Your Team Isn’t Overworked They’re Under Supported
It’s easy to look at a stressed-out team and think the answer to helping them is to hire more people or cut the workload, but the truth is that half the time the real issue is that the environment just doesn’t support them properly. People really can do hard things - sometimes they have to - but when there’s no good structure around them and no one to support them, it’s going to be a lot harder, and they might find they’re struggling. With that in mind, keep reading to find out more about why your team might not be overworked, and why they might actually be under supported.
When People Don’t Feel Safe, They Can’t Focus
You might assume that the support we’re talking about is some kind of emotional pep talk, but it’s not that, or at least it’s not just that. What it really means is that you need to create a space where people feel respected, protected, and able to speak up when something doesn’t feel right and they’re uncomfortable. The reality is that when a team is dealing with tension, snide comments, power dynamics, or bad behaviour that no one’s dealing with, they’ll start to get a lot more stressed and that’s going to make any task much more difficult to do.
That’s where you need real support, which includes clear expectations, strong communication, and even things like proper workplace harassment training so people know what’s okay, what isn’t, and what to do if someone crosses a line.
Clarity Is A Kind Of Support
Nothing is going to drain a team faster than confusion, so when roles are pretty vague, priorities change from one day to the next (or even many times in one day), or communication sounds more like a riddle than information, people are going to have to spend time decoding everything, and that’s going to take time away from doing the job itself.
By giving people clear direction, you’re helping them massively when it comes to them being able to do their job. And don’t worry about limiting their creativity when you’re letting know what what to do and perhaps how it needs to be done because with those instructions in place, people are able to able to be a bit freer - they’ll have a framework to work to, and they’ll be able to do their own thing within it, rather than second-guessing themselves and what you want all the time.
People Need Tools As Well As Encouragement
You can cheer your team on all day long, but if they’ve not got the right tools in place, it’s not going to matter. Slow systems, outdated tech, clunky processes… these are the things that ruin morale in the end because if doing even the most basic tasks feels harder than it should, everyone’s going to burn out much faster.
So if you want to support your team, you’ll need to remove as many of the sticking points as you can to make their work easier. And one of the best ways to do that is to make sure the tools you give them actually work so they can get on with their jobs without any hassle.
