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?
