“What went wrong?” Most managers will ask this at some point. A deadline for an important client is quickly approaching. One team member is out sick. The rest are scrambling to take on their workload. Work is getting done, but it’s a balancing act with all the other emails coming in. There isn’t enough time left to cover everything. Chaos and panic ensue. The manager, sweating profusely, mentally assesses the damage if they were to ask for an extension.

Now imagine the same situation but with some key differences. The energy in the office is intense, but the team knows they can cover for their sick co-worker — or enlist someone in the organization who can. Given the high stakes, the whole team has their “away” automatic emails turned on, deferring new requests so they can funnel their attention properly. The team stays focused instead of wasting energy wondering “can we really do this?”

What’s different between these two situations? Some factors might be obvious, but a lot of prep goes into making a team work well on such occasions.

How Stressed are Employees?

As companies compete to survive and thrive, they increasingly need more from their employees, especially given the constancy of change. This need has stretched employees thinner than ever — with the risk of them entering burnout a constantly looming threat. The more hours employees work beyond what they’re intended to work, the likelier they are to burn out.

Burnout isn’t just caused by immense pressure or tight deadlines; it involves a lack of support, communication or fair treatment when the office is scrambling. However, it’s important for managers to ensure someone isn’t unfairly shouldering the burden, especially if they don’t have the resources or information they need to complete the task.

A few months into the COVID-19 pandemic, a national study showed that the amount of employees reporting burnout went up almost 15%, and rates of burnout haven’t come down since. In addition to the personal costs of burnout, such as taking more sick days, companies also stand to lose out on productivity and their employees seeking a job elsewhere.

How Managers Can Get Employees into the Stretch Zone

Once someone leaves their comfort zone to complete a difficult task or to learn a new skill, getting into the stretch zone will help them stretch their own skills and resources, but to the point of snapping.

Stretching takes focus and deliberation in the moment, but it’s also about being set up for success.

Managers Must Present Urgent Tasks Accurately

The first thing managers must communicate is the purpose of what’s coming down the pipeline. It would be demotivating for an employee to work extremely hard, only to realize their effort is going to waste.

Generally, employees find purpose and satisfaction in creating high-quality client experiences, contributing to their teams and helping the company execute a meaningful purpose, mission and set of values (PMV). In contrast, given that urgency requires employees to put in more time and effort, they’re likely to scrutinize the situation — “Do I really need to work extra hours to finish this?” or “Can the deadline wait until next week?”

Beyond doing meaningful work, the urgency itself must feel meaningful. The team needs to know that completing their work means, for example, that they’re allowing the client to pull off an impactful conference or presentation to their executive team.

Managers Must Promote a Healthy Mindset and Provide Resources

When an urgent task lands in an employee’s lap, their immediate response is reflective of their mindset. Some might panic and others might think, “Let’s do this!” Regardless of an employee’s mindset, they need guidance from managers to maintain emotional equilibrium during a season of stress.

A common approach to stress is reframing it as a challenge — a mountain to be scaled. This can be satisfying for some employees, but there is a caveat. A review of the research showed that this sentiment doesn’t always buffer against burnout. While this mindset is constructive, companies shouldn’t use “challenge” or other intrinsic or extrinsic rewards in place of critical resources for getting teams through stress. Critical resources include proper task support, being encouraged to ask for help, intermittent breaks and having the time and space to decompress after urgent tasks have been resolved.

Managers Must be a Role Model to Unite Their Team

How managers feel about work affects how their employees feel about work. This means managers literally need to be the change they want to see in their teams.

Managers should strive to be proactive instead of reactive, anticipating issues before they arise or become worse, especially when stress is already high from tackling a tight deadline. Other competencies managers can model for their team include communicating with positive intent to mitigate conflict and focusing on common goals — ultimately building collective resilience among the team.

Beyond modeling behavior, managers need to think like a coach — having one-on-one conversations with employees about how they handle stress, what resources will prepare them for future emergencies, and ask about any gaps they come across while trying to stretch themselves.

Managers Must Consider Job Fit Based on the Cadence of the Work

Managers are responsible for ensuring this fit for their team — it starts when employees are hired. Managers must communicate transparently about the expectations of the job, including the pace and the frequency of deadlines. It’s helpful to tell employees what a typical workweek looks like and if their schedule will vary. After hiring, managers must continuously communicate with their team as expectations ramp up — especially with the accelerated pace that many companies use to keep up with competitors.

Preparing for the Stretch Zone When Things are Calm

Employees shouldn’t only enter the stretch zone during urgency. They can do so while their work is calm. A common way employees do this is by learning new skills, which helps them be more efficient at tackling future challenges and, thereby, handling stress.

Employees need to own their learning, but managers should advocate for these learning initiatives — by helping identify relevant learning opportunities, delegating stretch assignments to employees, connecting them with others at the company to enhance the visibility and efficacy of employees’ potential and allotting time and support to spend on development. Employees gain confidence when they learn — making them and their organization feel more resilient and prepared during times of stress.

Give Employees Autonomy

Employees will unearth new purpose and autonomy when they see their job strategically by practicing decision-making and prioritizing tasks. Managers should have their team reflect on top priorities, then focus on actions that will help get them there — perhaps by reducing non-essential meetings or by cross-collaborating to foster new ideas.

Taking ownership and feeling in-control buffers against job burnout due to increased motivation, which generates more cognitive and emotional resources. This allows employees to pace themselves and recognize how much they can take on.

Another important thing employees can do is to take time off when they need it. Disconnecting from work restores people’s mood, which contributes to well-being and physical health. For an employee to get the most from their downtime, their manager and coworkers need to ensure that employee’s work is covered (or can be paused) — and the employee should take full advantage of sending automatic “out of office” email messages.

In Conclusion

In an ideal world, employees would always have what they need to tackle deadlines, and those deadlines would give employees plenty of berth to deliver high-quality work. However, it’s inevitable that teams will need to make that happen but with a less-than-ideal timeline.

The pressure will be on, but teams will come out on the other side without becoming burned out if they pace themselves, look to each other for support and give themselves grace during the process. Eventually, it will be time to celebrate the outcome of their hard work and reflect on what contributed to their success, as well as lessons learned about what will allow the team to continue doing great work in the future.

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