WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST CHALLENGE IN LEADING YOUR SCHOOL TODAY?

Maybe that is a really unfair question to ask at week’s end in the closing weeks of the shortest and most frantic term of the school year.

But indulge me for a moment. Engage in some deeply honest self-reflection with me.

Your work-life as a school leader consists of challenges. Some are more complex than others. Some take longer to resolve than others. Some are personal; others cultural; still others professional. Sometimes they all come at once. Relentlessly. And there you are – in your ivory tower of leaders’ isolation, experiencing the sheer loneliness of command.

You are feeling overwhelmed.

But you are not alone if you are feeling overwhelmed. According to Forbes contributor on leadership, Martin Gutman, feeling overwhelmed is the biggest challenge facing leaders today (see The Biggest Challenge Facing Leaders Today, According To Coaches, in Forbes, 14 Oct 24).

Gutman asked six experienced executive coaches what they found to be the biggest challenge currently facing leaders.

Leaders are overwhelmed, said Mimi Nicklin, founder of Empathy Everywhere.  In moments they are fearful, she went on, of the breadth of their role today. Nicklin could not have provided a better summary of what the other coaches told me, Gutman shares. The feeling of being utterly overwhelmed appears to be the new normal for leaders around the world.

How and where we work is changing at a rate faster than leaders can keep up with, Alexis Zahner averred. Zahner is co-director and founder of Human Leaders.  Mira Culic and Peter Griffiths of the Berlin-based consultancy The Mind Takeaway agreed.  Leaders suffer from busyness without having downtime or room for reflection or creativity, they said. Joel Monk, founder of Coaches Rising, a resource and training platform for coaches, told Gutman that the leaders he works with were finding it hard to make sense of” and to “act in the face of the complexity and uncertainty of the world.

The implications of this are profound, Gutman affirms, reiterating Djahan Banoo’s comment that if leaders feel like they can’t manage their own inboxes and to-do lists, how can we expect them to manage the work of others with the care and precision that work today requires? Banoo is a leadership communication coach for Better Up and the founder of Align Coaching and Consulting.  Culic and Griffiths had similar concerns: Being too busy has led to a lack of focus and burnout and reduces a leader's ability to be present and make good decisions.

Gutman explains that collectively, these six coaches work with leaders from across the world, across functions and across industries — from CEOs down to team managers. As such, they have their fingers on the pulse of global leadership and their observations bear some empirical heft. Their shared concerns about organisational and institutional leaders are real and deeply troubling.

And there is quantitative evidence to underpin their observations. A recent survey by Lattice and YouGov of 500 UK-based managers found that half (47%) were too overwhelmed to carry out their role to maximum efficiency. US-based research firm Gartner, meanwhile, found that 75% of the managers they surveyed to be overwhelmed.

So what is going on? Why this bad? Why now?

Growing Expectations

One explanation from the coaches Gutman asked was the growing demands and expectations placed on leaders. From a time when the leader's focus was quite linear (profit, clients, culture and stakeholder value) they are now required to become 'experts' in a wide range of specialist content and social context (diversity, maternity policy, family policy, LQBTQI, inclusion, mental health, wellbeing, an AI-enabled workforce, etc.), Mimi Nicklin said. Coupled with this is the fact that what constitutes productive work—for leaders themselves and the people they lead—has become more diffuse and difficult to define, Zahner mentioned, because today, historically, proxies such as time spent in an office no longer indicate any actual output or quality of work.

In short, Gutman observes, the expectations and areas of responsibility for leaders have not only ballooned but have simultaneously grown more diffuse, more demanding, and more multifaceted.

Digitisation And Distractions

A second driver of the current spate of leaders feeling overwhelmed which was cited by the coaches was digitisation and hyper-connectivity, Gutman reports, adding that the fact that digitisation can be a double-edged sword is well-established in social science research. He cites a recent Stanford University study found that electronic records and the electronic bureaucracy are closely linked to physician burnout. Several of the coaches highlighted the strain and information overload (Culic and Griffiths) that digital communication tools were imposing on the leaders they work with.

The worst of this is that this is occurring at a time when leaders can least afford it to be happening. Most of the tough challenges facing companies today require concentrated, deep work to be solved effectively—whether by an individual or a team,” Banoo explained, yet the very tools we have for collaboration are often more of a hindrance than an enabler of such work.

A Rapidly Changing and Uncertain Environment

The ballooning of managerial roles and expectations, as well as the added complexity and distraction of digital tools, are taking place within the context of uncertainty and rapid change, Gutman asserts, noting that wars, geopolitical tensions, a looming climate crisis and the rapid adoption of AI are just some of the drivers and symptoms of a volatile world. Monk referred to this as a, poly-crisis, a multitude of global crises that have an unprecedented effect on what it means to lead in these times. Taken together, these factors are a heavy weight to bear, said Nicklin, made all the more challenging by leaders’ perception of the consequences of getting it wrong.

What Now?

Being in charge is not easy and it never has been. Yet the impressions of six professionals who spend their days talking to leaders suggest that this is more true now than ever, Gutman concedes bluntly, going on to say that being a leader today often means being in a state of being overwhelmed. This is, to put it mildly, a problem.

So, what is the solution? What can leaders do to manage feeling overwhelmed—or better yet, to avoid it in the first place, Gutman asked the coaches he spoke to. On this point, too, the coaches I talked to had lots of suggestions born from their years of practice and understanding of the relevant science, he relates.  But for these coaches, the first step is simple yet powerful: acknowledgement. Admitting that you are overwhelmed is OK. Admitting that your job is really tough is OK. Acknowledging that you cannot continue as you are, is also OK.

Let me finish as I began. Engage in some serious, sincere, sensible self-reflection about what is getting you down as this year comes to its end. Recognise that you are not alone in feeling overwhelmed. Leaders all over the world are feeling overwhelmed. All of those principals you met with at your Term 4 meeting last weekend were feeling exactly like you. And the Principals who thought they were not overwhelmed most likely were just not admitting it.  Or they weren’t there.

I am with Gutman: leaders – like you - need to take a hard look in the mirror and  —  in most cases — admit that they are overwhelmed. Admitting you are overwhelmed to yourself is the first step to getting control over it. Believe me - this feeling of being overwhelmed will pass. Stare it down, one step at a time.