management
Stop the Bus! How to Deal with Overwhelm...
Stop the Bus! How to deal with overwhelm…
By Karen Amos
I was working with someone this week who confided in me that she was feeling completely overwhelmed with work. My response? ‘Stop the bus!’ Well, this gained her attention if only to wonder what on earth I was talking about (particularly seeing as there was no bus in sight) - which was compounded by my next instruction, ‘Turn off the ignition. Now get off the bus!’
Feelings of overwhelm are no stranger to most of us – I include myself in this. Issues and tasks mount up and we become less and less effective, whilst proportionately becoming more and more anxious. It frequently leads us to a complete standstill, or at best, with us tinkering around the edges with minor activities, whilst the important stuff is left unattended.
To be honest, I’ve found myself in just that situation this week, so thought I’d share a few thoughts and strategies on how I’ve dealt with this.
- Stop the bus!
In order to deal with overwhelm, we need to stop the endless cycle of panic, fear and urgency that’s gripping us. We need to recognise these are just feelings – our feelings. They don’t accurately reflect what’s going on in the world around us.
One way to do this is to ‘Stop the ‘overwhelm’ bus’ by literally doing just that – stopping and taking time out to evaluate your situation. ‘Are you joking?’ I hear you exclaim! ‘That’s the point, I can’t take time out and that’s why I’m feeling overwhelmed!’
As I alluded to earlier, we need to check out the reality of this situation. Chances are if we’re feeling overwhelmed, we’re being completely, or at least relatively, inefficient. We aren’t working at our best, or most effective, so looking at it that way, wouldn’t it be a good investment to take at least a couple of hours out to fix the situation, knowing you’ll be back to full capacity when you’ve done so?
However you visualise it, stop your bus, turn it off and get off. Plot out a couple of hours for yourself where you won’t be disturbed, take a change of scenery if that helps, but lift yourself out of that head-down, flat-panic world.
- Work out what’s important
It’s so easy when feeling overwhelmed, to get caught up in tasks and minor activities. This just leads to a vicious cycle of firefighting, where you haven’t a second to look up and take control. As a result, your first task needs to be to identify what are the important, significant issues and goals you should be dealing with.
I’ve just re-visited my 12-week-year planner, to re-focus and remember what I’m actually working towards. Seeing things in a ‘broader-brush’ context is often immediately comforting. If you don’t already have a plan or strategy, just ask yourself, ‘What would I like to see that would make the most difference in 6/12 months’ time?’ and start from there.
- Prioritise
This is a word that’s thrown around like confetti, but let’s face it, if it was that easy we’d already be doing it, right? The problem with overwhelm is that often everything feels like a priority. You feel leaned on and obligated to other people too.
I’ve found there are some great coaching questions to help weed out what’s really a priority. Try a few of these:
- Does this help me achieve my bigger plan/strategy/aims?
- Do I actually need to do this? What will happen if I don’t? (If you’re not sure, try a very informal risk assessment in your head – i.e. What’s the probability and severity or not doing this).
- Is this my priority/issue, or is this really someone else’s?
- If it’s someone else’s, how do I hand this back to them, or help them with this?
- What one thing could I do right now that would make the most difference?
- When do these things actually need doing by? Set some new timescales according to your capacity.
- Is there someone else who can help with this?
- Facing your demons
Just one final thought – I often work with clients who feel overloaded with minor activities and tasks at all levels in organisations. There’s a common theme when we start to drill down though, which is that we often focus on small tasks and activities, as they’re easier and less daunting than tackling the bigger issues.
Again, useful coaching questions would be:
- Being honest myself, is there anything I’m avoiding right now?
- What would I advise someone to do in my position?
Hopefully, you’ve found something useful in there, for you, or a member of your team and can stop your runaway bus or train and embark on a more enjoyable and productive journey.
If you would like to book one-to-one or Team Coaching for your business, organisation or school, or would like an informal, no-obligation chat about how this can work for you, call us on 07714 855757, or email info@bright-bird.co.uk.
