Dear Reader ,
Every farm has a harvest season.
It is the period when the work becomes heavier, the days become longer, and everyone has to move faster.
Not because the farmer enjoys putting people under pressure, but because the crop is ready and cannot wait.
Teams have harvest seasons too.
There are periods when several priorities arrive at the same time. Deadlines overlap. The pipeline is full. Expectations are high. The calendar is packed.
There is no realistic version of that season where nobody feels the pressure.
My team is currently in one of those seasons.
Recently, I noticed that burnout was beginning to creep in.
Nobody was openly complaining but it was starting to show up in smaller ways: lower energy, shorter responses and how long it took people to recover from minor setbacks.
I was feeling it too.
So, one Friday, we paused.
We organised a sip-and-paint session. We stepped away from the deadlines, spent time together and reconnected as people rather than colleagues chasing deliverables.
I will come back to what that pause achieved.
But first, there is a more important lesson for those who lead or manage people
Productivity is Not Simply About Doing More
Managers often treat productivity like addition.
More hours.
More effort.
More people.
More pressure.
We assume that if we keep adding input, output will increase; but teams do not work that way.
A team’s output depends not only on how hard people work, but also on how well their efforts work together.
Clarity, trust, speed and collaboration can multiply effort. On the flip side; Confusion, fear, delays and rework can reduce it.
Imagine for a moment that your team is operating at half its potential because priorities are unclear and decisions are slow.
Even if everyone works twice as hard, the team may only return to its normal level of output.
People will become busier and more tired, but the results will not improve. That is why a team can work harder than ever and still deliver less.
During a demanding period, the manager’s greatest influence does not come from pushing people harder. It comes from improving the conditions in which they work.
Pushing adds more effort. Good management multiplies the value of the effort already being given.
Start by Removing What is Slowing The Team Down
Before trying to improve performance, managers mus first identify what is wasting time and energy.
These are some of the most common problems.
Unclear priorities
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When everything is described as urgent, people do not know what deserves their attention first.
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They spread their effort across too many tasks, start several things at once and struggle to complete the most important work properly.
The team looks busy, but critical priorities remain unfinished.
Vague instructions
Unclear instructions at the beginning usually create rework at the end.
People make assumptions. The work is submitted. The manager then says, “That is not what I meant,” and the task has to be done again.
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Work that must be redone is work completed twice. In a high-pressure season, that is capacity the team cannot afford to lose.
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Decision bottlenecks
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When every decision must be approved by one person, the whole team can only move as quickly as that person responds.
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This causes work sits in inboxes for too long, then small issues become long delays and ultimately employees stop taking initiative because they are always waiting for permission.
If every decision must pass through the manager, the manager’s availability becomes the team’s speed limit.
Sometimes, the manager is not driving the work forward.
The manager is the traffic.
Too many meetings
Work that requires thought, creativity or problem-solving needs uninterrupted time.
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When every day is divided into meetings, check-ins and calls, people may be occupied all day without having enough time to complete meaningful work.
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A full calendar is not always evidence of productivity; sometimes, it is the reason productivity is low.
Fear
Fear is often the most expensive problem.
When people are afraid of how their manager will react, they delay difficult conversations. They soften bad news, hide mistakes and wait too long before raising concerns.
A problem raised on Monday may be manageable. The same problem discovered on Friday may be costly.
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Healthy teams do not avoid bad news. They make it safe for bad news to arrive early.
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Removing the problems listed above matters; but removing friction is only the starting point. It can prevents waste, but it does not automatically create a high-performing team.
There are few things managers must also strengthen to help people perform well.
Six Things That Multiply a Team’s Output
During a demanding season, there are six things managers can deliberately improve.
These are not motivational tricks, rather practical leadership choices I have made and proven over time.
1. Prioritize Clarity
Your team does not only need to understand the organisation’s annual goals, they need to know what matters most per time.
For instance; what are the one or two outcomes that must be delivered this week?
What can wait?
What does good work look like?
Who owns each decision?
If people cannot clearly explain the team’s immediate priorities, they are probably guessing and guessing is expensive when time is limited.
2. Practice Subtraction
During a demanding period, what you remove can be more valuable than what you add. Every unnecessary task you eliminate returns time and attention to the team.
You may not be able to reduce the main workload, but you can remove some of the work surrounding it.
Cancel reports nobody reads.
Turn unnecessary meetings into messages.
Remove approval steps that exist only because they have always existed.
Pause low-priority projects.
A manager who cannot reduce the main demand should at least reduce the distractions around it.
3. Enable Faster decisions
Tell people what they can decide without you, give them clear boundaries and then allow them to move.
