When Workers Don’t Say No: Managing Employees Who Overcommit

March 30, 2020 Employee Performance and Coaching

How to Supervise People Who Struggle to Meet Dates

Whether they report to you directly or they are assigned to your program, employees who won’t say ‘no’ and overcommit themselves will eventually miss a critical deadline. In extreme cases, this employee behavior can even threaten the success of an entire project. As competent and dedicated as they may be, staff members who spread themselves too thin will inevitably get to the point of burnout. What should you do when you have an employee who continuously overcommits and struggles to meet deadlines?

Now, at first you might ask “Why would I want my employees to say no or to push back? I want them to follow my direction.” It’s a reasonable question; we want our employees to follow our guidance and work to the priorities we set. But think about it like this: if employees aren’t signaling that they are struggling to keep up, we as their boss will just assume everything is fine until that due date comes and goes and the work is still not done. Then what?

Situations like this also have knock-on effects: impacting additional deadlines, weakening quality of work, and delaying downstream activities, to name a few. If the employee does not indicate there is an issue, how will we know until it’s too late?

Sure, through the normal course of business, there are always ups and downs. However, commit dates are important and as managers, predictable execution is a common goal we all share.

Supervising employees who routinely stretch themselves too far demands extra effort on your part to prevent it from happening in the first place. If this situation hits close to home, keep reading. We’ll introduce 11 strategies and tips for managing employees who take on too much, who won’t to say no, and who often overcommit. Let’s begin…

Is This Really a Big Deal?

Yes. When employees overcommit, everyone loses. First, the employees will find himself or herself working to the bone to complete everything he or she agreed to do. Inevitably, when a date is missed, we as managers must then reprioritize assignments and find ways to recover. Eventually, our commitments to customers and other stakeholders are impacted. Routinely bumpy execution like this leads to credibility issues – of the employee, the team and the organization as a whole.

To better understand the ways to prevent it, here are some reasons why the employee may overcommit:

He/She may not want to disappoint their boss or admit they are unable to get the job done.
He/She may just underestimate the time required to complete the task.
He/She is disorganized and forgot other items on their ‘To Do’ list when they set a date.
He/She may not understand the impact of missing a date, or do not take their commitment seriously.
He/She may overlook a codependency from another department that is necessary to get the job done.

Given such a diverse set of reasons, strategies for dealing with them will also vary a great deal.

So where do we draw the line? Yes, we all want our staffers to work hard and to push themselves to perform at a high level. But we don’t want them burning themselves out, nor do we want them routinely missing commitments for one of the reasons above. Now, let’s talk solutions.

Here are 11 strategies for managing employees who constantly over-extend themselves.

0. Are You Part of the Problem?

While we are discussing strategies to manage employees who struggle to meet due dates, we must first take a hard look in the mirror to make sure we are not contributing to the problem.

Ask yourself:

Are you paying attention to how much work you’re assigning to the employee?
Are your requests and “need dates” realistic? Are they necessary?
Are you pushing back on incoming requests to your department hard enough, or are you just flowing all requests downhill automatically?
Do your employees feel they can speak openly to you about their workload? Are you approachable?

Before you assume this is an employee issue, make sure your management style is not contributing to the situation. If your employees don’t feel comfortable approaching you or you are not pushing back on incoming requests in order to make the workload manageable, you are likely part of the problem.

1. Define the Full Meaning of Accountability

A core pillar of any effective team’s culture is accountability – do what you say, say what you do and be transparent with the facts. When employees aren’t meeting dates because they don’t make an effort, we rationalize this as an accountability issue.

However, whether they miss a date because they didn’t put in the effort, or because they just took on too much and overpromised, the result is the same. Thus, overcommitting is also an accountability issue.

It the employee’s responsibility to ensure a successful outcome of the assignment, even when it means asking for help if a deadline is in jeopardy.

2. Keep Tabs on Working Hours

The next step in managing employees who tend to overcommit is to keep an eye on their hours. Yes, every now and then, extra hours are necessary in virtually every organization. A critical deadline; a staffing shortage; we expect to see spikes in working hours from time to time.

However, if you routinely see an employee staying after hours to get things done, or frequently sending late night emails, it’s a sign that he or she is spread too thin.

When you observe behaviors like these, pull the employee aside to specifically discuss their workload. A short conversation can easily streamline priorities, address issues, or even reveal an explanation that has nothing to do with workload at all.

3. Don’t Just Ask for a Due Date

As you’d normally do when assigning work to a team member, ask for commit date. However, don’t stop there. Specifically instruct the employee to contact you if there are changes in the date ahead of time.

