Collaborative work is everything we do
to come up with big new ideas
and make plans to bring them
to life with other people.
The modern workplace is set up
with so many ways to foster collaboration:
meetings and brainstorming sessions,
Zooms and Slack channels,
email, instant messaging,
so many tools to help us
work closely together.
And aspects of this are great,
but we're doing more collaborative
work than ever before,
and the problem is it's overloading us.
[The Way We Work]
From launching a new product
to creating a vaccine,
almost every endeavor we do at work
requires working with others
towards a common goal.
And collaboration is a great thing.
It can help us work better and smarter.
It can help us come up with ideas
we never would have had on our own.
And it can make us happier
than executing tasks alone.
But collaborative work has risen
50 percent over the past decade.
It's now taking up to 85 percent
of most people's workweeks.
And those numbers from my research
were pre-pandemic.
Studies show that people are working
five to eight hours more a week now,
with collaborations drifting
earlier into the morning
and later into the evening.
When I came into this research,
I was 100 percent convinced
the enemy was external.
It was emails, time zones and demanding
clients, to name just a few.
But after hundreds of interviews,
I've discovered that even when given
a choice not to participate,
people are taking on more
collaborative work than ever before.
We’re just too eager to jump in
to collaborations that burn up our time
and that might actually run better
without 20 people in the fray.
About 50 percent of the collaboration
overload problem starts
with the beliefs we have about ourselves
and what it means to be a good colleague
and a productive person.
These beliefs are hard to change,
but if we examine them more closely,
it can allow us to make stronger choices
about what we do at work
and who we do it with.
There are many triggers
that spark our desire to say yes so often.
But today I want to focus
on the top three:
the desire to help others,
the need for accomplishment and fear.
The first trigger is the desire to help.
And the desire to help others
is a positive, constructive thing
and an important factor in success.
It fulfills a deep need to be useful
and bolster our identity
as a good teammate,
But it's also one of the most
significant drivers of overload.
The more you're helpful,
the more people ask for your help.
The problem is that you get
so bogged down in helping
that it prevents you
from meeting your own goals.
And over time you become a bottleneck,
slowing others down.
And this is all coming from a good place,
the desire to help.
The second trigger's the need
for accomplishment.
Our drive to achieve is another admirable
trait critical to success
and productivity in the workplace.
And it also feels good,
as little wins throughout the day and week
give us a burst of satisfaction.
The issue is that the cycle
can get addictive.
It leads you to solve more and more
small problems for other people
and avoid the bigger, thornier ones
critical to your own success.
This is my trigger.
If I see a five-minute window,
I will inevitably try to jam 60 minutes
of these little fixes into it
and completely ignore the three hours
of coordination I need to do
to get my team on board
with what I'm up to.
And then I end up
overwhelmed six weeks out,
again, all from a good place
of trying to get something positive done.
The third trigger is fear.
Fear is a major driver of overload today
that takes several forms.
The fear of missing out
on better projects,
better colleagues, better opportunities,
can become a persistent,
nagging problem that never lets you rest.
You feel a frantic need
to be a part of things,
worrying that it'll be
your last opportunity.
The fear of losing control is just as bad.
It makes you reluctant to delegate
or connect the people around you,
sentencing you to a life
of doing everything yourself.
And the fear of what others
will say is powerful, too.
Your knee-jerk response becomes
to say yes early and often,
so everyone can see
how responsive you are.
Unfortunately, these fears drive
unproductive choices
and lead us into burnout today.
Chances are you recognize yourself
in one or more of these triggers.
And since I gave you three triggers,
how about three ways to deal with them?
Number one, learn to get
comfortable saying no.
Don't let yourself fall into the belief
that you don't have power in situations
where your help is requested.
Remember that your answer
doesn't have to be a binary yes or no.
If you get a request
from a boss or a colleague,
chances are they have no idea
what obligations you're juggling.
Be clear about what projects
or deadlines you have ahead.
Ask them to help you prioritize.
And if you just don't have the bandwidth,
ask the person if you can show them
how to do the task they're asking
or discuss if there's a different
way to accomplish their goals.
At the end of the day, every yes
means saying no to something else.
Save your yeses for when
they really matter to you.
Number two, remember, you can delegate.
Opting out of a request can actually help
others become more self-reliant.
I’ve found that the most efficient
collaborators get their sense of worth
not from always giving input
and being involved
but from developing others
and positioning them to grow, too.
Draw a line between tasks
that really do require you
and lower-risk ones that you can
delegate without concern.
Look for moments when you can give
partial direction, empower someone
and then step out of the way.
And celebrate other's wins.
Don't succumb to the temptation
to point out how you would
have done it differently.
Number three, be intentional
in crafting your work life.
High performers are strategic
in knowing their goals
and identifying what they can
and should take on.
They think about their priorities
not only for the week ahead
but on a two-to-three month
time horizon too.
So when a collaboration surfaces,
make sure you're not making an emotional
decision based on a false belief.
Ask yourself, how does it
align with my goals?
How much time and energy
will it take each week?
And what are the upsides of the outcome?
Try to maximize those collaborations
where you want to do the work,
it contributes to your goals
and you're the best person to do it.
The crazy thing about collaboration
overload is that it feels good
right up until it doesn't.
All it takes is one thing too many
to start a downward spiral.
Remember, you're the only one
who knows all your goals and obligations
and that you often
have more choice than you think.