Your team member is overwhelmed with client work. How can you support them effectively?

To help a stressed team member, help them to identify and prioritize key tasks. Simplify complex projects into smaller steps. Balance workload and reassign tasks if needed. Use automation tools or delegate low-priority work. Listen well and show empathy. Validate their emotions and motivate them. Tell them it’s fine to seek help. Promote breaks, exercise, and sleep. Prevent burnout. Offer training sessions or workshops in their area. Learning new skills can increase confidence and lower stress. Remember, being resilient and self-aware is important. Check in regularly and communicate openly to create a supportive environment.

Assess your team member's workload by reviewing current tasks, deadlines, and priorities. Offer to redistribute tasks, provide additional resources if needed, and discuss ways to streamline processes to alleviate their workload effectively.

Is the overload a perception or a reality? Often people feel overwhelmed because they fail to optimize their time - not because the tasks are actually overwhelming.

Connect with your team and ask them to unpack what has them feeling overwhelmed. Then, work through a few solutions together including, if possible, pulling off a few items to help them get some momentum and the feeling of some quick wins. And walk your team through how to stay on track with the understanding of how they got to this feeling and encourage them to identify the issues going forward and reach out for support as needed.

See what work they are doing - and if it's valuable work or not. Determine how much of their workload is other customers (that you may not cover) v. your customers - and of course, always make YOUR customers the priority ;^)

Help them determine what needs to be worked on first and why - and tie it back to business outcomes that the customer cares about - as that will typically align to whatever metric/OKR your teammate cares about!

This is key and has taken me a while - you have to trust your teammates to do the right thing in your absence. I used to routinely reply to emails/texts on vacation but no longer - as you have to trust your team to do their jobs. Now, you may not trust everyone at the same level, and that's fine - but hopefully you can trust some of your teammates some of the time ;^)

Always ask what you can do to help - so you're not simply a task master but rather working in collaboration with them to help them meet both their professional & personal goals.

Very important - encourage your teammates to take time off, ask about their life outside work, and show that you genuinely care about them as humans, not just automatons that are in the big work machine.

Encouraging breaks isn't just about rest; it's about recharging. I've found that a few moments away from the desk can significantly reduce stress and improve focus.

As always, everyone can find things that are wrong, but very few can make suggestions for improvement - always have that type of mindset when you approach issues in your work environment.