The last thing you want is the employee coming into your office on the day an assignment is due to ask for an extension because they had too much to do. You should always ask to know in advance of the deadline that a change is needed.

4. Give a Target Date to Establish Priority and Expectations

It’s always a good idea to give the employee a target timeline when you assign a task. Doing this establishes a level of priority as well as an expectation of how long you might think it should take. If something is not needed right away, make it clear. (e.g. “Sometime in the next few weeks.”)

If you’re looking for something to be completed on Friday, for instance, saying so gives the employee an initial opportunity to identify any other potential conflicts to meeting the requested timeline.

5. Identify Disruptions Through Frequent Check-Ins

Check with the employee often in order to know what’s going on. In many work places, it’s not uncommon for employees to receive an incoming question, inquiry or task from another team or department.

However, seemingly harmless things like locating a document, digging up some old emails on a given topic and even a simple favor can take time. In some instances, one simple request can unexpectedly lead to a much greater effort, even full-time support.

Check in with the employee periodically to understand if another assignment has emerged that threatens the due date. Yes, you asked for updates, but when people tend to overcommit, they may also be overconfident about finishing and not see a reason to communicate a change until it’s too late. You may need to evaluate the situation yourself.

6. Ask If There Are Any Other Priorities

Taking our previous point to the next level, in many organizations, employees are actually shared resources who split their time between different projects and work assignments. Thus, in situations when an employee may not report directly to you, or you do not have full control (or awareness) of the employee’s workload, ask if there any other assignments or priorities he or she may have.

Don’t assume you’re the only one assigning work! Understanding other commitments or urgent assignments he or she may be supporting is essential to ensure you don’t pile even more work onto the employee only for him or her to miss the due date – either yours or someone else’s.

Asking what other priorities the employee is supporting will avoid setting the employee (and yourself) up for failure.

7. Remind the Employee That It’s Ok….

…to not do everything. When I first started in my career, I found it hard to push back on my superiors. I wanted them to feel they could count on me. But as my career progressed, I realized that by taking on too much and working long hours to meet dates I set, I was actually doing a disservice to the organization.

With certain employees, the tendency to spread themselves too thinly is simply the result of being afraid to admit they have too much, and they can’t do it all.

If necessary, have a quick chat with the employee to reassure him or her that it’s ok to speak up. It’s not about admitting defeat; it’s about ensuring success for everyone.

8. Calibrate to Ensure the Scope is Understood

When talking timeframes and schedules with your staff member, ensure they truly understand the scope of what is being asked of them. If you think something should take a week and they tell you it will be the end of the day, verify they understand what you’re looking for. Discuss deliverables and the sequences of steps.

To make sure the employee doesn’t overpromise, ensure the expectations of the assignment are clear so they don’t waste valuable time on something that misses the mark.

9. Be Realistic, Not Optimistic

An employee’s tendency to overcommit may have nothing to do with an unwillingness to say no and have everything to do with being a poor judge of time. When you ask for a commitment, don’t be afraid to challenge their estimates if you feel it is unreasonable on top of other things they have going on.

When I ask my employees for their commit dates, I typically remind them that I’d rather they add a few more days so the can be confident they’ll complete the task, rather than to give an earlier date and miss it.

“Give me a date you are comfortable with and that you can hit. Don’t tell me what you think I want to hear.”

10. Talk it Out

Let’s face it – depending on the ‘ask,’ estimating a timeframe for a complex assignment can be difficult. In circumstances such as these, help your employee work out a reasonable timeline. Hash out a process, a workflow and a sequence.

Discuss the questions they should go off and answer, talk through subtasks, and work out a plan that makes sense. Even our best employees need help estimating timescales on occasion.

11. Negotiate with Other Managers

In certain situations, you should work around the employee to negotiate with other managers on the employee’s behalf. Other managers may not be as vested in monitoring the employee’s sanity and to keeping their workload under control as you are.

It’s not to get the employee in trouble for missing a date or falling behind. A conversation may be warranted, though, just to make sure there is awareness and to keep the employee from getting too far behind or buried.

Can you relax your dates a bit? Can the other manager delay some of theirs? Hard working employees always welcome some relief.

When Employees Overcommit and Miss Dates

No matter what the reason may be, when employees are afraid or unwilling to say no, it can lead to any number of problems and challenges.

Keep an eye on the employee’s behavior and learn their tendencies. Employees who are notoriously bad about time estimations often need help planning. Employees who continuously volunteer and don’t push back may be burning themselves out. Employees who have several ‘bosses’ may need your support intervening at a higher level in the organization to get things under control.

No one wins when employees take on too much and deadlines are missed, so use these 11 strategies and tips to help optimize workloads in your department.