Balancing Workload Effectively

VP: "Employee A is under-performing. They won't last long." Me: "Did we clearly explain to employee A the expectations for the role?" VP: "Yes, definitely. Very clearly explained" Me: "Have you told them as clearly as you have told me?" VP: "Actually... no. Not that clearly." Me: "Great, let's have a convo. Let's CLEARLY tell them what those expectations are." — They had the conversation and within two weeks, Employee A's performance was on par with everyone else on the team. Why is that? They got the skills suddenly? They got more motivated? They just did not know what good performance looked like. Before making assumptions on why a team member is under-performing. Communicate SUPER effectively the expectations for the role. Clarity creates speed. Speed creates progress. Progress creates momentum. Momentum makes success inevitable. agree?

One of my most challenging moments in the Military was my deployment in northern Mali. These lessons remain useful Northern Mali was Known as the most dangerous United Nations mission. I was in a consulting room one day when a call came in from the medical directorate. The message was simple: You are leading the Ghana Aviation medical team to Mali. Yes, sir, was my response! Northern Mali tested not only my skills but my resilience and humanity. Sleep was often a luxury, as the piercing sound of sirens signaling incoming rockets or explosions would jolt us into action at any moment. ✅ In such a volatile setting, the power of teamwork and true leadership became not just important but essential to my team's survival and success. In an environment where every minute could bring a new threat, no one could afford to work in isolation. Each team member played a critical role, from the nurse to the logisticians. The constant threat of danger required us to operate as a cohesive unit, where trust and communication were our most valuable tools. In such high-stress situations, leadership took on a new dimension. ✅ True leadership wasn’t about giving orders; it was about understanding the fears and anxieties of each team member. Recognizing their strengths, and knowing when to step back and let others lead. Empathy became as crucial as any medical skill because leading with empathy meant acknowledging that no one could do it all alone. It was about building an environment where everyone felt supported and valued, even when the circumstances were at their most dire. ✅ Recognizing the Limits and the Strengths The constant tension of not knowing when the next rocket might land taught us all a humbling lesson There are limits to what one person can endure or accomplish alone. ————————- The lessons learned in northern Mali extend far beyond the field. In any professional or personal setting, the principles of teamwork and empathetic leadership remain just as relevant. Recognizing that you can’t do it all, that you need to rely on others, and that every member of a team brings unique strengths is crucial to achieving success in any endeavor. Whether in a boardroom or a medical tent, these lessons continue to guide how I approach challenges and leadership today. The experience in northern Mali was a stark reminder that true strength lies not in individual heroics but in the power of a united team. Reflecting on those days, I am reminded of the importance of ✔︎empathy, ✔︎collaboration, and ✔︎shared leadership →Lessons that continue to shape my approach to every challenge I face today. Any experiences to share? ♻️repost for others #leadership #growth #selfless

Stress is inevitable...but how you handle it defines your leadership: Leadership isn’t easy. From juggling deadlines to managing inbox overload, it’s no wonder so many leaders feel burned out. But stress doesn’t have to derail your focus. Here are five proven strategies to reduce stress and lead with clarity: --- 1. Overwhelmed by emails? Solution: Inbox Zero Unsorted emails waste time and energy. - Delete unimportant messages. - Delegate tasks when possible. - Tackle quick replies immediately. Take control of your inbox to free up mental space. --- 2. Tight deadlines crushing your focus? Solution: Parkinson’s Law Time expands to fit the task, but you can take control. - Set strict time limits for projects. - Challenge yourself to finish ahead of schedule. You’ll be surprised how much you can accomplish. --- 3. Multitasking leaving you drained? Solution: Single-Tasking Multitasking can cut productivity by 40%. - Dedicate your full attention to one task at a time. - Complete it before moving on. Deep focus drives better results. --- 4. Facing unresolved conflicts? Solution: Thomas-Kilmann Model Unresolved tensions lower collaboration. - Assess your conflict style (competing, collaborating, etc.). - Aim for collaborative approaches to improve outcomes. Effective conflict resolution boosts team performance by over 50%. --- 5. Struggling with work-life balance? Solution: Four Burners Theory Life has four burners: family, friends, health, and work. - Prioritize the areas that matter most in the moment. - Accept that balance isn’t static, it’s about trade-offs. Protect your energy and focus on what truly counts. --- Stress is part of leadership, but it doesn’t have to control you. By applying these strategies, you’ll regain focus, reduce overwhelm, and lead with confidence. What’s your favorite way to handle stress? Let’s discuss in the comments. If this post helped, share it with someone who’s feeling the pressure. Follow Jay Mount for more strategies on leadership and focus.

