The Helper’s Curse: Why Your "Best" Team Players Are The First to Burn Out

Research reveals that the "good citizen" who always says yes is often on a direct path to burnout and low performance. To sustain success, leaders must stop rewarding selfless giving and start teaching their best people the strategic discipline of saying "no."


Introduction

Modern management espouses collaboration as the ultimate virtue. Employees who stay late to help a colleague, join extra committees, or simply always say yes are praised. Overall, it is assumed that these “good citizens” are the lifeblood of a given organisation.

However, research suggests that this reliance on helpfulness is the cause of a hidden crisis. Treating collaboration as an infinite resource results in companies driving their most valuable assets into a statistics trap known as “Collaborative Overload”. Data reveals that being the go-to person can be exhausting and lead to low performance.

The 3% Rule: The Silent Bottleneck

It is assumed that collaboration is evenly distributed across a team; however, this is seldom the case.

A 2016 network analysis by Cross et al., across 300 organisations, reveals that 20% to 35% of all value-added collaboration comes from only 3% to 5% of employees. Consequently, these “super-helpers” become the organisation's connective tissue.

Nevertheless, this ‘popularity’ can be toxic. Cross and his team found that these highly utilised employees often have the lowest engagement and career satisfaction in the entire company. In large part, this is a result of them turning into institutional bottlenecks. As their reputation for helpfulness grows, they are drawn into an ever-increasing number of projects until they are buried by an avalanche of requests, and thus they have no time for their own critical work.

The Giver’s Dilemma

Consequently, this creates a paradox in performance data. In a 2013 study, Grant, an organisational psychologist at Wharton, analysed data across three distinct industries to investigate where these “good citizens” land on the performance spectrum.

The results were bimodal; the worst performers were “good citizens” due to how busy they were with solving other teammates’ problems. At the same time, the best performers were also good citizens.

The difference was that at the bottom, such employees were selfless and said yes to everything. Conversely, the top performers were “otherish” in that they were generous but strategic in protecting their time.

The Extra Miler Effect

Managers’ addiction to these selfless employees is a key cause of this phenomenon.

2015 research by Li et al. found that even a single one of these team members can drive team performance more than all other members combined. Consequently, leaders become dependent on these individuals to smooth over cracks in an organisation.

However, a vicious cycle is created: the more capable the helper, the more work they attract. Thus, the faster they approach the collaborative overload tipping point, where their performance collapses.

The Solution

To solve this issue, leaders must disincentivise selfless giving and start building the foundation of strategic giving. Cross et al. suggest three solutions:

First, the load must be redistributed. Network analysis can be used to identify the 3% of overloaded employees. Subsequently, they should be forcibly removed from low-value meetings.

Second, the “reply all” culture must be discarded. Collaborative overload is often self-inflicted by a culture that equates visibility with value. Leaders must ensure that not attending a meeting is seen as a higher form of discipline than attending it.

Finally, “takers” must be screened for. Grant notes that one “taker” (i.e., someone who exploits help) overburdens the entire system. Hence, firing takers can be more effective than hiring selfless employees.

Conclusion

High-performance leadership requires, above all, protecting the most effective leaders from their own good but self-destructive instincts. Such employees must be taught that ‘no’ is not a rejection of the team, but a requirement for sustainable performance. Ultimately, if the 3% who carry the 35% burnout, the entire structure is at risk.

 

Sources:

Cross, R., Rebele, R., & Grant, A. (2016). Collaborative Overload. Harvard Business Review.

Grant, A. (2013). Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success. Viking.

Li, N., Zhao, H. H., Walter, S. L., Zhang, X. A., & Yu, J. (2015). Achieving more with less: Extra milers’ behavioral influences in teams. Journal of Applied Psychology.

 

 

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