# How Do You Create a Sense of Urgency Without Stressing Out Your Team?  ## About - Author: fingerprintforsuccess.com - Title: How Do You Create a Sense of Urgency Without Stressing Out Your Team? - Tags: #articles - URL: https://www.fingerprintforsuccess.com/blog/sense-of-urgency ## Highlights Establishing a sense of urgency is *so* crucial to organizational transformation that Kotter wrote an entire follow-up book entitled, of course, *A Sense of Urgency*. In it, he argues that **leaders are responsible for creating a sense of urgency in their organizations.** Complacency and a false sense of urgency, Kotter argues, are the enemies of a true sense of urgency. --- This means that now, more than ever, workers have a strong drive to avoid problems, so a sense of urgency can help them get their work done more effectively than having them focus on a goal. There’s a caveat to this, though: **Creating a sense of urgency should not come at the expense of workers’ health. Too much urgency can create undue stress and lead to** [**burnout**](https://www.fingerprintforsuccess.com/blog/signs-of-burnout-at-work)**.** --- Related to values, it’s important to define purpose. A team under a tight deadline will act with urgency, but a team under a tight deadline *and* with a shared purpose will act with conviction. The former will stress people out, the latter will energize them with meaning. --- Remember, model the behavior that you want your team to exhibit. This means choosing your battles wisely. If you treat *every* task as though it’s urgent, your team will realize that nothing is truly urgent.  For example, if you respond instantly to every email and Slack message (things that are not truly urgent), you send the message to your team that you don’t even know what matters most. --- One way to show a sense of urgency is to take the initiative on critical matters—even if it is not in your job description. For example, if you tell your team that improving customer service response times is an urgent matter, then the next time a customer call comes in and none of the support reps are available, answer it yourself.  These small acts signal to your team that A) what you say is urgent is truly urgent and B) you’re willing to roll up your sleeves and do what’s necessary to reach team goals (and guess what? They’ll respect you all the more for it). - Note: This could help me with sunswift - I can show people who make mistakes what I've done to solve them (roll up my sleeves) but also support the sense of urgency too --- These small acts signal to your team that A) what you say is urgent is truly urgent and B) you’re willing to roll up your sleeves and do what’s necessary to reach team goals (and guess what? They’ll respect you all the more for it). --- These small acts signal to your team that A) what you say is urgent is truly urgent and B) you’re willing to roll up your sleeves and do what’s necessary to reach team goals (and guess what? They’ll respect you all the more for it). ---