In today’s fast-paced work environments, it’s easy to feel constantly drained and stretched too thin. If you want to reduce overwhelm and stress across your team, creating a work environment that prioritizes well-being is essential. Burnout doesn’t happen overnight—it builds over time. To build and sustain healthy workplaces, it’s important to take intentional steps towards minimizing these risks.
As a speaker, consultant, and trainer working with businesses and organizations across many sectors, I am hearing similar comments across sectors and roles, which follow these themes…
- Too much to do and not enough time or support
- Change is frequent and fast and there is much uncertainty
- Conflict and communication challenges take up a lot of time and energy
- People are feeling stress and overwhelm
- Some leaders feel they are riding the line to burnout
The STRIVE Method to Reduce Overwhelm and Stress
Here are some ways to reduce overwhelm and stress along with fatigue and STRIVE for wellness (Raise a Dream, 2021) that I created for my other business blog:
S:
Strengthen and cultivate relationships within your team and across departments. When you engage others and collaborate, you share the efforts. Support, recognize, and appreciate all the contributions that people make on your team. Recognition can be like a domino effect in that others start to recognize and appreciate their team members.
T:
Talk issues through. Don’t let assumptions, gossip, miscommunication, and conflict linger too long without being addressed. Provide opportunities for 1:1s, check-ins, and team discussions. Remember that during change, communication needs to be consistent and shared on an ongoing basis.
R:
Retention and recognition of your team is important for morale, the culture, and for paving the way for what people are doing well. Recognition needs to be sincere; know how people on your team prefer to be recognized. Explore what matters to people. That is one way to work towards retaining team members so they grow with your company or organization.
I:
Innovation and ongoing “review and learns” are one of the foundations for success. Invite team members to provide their perspectives on how to navigate workplace issues, solve challenges, and find innovative approaches to address what matters most.
Review and learns have four powerful questions:
- What worked?
- What was a challenge?
- What did we learn?
- What will we do differently?
V:
Value alignment is an important foundation in teams. When team members know the organization values (and what the values look like in action), the culture may start to strengthen. In your 1:1s and conversations with team members, take time to learn about what they value as well! This is often an untapped area of support! When we know more, we do better!
E:
Educate about the status of projects, changes that may be coming forward, and the plan to navigate these. Communication goes a long way in reducing stress and heading off burnout so that you STRIVE and thrive!