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Karen Amos is an executive coach and founder of BrightBird Coaching & Training. She supports business owners and managers to get the best out of themselves and their teams. She brings a practical, down-to-earth approach to improving working lives through better leadership, communication and working relationships.
Helping you move the rug when you’re stood on it – The power of coaching
By Karen Amos
My late and much-missed mentor used to have a brilliant phrase when I was bogged down in work issues – ‘You’re trying to move the rug, but you’re stood on it.’ It's a phrase I now use with many of my clients and the response is usually a resounding, ‘Yes! It’s exactly that!’
Often as a coach, this is exactly what I’m tasked to do – help my clients move that rug. So what’s the rug? It could be anything from managing an overwhelming workload, unpicking the intricacies of team dynamics to enable staff to work effectively, to prioritising which problem or issue to deal with first to develop a robust business. Whatever the scenario, I'm sure you know that feeling of pressure, but not knowing even where to start to resolve things, as every factor seems to depend on other factors for success.
Why can't we just sort this stuff out for ourselves? Basically, it’s due to the plate spinning that’s part of everyday working life. Here’s an example. Clients often come to me to improve their time management and work-life balance. If it was that simple, they wouldn’t need a coach. After all there are any number of books, apps and online videos with a plethora of tips and strategies.
So why is coaching successful when these things often fail?:
1. You need to identify the right issue to work on. If you don’t get to the root cause of the problem, you’ll continue to come back to the same issues. Whilst hints and tips are useful, they only address the symptoms of the problem. To gain lasting change, you need to find out what the real issue is. Using time management as an example, people often come to me to help manage their emails or to-do list, but the root cause could actually be a lack of confidence to say no, or other members of the team not doing their share.
2. Gives you a strategy for success – Once you’ve identified the root cause of the problem, coaching helps you put in place a strategy for the future as you’d choose it to be. Coaching helps you lift your head and gain a clearer picture of what a good solution to your problem would be. Again, an example would be that we would work on confidence, mindset and communication skills to enable you to be able to say no to unreasonable demands and put alternative actions into place.
3. Coach as accountability buddy – It’s easy to give in when the going gets tough isn’t it? We’ve all experienced this at some time or another, whether it’s learning a new language or embarking on a fitness drive. Knowing you’ve a regular meeting with someone who is going to ask about your progress is often a powerful motivator to stick with change, even when you feel like walking away from it all.
4. Independent feedback – Coaches often talk about ‘challenging’ their clients. This really isn’t as confrontational as it sounds, but we are able to question and dig deeper regarding your motives for your actions and also help you to test out scenarios in a safe space. Your coach is there for you only, so I will often ask my clients if it’s ok to give them some feedback on perhaps how they have presented themselves, or their communication skills. Completely independent feedback is often impossible to come by in our work and personal relationships and can be invaluable to help move you to more positive ways of behaving.
5. Walking toolkit – I often describe myself as a walking toolkit for my clients. Through my experience, training and development as a coach, I’ve picked up lots of concepts and tools that can help frame the world differently and bring some clarity and a way forward. This could be everything from decision-making tools, to understanding your personal interactions with others, to leadership approaches. As mentioned above, these aren’t used indiscriminately, but rather are tailored to your individual requirements, saving you having to filter out what you need from the overload of information out there.
Hopefully that’s given you a taste of why coaching can be such a powerful tool - supporting you make positive changes when you really can’t see a way out of the situation. Helping you to move that rug!
Karen Amos is an Executive and Professional Development Coach and owner of BrightBird Coaching & Training. She specialises in supporting managers and business owners to build positive and productive teams, through 1:1 and team coaching and training workshops.
If you would like to find out how BrightBird can help you build your performance and support your teams to remain positive and productive, get in touch for a chat and to book your no-obligation FREE 1-hour Discovery coaching session.
We offer online video 1-to-1 coaching support from senior leadership to front-line staff and also team/group coaching.
Tel: 07714 855757 or email: karen@bright-bird.co.uk
Karen Amos is an executive coach and founder of BrightBird Coaching & Training. She supports business owners and managers to get the best out of themselves and their teams. She brings a down-to-earth approach to improving working lives through better leadership, communication and working relationships.