Ask Your Boss to Validate Your Priorities: It's a Tool, Not a Weakness

Last week, I asked my boss for help.

I’ve written extensively about the techniques I’ve used on my own to gain back capacity and reduce stress in my job as a project leader. I’ve implemented mindset shifts, practical tactics, and everything in-between. And it’s all made a difference.

But unfortunately I still haven’t gotten to a place where my week-in, week-out workload feels right-sized and sustainable. I went on vacation for two weeks (take breaks!), and when I returned to my workload with fresh eyes, I had to admit I wasn’t getting to the balanced place I needed to be on my own, and it was time to ask for help.

It was hard for me to open up to my boss that I’ve been struggling with my workload. It’s not so much that I’d feel like a failure—though I know this is a common feeling; if this is you, it’s understandable and you’re not alone. But for me, it’s more that it’s taken me ten years of full-time work to develop some confidence about what I should be able to handle and what’s objectively too much. I didn’t want to look weak or incapable by asking for help with something I should be able to handle, and thereby put my job at risk. So I felt like I needed to try everything I could on my own first. For ten years I guess, ha.

But no, it’s been good to push myself to grow and find my limits. And to spend some more time being sure I’d hit them. As much as I don’t love having more than 100 active projects at a time, I feel like a badass that I’ve learned how to do it.

But now it’s time to focus on sustainability in my role, to make sure I can manage projects well for many more years. So I told my boss I’m feeling overwhelmed and I want to work together on solutions.

She’s been very supportive. When she asked how she can help, I had us start looking at my to-do list together and talking through the items on it, so she could tell me:

• What she agrees is a priority
• What can wait
• What can be achieved in a simpler way than I was picturing
• What I don’t really have to do at all

While I’m generally a good prioritizer, I tend to feel weighed down by items left on my to-do list or kicked down the road farther than the original requester might have wanted (I'm working on that!). Even if I’ve made good priority decisions, I guess it's hard for me to emotionally let go of what I’ve deprioritized if I’ve determined the priority all by myself. When someone else validates what my priorities should be—particularly my boss who is officially in charge of what work I should be doing—I have a much easier time embracing the priorities and letting go of the rest.

The ’simple’ answer to my feelings of overwhelm could have been for my boss to take projects off my plate. But not only is there not a practical other person to cover those projects in the short term, but doing this would skip over the step of diagnosing why exactly I’m feeling overwhelmed. I may need less projects, but I may also just need a fresh way of thinking about which actions I prioritize on the projects I have. It’s a more nuanced solution, but we’d probably miss capacity and opportunity if we didn’t do it.

As we talk through how I’m prioritizing and thinking about individual tasks, in the short term I’m hoping that:

• My boss will suggest ways I can adjust my approach to my work that I haven’t thought of, and
• I will get a better sense of how she thinks of priorities for me, so I can sort of ‘catch’ and adopt her way of thinking. This will help me feel more validated in my priority decisions in the future.

And in the longer term, I like that this openness about the day-in, day-out nature of my work lays the foundation for bigger solutions like:

• Improving how I balance the company project load between myself and the PM who reports to me
• Beginning to actively support individuals in other departments to manage some of their own projects
• Discussing the possibility of additional project management staff

It will be easier for my boss and I to conclude together that one or more of these steps is needed, if we have a shared sense of the reality of my role as it is, and if we’ve worked together to optimize it as best we can.

It’s not convenient, per se, that I’m needing to ask my boss to validate my priorities in order to feel like my workload is sustainable and my priority decisions are ‘right.’ But it’s also nothing to be ashamed of, and if it’s the tool that gets me where I need to go, then there’s no reason not to use it. I also believe the new level of openness and collaboration with her about the realities of my work will lead to better integration of project management across our company and improvement in how project management is done.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by your workload, don’t overlook validation of your priorities from your boss as a tool to make things better. If you don’t feel comfortable doing this with your boss, doing it with an outside mentor can also help some. Maybe you don’t have to wait ten years like I did. Don’t shy away from the tools that will get you where you need to go and help you shine as the project superhero you are.