Keep Collaboration Overload from Burning Out Your Team
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Keep Collaboration Overload from Burning Out Your Team

Many people believe burnout is always caused by too much work. In fact, it can also be driven by something seemingly innocuous: too much collaboration. To reduce burnout caused by collaboration overload on your team, start by asking these questions.

  • Can we reduce structural complexity? Investigate your team’s hierarchical structure, communication habits, and competing priorities. Then identify places of redundancy or inefficiency that can be improved.

  • Do our workflows still make sense? Ask your team where new technologies and platforms have introduced complexity, additional work, and stress. Then agree on a new set of simpler, team-wide, collaborative norms.

  • Are micro-teams causing microstress? Organizations increasingly rely on smaller sub-teams to take on projects, which requires more communication and collaboration between employees. Keep the number of these micro-teams in check to mitigate collaboration creep.

  • Do employees feel a sense of purpose? While many organizations focus on rallying employees around a collective corporate purpose, research suggests that purpose can also be found in positive, everyday interactions with colleagues. Enable employees to build on each other’s ideas, which helps create a sense that you’re in this together.

Read the article: "What’s Fueling Burnout in Your Organization?" by Rob Cross et al.


Read more:

Why Career Transition Is So Hard


Creating a Happier Workplace Is Possible — and Worth It


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Collaboration is key, but it's also important to find the right balance.

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Pavel Verbnyak

Professional speaker | Success and life strategist | Corporate trainer | Life coach and author | Certified Canfield Trainer in the Success Principles | TEDx Speaker | Executive MBA

10 个月

Hi! I'm passionate about empowering individuals through impactful speaking and transformative coaching. I believe in harnessing the power of words to inspire growth and success. Let's explore synergies in our expertise to create compelling experiences that drive personal and professional development

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Samir Mehta

Chief Operating Officer | Tourism & Hospitality | Transformation Advisor | Sustainability Champion | Entrepreneur | Global Citizen

1 年

Very relevant topic and content; essential to establish AND maintain a balance between collaboration and getting on with it!

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These are all very interesting and insightful points, but the last one about employees feeling a sense of purpose struck me the most. Another thing that could be added onto this point is creating a culture of accountability from every team member. By establishing individual ownership through project and client management, there's a more unified sense of purpose that benefits individual employees as well as the company as a whole.

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Romain Humbert

Global Senior Integrated Marketing Manager

1 年

Microstress is the silent productivity killer we often overlook. It's not the heavy workload but the small everyday interactions that add up, eventually leading to burnout. To combat it, organizations need to simplify collaboration processes, reduce tool clutter, and remind employees of their larger purpose. As leaders, we should lead by example and reduce microstress for ourselves and our teams. In this fast-paced, tech-driven work environment, recognizing and addressing microstress is pivotal for sustained productivity and employee well-being.

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