Seven ways to protect teams from overwork
Let's coach teams to manage their workloads, not do more with less
Layoffs. Plummeting morale. Return-to-office. Management layers flattened. More layoffs. Shrinking funding rounds. Smaller teams. Work feels harder now. I’ve spoken with numerous design leaders and it’s clear that more is being asked of all our teams. “Doing more with less” gets brought up in meetings and goes over like a lead balloon.
As leaders and people managers, it can feel harder to protect teams from overwork. In hard times, it’s easy to panic or push through. Whenever I start to feel the pressure, I step back and remember the seven approaches I learned (the hard way) and teach teams to get through the most turbulent projects and timelines.
Our teams are our best teachers. And I’ve learned the most during 1:1s. In a 1:1, if I’ve done a good job of building trust, the team member will be honest about their ability to deal with a difficult project or deadline. These vulnerable conversations inspired me to create simple coaching tools and approaches, which I divide into two buckets: managing yourself and managing team expectations.
Managing yourself
I start every 1:1 with “How are you feeling today?” And if I’ve done a good job of building trust, they’re honest if they feel stressed, worried, burnt out, or anxious. If I think they’re at all stressed, based on facial expression, tone of voice, or my understanding of their workload, I’ll offer a couple tools:
1. Whelm Scale to identify burnout
Workload is different for every person and often dependent on amount of experience, so I like to keep it light by asking, “On a Whelm scale, where are you at? Are you feeling underwhelmed, whelmed, or overwhelmed?” Some folks fighting burnout can be underwhelmed or disengaged (even if they have a few great projects), while others fighting exhaustion feel overwhelmed and overloaded. If they’re underwhelmed, I need to dig into why and either help them find work they feel challenged by or give them time off. If they say they’re overwhelmed, I need to coach them to trim down their priorities, work more efficiently or take some time off. When I shared the Whelm scale at my old company, OpenTable, it really took off with managers from engineering to sales using it with their teams.
2. 3 Ds: Do, Delegate and Drop
Speaking of trimming down priorities, I also use 1:1s to combat overwork through the 3 Ds. We first make a list of their projects and then divide them into 3 categories: Do, Delegate, and Drop. These are my instructions for each category:
💪🏽 Do. Do a few essential, high priority projects where they’re learning a lot and able to focus. The biggest gift we can give our teams is focus.
🤝 Delegate. Find peers to take over work they can’t do. Hand. Things. Off.
🗑️ Drop. They can’t do everything. Let it go. (This is hard for everyone. It’s okay if someone else can’t take it on. They can always come back to it later.)
The only rule is they can’t have everything in one bucket.
Here’s my 🧰 3 Ds template.
When they do the 3 Ds, they’re empowered to prioritize their work, ask for help through delegation, and most importantly, give themselves permission to let go of what’s not important. My goal is that some day they can do this on their own. And when they’re in my shoes, they’ll do the same for their teams.
Managing team expectations
Sometimes when I use the Whelm Scale and the 3 Ds, folks feel unblocked and less stressed. However, sometimes it’s crystal clear the pressure is external and I’m most helpful if I coach them to negotiate asks from teammates and stakeholders. Everything is a collaborative negotiation. Here are my favorite tactics:
3. Subdivide tasks into sets with different deadlines
As designers, our collaborative approach of “Yes, and” can get us in trouble when it comes to deadlines. We can feel we can’t say no to delivering a full set of workflows or design vision within a short timeframe. However, product dev teams don’t usually need every workflow to kick off a project. Designers should feel empowered to negotiate with the PM or engineering lead to finish an initial set of flows to unblock engineering, and have subsequent flows ready at a later set of dates.
4. Ask for help to buy time
Another approach I take is to ask the PM to buy me time by finding other projects for the engineers to work on, while I think through designs. We discuss how much time I need and then agree with the engineering lead on what work we can pull up from the backlog. The point here is that when a designer does this, they’re actively problem-solving with cross-functional leads to achieve a good outcome, which is just being a good partner.
5. Say no and offer a timeline and/or another option
As designers, we often feel pressured to say yes to dates, however sometimes the best answer is, “Unfortunately, I can’t hit that date for [insert objective reason]. However, I can meet this [date]. I have a revised timeline I can share.”
Specifically, if a designer is pushing back on a date, they offer a stronger case if they include a timeline. For example, if a PM wants two weeks to design and a designer asks for six weeks, what they must break down is the timing for, say, multiple rounds of iterations, and doing one to two rounds of user testing. When there isn’t a task and time breakdown, it’s common for non-design stakeholders to assume they’re spending all their time playing in Figma. 🙄 When a designer shares a detailed timeline with tasks, a PM can collaborate with the designer to revise and find time for them to complete their work in a reasonable amount of time.
6. Describe tradeoffs to meet the deadline
It’s happened countless times where I’m in a meeting and a stakeholder will ask me or my team to meet a short deadline. The people-pleaser in me wants to say yes, but I take a breath, and say I’ll check the other projects’ timelines and get back to them. Then I draft and share a timeline to achieve the deadline and a bulleted list of tradeoffs.
Stakeholders want everything now. (Real talk, I’ve done the same in their shoes, within reason.) What they need to know are the tradeoffs and implications of their asks. Examples of tradeoffs are: other projects that will be deprioritized or delayed, or what outcomes will be at risk, or impacted in some way, to meet the deadline. Once I share the timeline and tradeoffs, I ask them if that works for them. Often we talk through the details and problem-solve together to reach a more sensible date.
7. Escalation
But shouldn’t the manager speak up to defend their designer’s time? Yes, of course. Depending on the visibility, level and number of stakeholders, the most scalable way to lead is to coach designers to know their workload and take the initiative to ask for changes to deadlines and timelines. My teams know I’ll back them up, and I will jump into conversations if they continue to receive pushback. That said, I will jump in at the beginning or more frequently, especially if the designer is earlier in their career or the project is particularly volatile.
Edit: Thanks to Scott Perket for reminding me that if timelines are firm, then it’s worth checking if other internal teams can provide support or, budget permitting, to bring in contractors and agencies to help.
Final thoughts
It’s hard right now, y’all. If I can coach someone to manage their workload, either by getting real with what’s doable or negotiating a deadline with a partner, then the work hopefully doesn’t feel as heavy. My hope is that sharing these approaches will help all of us feel empowered to do good work with less while still getting to good user and business outcomes.