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Are You Feeling Overwhelmed?

All of us have our limits, but the work keeps coming.

What drew me to this article was the title, Your Job As A Leader Is Not To Be An Expert. It's To Be An Expert Learner.

I didn't find that the title matched the content so much--for me anyway. What is in the article is about the leader and the organization feeling overwhelmed with the work that needs to be done. 

Emergency managers are a bit like farmers. There is always more work to be done then there is time in a day or a week to do it. Thus, we can easily feel overwhelmed. The article has some good tips for leaders of teams about acknowledging the amount of work to be done. 

Not mentioned is how not to deal with it. I think a leader who demands perfection in all areas will wear his people out and make for an unhappy and soon to depart workforce. Some things do need to be perfect, most others do not. I'm not condoning doing sloppy work, but I'm advocating for taking perfection out of the mix. Perfection often demands extra and extraneous work for not much gain. Most of what we do is not flying in the Space Shuttle--where perfection was needed. 

As we begin to look towards 2019 we should examine our priorities and decide what it is we should concentrate our efforts on in the coming months. 

Eric Holdeman is a contributing writer for Emergency Management magazine and is the former director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management.