but it’s just not visible at work.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. I do sigh. There are times when I go [DEEP BREATH] and you’re like, everything okay? [LAUGHTER]

DAN MCGINN: When you see a colleague who is having essentially emotional problems because her workload is higher than she can handle, what’s the best way to intervene or to try to help?

AMY JEN SU: Yeah, I went back and forth on this one between you should have just a zero-tolerance policy and explain to this woman that this isn’t acceptable workplace behavior. You’ve tried to be a good friend but you can’t anymore. So that’s on one side. And then the other side is, okay, well let’s follow all the things that we need to do to be empathetic, to listen, to figure out what the root cause of the problem is. I’m torn between those two options because it seems like she has done some of the latter. So at what point do you just cut it off and say, I’m done?

DAN MCGINN: It’s hard too because this is a peer relationship. Our listener is not the boss or the manager of this woman. Arguably, it’s not her job to try to fix this. One does wonder what the actual boss thinks of all this.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. And I mean, we’ve published so much on emotional contagions, so this can’t just be affecting our letter writer; it has to be affecting the whole team. But then also the fact that no one is dealing with it and this woman continues to behave in this way has to be really demoralizing too. So it’s making everyone on the team stressed out.

AMY JEN SU: And that emotional contagion piece is so true that all it takes is that one person to telegraph that negative energy and it can really affect an entire team’s performance.

ALISON BEARD: So Shawn Achor and Michelle Gielan, who are happiness researchers, have written for us about inoculating yourself against colleague stress and they talk about sort of always having a calm tone and smiling but then also just within your own self, having self-esteem and confidence to just say, that’s you, not me, as you were saying earlier, Amy, and then focusing on gratitude and the things in the workplace that are positive and that you appreciate. But again, that’s asking our letter writer to do a lot of work that she shouldn’t need to do.

AMY JEN SU: It does. What is interesting, Alison, in what you’re saying and Shawn’s and Michelle’s research, is that what part of this is within my control? And we really can’t control the behavior of others. And so, I think in the interim, until this problem is solved, perhaps our letter writer should do things like leave the area and go work in a conference room.

DAN MCGINN: I wonder if there’s some coaching or some something that could be done to try to help her erect that boundary and, you know, use her inside voice in the office.

AMY JEN SU: Absolutely. I think this is a case where it’s unclear what conversation the friend has had with this person so far in terms of, hey, this may not be your intention but it’s really important that I share with you the observations of what I see happening in the office. And again to ask, is this a call for attention, is this a call for help, what do you need? And then to really work with them to say in a private space and place, how does she come to more grounding and not behave that way and impact others that way. But I think it’s important to say we’re really unclear of the intent here versus the impact.

ALISON BEARD: But if that is the problem, what does our letter writer who is not the boss do about it? And without, the obvious solution is offering to do some of this person’s work, which I don’t think she should do.

AMY JEN SU: I think it’s potentially part of the conversation around helping the colleague figure out the root cause so that then they can take proactive action. She may be so overwhelmed in terms of workload and not even thinking clearly and not even being aware of the type of behavior that she’s demonstrating.

DAN MCGINN: If she decides to approach either the person’s manager or HR, which she does raise as a possibility here, how should she play out that conversation?

AMY JEN SU: I think whenever we escalate something to our boss or to HR, we have to proceed with caution. And so the first step is to really pause and ask yourself, have I done everything I possibly can constructively here? And in this case, we think perhaps she has. And then second, when approaching the boss or HR, make sure you’re really transparent and explicit in your intention. So you’re coming to your boss not to throw somebody under the bus or to get somebody in trouble, but because you are thinking about the overall productivity and effectiveness of the whole team and that you’re worried. And so perhaps you could frame the conversation with the boss as advice. You know, this is what’s happening, this is what you’re observing, you’re not sure what to do, what advice would the boss have?

ALISON BEARD: And is the manager a good step even though she’s already looped in HR and HR already knows about the problem?

AMY JEN SU: I think at this point of the game, the manager being aware, especially if there is a productivity or effectiveness issue across an entire team, I think ultimately as a boss we always have to ask ourselves, is the behavior of one person worth the expense of the morale of the rest of my team?

DAN MCGINN: So Alison, what are we telling this compassionate coworker?

ALISON BEARD: First we congratulate her for trying to be such a good friend. She should be careful because emotional contagion is real. We would advise her to take some steps to inoculate herself against her colleague’s stress, you know, understanding that she can remove herself, either physically or mentally; focusing on her own work; understanding that it’s not your problem, it’s hers. At the same time, she still can be supportive, you know, she can listen. Maybe she could take her out of the office to vent. What we really want her to do is help this colleague understand the root cause of the problem and then figure out how to solve the problem, especially if it’s this heavy workload, it is solvable. We think that she should also explain just in very clear terms that the behavior isn’t appropriate for the office and she really needs to get a handle on it. She might need to escalate it to HR again or even to the boss, but we encourage her to do that just by explaining that her intent isn’t to get this colleague reprimanded or fired but it’s really impacting the team in a negative way and so she’s looking for advice and possibly support in steering this colleague to better behavior.

