Over the past few weeks, I’ve heard a similar comment from many people:
“I can’t believe it’s already March. It feels like the year has just started and we are already heading towards the long Easter weekend.”
There is usually a small laugh when people say this, but underneath it is a real sentiment. Many capable, well-intentioned teams are already feeling stretched, even though the year is technically still in its early stages.
This is not usually because people are not working hard enough. In fact, the opposite is normally true. Most teams we work with are highly committed and capable, doing their best to deliver in environments where change is often ambiguous and expectations continue to increase.
So what is actually going on?
It is not capability. It is capacity pressure.
Across many organisations, we are seeing a similar pattern emerging. Teams are managing:
Ongoing resource constraints
Increasing political and/or stakeholder expectations
Continuous change initiatives
The need to deliver operational work while having little time for strategic focus
Higher levels of complexity in decision-making environments
Uncertainty about AI and what it may mean for the future of work
Broader global and economic uncertainty, including cost-of-living pressures, affecting people’s focus and energy
A recent Harvard Business Review article highlighted that many organisations are experiencing what researchers describe as “performance pressure without capacity growth.” In simple terms, expectations continue to increase while time, resources and attention do not.
Gallup workplace research continues to reinforce this pattern, showing that role clarity, manageable workload and supportive leadership remain three of the strongest predictors of whether employees feel engaged or overwhelmed.
What is interesting is that this is not just affecting struggling teams. It often affects high-performing teams the most because they are the ones trusted to take on more.
Where good teams can get stuck
When pressure increases, most capable teams respond in predictable ways. They:
Work harder and become more responsive
Agree to unrealistic deadlines, often encroaching into personal time, driven by their own strong sense of responsibility and high personal standards
Try to solve problems quickly to get early wins or measurable results, sometimes at the expense of longer-term thinking
Say yes more often than they should
Focus on delivery rather than strategic development
These are understandable responses. They are usually driven by integrity, professionalism and a genuine commitment to doing good work. However, over time they can create unintended consequences. None of this reflects poor leadership. It reflects what happens when good people operate in sustained pressure without enough space to step back and recalibrate.
Increasingly, what leaders are also describing is not just workload pressure, but cognitive load. The mental effort required to constantly switch between priorities, adjust to changing direction, and manage competing expectations. This is why many capable people feel tired even when they have not technically worked longer hours. It is not just workload. It is the mental load of uncertainty, adjustment and constant refocusing.
What effective leaders are doing differently
One of the most encouraging things we are seeing is that strong leaders are not necessarily trying to remove pressure. They are helping their teams work more effectively within it. Some consistent practices are emerging.
They are creating clarity
When everything feels urgent, nothing feels clear. Strong leaders are spending more time helping teams understand:
What really matters over the next 3-months
What good looks like
Where people should focus their attention
What can wait
Where “over-servicing” may be occurring
This aligns with research from the Centre for Creative Leadership, which consistently shows that clarity reduces stress more effectively than motivation alone.
Psychosocial hazards in Australian workplaces have garnered increasing attention due to their significant impact on employee mental health and organisational performance. Claims for psychological injury are rising at a rate that far outpaces physical injury claims. In New South Wales alone, there has been a 30% increase in psychological injury claims over the past four years. Contributing factors include bullying, harassment, and inadequate support prompting SafeWork NSW to introduce stricter compliance measures.
Psychological safety refers to an environment where individuals feel safe to express opinions, suggest ideas, ask questions, raise concerns, and admit mistakes without fear of negative consequences.
According to Harvard Business School – Dynamic Teaming, psychological safety is built on four key elements:
Willingness to help: Employees believe it is appropriate to ask for help, and trust their colleagues will support them.
Inclusion and diversity: Employees feel a genuine sense of belonging, and that their diverse experiences and perspectives are valued.
Attitude to risk and failure: Mistakes and failures are viewed as opportunities for learning rather than reasons for blame.
Open conversation: Employees perceive discussions as open, candid, and safe to participate in.
For a workplace to be truly psychologically safe, all four dimensions must be present.
While many leaders believe their teams operate in psychologically safe environments, research indicates otherwise. It is important for leaders to develop and hone their interpersonal and leadership capabilities, that are required to foster and maintain this kind of culture. This is not a question of will but of skill.
