By Jonathan H. Westover, PhD
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Abstract: This article examines the challenge of collaboration burnout in the modern workplace and provides recommendations for leaders to facilitate productive collaboration without overwhelming employees. Drawing on research and the author's experience as an organizational consultant, key drivers of burnout are identified as excessive and inefficient meetings, unclear collaboration expectations, and poor work-life integration. Five practical recommendations are outlined for leaders to mitigate these risks, including establishing clear collaboration guidelines, fostering an efficiency culture, empowering autonomy through flexibility and trust, encouraging flexible work arrangements, and modeling good work-life harmony. The recommendations are brought to life through examples of their application in contexts like law firms, software companies, and advertising agencies. The article argues that a balanced, human-centered approach to collaboration considering employee well-being is critical for organizations to sustain engaged, innovative teams over the long-term.
As a management consultant and researcher, there is one leadership challenge I see time and time again - the struggle to collaborate effectively without burning people out. In today's fast-paced, global workplace, collaboration has never been more important for driving innovation and strategic execution. However, collaboration requires a significant investment of time and energy that, if not managed properly, can lead to employee burnout.
Today we will explore the key drivers of collaboration burnout and provide practical recommendations for how leaders can facilitate productive collaboration while maintaining employee work-life balance and well-being.
Understanding Collaboration Burnout
Before delving into solutions, it's important to first understand what drives collaboration burnout. Research shows there are three key factors that contribute to employees feeling overwhelmed and burnt out from collaboration (Henttonen et al., 2016; Müller et al., 2018):
Excessive meeting frequency and duration: Having too many meetings that drag on without clear objectives wastes people's time and mental energy. When meetings feel inefficient, employees start to dread them.
Unclear collaboration expectations: Vague or shifting expectations around collaboration make it difficult for employees to plan and prioritize their work. Not knowing what is expected of their contributions leads to stress and feelings of being overwhelmed.
Poor work-life integration: When collaboration interferes too much with personal life outside of work, it disrupts work-life balance and employees' ability to recharge. This creates a continuous state of overwork that depletes people's mental and emotional reserves over time.
Understanding these root causes is key for leaders looking to tackle collaboration burnout at the source by addressing workflow inefficiencies and establishing clear behavioral norms and boundaries around teamwork.
Recommendations for Leaders
So how can leaders facilitate productive collaboration without burning people out? Based on my experience, here are some practical recommendations:
1. Set Clear Collaboration Guidelines
Establish written collaboration guidelines that clearly outline expectations around things like: meeting frequency norms, advance meeting booking policies, collaboration tool usage policies, expectations for keeping cores hours sacred for focused individual work, etc. Having transparent guidelines establishes psychological safety, predictability and a shared understanding critical for maintaining work-life harmony (Google, 2021).
2. Foster a Culture of Efficiency
Cultivate an efficiency mindset where every collaborative touchpoint must have a clear purpose aligned to organizational goals. Train people in facilitation best practices like establishing agendas, timeboxing discussions, parking lotting tangential topics, etc. Consider tracking and sharing metrics on things like average meeting duration to spark healthy competition towards brevity (Microsoft, 2019).
3. Empower Autonomy and Trust
Give employees more autonomy over their work so they feel less micromanaged and have room to optimize their workflow as they see fit. Build high-trust relationships through transparency so people feel comfortable saying "no" to unnecessary meetings and requests without repercussions. Balance oversight with empowerment (Netflix Culture Deck, 2018).
4. Encourage Flexibility
Promote flexibility in when, where and how people collaborate - options like virtual meeting attendance, asynchronous collaboration tools, and non-traditional working hours enhance work-life integration. Encourage employees to schedule protected breaks during their day and refrain from scheduling meetings during core hours set aside for individual work (Anthropic, 2021).
5. Model Work-Life Harmony
Lead by example by visibly practicing good work-life harmony habits yourself - being transparent about your calendar, avoiding emails after hours unless urgent, encouraging team members to take vacations, etc. Normalize discussing self-care publicly to destigmatize limits and build a culture where people feel comfortable enforcing boundaries (Buffer, 2021).
