When an Incident Commander feels overwhelmed, they should seek support from deputies or teams.

Feeling the pressure rise during a live incident is a common, almost universal, moment for Incident Commanders. You’re juggling info streams, stakeholder needs, and the clock all at once. It’s not a flaw to feel overwhelmed; it’s a cue that you could use a little help to steer the ship. The practical move, the sane move, is simple: call on deputies or your team for support. That’s how effective incident response works in real life, not just in theory.

Let me explain what that looks like in practice and why it matters.

Why seeking support is the smart move

Think of incident response as a relay race. The baton starts with the Incident Commander, but the goal isn’t to run solo to the finish line. It’s to hand off cleanly to teammates who can take on specialized pieces of the puzzle—responsibilities like resource management, communications, and technical triage. When stress spikes, the brain works best with a broader lens, not a tighter one. Deputies, co-leads, and the broader SRE or DevOps team bring different angles, and that mix often leads to faster, safer resolutions.

In PagerDuty terms, you’re leaning on escalation policies, on-call rotations, and clearly defined roles. Those aren’t just busywork; they’re the scaffolding that keeps an incident steady when the storm hits. The moment you reach out to deputies or teammates, you’re activating a more accurate incident timeline, a broader view of affected services, and a faster path to decision-making that benefits the whole organization.

What happens when you ask for help

• Workload becomes shared, not shouldered alone. You’re less likely to hit cognitive overload if tasks are delegated to people whose plates mesh with their strengths.

• Decisions improve. More heads mean more checks. Deputies might spot a risk you didn’t notice, or they might recall a similar incident from the past that provides a useful lever.

• Communication sharpens. With more hands, you can assign a dedicated communicator to keep stakeholders in the loop while you focus on the call list, runbook steps, and the technical triage.

In real terms, this looks like a quick, calm motion: “Hey, I’m handling X, can you take Y and Z?” It’s not a loss of authority; it’s the rare moment when leadership shows up by distributing power to the right people at the right time.

How to do it without losing control

First, recognize the signs that you’re not at peak bandwidth. A few red flags—slower decision-making, missing or conflicting data, or a backlog of tasks piling up—are not failures; they’re pointers to bring in help. Then, use the tools you already have.

• Call a quick stand-up with deputies and key responders. A short 5–10 minute huddle can re-align priorities and surface blockers. Treat it like a quick pivot in a game, not a meeting that drags on.

• Reassign tasks via your incident command board. In PagerDuty, you can tag tasks, assign them to deputies, or create sub-tasks under the main incident. This keeps the main timeline intact while letting experts focus on what they do best.

• Leverage runbooks and playbooks. If you have documented steps for common failure modes, deputized teammates can execute them without needing every decision to funnel back through you. It’s about preauthorization in practice—where the team has the authority to run certain steps automatically.

• Keep the core timeline visible. Update the incident timeline as you delegate. A running narrative helps everyone stay aligned and reduces duplicated work or miscommunication.

What not to do when you feel overwhelmed

The instinct to soldier on is powerful, especially for people who are used to taking the heat. But pushing through without help can backfire. Poor decisions under strain ripple outward and can slow the incident resolution, or create follow-on issues that bite later. Resigning or escalating to external agencies are not the defaults you want to reach for unless there’s a clearly defined policy and a specific reason; in most cases, internal support is the fastest, most effective path forward.

• Resigning from the role mid-incident is a costly move. It leaves the situation with less oversight and creates uncertainty for everyone involved.

• Pushing through without assistance invites avoidable errors. We’ve all seen the domino effect: a misread alert, a skipped notification, a misinterpretation of impact.

• External escalation can complicate things. It’s not that external partners can’t help, but it usually adds layers of checks and delays. Internal deputies are the first line of defense because they’re already part of the same response ecosystem.

A few practical signals you can use to decide whether to call for help

• Are you confident in who owns the next decision and what the current priority is?

• Is the action queue growing faster than you can clear it?

• Do you feel you’re filtering out useful information because you’re trying to keep all channels in your head at once?

• Is someone else on the team ready and able to take on a chunk you’re not the best person to drive?

If you answer yes to any of these, it’s a strong moment to invite others to join the effort. It’s not a sign of weakness; it’s a sign you’re protecting the incident’s health.

From tension to teamwork: a few cultural ideas that help

A healthy incident response culture makes asking for help a normal, expected behavior. Here are a few ideas that keep the mindset practical and humane:

• Normalize deputies as part of the incident structure. Assign a deputy role as part of your escalation policy, with clear boundaries on what they handle and when they step in.

• Treat runbooks as living documents. They should expand under pressure, not stay static. After each incident, a quick debrief should update the playbooks with new learnings.

• Practice together, not just in theory. Tabletop exercises or simulated incidents, where deputies practice stepping in, build muscle memory. You’ll feel the difference when real pressure hits.

• Communicate with stakeholders in plain language. Technical terms have their place, but clarity wins when under time pressure. It’s better to explain quickly and accurately than to sound precise but be misinterpreted.

What this looks like in the real world

Let’s ground this with a simple scenario. An essential service suddenly slows down. The Incident Commander notices the backlog piling up and the alert volume rising. It’s tempting to tighten the circle, but the better move is to call a deputy and designate a communications lead. The deputy starts triaging the severity of issues, assigns network teams to verify connectivity, and a product owner liaison updates stakeholders on impact and timelines. Meanwhile, the Incident Commander keeps an eye on the big picture—service health, customer impact, and the strategic path to restore normalcy. As the day unfolds, the timeline remains dynamic, but the responsibility is shared, and decisions land with people who can act quickly.

The result is a smoother recovery, fewer missteps, and a team that trusts the process. The Incident Commander isn’t “passing the buck”—they’re enabling a faster, more accurate muscle memory across the group. And when the incident resolves, the real victory isn’t just “the fix.” It’s the way the team collaborated under pressure, captured lessons, and refined the runbooks for the next time.

A quick note on learning and resilience

Resilience isn’t built in a single moment of crisis; it’s cultivated through practice, reflection, and honest feedback. Debriefs, post-incident reviews, and knowledge-sharing sessions are the quiet engines behind better responses next time. If you’re worried about future incidents, you can set up small, low-stakes simulations that mirror the stress of a real event without the chaos. These exercises build confidence, shorten recovery times, and reinforce the habit of asking for help when it’s needed.

In the end, the best Incident Commanders aren’t those who never feel overwhelmed, but those who don’t let overwhelm stand in the way of progress. By leaning on deputies and teams, you preserve the integrity of the response, protect the customer experience, and keep your organization moving forward with a calm, coordinated rhythm.

A few takeaways to carry into your next incident

• The right move when overwhelmed is to seek support from deputies or teammates. It’s a sign of strength, not weakness.

• Use the tools at hand—escalation policies, on-call rotations, and runbooks—to distribute workload quickly and safely.

• Keep the incident timeline updated and make communication clear for all stakeholders.

• Practice with your team so tasks feel natural, not forced, when pressure rises.

• After-action learnings should translate into better playbooks and better collaboration next time.

If you’re navigating an incident and feel the weight, remember you don’t have to shoulder it alone. A solid team, prepared roles, and clear processes turn a stressful moment into a coordinated, effective response. That’s the real power of a well-supported Incident Commander. And it’s what helps you protect service reliability, keep users satisfied, and sleep a little easier at night.