The Manager's Dilemma: How to Lead Your Team When You're Already Overwhelmed
It's 7pm. You're still at your desk, halfway through the work you were supposed to finish this afternoon. Your inbox has 87 unread messages. Three team members are waiting for feedback. You haven't prepared for tomorrow's client meeting. And you've just remembered you promised to write performance reviews by Friday.
You were promoted six months ago. You were brilliant at your individual contributor role, so management seemed like the natural next step. What nobody mentioned was that your new job would be two jobs: doing the work you were already doing, plus managing a team of six people.
There aren't more hours in the day. You can't clone yourself. Something has to give—and increasingly, it's either your own work quality, your team's development, or your wellbeing. Usually all three.
If this sounds familiar, you're not alone. The overwhelming majority of managers face the same impossible situation: expected to both deliver and lead, with resources for only one.
The Fundamental Problem
Here's what most organisations get wrong: they promote someone into management and treat it as a slight adjustment to their existing role rather than a completely different job.
You were an engineer. Now you're an engineering manager. You still write code, but you also manage six engineers.
In theory, this makes sense. You maintain credibility by staying in the work.
In practice, it's unsustainable.
Managing people well requires time. Giving effective feedback, having meaningful one-to-ones, coaching through challenges, monitoring team dynamics, preventing conflicts—all of this takes hours.
Simultaneously, your individual contributor work hasn't disappeared. You still have targets, deliverables, and clients expecting the same quality.
The maths simply doesn't work. A 40-hour work week can't accommodate 25 hours of management work plus 35 hours of individual contributor work. Yet that's effectively what organisations expect.
So managers make impossible choices every day: Do I finish this report or check in with Sarah who seemed stressed? Do I prepare for my presentation or give David feedback on his project? Do I handle this client issue myself or delegate it even though delegation will take longer right now?
These aren't really choices. They're damage-control decisions about which responsibility to neglect least harmfully.
What Falls Through the Cracks
When managers are chronically overwhelmed, predictable things break down:
Development conversations don't happen. When you're drowning, these feel like luxuries you can't afford. So they don't happen, and your team's development stagnates.
Feedback becomes delayed or absent. You notice something that needs addressing but you're too busy. Small issues become patterns. Patterns become problems that eventually explode.
One-to-ones get cancelled. Regular touchpoints disappear. Your team sees less of you, communication suffers, and you lose awareness of what's actually happening.
You micromanage or under-manage. When overwhelmed, managers swing between extremes. Sometimes they jump into every detail. Other times they completely check out. Neither works well.
Conflict festers. Addressing team friction properly takes time and emotional energy. If you don't have either, you ignore it and hope it resolves itself. It doesn't.
Your own work quality drops. You're rushing through everything. Making mistakes you wouldn't normally make.
Strategic thinking disappears. You're entirely in reactive mode. You never have time to think ahead or work on important-but-not-urgent priorities.
Your wellbeing suffers. The stress is constant. You work evenings and weekends. You're exhausted. You question whether you're cut out for management when actually, the situation itself is unsustainable.
The Traditional "Solutions" That Don't Work
When managers raise this problem, they typically hear several standard responses. None actually solve the underlying issue.
"You need to delegate more." This assumes you have team members with capacity, that the work is delegable, and that delegation requires no time from you. Often none of these hold.
"You need better time management." The implication is that you're inefficient, when actually the problem is impossible workload.
"You need to say no more." To whom? Your team who need support? Your manager who set your targets? Clients who expect service?
"Leadership is about working through others." True in theory, but most new managers still have significant individual contributor responsibilities.
"It gets easier." Sometimes it does. But often it doesn't—you just get more senior, and the scope grows proportionally.
These responses treat the manager's dilemma as a personal failing rather than a structural problem.
What Actually Helps
If you can't fundamentally change the situation—and most managers can't—what can you do?
Redefine What "Good" Looks Like
Accept that you cannot do everything at the level you'd like. Something will be done at 80% of your ideal standard.
The question is: what can afford to be 80% and what must be 100%?
For most managers, the answer is: your team's development and wellbeing must be close to 100%. Everything else can be adjusted. Why? Because if your team thrives, they can take on more. If they don't, you're permanently stuck doing everything yourself.
This feels counterintuitive. When you're drowning, investing time in others feels impossible. But it's the only path to sustainable management.
