Do You Know If Your Team Is Overwhelmed?
"n a world where relentless demands and blurred boundaries have become the norm, overwhelm is no longer an occasional experience; it’s a defining feature of modern work. It’s easy to dismiss it as stress from an employee under pressure or mistake it for burnout. But it’s neither. Overwhelm is an exhausting—and often invisible—tipping point when the stressors you face begin to exceed your perceived ability to cope with them. Overwhelm can surge suddenly and unpredictably. When ignored, it becomes the gateway to exhaustion and future burnout. There are five actions leaders can take to reduce overwhelm and build healthier, more sustainable workplaces: 1) Spot both the silence and the strain; 2) engineer micro-control in a macro-uncertain world; 3) recalibrate standards—starting with your own; 4) create psychological permission to say “I’m at capacity”; and 5) design work for recovery, not endurance."
Shared by Bertrand Duperrin, 1 save total
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Stress can be stimulating; when kept in check, it sharpens focus and fuels energy. Burnout is an outcome of unmanaged chronic stress that develops over time.
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We conducted research with 94 working professionals to unpack the experience of overwhelm at work. Through narrative descriptions coupled with survey data, we captured how they describe it, what causes it, and the impact it has—on their thoughts, emotions, relationships, and work outcomes.