“We rarely teach people how to speak up or listen effectively – skills that psychological safety requires.” – Amy Edmondson, Harvard Business School, The Fearless Organisation
In April 2025, Marana facilitated a two-day Leadership Forum for a State Government client, building on an internally delivered session on psychological safety. The forum explored practical skills and strategies to support a psychologically safe workplace culture. Key topics included:
The concept of risk in a public sector context
The courage and vulnerability required to ask for help, and the acceptance of mistakes and failures as part of learning
Risk management frameworks
Problem-solving skills
Communication strategies to encourage staff to contribute more openly and constructively including techniques to uncover what may not be openly expressed by individuals or groups.
Some discussion points covered and practices to build psychological safety include:
Make “helping” behaviour the norm. Institute “reciprocity rings” (Baker & Baker, 2016) where team members regularly share what they need, how others can help and how they can help others.
Define what team-orientated and/or collaborative behaviour looks like in practical specific terms.
Frame mistakes as opportunities for shared learning: “This didn’t work. What can we take from it?”
Teach teams to expect errors, detect them early, and learn from them.
Discuss unrelenting standards, what “over-servicing” might look like. Evaluate your own levels of perfectionism and/or unrelenting standards.
Train people in how to actively listen as opposed to talking about what active listening is.
Anticipate what might go wrong in advance to reduce the stigma if it does. Consider “What is the worst that might happen? What is the best outcome? What is most likely?
Lead with vulnerability. Share when you don’t know something. It gives others permission to do the same.
Creating a psychologically safe workplace is not about grand gestures or abstract ideals it is about building specific, learnable skills. Leaders and teams need to practice curiosity, empathy, humility, and courage in tangible, everyday ways.
The good news is that these are not personality traits, they are capabilities that can be developed. With the right tools, support, and intention, teams can build cultures where people feel safe to speak up, take risks, and grow.
Start small. Practice often. Reflect together. Psychological safety is not a destination it is a discipline.
What is one thing you can do this week to make your team feel safer, more supported, or more heard?
As we wrap up the financial year, we’re proud to share that over 1,700 people participated in Marana facilitated sessions. This is testament to the continued demand for practical, customised professional development. Amongst other areas, assignments have taken us across to Perth, out to Dubbo, Wagga Wagga and Tamworth, up to Gosford, Maitland, Newcastle and Coffs Harbour and down south to Wollongong, Goulburn and the ACT.
Our most requested topics reflect the current focus on people, purpose and practical support in the workplace. Especially as workplaces continue to respond to restructures, organisational change, and the accelerating influence of AI and automation.
Leading the list are our customised Leadership and Management Development Programs, with a noticeable rise in interest around our Leader as Coach content. Organisations are recognising that effective leadership today means adopting a coaching facilitated style with empathy, clarity, accountability and purpose to support engagement.
Close behind are sessions focused on Feedback Skills and Cultivating Positive and Respectful Workplaces. The latter continues to resonate strongly, especially as we collaborate with clients to customise case studies and skills practice that go beyond legal compliance. Facilitated face-to-face sessions allow for deeper, more robust conversations that genuinely support healthy, inclusive workplace cultures while also strengthening individual and team well-being. Well-being and resilient leadership have also emerged as dominant themes in many of our coaching conversations, highlighting the ongoing need for grounded, people-centred support in times of change and complexity.
Customer Experience and Service also remains a key focus, as stakeholders aim to enhance both internal and external relationships in an environment where expectations can be high, and situations of entitlement can emerge. This is particularly relevant in regulatory legislative settings, where managing expectations with clarity and being able to manage self to constructively respond is essential.
Recognising the need for a more practical approach to knowledge transfer within workplaces, we have developed and delivered a hands-on Delivering on the Job Instructions program. Unlike theoretical Qualifications such as the Cert IV in Training and Assessment, this program focuses on practical application, enabling employees to effectively share and embed expertise and effectively communicate Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and Safe Work Method Statements (SWMs).
In addition to group sessions, we’ve seen steady investment in both one-on-one and team coaching, reflecting a broader shift toward tailored, high-impact learning that supports sustained performance and personal growth. In the past financial year, at least two government coachees were nominated for leadership awards, with one receiving the honour. This is meaningful recognition of their development and leadership in action. Coaching supports accountability for action, helping individuals turn insight into progress.