Ever felt your mind go completely blank right when it mattered the most? You’ve prepared, practiced, and yet—under pressure—you freeze. During a recent training session, a participant vulnerably shared: “In high-stakes moments—tight deadlines, crisis meetings—I just go numb. I forget what I had to say or do. And every failed attempt makes the next one harder.” Sounds familiar? Staying calm under pressure is not a natural skill—it’s a learned one. Here are 6 quick strategies I shared that can help break this cycle: ✅ Breathe before you act – Slow, deep breaths signal your brain to stay calm. ✅ Anchor yourself – A small gesture (like touching your thumb and index finger) can become a calming ritual. ✅ Practice with distractions – Train yourself in noisy or time-bound situations to build real-time focus. ✅ Reframe the situation – Instead of "I have to deliver", say "I get to express myself". ✅ Visualize success – Picture yourself handling the situation calmly and confidently. ✅ Be mindful, not mind full – Just being present in the moment can help cut out panic and past baggage. Remember: the goal is not to avoid pressure, but to build your muscle to stay composed within it. What helps you stay grounded when pressure peaks? #EmotionalResilience #CalmUnderPressure #CorporateTraining

Are you struggling in an under-resourced #workplace? Inadequate staffing has been cited as one of the biggest stressors in today's business world. As employees struggle to manage the job responsibilities of 2 or 3 people, exhaustion happens first. Long working hours, with little to no downtime, leads to mental and physical fatigue. In the long term, it’s the pressure to continue to meet high expectations, even though the workload is unmanageable, that causes #burnout. At this stage, employees either collapse or quit. As employees we know working like this is harmful and not sustainable, but we keep going. The fears of: ❗️ disapproval and judgement  ❗️ missing out on a promotion  ❗️ being seen as weak, imperfect or a poor performer  ❗️ letting people down ❗️ being indispensable ❗️ conflict or confrontation ❗️ rejection or job loss make us soldier on. The hope of change fuels us to keep going. But eventually, even that won't save us from burning out. If you’re in an under-resourced environment and struggling with your workload, standing up for your physical, emotional and mental needs is crucial. Otherwise, burnout will ensue. Take charge of what you can: ✅ Reduce overwhelm by creating a list of most critical/time-sensitive tasks and focus on those first. Break down larger tasks into smaller, manageable mini-goals. ✅ Block time for specific tasks, including breaks - eliminate distractions, and learn how to say “no” to additional workload and people (you can also say “I can’t do it now but I can do it *state time* or “colleague” can help you…) ✅ Communicate challenges and ask for guidance, tools and techniques from managers, mentors, HR, colleagues ✅ Learn/model influencing, selling and negotiating skills to increase your chances of making your needs heard and getting the resources or support you need ✅ Clarify your boundaries, communicate them and stand by them ✅ Seek professional help to work on what's stopping you from setting boundaries e.g. people pleasing, fears of saying no, perfectionism, FOMO, fear of job loss ✅ Update CV, LinkedIn profile, nurture your network, upskill to create psychological safety that if you lost your job, you’d find another one Sometimes the under-resourced state is temporary - and it's doing the best you can with the resources you have until the storm blows over. But if this is ongoing or permanent, and your employer isn’t willing to give you what you need to perform at your best, you must ask yourself: 1) What are you really doing this for? And 2) Is it worth it? What other advice would you give to anyone working in an under-resourced environment right now? #workstress #overworked #mentalhealth

Being busy is not the same as being productive. Forget about the start-up overwork ethic that people wear as a badge of honor–get analytical. The 80/20 principle, also known as Pareto’s Law, dictates that 80% of your desired outcomes are the result of 20% of your activities or inputs. Once per week, stop putting out fires for an afternoon and run the numbers to ensure you’re placing effort in high-yield areas: What 20% of customers/products/regions are producing 80% of the profit? What are the factors that could account for this? Invest in duplicating your few strong areas instead of fixing all of your weaknesses.

𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗜𝘀𝗻’𝘁 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗪𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗽𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿 — 𝗜𝘁’𝘀 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀 (𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗲 𝟱 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝘀 𝗛𝗲𝗹𝗽 𝗠𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝘆 𝗦𝗮𝗻𝗲) Being a working professional means juggling deadlines, goals, and “I’ll do it tomorrow” habits that never get done. For the longest time, I blamed myself for not being consistent. Then I realized — it wasn’t a discipline issue. It was a system design problem. Here are 5 apps I use daily to stick to my personal and professional goals — and actually follow through 👇 🔹 𝙉𝙤𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 – 𝙈𝙮 𝙨𝙚𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙙 𝙗𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣 From planning weekly content to tracking goals to journaling lessons learned, Notion is where I think clearly. Bonus: I use a “Weekly Wins” tracker to log even small progress — momentum > motivation. 🔹 𝙃𝙖𝙗𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙖 – 𝘽𝙚𝙘𝙖𝙪𝙨𝙚 𝙜𝙖𝙢𝙞𝙛𝙮𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙝𝙖𝙗𝙞𝙩𝙨 𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙠𝙨 It turns habit-building into a role-playing game. Yes, I get XP for drinking water and finishing my reading goals. 📌 Tiny dopamine hits = consistent behavior change. Works like magic. 🔹 𝙂𝙤𝙤𝙜𝙡𝙚 𝘾𝙖𝙡𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙖𝙧 – 𝙈𝙮 𝙖𝙘𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙗𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙢𝙞𝙧𝙧𝙤𝙧 I don’t just use it for meetings. I block time for reading, breaks, deep work, even errands. If it’s not on the calendar, it’s not real. 🔹 𝙁𝙤𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙩 – 𝘼𝙣𝙩𝙞-𝙨𝙘𝙧𝙤𝙡𝙡 + 𝙛𝙤𝙘𝙪𝙨 𝙗𝙤𝙤𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧 Plant a tree. Stay off your phone. Sounds silly — but watching a digital tree die because I opened Instagram? Genuinely painful. And yes, I’ve built real focus blocks using it. 🔹 𝙏𝙞𝙘𝙠𝙏𝙞𝙘𝙠 – 𝙁𝙤𝙧 𝙩𝙤-𝙙𝙤𝙨 𝙄’𝙡𝙡 𝙖𝙘𝙩𝙪𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙙𝙤 Simple, clean, and perfect for daily and recurring tasks. I group tasks by energy levels — so even on tired days, I still tick off 2–3 quick wins. 💡 Productivity isn’t about doing more. It’s about making what matters easier to do. And tools don’t replace discipline — they reduce friction so your habits can stick. #ProductivityTools #WorkingProfessional #HabitsThatStick #DisciplineByDesign #SystemsOverWillpower #CareerGrowth

A leader is the one who’s effective directions,guidance and advice takes any organisation to success 🔂DELEGATE EFFECTIVELY ✅SHIFT FROM DOING TO LEADING Effective delegation requires letting go of control and it starts with a big #mindset shift. Don't stretch your own limits, stretch the limits of your team. Shift your mindset from doing to leading others. From generating an outcome yourself to helping others achieve the same outcome. From practicing the #skills that got you here to investing in building the same skills in others so that they can do it too. Build fault tolerance in your mind and attitude. ✅MAP RIGHT PROBLEMS TO RIGHT PEOPLE Picking the right person is the crucial part of getting the job done well. It's not always the person who can do it best. You need to ask yourself - who needs this opportunity right now? Who needs to practice these skills? Who might seem interested to take on this challenge? Who actually has the bandwidth? Once you are able to identify the parts that only you can do, identify ways to delegate the rest. Map people to different areas based on their strengths, the opportunities they need or the skills they have been looking to practice. ✅DELEGATE PROBLEMS, NOT SOLUTIONS Managers fail to delegate effectively when they pass on the opportunity but refuse to give the autonomy that goes with it. They share the "what," but hold on to the "how." To delegate effectively, focus on the results and not the methods. Think in terms of the final outcomes you desire and not the specific tasks someone needs to do to achieve it. When you define the outcome clearly, but empower others to implement their own solutions, they aren't restricted to one way of doing things. Giving people a choice of method also makes them feel responsible for results. ✅DELEGATE, DON'T ABDICATE #Empowerment does not mean boundary less freedom. You cannot be too hands off and expect people to figure everything out on their own. People need support to feel empowered. Leaving them to struggle and figure everything out on their own leads to frustration, adds to confusion and lack of support can make them feel helpless. They need your support along the way. Involved too much? You run the risk of micromanagement. Involved too little? It can make you miss those critical moments where your support or advice could have made a difference. The magic is in the balance. ✅INCORPORATE FEEDBACK LOOP The only way to know where you stand and what you can do to improve is to incorporate feedback from the process. Spend some review time with your team: Did they understand the problem clearly? Were they empowered to solve it? Did they get the context and support required to solve it effectively? What were they missing? What can be done better? What's going well and how can it be improved? What should you absolutely stop doing? What should you start doing to make delegation more effective? Give your suggestions… #leadership #responsibilities