DAN MCGINN: Third letter. Dear HBR: I’m the head of a department in a growing educational company. I joined six months ago and recently had a glowing performance review with the CEO. The one area for improvement is that I need to increase the quality of work produced by my team. Many of them arrive as late as they can and leave as early as possible. Our internal documents are reflective of a group that is doing the bare minimum. As a result, our performance lags behind every other department in the company, even though we’re the largest team. I agree with the CEO that our department needs to improve; however, my hesitation is that a lot of these people are very highly strung. I’ve had a lot of one-on-one conversations with team members who have been in tears over how much work they’re expected to do. I struggle with this. The workload here is less than at any other company I’ve worked at over the past 10 years. I’ve attempted to lead by example but it hasn’t worked. How can I turn things around without causing mass burn out or emotional distress? Amy, what’s your reaction?

AMY JEN SU: My first reaction to this letter was the classic player-coach dilemma. We definitely hear that this letter writer is a strong player. He got a glowing review from his CEO, and at the same time, it sounds like there’s a lot of room for him to up his game in terms of managing and coaching the team. The second reaction I had was, does he have the right people in seats? Because it sounded to me like, does he have an entitlement issue or a workload issue on his hands? It wasn’t really clear.

ALISON BEARD: Well, it seems like he might have inherited this team of underperformers. How does he get this group that he’s stuck with to start behaving more like him?

AMY JEN SU: I’m not sure if it’s about behaving like him. I think, to your point, it’s really beginning to assess each individual player on his team and how do I create an individual plan for each one. And then at the team level if, in fact, workload is an issue and people are feeling very stressed and high strung, you know, I think a theme for this entire episode so far has been prioritization. And as a leader, how do we help others ruthlessly prioritize so that folks don’t feel like, that he’s asking them to work until midnight, he’s asking them to work smarter?

ALISON BEARD: Dan, what would you do if your employee arrived late, left early, and then cried to you about how much work they had to do?

DAN MCGINN: Wow, that’s a tough one. I think what I did about that would depend partly on the culture of the organization and the systems that are in place. The manager’s problem is partly caused by the organization and its performance culture, and it’s a really tricky one if there are no consequences for doing the bare minimum and just sort of skating by. I get, I get Amy’s take that it’s going to be one-on-one performance evaluations but it’s, like, where’s the carrot, where’s the stick here, right?

AMY JEN SU: It’s really tricky. I think the cultural overlay really does drive how much room this manager has to affect change and how quickly. Perhaps there’s a way for him to begin to engage the team differently. So for example, before a project, is he sitting down with folks to say, hey what are you excited about for this project, what do you want to learn, what’s the contribution you want to make? Or debriefing with the team afterward around, what were you proud of or what were you excited about, and starting to work at that level.

ALISON BEARD: I think that’s such a great point. We published an article by Ron Carucci that cited a survey showing that only 47% of employees can make the connection between their jobs and company performance and the mission. But maybe he doesn’t have employees that care about any of this, [LAUGHTER] so that is the issue. You know? If you have a group of true slackers, what do you do?

DAN MCGINN: Well, let’s throw out some ideas here. As a simple first step, what if he sent an email to the group saying, hey team, I just wanted to remind everybody that the hours of our company are 9 to 5. I’ve noticed that the place is a little empty at 9:30 and it’s a little empty at 4:30 and that’s not cool. Let’s adhere to company policies about our work hours. If you’d like to talk about your individual situation related to this, please come and see me.

ALISON BEARD: As someone who arrives late, just like you do, Dan, and often leaves early to handle various things going on in my life but still get all of my work done in all different hours, I think that’s a spectacularly bad idea. I would like [LAUGHTER] him to say, I totally don’t care where you’re doing your work as long as it’s getting done.

DAN MCGINN: I totally disagree. [LAUGHTER] So I’m not commenting on what work hours I keep and I’m not agreeing with any of your assessments of my work hours, but I think people who have the flexibility to come and go have basically earned that privilege by a long period of outperforming and exceeding expectations. To give people that privilege before they’ve earned it is completely backwards.

AMY JEN SU: This one’s tricky. I find myself trying to figure out the hybrid between both, what you both have offered here, and I do think there is some form of resetting team norms. So I’m not sure that I agree with an email. Perhaps it’s bringing the team together to say, it just feels like right now we aren’t meeting our full potential, so let me paint an aspiration for what this team could be and what are some guidelines and norms we all need to abide by for some consistency. And then as you begin to see performance grow and you offer some one-on-one plans for folks, then I think loosening the grip or allowing for more leash at that point might make more sense.

