How to create employees who feel overworked and overwhelm

I wrote a book about 10 years ago and it wasn’t GREAT

It was called ‘Fit for Business’ and I wrote it for the type of clients I was working with at the time.

C level, founders, partners in law and consultancy firms for the most part.

It got some decent reviews. I sold a few hundred copies but it didn’t set the world alight and the truth is I didn’t put all of my effort behind pushing it, because I wasn’t proud of it.

That was a big lesson learned for me.

The book offered some knowledge around habits, sleep, exercise, stress, nutrition and productivity/ mindset.

Then it offered a way to move from where you are to where you want to be at a speed and approach that works for you.

It has always been important to me that my clients know the truth of what science is currently telling us and what my experience has shown, but also that they can choose their own adventure within that.

I wasn’t proud of it because once it was in print I could immediately see how it could be significantly better.

It wasn’t until later though that I discovered something really interesting.

What I had decided was ‘finished’ was what career writers call

“The bad first draft”

Amateurs produce ONCE then judge themselves, their value AND their potential on that product.

Then usually give up as a result. Like someone who hits a tennis ball once and decided’s they’ll never be good enough.

Professionals of course all have their own process but they recognise that producing quality is an iterative process.

Of course that means defining measurable’s around what good enough looks like and you might have different ranges of criteria for

Email, text, social media post, job ad, book, presentation, conversation etc but the point to drive home is this,

As soon as you produce ANYTHING it represents the best you could do off the top of your head in that give moment.

That’s cool and you’ll get better and better at that with practise too but when there is opportunity to refine NOW your best gets better NOW. You are literally missing an opportunity to get better every time you fail to do this (I added that last line on my second run through this).

You don’t need to wait for your 100th book to produce something you’re proud of.

This ISN’T about perfection at all.

It’s about EXCELLENCE.

Which means taking a step towards more closely fulfilling your pre-defined criteria every time the opportunity arises.

An email is not just an email, a social media post not just a social media post, a book not just a book and a conversation not just a conversation.

The potential of what they can produce range from failure to success both of which come with huge degrees. This might sound like it would cause everything to take longer but which might be true. But if 10 minutes longer on an email is the difference between a life long client relationship and a some you confused into not responding then you might decide on the extra 10 minutes. This might sound like a rare case but everything we produce is loaded with potential.

I want to turn this idea towards LEADERSHIP now because it is causing a huge amount of unnecessary problems.

These are the primary causes of burnout, stress and overwhelm.

1. Never feeling like you are good enough

2. Feeling like you are lowing in the hierarchy because your product is constantly critiqued

3. Feeling like you are failing to meet expectations

These can all be summed up as not feeling socially safe within the tribe and not feeling physically safe in terms of the long term prospects of keeping your current financial stability.

From the brains perspective you are under threat so it produces a mental and physical state of high alert. Which is what leads to all the symptoms of stress:

poor decision making, poor memory consolidation/ learning ability, reduced cognitive function, reactivity (fight, flight, freeze) poor sleep, comfort eating and drinking, ‘bad’ habits, poor digestion and physical repair, reduced social skills and awareness.

All stemming from this one belief playing out in many different ways.

We will call them EXCELLENCE mindset - the belief in having a measure and iterating the product until achieving that measure.

PERFECTION mindset - the belief that the first draft should be perfect AND is a measure of how good YOU are. *I am not talking of perfectionism here but it is related this could become a book if I’m not careful. There is nuance within that but let’s keep it simple for now.

The PERFECTION mindset leader - doesn’t provide product measures but expects perfection and is judgmental when these unstated measured aren’t achieved. This leaves the producer under threat with no means to get out of it ie feedback of ‘not good enough’ is too vague so leaves not logical action course.

They believe many of their staff aren’t good enough (and have evidence) and so micromanage AND can’t see how to stop.

They take on too much responsibility and becomes a bottleneck because they feel like they have no choice.

The PERFECTION mindset employee - Never thinks they are good enough. Sends off sloppy emails and work product because they genuinely can’t see a way out of it because they are stressed when producing anything. Constantly procrastinates or gravitates towards work that doesn’t leave behind a lasting product. Like teaching, giving advice, helping someone with what they are producing. They are constantly overwhelmed, stressed, report being over worked or under too much pressure even if the data doesn’t support it. Note: they aren’t lying, see symptoms of stress.

The EXCELLENCE mindset leader - constantly shares the principle AND practises of iteration because they recognise that people lose sight of it often. They share product (output) measures and encourage the creation of them and measuring against them. They use this process when inadequate product slips through the net. Subsequently their teams become autonomous and move quickly towards mastery so find themselves working less or asking for more responsibility. They quickly feel redundant and often switch their focus towards business growth or taking on more.

The EXCELLENCE mindset employee - asks for performance measures. Iterates on everything and creates standards where they are missing. Becomes increasingly more competent often significantly out performing others in similar positions even if they started behind them. Gathers up responsibility. Asks for more challenging work. Become increasingly more autonomous.

It is so important to map these things out because to the PERFECTION mindset leader or employee they are impossible to see because they can only see the more pressing realities rather than the causes ie I’m not performing or they aren’t performing.

What’s important to know is that these mindsets can be created in a moment, and switched between and both exist inside the same individual. This is what I do for leadership teams, I switch them into excellence is every area of their lives.

An organisation must operate FROM excellence as its guiding principle and support it with a series of practises.

Without these principles and practises in place a perfection mindset is likely to dominate.

Can you see traces of these in your organisation?