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Promote the most capable of them to help you manage. That’s way too many reports without middle managers
I’m not sure what industry you’re in, but is it possible that your peers have requested leads/help? I don’t see anything wrong with asking for the support you need to run efficiently.
That is alot of direct reports! Maybe your leadership can provide some team lead promotions to your current staff to help create some in direct supervisors to help ease the workload.
I actually have 22 who report directly to me. I had a lead but she left because she felt overwhelmed. I have a middle manager and because we are hiring freeze I can’t hire no one.
That is tough! I was in a similar situation - our leads team was understaffed and often felt that I was failing my team because I didn’t have enough time in my day to make sure my team felt supported and get my work done.
I am not sure what industry you’re in, but something that helped me was sitting down with my own manager and brainstorming on how we can pause/push certain tasks on my plate so I can get some time back in my day as we couldn’t change the reality of not having a staffed leads team in that exact moment. Identifying meetings that made sense to adjust the cadence for (move weekly to bi-weekly, cancel, or not attend and read over meeting notes), delegating tasks to tenured team members to start owning that would also help them progress in their careers, and being transparent with my team of the reality of the situation - this isn’t the ideal state, but given our business needs right now, this is the reality so we are going to make the most of it and gave them my action plan!
I scheduled three 15 minute blocks on my calendar to respond to my direct reports emails/slacks during the day to make sure I was staying timely and organized with communication. I also learned that I had to respect those blocks bc there were times where I was in a good groove getting other work done so I promised myself I would respond to these later, but of course later became the end of the day where many responses were no longer relevant/timely which would hurt my team.
Also, my team was almost all entirely new to the team and to the company, and they were all onboarding remotely. We encouraged our team to post product/sales/process related questions in a team channel we created specifically for this vs. their direct manager. Not only did this help limit the message volume, but also strengthened our teams bond. No question is a silly question and they all lean on each other to problem solve and loop in a manager when needed.
Also, want to say I agree with everyone else in the comments here. Many companies have hiring freezes due to pandemic/other reasons, but doesn’t mean that current employees should be over worked/over stretched. The best advice I received from a former manager is to raise concerns to my manager early and create an action plan together. Then bring it up during each 1:1, even if you already have voiced your concerns. It felt repetitive and weird at times, but sometimes it’s hard for other people to understand the velocity of how you are feeling if they don’t see it as an ongoing problem. If you bring something up once, and never again, it’s easy to feel like the issues has been resolved or we have learned to navigate the issue. By bringing up this situation continuously, even if there is a hiring freeze, your manager will know that this is an issue and hopefully will be able to prioritize getting you a peer post hiring freeze and/or continuously help get you and your team into a more manager spot.
Best of luck!
Agree with some other previous responses! Identify some of the stronger individuals on your teams and delegate. Create sub teams and this will organically require leads and foster leadership skills within your group. DM me if you need some assistance mapping this out.
You should express your concern to your manager and ask for help to prioritize and set realistic timelines.
Thank you all. We are currently in a hiring freeze in our area. I have 22 who directly report to me. I did have a lead but unfortunately she left the company.
Perhaps you can identify a few as a “team lead” or break it up into three groups and have a leader for each time - use it as a training/mentoring opportunity rather than a formal promotion. Hopefully there are a few within the 22 that would see this as an opportunity and step up for the experience.