How to Speak to Your Boss About Your Workload

In this week's LinkedIn Daily Rundown, a question came from member Joshua Hitchen, looking for guidance on how to speak honestly about his work load with his boss. He asked:

“I’m constantly being given new tasks with ultra-short deadlines (write an app in two days, severely change another at the same time, write R&D reports for large projects also alongside the other two tasks). It feels like the moment I complete one thing, I have two more urgent tasks to complete. I’m fine with it, but beginning to grow concerned that it will lead to mistakes with long term impacts because I don’t have time to properly review my code (we don’t have a quality assurance team). How can I convey this concern to my boss without it seeming like just a complaint about workload?”

Dear Joshua,

First and foremost, Metro Security is lucky to have you on their team - do you know how many people out there would just say “the code’s good enough and I’ll deal with the fixes as they crop up.” Not a good mindset, especially when dealing with security - I get it. I was a Navy SEAL, and security is serious business!

Not knowing much about your boss (does he/she have coding experience?) my recommendation is going to assume your boss doesn’t have a good understanding of coding. I’m focusing on the coding challenge first because that is at the heart of your company’s value to your customers - if your security isn’t working properly (i.e., the code is buggy) then your customers will leave. 

Here’s my recommendation:

1. Do your homework before you speak with your boss - map your last month’s worth of work so you can give context to your boss on the myriad of things you do.

2. Request a meeting with a subject line like this: Seeking Advice

3. When you start the meeting - start positively with an upbeat tone. This fires oxytocin which encourages creativity which is what you want this meeting to be about - solving problems! Tell the boss you’ve got lots going on, and it’s great to be busy, but you need some help and let me explain where and why you need the help. Make the meeting about working together, not what are you going to do for me. Come with some creative options for solving the problem such as “I can be better at writing code than switching to proposals and then back to code - how about having a different member of the team write proposal drafts, and I’ll check their work?"

At the end of the day, it’s about having candid conversations with context and a willingness to make the team better - people will lean into problems when you’re thoughtful about how you approach them versus coming across as whining and complaining.

Hope this helps, and they are lucky to have you!

Best regards,

Alden