One of the most important things I do is work with people who are in leadership roles in different organizations all over the world. As part of that, I find I am frequently asked to engage in coaching the next generation of leaders in how to be effective leaders.

A hallmark of leadership is you have responsibility, but you also frequently feel there are many things you need to attend to. So it is often the case that leadership and the experience of potential overwhelm go together.

 

How Do You Address Overwhelm as a Leader?

This is a question any effective leader has to have an answer to. One of the things that’s fascinating to me about being overwhelmed (or fearing that you’re going to be overwhelmed) is that no one is ever really overwhelmed by what they are doing. In fact they are overwhelmed by the number of things they are not doing and that they feel they should be doing. You therefore have this very curious scenario in which overwhelm is not about what you’re doing but about what you feel you should be doing. 

 

The secret of dealing with overwhelm is getting very clear about what matters most. If you don’t know how to prioritize, avoiding overwhelm will prove rather difficult. If, on the other hand, you cultivate the art of prioritizing, overwhelm will be easier to manage. You will learn how to address questions such as “what is most important here?”, “where do I need to focus my attention first?”, and “what is requiring my attention now?” in real time as tasks arise. 

From there, you are constructing timelines for yourself as well as asking, “what are my top 10, top 5, top 3 things to do?” Being able to do this is a learnable skill, but without practice it’s something very difficult to do in the moment. Until you actually have some means of stepping back, you are unlikely to do it because you’re too busy simply being busy.

 

Creating Breathing Space and Avoiding Burnout

One of the things I notice about people is the longer they’re in the world of work, the busier they get. The busier you are, the greater the danger of not being strategic because you’re focusing your energy on keeping your head above water. 

 

How to ensure you don’t get lost in your own workload or don’t get overwhelmed by the drama of the day? Well, when you come back from a holiday (this week, for example) – you frequently see things differently. Why? Because you’ve taken a break and stepped back. You’ve created a breathing space to regroup and recharge. 

 

I think very often that is precisely what good coaching does, and it is absolutely why the CEOs I work with value having a coaching space. It is because every so often, on a regular basis, they step back from the drama of the day and they do something really important. They take a breath, they take stock, they look at the big picture and determine what really matters. Again, they are prioritizing, but they are doing so based on their own values, creating an understanding of what is important going forward. They also look at what is in keeping with their own primary values and the goals they seek to realize. If you don’t do this on a regular basis, you will forget what your primary values are and what your big-picture goals are, because you will be too busy trying to keep up on the chaos of the day-to-day.

 

Good coaching creates the space to be strategic not just in your leadership but in your leadership style. This prevents overwhelm and means you get to be a whole different kind of leader– one who can inspire others to learn how to do this too. That has got to be a skill worth learning.

 

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