My Boss is Always Stressed Out, How Can I Help Them? (Ask Christa! S6E71)

Introduction

Hi everyone and welcome to Ask Christa! where I answer listener questions about business challenges and workplace issues. I’m Christa Dhimo, and here’s a quick reminder! My show is a free resource to help people get through common day to day issues at work. I keep it going because of the questions I receive and my listeners, but you know how it helps if you like and subscribe wherever you’re watching or listening—and I THANK YOU for the support.

This is episode 71 in Season SIX, which focuses on Dealing with Bad Bosses. And in fact, this season has created SO much interest and additional questions, that I’ve decided that next season will continue focusing on what it takes to deal with bad bosses in a way that will enrich YOUR career, too, not just theirs.

Today’s episode is about STRESS, and the common theme is based on what we should ALL be considering when it comes to our mental health in the face of high stress from others: the importance of managing our own stress, first.

Listener Question

Here’s the listener question, “My boss is a great guy, but he’s always stressed out. He has a newborn at home so isn’t getting good sleep, and his Dad has Alzheimer’s. We know that’s tough, and he’s always been a great boss, but lately he’s been losing his patience with us. On the one hand, we were waiting for the stress to show up, but on the other hand, it’s getting problematic. He doesn’t always communicate what he thinks he has communicated, then asks us as a team why we are always behind in our tasks when we aren’t. We’re taking on some of his work to make sure nothing falls through the cracks, but he’s getting more irritable and critical, which isn’t like him. Last week he lashed out at me saying he’s tired of me making excuses for being late on my tasks when I wasn’t late at all—he never told me that something was due. We’re all worried about him. Last week some of us approached our HR Business Partner to determine how we can have a supportive intervention and help him get the help he needs while also making sure he doesn’t take us down with him. My question is: how else can I help him?” 

Our Listener is 100% Right!!!

And here’s my answer: you’re doing the best you can for your boss by getting a trusted HR Business Partner involved. If you work in an organization where HR is understood as a strategic driver for organizational performance, and as an aside: you can assume HR is strategic if the HR Leader reports directly to the CEO and the organization places emphasis on culture, performance, development, and metrics that MEASURE performance as a future or leading indicator of success. And if that is the case, then your HR Business Partner will know how to effectively support your boss and your team in a way that is supportive, expert, and within the various laws and protections of employees.

So, from a preliminary perspective, I wouldn’t do anything more for now. You ARE helping him by understanding the context of his situation, giving him an earned benefit of the doubt, showing compassion and respect for his circumstances, and treating him with dignity by getting the right people involved before spreading rumors or talking about him behind his back.

But… and this is for ANYONE dealing with a stressed out boss or anyone else at work… it’s equally important to check in on your OWN stress. 

Start with Identifying the Signals of Stress

We all experience stress every day, sometimes it’s good stress, sometimes it’s slow-burn stress, sometimes it’s bad stress and sometimes it’s in-the-moment-stress, like your laptop won’t work when you have a virtual meeting to go to, then finally it works and you make it on time.

We talk a lot about how to MANAGE stress, but like so many other things, especially in the workplace, we don’t pay enough attention to identifying the SIGNALS of stress, before it becomes a problem.

In society, especially in the United States, we get into the habit of reacting to big things instead of preparing for them, or creating chaos during an unpredicted situation instead of building skills to manage life when things we didn’t account for occur. 

Sound familiar?

We then bring this into the workplace, and except for large, enterprise-level organizations, very few companies take the time to develop competencies that enable employees, and especially managers, to see signals of stress then determine whether and how they should be addressed BEFORE they have a negative impact on performance.

In the case of our listener’s boss, the signals for stress happened back when they knew his dad had Alzheimer’s. That alone creates a difficult and heartbreaking circumstance in all ways for family members. Another signal for stress happened back when the organization knew our listener’s boss expected a newborn in his house. 

