Coping or Redesign? When should I coach the person — and when should I change the work?
When someone on the team is struggling under pressure, the instinctive response is often:
“How can I help them cope better?”
Sometimes that is exactly the right question.
Sometimes it is not.
The real problem may be conflicting priorities, invisible workload, unrealistic client expectations, poor role clarity, dependency on the strongest performer or a work process that needs to change.
This Decision Room helps managers practise distinguishing between:
Why this matters
CA2025's leadership acumen includes motivating and developing others, coaching junior team members, delegating, setting expectations, monitoring progress and giving balanced performance feedback.
The IRBA framework develops this further: Team Leadership and Supervision is linked to clear accountability and sustained team performance, while advanced resilience outcomes refer to preventing burnout and quality decline, creating psychological safety and addressing workload pressure.
Seniors/Managers will:
Each participant receives the:
The source of pressure exceeds the manager's reasonable authority.
Managers, audit seniors, supervisors, team leaders and other people-managers from any firm
