Telling your manager that the workload is becoming unmanageable can feel like admitting defeat.
In workplaces where being constantly available is treated as commitment, people often wait until they are exhausted before raising the issue. Others try to solve privately what can only be fixed through decisions about priorities, capacity or ownership.
The first mistake is to turn the discussion into a personal endurance test. A useful conversation is less about persuading somebody that you are tired and more about explaining the gap between what has been promised, the resources available and the decisions still outstanding.
Bring the work into focus, not just the frustration.
A lengthy list of tasks may convey pressure without clarifying what needs to change. Look instead at the competing demands on the same time: agreed outcomes, unplanned requests, meetings, rework and decisions that arrive late. They cannot all be the highest priority at once.
Consider a more precise question: “We have three deliverables due this week. This additional request needs the same time and people. Which commitment should move, or who can take it on?” That shifts the conversation from individual resilience to the choices required to make the work possible.
Silence has organisational consequences.
When excessive work is repeatedly absorbed without being made visible, a plan can appear sustainable when it is not. Clarifying a genuine constraint is not a failure of commitment; it is information that better decisions require. Of course, the discussion still needs professional judgement, evidence and a willingness to agree practical next steps.
Good management does not demand a demonstration of suffering before it is willing to set realistic priorities. Nor can it promise that every difficult week will disappear. The point is to distinguish exceptional pressure from an operating model that quietly depends on unpaid hours, repeated emergencies and postponed decisions.
Judge the response by what changes.
A sympathetic meeting is a beginning, not a result. Were deadlines revised? Was responsibility redistributed? Has someone agreed who decides when new work arrives? If nothing about the work changes, the conversation risks becoming another task the individual has been asked to carry.
If the situation is having a persistent impact on health, appropriate professional support may also be necessary. Management conversations and clinical care serve different purposes, and employment rights depend on the relevant legal context.
O Teu Próximo Passo places clarity before decisions and action. It examines the difference between what a person can negotiate and what leadership or the wider organisation must change. The book is published in Portuguese.