A team that must wait for permission at every stage will always move slowly.
A team that understands its authority can solve problems and make progress without being delayed by the manager’s calendar.
Delegation is not simply giving people tasks.
It is also giving them enough authority to complete those tasks.
4. Build Psychological Safety
Make it easy for people to tell you the truth.
When an employee raises a problem, pay attention to your first reaction.
Do you become defensive?
Do you blame them?
Do you make them regret speaking up?
If employees are spending energy managing your reaction, they have less energy to manage the work. Managers do not need to enjoy bad news; but they must respond in a way that makes honesty possible.
5. Make Progress Visible
During a long and difficult period, teams can become so focused on what remains unfinished that they forget what they have already achieved. Your job is to:
Make progress visible.
Acknowledge completed milestones.
Show the team what has moved forward.
Name the problems that have been solved.
Celebrate meaningful wins without pretending the pressure is over.
People need evidence that their effort is producing results. Visible progress creates momentum.
6. Normalise Recovery
Recovery is often treated as a reward people receive after the work is finished; this should not be. It should be treated as part of the work.
A tired team does not make better decisions, communicate more clearly or produce stronger work simply because the deadline is important.
People cannot continue sprinting when they have nothing left.
Rest does not always mean taking several days off in the middle of a major deadline.
It may mean ending a meeting early.
Protecting an evening.
Allowing someone to work from home.
Creating an afternoon without meetings.
Making sure people take real time off after the peak period.
Recovery is not the opposite of productivity. It is one of the conditions that makes sustained productivity possible.
What Our Friday Pause Actually Achieved
Back to the sip & paint I had with my team....the session was not supposed to fix our workload problem.
The deadlines remained; the pressure did not disappear but something important happened beneath the activity.
First, the team felt seen.
They got the message that someone had noticed the change in energy and acknowledged that the pressure was affecting the team.
Second, people were given permission to stop.
In many workplaces, pausing during a busy period can feel irresponsible. People may worry that resting will make them look unserious or uncommitted. As the manager, I made the pause legitimate.
Third, we stopped together.
Burnout can feel isolating. People often assume they are the only ones struggling. A collective pause reminds everyone that they are not alone. Finally, for a few hours, we were not simply employees responsible for output.
We were people that mattered.
A Truth To Remember
The Friday pause helped, but it did not reduce the workload.
The season is still demanding. My team has continued to show up with the right attitude. They are responsive, committed and determined to deliver good work.
They have shown real grit.
It would be easy to look at that and conclude that everything is fine.
But grit does not prove that a workload is sustainable; it only proves that people are willing to carry it for now.
Employees can continue performing through pride, loyalty and commitment long after the workload has stopped being reasonable.
From the outside, it looks like resilience until one day, it does not.
Teams do not always break down dramatically. Sometimes, they keep delivering excellent work until someone quietly resigns.
What You Owe a Team That Gives You Its Best
Grit is valuable, but it is not unlimited.
When a team carries the organisation through an unusually demanding period, managers owe them something in return.
At the very least, they owe them these three things.
1. A clear end point
Tell people when the demanding period is expected to end.
People can manage a difficult season more easily when they know it is temporary.
Pressure with a clear end point can feel like endurance. Pressure with no visible end can become attrition.
If you do not know when the season will end, say so honestly.
Then find out what can be done to create a realistic timeline.
2. Protection from unnecessary pressure
You may not control the main workload, but you still control many of the conditions around it.
Do not create false urgency.
Do not schedule meetings that could have been messages.
Do not delay decisions and then expect the team to absorb the consequences.
Do not create extra work through poor planning.
And when the peak period passes, make sure people take real time off. Not leave that is technically available but never used. Actual recovery.
3. Honesty
Tell your team what you can change and what you cannot.
Do not pretend that everything is fine when it is not.
Do not make promises you cannot keep.
People can carry a heavy workload for a period.
What becomes difficult is feeling that nobody in leadership has noticed, cares or is trying to improve the situation.
Sometimes, honest communication does not reduce the workload, but it reduces uncertainty and helps people understand what they are being asked to carry.
The Takeaway
During a demanding season, the natural instinct is to push harder.
But your team may not need more pressure.
They may need clearer priorities.
Fewer unnecessary tasks.
Faster decisions.
More freedom to speak honestly.
Visible evidence of progress.
And proper opportunities to recover.
Pressure can increase effort for a while, but good leadership increases the value of that effort. The manager who understands the difference can deliver the harvest without exhausting the people responsible for it.
Next week: the same season from the other side of the desk, what you can do as an individual contributor when the pressure is high and the workload is not yours to change.
Still learning,
Eyitemi
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