Well-meaning Collaboration Can Burn Your Superstars Out

If your team of superstars is morphing into burned out zombies and productivity is waning, Eric Garton, co-author of “Time, Talent, Energy: Overcome Organizational Drag and Unleash Your Team’s Productive Power,” says look no further than your company culture.

He writes in the Harvard Business Review that three things cause employee burnout:

• Excessive collaboration, weak time management and overloading the most capable. Here’s what happens: too much collaboration can result in endless meetings, conference call overload and an avalanche of emails.
• The demands of collaboration, and the lack of up-to-date time management tools, can lead to poor time-management. Garton recommends that managers analyze how team members use their time.
• And, overloading the most capable results in burnout. In a collaborative culture, this is a big problem for employees whose expertise is in high demand.