A recent Harvard Business Review piece revealed a striking statistic: the more a person was an effective source of information and the more their colleagues wanted to access them, the less engaged that person was at work. Professor at University of Virginia Rob Cross calls this the Success Syndrome: the better you perform, the more you’re expected to fulfill everyone’s needs.
Fortunately, Cross and colleagues also found that top performers with great time-management skills are less likely to burn out and are exceptional at dealing with increasing demands. The authors suggest that leaders encourage their employees to adopt the following techniques:
- Check email and Slack in batches. It’s tempting to keep hitting that refresh button or to leave that green dot on in Slack, but attention is your most valuable asset. Encourage focus and avoid multitasking whenever possible.
- Default meetings to 15 minutes. Meetings typically run 30 minutes to an hour, but you can actually accomplish a lot in a 15-minutes. Toggle your organization’s calendar settings to a 15-minute block, and get familiar with how to run good meetings.
- Identify meetings and information requests that aren’t priority. Remind your team to look over their calendar and emails every four months and remove, decline, or ignore less important requests.
- Teach others how to prioritize and say no. A “yes” to one thing is a “no” to 10 other things. Your stressed-out employees will be relieved when you give them permission to say no more often.
The authors further suggest a long-term strategy of a “Chief Collaboration Officer” in organizations, but as this may be a long time coming, consider putting these tips to use and encourage your organization to do the same.
Do your top performers succumb to Success Syndrome? You can also try declaring “No Meeting Wednesdays” to give colleagues room to think.