Load Balancing Algorithms: How They Work and When to Use Them ⚠️ Load balancing distributes network traffic or workloads across multiple servers to prevent overload on any single server. These six algorithms define how that distribution happens: 1. Round Robin (RR) 🔹 Cycles through servers sequentially. 🔹 Best for non-session-persistent workloads. 🔹 Simple but assumes equal server capacity, which can cause imbalance. 2. Random 🔹 Distributes traffic randomly across servers. 🔹 Works well in test environments or when balancing precision isn’t critical. 🔹 Over time, traffic balances statistically. 3. Least Connections (LC) 🔹 Directs requests to the server with the fewest active connections. 🔹 Great for applications with variable session lengths. 🔹 Requires real-time monitoring for efficiency. 4. Weighted Round Robin (WRR) 🔹 Extends Round Robin by assigning weights to servers. 🔹 Distributes more requests to higher-capacity servers. 🔹 Useful when servers have different processing power. 5. IP Hash 🔹 Maps requests to servers based on client IP. 🔹 Ensures session persistence without cookies. 🔹 May cause imbalance if some IPs dominate traffic. 6. Least Response Time (LRT) 🔹 Sends traffic to the server with the lowest response time. 🔹 Best for latency-sensitive applications. 🔹 Requires constant performance monitoring. Best Practices for Implementation ▪️Real-time monitoring: Ensure server health and performance tracking. ▪️Failover strategies: Plan for seamless recovery during failures. ▪️Dynamic adjustments: Continuously optimize weights and thresholds. ▪️Session persistence: Handle edge cases like shared NAT IPs. In your experience, what’s the most common mistake in load balancing algorithm setups? ------------ 📷 I'm Nina, Software Tech Lead & PM, crafting tech visuals engineers love. I call them Sketech, easy to find for tech minds. Sketech has a LinkedIn Page. Join me ❤️!

If you’re doing everything yourself, you’re not leading. You’re micromanaging. I learned this the hard way. Early on, I thought being involved in every task was a sign of commitment. But it actually meant I was slowing the team down and holding onto control. Delegation is not about giving away work. It’s about building trust, developing capability, and stepping back so others can step up. Here are the 7 secrets that helped me do it better ⤵️ 1️⃣ Hire the Right Talent → Start by identifying people with the right strengths not just experience, but mindset and initiative. 2️⃣ Mentorship and Training → Don’t just assign tasks. Teach the ‘why’, coach the ‘how’, and stay involved until they’re ready. 3️⃣ Trust in Team Capabilities → If you’ve hired and trained well, trust them to do the job without hovering. Let them lead. 4️⃣ Lead by Example → Model the behaviour you expect. If you want your team to take ownership, show what that looks like in your own work. 5️⃣ Provide Clear Guidelines → Be direct about expectations, outcomes, and timelines then give space for the team to deliver. 6️⃣ Foster Open Communication → Create a feedback loop. Make it safe to ask questions, flag risks, or share progress early. 7️⃣ Celebrate Achievements → Acknowledge initiative, not just output. Public praise reinforces private confidence. Delegation is an act of leadership. Done well, it builds people and frees you to lead where it matters the most. Question: What’s one delegation lesson you had to learn the hard way? -------------------------- Hi, I am Muhammad Mehmood. Helping you build what lasts.