How Saying Yes to Extra Work Makes You Less of a Team Player as a Humanitarian and International Development Leader

Ever felt overwhelmed by your workload simply because you couldn’t say no?

Sometimes humanitarian and development leaders struggle with the urge to be team players, often leading to taking on more work than we can handle.  This may lead to burnout and decreased productivity.

This episode dives into a critical mindset shift: recognizing that saying no can actually enhance your effectiveness, well-being, and relationships at work.

In this episode you'll learn:

• How to reclaim your time and energy by understanding the true cost of overcommitting.
• Practical strategies for saying no without guilt, realize the positive impact of focusing on quality over quantity
• Gain insights into fostering a healthier team culture that respects boundaries.

Tune in now to transform your approach to workload management AND become a more effective team player!

WHAT IS YOUR LEADERSHIP STYLE? QUIZ

Want to know how to lead better?  It starts by understanding your leadership style.   To find out yours, take my free quiz “What Is Your Leadership Style” - you’ll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.  Just click on the link fill out your quiz and click submit.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Find out how saying no to extra work will actually help you, your colleagues and your organization and today's episode.

Welcome to The Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader podcast, the podcast, helping humanitarian and development supervisors make a greater impact by taking control of your time, leading more inclusively and empowering your team all the while avoiding stress, burnout, and overwhelm. I'm your host, leadership coach and former aid worker, Torrey Peace.

Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hello, my aspiring modern humanitarian and development supervisors. I hope you're having a wonderful week. And in today's episode, you're going to learn: a common belief humanitarian and development supervisors have which results in high workload and less productivity. What happens when we are too much of a team player. And how to be a team player without having to take on extra work.

This is a continuation of this series around what I addressed last Monday and the episode about high performance syndrome. And high-performance syndrome once again is what I define as a well-intentioned traditional way of thinking and leading in the humanitarian and development sectors that creates a lot of busy-ness, but not so much impact. And the thing is it is so sneaky because it's very common.

We see these ways of thinking and acting as normal. And because of that, we just keep doing them without even realizing that they are actually negatively impacting us and those around us.

Let's say that a colleague comes to you and asks you, to help them with something they need help on: a project they're doing or something that they've been working on. And you know that if you say, yes, this is extra work for you, it's not within your job description. It's not something you have to say yes to. And actually, if you say yes to it, you know it's going to mean that you have even more work on top of everything else that you already have going on. And you want to say no, because you know you're too busy and this is going to make you very stressed. But then you think about how many times this person may have helped you or others may have helped you in a In a similar situation. Or maybe how you hope they would help you if you needed it. And you think about how others are going to see you as a bad team player if you say no. And so you feel guilty. And so you say yes. Not yes as in yes, I am excited and willing and I have the time. Yes, because I feel guilty and I'm a little resentful right now, but I feel bad and I need to be seen in a good light. And so I'm going to say yes. So what's the result of this? And I think it's quite common.

You probably have at least one or two times you can think about recently where you have been in the similar situation and have done this. It is so common. And so the result is that you take on more work than you can handle. You may have to work extra hours in order to get that work done. Or you might have to sacrifice something or not do something of your own to get it done, or at least do something, but not at the quality or the level of quality that you would like. And that means that the overall quality of your work decreases. It means that you also are compromising your health because you're working after hours and you probably feel stressed. All because you won't be seen as a good team player if you say no to extra work. Or at least that is your thinking.'because this belief that if we say no, we are not a good team player is a high-performance syndrome thought. It is not a fact. It is not a fact that if we say no to extra work, that we automatically become a bad team player. That is not true.

That is a belief that we have about ourselves or about the situation. So here's another way of looking at the exact same situation, which is just as true. By taking on more and doing lesser quality. So in other words, when I say yes to this person and I take on extra work, And I do a lesser quality job because I have more work.

And so I have less time to focus on what I need to get done. You are not being a team player. You are being the opposite. So actually you're being less of a team player when you say yes to extra work. Because you are not contributing fully. When you take on too much your work quality will go down or your health will suffer and you will be less of a team player.

Is your mind blown right now? It's interesting because sometimes we don't stop to think about how true our way of thinking is, and that it is just a way of thinking about a situation.

