An HR exec who's led teams at WeWork and Citi explains the best way to tell your boss you're overworked

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A rational boss will support the conversation.

• It's your responsibility to tell your boss when you're overextended at work.
• A WeWork HR exec recommends opening the conversation with questions so your manager doesn't go on the defensive.
• Ask about priorities to make sure you and your manager are on the same page.
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At a previous job, Alex Seiler signed up to work with an executive coach. The coach kicked things off with a 360-degree review of Seiler's performance (meaning he got comments from supervisors, peers, and reports).

"Some feedback bubbled up that I hadn't really heard before," Seiler told Business Insider. Uh-oh.

Several people had mentioned burnout and being overextended.

Seiler is a senior director and global HR business partner at WeWork; he's previously led HR teams at Citi, Time Inc., and Blue Shield of California. He spoke with Business Insider at the From Day One conference, in New York City in June.

As he reviewed the feedback the coach had gathered, Seiler knew he was partly responsible for these issues. "I hold myself accountable to high performance; and so I hold my team, too," he said.

But he knew his employees were partly responsible as well. "They should have come to me when they started feeling stretched too thin." Instead, the team waited until their work had gotten out of control.

Read more: The best bosses ask 2 simple questions when they check in with their team members every week

Avoid encouraging your manager to get defensive

Burnout has been in the news lately, since the World Health Organization recently classified it as a "syndrome." According to the WHO, symptoms of burnout include exhaustion, cynicism toward your job, and feeling less capable at work.

Meanwhile, a 2018 Gallup study of nearly 7,500 full-time employees found that 23% said they felt burned out at work very often or always, and 44% said they felt burned out sometimes.

Still, it can be hard to approach your manager - the person with the power to fire you or decline your request for a raise - and tell them you can't handle your workload. Seiler had a few tips to make it easier.

First, be sure you're not "taking an aggressive stance" or approaching the conversation in an "adversarial way." Instead, Seiler recommended leading with questions.

The key here is not encouraging your boss to get defensive. You can initiate the conversation by asking simply, "Can I be honest with you?" Seiler wrote in a follow-up email. "This opens up the dialogue and can lead to a productive level-setting conversation around capacity."

Seiler also suggested asking about priorities to make sure you and your manager are on the same page. "That will quickly help an employee understand whether he or she is doing work that their boss considers adding value or not," Seiler wrote.

If you and your boss realize you're bogged down in something relatively unimportant or non-urgent, you can move on to something more valuable.

Seiler's comments recall advice from other career experts on declining assignments from your boss. If you're already overloaded, workplace expert Lynn Taylor recommends saying:

"I would be happy to do that project, but what that could mean is that [whatever other project you're working on] will have to be put off until tomorrow, because I was actually going to spend the next three hours finishing that proposal. Would you like me to put that off?"

As for Seiler, he said any effective manager will appreciate when their employee brings up a workflow problem. He said, "Somebody who is a truly rational, logical manager will be very supportive of that conversation."