Leadership, feedback, communication, and workplace behaviour may be long-standing focus areas, but their relevance has never been more current. As the workplace continues to evolve, these core capabilities remain central to building healthy, effective teams. I’d like to personally thank you for your continued support, and we look forward to partnering with you in this coming financial year.
“The workshops were tailored to our business, hit the nail on the head in terms of the brief and delivered some great outcomes that helped shape some huge improvements in our service delivery, commitment to our customers and some positive change in how my leaders lead their teams.”
Testimonial from our Local Government – Leisure and Aquatics client regarding the recent training program designed and delivered by Marana.
Our Client
Our client provides Leisure and Aquatics facilities across multiple locations in their local government area. Visitors of all ages are welcomed and programs and services are offered including learn to swim, aquatic facilities, fitness classes, gym services and a golf course.
The Challenge
The Executive Team have a comprehensive direction and strategic plan for the Leisure and Aquatics facilities and required practical skills to support People Leaders and staff to lead and drive change. Part of the strategic direction is to have a Customer Experience Culture at the core of everything Leisure and Aquatics do.
It was identified that some staff may require assistance with adjusting to and embracing culture change including new ways of working. People Leaders needed the skills and knowledge to lead and drive change and staff would require the skills and understanding to implement this into both internal and external customer interactions.
Some of the key challenges were:
Mystery Shopper survey results revealed that customers wanted staff to be able to assist with their enquiries at the first instance. Staff were accustomed to helping only with enquiries for their section, and weren’t working as a whole team across the Aquatics and Leisure Team.
Staff understanding the importance of taking ownership for consistent service delivery and how their interactions reflect the Council as a whole. It is important to promote that Leisure and Aquatics are not separate to Council, they are Council.
People Leaders required the practical skills and knowledge to create, develop and maintain a Customer Experience Culture. This includes being able to facilitate difficult conversations with staff when actions or behaviour were not in line with agreed expectations.
Staff required understanding of how Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) fit in with the bigger picture and People Leaders required skills to measure the quality of customer experience / service and how to effectively use measures to support a positive customer experience culture.
The Customer Experience Charter was identified as outdated and required revising to underpin the Customer Experience Culture change.
The Solution
For People Leaders this consisted of a two-day Leading a Customer Experience Culture program that was designed to support participants to lead, champion, develop and maintain a customer experience culture.
During the program People Leaders developed skills in identifying customer expectations and linking these to the Customer Service Charter, working with and measuring KPIs, understanding change management, skills to praise and recognise staff as well as how to provide redirection when standards are not being met. It also included the importance of being detailed and specific when providing feedback related to service delivery.
Over the past few years there has been a growing demand for more flexible work arrangements – and then came Covid-19. Very quickly most of us had to work from home full-time and adapt to remote working. Now with people increasingly returning to the office, it is clear flexible working has become the new “normal” and it is a huge incentive to attract talent and maintain the workforce.
At Marana we adopted flexible working practices a number of years ago and along the way we have learned how to make it work for us. We are now working with clients to make their adoption of flexible work practices a success for staff, teams and the organisation and its customers and/or clients.
Beyond complying with legal issues, our recent experiences with clients suggests the following approaches make flexible working positive for everyone.
1. Decide which flexible options the organisation and its work can support and then develop a Flexible Working Policy and communicate it to staff. For many organisations, it may not be possible to have everyone work from home all the time and it’s unlikely you cannot have some of your staff work flexibly. It is important the Policy outlines who can apply for flexible work and what arrangements can be adopted, how to apply, what the decision-making process for an application will be and how it will be monitored and reviewed. The Policy helps managers and staff understand the process and the reasoning behind decisions made and assists in achieving a consistent approach.
2. Have a transparent flexible work assessment system that can review which parts of the job can be performed remotely and which in the office or workplace. It will be important to consider the deliverables or outputs of people’s work and the customer’s or client’s needs in this. It is essential for you to have coverage for client-facing work.
3. Check whether you have the systems and technology to support the arrangements you want, including methods for knowledge transfer and training. Staff may need additional hardware for working remotely and some may require additional strategies and support when poor internet connection impacts productivity. This is especially the case for some parts of regional NSW – staff often tell us about their “technology rage”!