Paying attention to collaboration workflow, setting guidelines, fostering an efficiency culture, empowering autonomy, enabling flexibility, and openly discussing well-being are all important factors within an organization's control to mitigate collaboration burnout risks and facilitate productive teamwork. The key is a balanced, human-centered leadership approach.
Applying Recommendations in Practice
Now let's explore how some of these recommendations could play out in specific industry contexts based on client situations I've encountered:
Collaboration Redesign for a Law Firm
A 200-person law firm was grappling with attorney attrition due to burnout. After analyzing workflows, we found lawyers spent 2-3 hours in unnecessary meetings daily. Following my recommendations, the firm introduced new collaboration guidelines, clearly delineating between different meeting formats like staff meetings, case discussions, client updates, etc. based on purpose and attendance policy. They encouraged flexible scheduling and adopted tools for asynchronous case collaboration. Six months later, attrition rates declined as lawyers experienced more efficient, empowered collaboration.
Empowering Remote Sales Teams
A software company with a fully-distributed 500-person global sales team struggled with collaboration fatigue amidst frequent, lengthy status update meetings. We coached managers to be transparent about personal calendars, set autonomous working hours daily for uninterrupted focus, and use asynchronous collaboration tools more proactively. Monthly employee surveys showed significant improvements in work-life balance and fewer employees nearing burnout.
Modeling Well-Being at an Ad Agency
As the CEO of a 200-person ad agency found themselves frequently responding to late-night emails from overworked employees, they realized changes were needed to promote a culture of renewal. Following the recommendations, they began holding "No Meeting Wednesday" afternoons, openly discussed self-care, limited work travel, and tasked hiring managers with candidate interview questions centered around work-life integration. Employee engagement and retention increased as a result.
Conclusions
Collaboration is crucial for organizational success, but only if executed efficiently and with employee well-being and work-life harmony in mind. Leaders play an influential role in mitigating collaboration burnout risks by establishing transparent guidelines, fostering an efficiency culture, empowering autonomy, enabling flexibility, and modeling work-life harmony through both policy and personal leadership behavior. A human-centered, balanced approach to collaboration is key for maintaining productive, engaged and renewable teams capable of long-term innovation and strategic execution. While collaboration challenges will always exist, these proven recommendations equip leaders with practical solutions to make teamwork sustainable for both individuals and the organization.
References
Anthropic. (2021, August 3). How to prevent remote work from burning people out. Anthropic. https://www.anthropic.com/blog/how-to-prevent-remote-work-from-burning-people-out
Buffer. (2021, May 10). The ultimate guide to communicating work boundaries. Buffer Social. https://buffer.com/resources/communicating-work-boundaries/
Google. (2021). Well-being at Google. https://rework.withgoogle.com/print/guides/5721325765835136/
Henttonen, K., Kianto, A., & Ritala, P. (2016). Knowledge sharing and individual work performance: An empirical study of a manual organization. Journal of Knowledge Management, 20(4), 704–718. https://doi.org/10.1108/JKM-10-2015-0392
Microsoft. (2019, July 3). Meeting efficiency guide. Microsoft. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2019/07/03/meeting-efficiency-guide/
Müller, R., Shao, J., & Mayzlin, D. (2018). The Sharing Economy as an Engine for Cultural Engagement. Working Paper, USC Marshall School of Business. 10.2139/ssrn.3123934
Netflix. (2018). Netflix culture: Freedom & responsibility. Netflix. https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664/1
Jonathan H. Westover, PhD is Chief Academic & Learning Officer (HCI Academy); Chair/Professor, Organizational Leadership (UVU); OD Consultant (Human Capital Innovations). Read Jonathan Westover's executive profile here.
Suggested Citation: Westover, J. H. (2024). How to Collaborate Without Burning Out. Human Capital Leadership Review, 12(1). doi.org/10.70175/hclreview.2020.12.1.8
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