ALISON BEARD: I think that’s a really good compromise. In part, I think my negative reaction to Dan’s suggestion was just, I don’t want this team to hate our letter writer. And I think you need to feel that your boss is supportive and wants to help.

DAN MCGINN: Here’s another idea. Maybe the manager calls everybody together and says, look, I know many of you feel like you’re working too hard and that we really need more resources but yesterday the CEO wandered through our department at 4:30 and nobody was here, and it’s impossible for us to advocate that we’re stretched too thin when it’s obvious to people that we’re not here at the appointed hours and, you know, we’re coming in late, we’re leaving early. Do you think that’s a better tactic?

AMY JEN SU: I do like that one because I think imbedded in that is making more transparent the context. So Alison, to your point in terms of setting a good tone, that feels like being on the same side of the table.

ALISON BEARD: Should he let his team know that the CEO is worried about their performance?

AMY JEN SU: I think that kind of information and feedback would be helpful for a team to understand that, wow, those at the top don’t see us producing and delivering, so how can we all rally and turn that ship around in the context of acknowledging that folks feel a heavy workload.

ALISON BEARD: And understand that these highly strung people might feel stressed as they’re trying to meet those expectations and so he’ll have to manage that too.

AMY JEN SU: Absolutely. And I think being there as a form of support and direction, this will be critical for him to hold both and may help this team.

ALISON BEARD: So he is only six months in, is there any value in figuring out how this team was managed before and how they performed previously?

AMY JEN SU: I think the more information he can find out about this team is always helpful. Dan raised the point around organizational culture, so there is a whole piece of context here that he may be missing that would be helpful. When did this history of complacency begin? I think I mentioned at the beginning, my initial reaction was, do we have a workload issue here or an entitlement issue? So again, I think the key is for him not to swing the pendulum and become a tyrant but really get a hold of this situation and then provide the direction and expectations that he needs to.

DAN MCGINN: Amy, how important do you think it is that the other teams in this organization are performing higher, working longer, and probably looking in at the target team here and noticing, hey, they’re not around a whole lot and they’re not performing, so is that something that our listener should bring to the attention of his team?

AMY JEN SU: So it feels to me almost like he needs to do a full 360 on his team and reach out to other parts of the organization to say, hey, given that I’m only six months into the job, I’d love to understand how we’ve typically interfaced and any feedback for my team as we work to get better and stronger.

ALISON BEARD: So Dan, what are we telling this manager who has a team with such heavy workloads?

DAN MCGINN: Well, we’re thinking that a good first step would be to share more information with the team; the fact that the CEO is concerned about the team’s performance, that the CEO and the manager, himself, are seeing a link between the hours that these people are keeping and the quality of the work that they’re producing. This is a really delicate situation. These people are underperforming and it’s been allowed to happen for a while and that has something to do with the cultural expectations of the organization; whether there aren’t a lot of penalties for underperformance, whether there are not a lot of incentives for overperformance. Some of these systemic and cultural things are going to be really hard for a new manager to change, but we do think he has to attack this problem by (1) sharing information and (2) we think he needs to assess his team. Does he have the right people on the bus? He needs to go through one by one, as any new manager should, and think about whether the people are right for the job and potentially make some changes in cases in which performance can’t be raised. Finally, we think that the entire team would benefit if he can help them think about priorities; saying no to low value tasks, maybe look at their meeting schedules, look at the pieces of how they spend their day that are not really contributing to the team’s performance and try to clear out some space for them, help them say yes to the right things and no to the wrong things, and not just increase the time they’re in the office but try to find ways to help them spend that time more wisely.

ALISON BEARD: Amy, thanks so much for all your good advice today.

AMY JEN SU: Thanks for having me, Alison and Dan.

ALISON BEARD: That was Amy Jen Su. She’s an executive coach and the author of The Leader You Want to Be: Five Essential Principles for Bringing Out Your Best Self Every Day.

DAN MCGINN: Thanks to the listeners who wrote us with their questions. Now we want to know your questions. Send us an email with your workplace challenge and how we can help. The email address is DearHBR@HBR.org.

ALISON BEARD: We also want to thank Louis Weeks and Nick DePrey for composing our theme music.

DAN MCGINN: We hope you liked today’s episode and if you want to get the next one automatically, please go to your podcast app and hit subscribe.

ALISON BEARD: And if you liked the show, please give us a five-star review.

DAN MCGINN: I’m Dan McGinn.

ALISON BEARD: And I’m Alison Beard. Thanks for listening to Dear HBR:.