So, what is the difference here? It's just the one thought. One thought is "I will only be a team player by saying yes when this person asked me to do extra work". That thought will lead you to the destination of being overworked overwhelmed. And probably less of a team player. And the other thought is "I can be a better team player if I say no to this person". And in that thinking, we actually feel more in control of our time, our schedule, our workload. We feel that we are not resentful toward anyone because we are taking responsibility by saying no. And being honest. And then being able to really focus and do our highest quality work in service of everybody. If we say yes to all of the requests that come our way for extra help because we feel bad

if we're going to be seen as not a team player, then guess what happens? The more that you say yes to extra requests, the more you're going to get them. Because people will see that you say yes, and they will come to you. You are training people. You are training people to come to you to ask to do extra work. At the same time, you probably have colleagues who are able to say no.

And sometimes maybe they do say yes, but they do so in a way that you never know if they're going to say yes or no. And so what happens, they train their colleagues to respect their time and to respect when they say no. Now you might also have the occasional person who says no to everything and they're really not a team player because they also don't do very well in their own work.

So that's a different situation, but I'm talking about high performers here. And high-performers they want to do their best. I know you are a high performer. But in order to do your best, you also have to take control of your time and your schedule, and to be able to say no to extra work, knowing that you will be a better team player because of it. If we say yes all the time to extra work that we can't take on and we don't need to take on, you will grow more resentful. And you are ironically growing resentful toward probably them, even though it's your own fault that you were saying

yes.

When you allow others to control your to-do list by saying yes, without being strategic in other words, anything that comes your way, any extra work that you can't necessarily take on, you say yes to. You are not doing them a favor and you're not doing yourself a favor. You are actually allowing them to decide what is best for you. And how would they know that they don't, you know, what's best for you.

You know what kind of workload you have and what's the best for you, for them and for the organization. What's best for the higher purpose as a high-performer is to do the highest quality work, the work that has the most impact. And so by saying yes to everything and yes, to extra work, when someone comes your way. Then that means that you are actually becoming less of high performer and less of a team player. You have to decide what is best for you, the person and the organization from a big picture perspective.

And guess what will happen if you do that? They will look for someone else who can do it. And you can allow the other person to be an adult like you and make their own decision of whether they can take it on. As an adult, as a mature team player, you are able to say no when you know that you can not take on extra work, because the quality or the impact of the work you already have going on. it's going to suffer So, if you truly believe this, and you truly believed that you would be a worse team player, when you said yes to extra work, that you can not take on, then you would not feel bad about it. If you really believed that by saying, no, you would be a better team player

you would not feel guilty. You would not feel resentful. You would actually feel satisfied because you would realize that you were actually making this decision for what is best for everyone.

You're not just being selfish. You are making a decision for what's best for everyone. . And what's best for everyone is if you are able to do your job to the best of your ability by saying no, in this instance to extra work.

This also goes back to being able to set an example of what we want to see as part of our organizational culture. So think of how your team sees you in that moment. Because they are watching. And if you say yes, in order to be a team player to all the extra work, they are going to feel like they also have to do the same. You are modeling the behavior that they likely will feel they have to do themselves.

Next time somebody comes to you and asks you if you can do some extra work and you know, you are too overloaded to say, yes, you don't need to even immediately say yes, you can just say "let me come back to you". And the more you take responsibility and control of your own workload, the more you will allow others around you to do the same.

What are you thinking right now, as I'm saying this? Are you thinking that, "I see what Torrey's point is. Maybe I can try this. I will try, and I can see that being a better team player and a high-performer means that sometimes I need to say no to extra work I can't take on because then I can really focus on the work I do have and do my best."

Or are you still thinking that, "ah, that sounds great Torrey, but I still have to say yes to extra work because I don't have the power to say no." Whatever you're thinking right now,

just be curious about it. Because the only thing sitting in the way between you and having less workload is that thought. That thought is what drives your actions.

And if you change those thoughts, you will change your behavior automatically.

But it starts with be aware of what you are thinking. And then deciding whether you want to change it or not. And this is exactly what we do in my course, "becoming the modern humanitarian and development leader". We look at some of these common ways of thinking and I coach some of my students on how they can overcome these high-performance syndrome thoughts as well as others that may not be serving them. So that they can be freed up to be a true high performer and to move on, to make a much greater impact.

So until next week when a senior manager in Ghana share some leadership lessons , and after that, we will continue on this journey of exploring high performance syndrome thoughts, how they impact you and how to overcome them. Until then keep evolving. Bye for now.

Are you the type of leader that tells others what to do? Or do you let them figure it out for themselves? Understanding your leadership style is the first step to deciding what's working for you and what's not. To find out your leadership style, take my free quiz "what is your leadership style?" You'll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team, and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.

Just click on the link in the show notes, www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz fill out your quiz and click submit. So what are you waiting for? Go to www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz and discover your leadership style now. Your team will thank you for it!