Make Small Investments That Multiply
You don't need hours of uninterrupted time. You need consistent small investments that accumulate.
Five-minute check-ins as you pass someone's desk: "How's it going? Anything you're stuck on?" These micro-moments catch issues early.
Ten-minute feedback conversations immediately after something happens: "Can I share an observation from that meeting?" Real-time feedback is more effective and takes less time.
Thirty-minute one-to-ones that actually happen consistently trump occasional hour-long deep dives. Regularity matters more than duration.
Two-minute responses to team questions that give clear direction save everyone time.
The goal isn't perfection. It's consistency. Small, regular investments compound over time.
Use Systems and Structures
When you're overwhelmed, you can't rely on remembering everything. You need systems.
Standing meeting agenda templates. Decision frameworks. Communication guidelines. Delegation matrices. Project templates.
Systems feel like overhead when you create them, but they save enormous time once established. They allow you to lead consistently even when stretched thin.
Leverage Technology Strategically
The tools that actually help are those that reduce rather than increase cognitive load.
AI-powered coaching platforms that provide immediately accessible guidance when you're preparing for a difficult conversation or trying to resolve conflict. Instead of spending an hour thinking through the approach, you get expert-backed suggestions in minutes.
Centralised personality insights that remind you how each team member communicates best. You don't have to remember everything—the information is accessible when you need it.
Proactive suggestions that flag when someone might need support or remind you of important conversations.
The key is tools that fit into your workflow rather than creating additional workflows.
Set Boundaries (Even Imperfect Ones)
You probably can't avoid evening work entirely. But you can establish some boundaries.
Time-box your workday some days. Batch similar work. Protect thinking time—even 30 minutes weekly makes a difference. Communicate your boundaries. Use your calendar strategically.
None of these will be perfect. You'll break them sometimes. That's fine. Even imperfect boundaries are better than none.
Get Comfortable with Imperfection
High-achieving individual contributors often become managers precisely because they had high standards. Then they try to maintain those standards whilst managing a team, and it's impossible.
You must recalibrate what "good enough" means.
That report doesn't need to be brilliant—it needs to be solid. That email doesn't need to be perfectly crafted—it needs to be clear.
This feels like lowering standards. It's not. It's appropriately allocating your finite time and energy.
Ask for Help
Most managers struggle to admit they're overwhelmed. It feels like admitting incompetence.
But struggling with an impossible workload isn't incompetence. It's reality for most managers.
Ask your own manager for help prioritising. Ask HR for resources or structural changes. Ask peers how they're managing similar challenges. Ask your team to step up in specific ways.
Asking for help isn't weakness. It's recognising that the current situation isn't sustainable.
Rethinking What Management Means
Management isn't doing your team's work for them when they're stuck. It's helping them develop capability so they get stuck less often.
Management isn't having all the answers. It's asking questions that help others find answers.
Management isn't being available 24/7. It's creating systems and autonomy so people can progress without you.
Management isn't proving you can still do everyone's job better than them. It's enabling others to exceed what you could achieve alone.
When you shift from "I must do everything" to "I must enable others to do things," the work changes fundamentally.
The Role of Always-On Support
Traditional management training happens periodically. But the moment you need support is Tuesday afternoon when you're about to give difficult feedback, or Wednesday morning when two team members are in conflict.
This is where having always-available coaching support changes the game.
Instead of struggling through situations alone, you have immediate access to expert guidance. "How should I approach this conversation?" "What's actually happening with this conflict?" "How do I balance these priorities?"
For overwhelmed managers, the value is time multiplication. Instead of spending an hour thinking through how to handle a situation, you get guidance in minutes. Better decisions made faster. Fewer problems escalating.
Making Peace with the Impossible
Here's the truth most managers need to hear: the situation is actually impossible. You're not imagining it. The expectations genuinely don't fit the time available.
The question isn't "how do I do everything perfectly?" It's "given that I can't do everything perfectly, what matters most?"
For most managers, the answer is: prioritise your team. When forced to choose between your work and your team's development, choose your team more often than feels comfortable.
Why? Because developing your team is the only multiplier available to you. The better they become, the more they can handle independently, and the more sustainable your role becomes.
That's not inspirational advice. But it's honest advice. And sometimes that's more useful.
Struggling to balance everything? Try the MyTeamBuilder demo and discover how always-on AI coaching helps overwhelmed managers lead effectively without burning out.
Photo by ThisisEngineering on Unsplash