These two items alone will cause massive disruption to a good human, which means massive disruption to those around the good humans dealing with all of that. And yet, there is a pervasive assumption that we’ll just figure it out on our own… when most times… we can’t. We might think we can, but sooner or later, we'll reach the point when we start to break down because there's simply too much stress. and once we start to break down, we start to put stress on others around us.

When a Stressed Out Boss Creates a Stressed Out Team

And so, for our listener, I’d like to offer some things for you to consider so you are taking care of yourself amidst the stress you have experienced, too.

First, whatever your HR Business Partner offers to help your manager deal with his current stress, ask how much of that can also be applied to your team. There’s no question that others are feeling stressed out considering what you’ve described in your question, and that should be addressed also.

With that, ask what you can all do to help improve  the balance of responsibilities and tasks across the team. I’m sure everyone’s been finding ways to adjust in some areas, but in other areas… when you feel stressed out, your energy and time and brainpower automatically go toward managing the stress, whether you want it to or not. And that means less energy, time, and focus on tasks at hand, much less ways to make work better and maintain or even improve performance.

Your manager needs and will hopefully receive some accommodations, but that doesn’t mean everyone else immediately takes on some of his work. There’s no sense in shifting some of the problem over the to team. This is an opportunity to examine what work is done, when, by who, and whether there are opportunities to find better ways of working, so see if you can get some short-term support with that also. 

And last, see what Employee Assistance Programs are available to support a team that is becoming stressed out. I realize not all companies have these kinds of programs, and frankly, not all companies understand the impact even moderate stress has on an organization when that stress is prolonged without an end in sight. It’s not something you should assume everyone can overcome, nor should they have to if it’s related to an issue at work that can be remedied.

But employees who are contending with difficult issues in their personal lives—and yes, having a newborn is a difficult issue if you’re not getting enough sleep—will have COMPOUNDED issues in their professional lives. And employees who are able to be their best and do their best at work means an organization has the opportunity to be ITS best and do ITS best every day for its customers, which in turn, makes everything else… GOOD.

Additional Resources

For your resources, located in the show notes, I’ve included an article from American Psychological Association called “Coping with stress at work.” It was written in July 2014, but updated in October 2024. It’s a part of their work tagged with “stress” and “healthy workplaces,” and I recommend you at least click on the Healthy Workplaces tag. That section opens up with articles about burn out, uncertainty, even how to deal with a chaotic workplace.

Next up: an article called “How to cope with stress at work” from the Mind website. They’re a charity organization headquartered in England and Wales with a mission to have government and health services take mental health needs more seriously, enabling those in need to receive the help they deserve, and raise awareness more broadly to support a keen societal focus on the importance of mental health. Their article is easy to read and PRACTICAL, and that’s the kind of resource I aim for with this show. Yes… yes… we all KNOW that mindfulness and meditation can be helpful in times of stress, but most people simply need a few every-day actions they can take in the moment while they attend to so many other things in their lives. The Mind article provides just that.

And last: a video from the American Psychological Association from August 2024 called, “Understanding, recognizing, and managing stress in the workplace.” It’s about six minutes long and packed with good information… I will say that it’s produced a bit like a required workplace training session, but here’s why I LOVE it: you will hear phrasing and language that will not only feel relatable, but will also equip you with HOW to say you’re stressed at work and take action in a meaningful way. 

Most times, all we need is to know what to say or how to describe the issues to get the right help, and once that happens, the good stuff starts up again.

And remember: get good people around you. Get into a community of good people who share your values, be it at work or outside of work or both. Good humans need good humans.

Wrap Up & Submitting Your Question

And there it is, Episode 71 from season six focused on Dealing with Bad Bosses. Like and subscribe here, but also go to my site and send in YOUR question. It’s AskChrista.com, that’s Christa with a C-H. You’ll also see answers to other questions, listed by category and season, and every season has a theme. As always, thank you for your support. And remember, if you have a business challenge or a workplace issue—Ask Christa!