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In the hypercompetitive world of professional sports, a new archetype of champion has been quietly emerging over the past few years. Athletes are acknowledging their limits, prioritizing their wellbeing over winning, and walking away from competition in pursuit of solace. In a true paradox, some athletes are returning from long breaks in competition better than when they left and reenergized by the perspective they achieved. There is a theme embedded in these acts of competitive defiance and soul searching: the importance of releasing external expectations to embrace one’s true inner compass.
As burnout continues to rise, this is an important moment for leaders to evaluate the effectiveness of their approach, and whether they are creating churn around them that is contributing to their people’s dwindling mental resources. As we contend with relentless expectations for results and fierce competition for our attention, it is easy to overlook the simple wisdom of disconnecting from an external locus of control and reorienting our focus on the people and experiences that give us the most joy and satisfaction. This can be particularly challenging in the seemingly all-encompassing world of hybrid work where constant connectivity can feel like the norm.
There are few experiences quite as exasperating as applying all the rigor, intellect and energy you can muster to achieving an outcome… and finding the results fall short. It’s even worse when you give everything you have, only to get in your own way or fail to drive results in the organizational system around you. Those empty times when the tire has fully lost contact with the pavement can be heartbreaking and disempowering. But these moments are also great opportunities for learning. The most challenging leadership experiences are almost always excellent vehicles for growth, if we do not feel our self-worth is hanging in the balance.
Leaders easily fall into this trap when they employ an approach that was effective in different context to a new challenge. This often leaves executives vexed by their lack of effectiveness and struggling to figure out why their efforts fell short. In these moments, it’s hard to navigate back into the sweet spot. Doing so requires a deeper examination of one’s leadership approach: what actions are reflexive in the current circumstances; where are your blind spots; and what biases are in play? Rather than looking for silver bullets and aspirational goals, the work is often about better understanding the new landscape, and the interpersonal and strategic adaptations necessary to succeed in this new environment.
To better understand these adaptations, we sat down with Rob Cross, Edward A. Madden Professor of Global Leadership at Babson College and author of Beyond Collaborative Overload. His work identified the unique traits of true outliers; the rare few who are both the highest performers, and those experiencing high levels of psychological well-being, resilience, career satisfaction and general thriving. His insights shed light on how we can better manage attention, energy and our networks in a hybrid world to become world-class collaborators.
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Infinity Loop
Beau River: The idea of collaborative overload is very relevant right now. Tell us about your research and the “Infinity Loop” of people who are performing well and living sustainably across all aspects of their lives?
Rob Cross: We went into organizations to map patterns of collaboration, performance and to gain a deeper understanding of employee wellbeing, satisfaction and thriving. Then we looked at how they are collaborating and operating across their network. What stood out immediately is none of these individuals were distinguished by a big network. Rather, we could see was that it was the efficiency of the network that set these people apart, usually by about 18-24% in comparison to their peers. This helped us identify the Infinity Loop of actions they were taking to truly thrive across their lives. We first noticed actions like strategically calendaring Friday and Sunday night to block reflective time, to managing interdependencies that drove work to them. Second, they tended to manage what I call “triggers” or beliefs that led them to jump into situations where they didn’t add a lot of value. If there was a big surprise for me, this was it. I had been convinced when I started that the enemy was outside: it was emails, time zones, nasty bosses and demanding clients. After studying these performers, we could see these triggers to jump in and do, rather than step back, created about 50% the overload people experience. These are deep-seated triggers on how we think we need to show up in situations. The third piece on the left side of the Infinity Loop is around how these people are engaging in tactical action, like email, meetings and virtual forums. What I saw is that the most efficient collaborators have a greater tendency to claw time back. I call this a brawl, not a ballet, because everyone is always looking for that one elegant solution and it’s not like that. What these people are doing is isolating a small set of things that they’re persistent on. For example, a lot of people would look at email and think, “I can’t control it, it’s coming from everywhere, I’m not going to even try.” The efficient collaborators decide if their team is generating 40% of this, they can establish some norms with their team around using it. If these norms are set, you can buy back 5% to 8% of your time. That’s the kind of persistence and clarity these people built into their lives.
River: What recommendations do you have for leaders to ensure alignment on strategic goals while also preventing burnout on their teams in a hybrid environment?
Cross: What I saw with the successful people is that they tend to spend 20-25% more time exploring collaboration and network possibilities. They seeded relationships that help to create capability when an opportunity arises and fosters a broader range of talented people who can mobilize to produce a bigger response. It wasn’t a form of networking where people are saying, “I need help with this thing”; it wasn’t tapping into some invisible power structure. What they were doing was engaging in a way that enabled small, micro-collaborative moments. Instead of turning to the same people you keep turning to, this group of thrivers would reach into their network to explore how a broader solution could be created, so they tended to win because they are producing a better solution with greater commitment from their team. The second-biggest predictor of these thrivers was the way they create energy and enthusiasm around them. We’ve been mapping that for 20 years, and it turns out that in over 300 different organizations, the people that engage in ways that create enthusiasm in these networks are usually about 4 times as likely to be a high performer. When we are under pressure and trying to do everything ourselves, people hunker down and don’t reach out. This kills their energy and enthusiasm and leads to visible signs of stress their colleagues pick up on. When people come in firefighting, they can easily let overload constrain them, and they stop doing the things that give them scale. This takes them off the upwardly mobile path. Let’s be clear, this is not just about creating happiness; these thrivers create pull where better talent wants to work for them and then stay longer.
River: How do you recommend leaders set sustainable boundaries around established strategic thinking time when the volume of hybrid collaboration is growing?
Cross: Understanding that reflection needs to be a priority is at the heart of it. We’ve seen that establishing two-hour blocks of time is closely associated with productivity. What we see with people who are doing this well is they often start with some kind of creative, strategic thinking in the morning and then take three 30-minute chunks throughout the day to communicate with others. Others might establish 15 minutes of mediation after every third meeting. Studies have shown that simply looking away from your primary task causes a 64-second focus recovery. If you lose your train of thought due to email or Slack, it can require 20 minutes to recover your focus. We saw leaders evaluate where the routine information requests were coming from, so they could evaluate how to move requests to the right elements of their network. If leaders do that with their teams around information requests, decision rights, and portions of their roles, the focal point is not on the intractable challenges, but how the challenge is being addressed. Rather than delegating to leaders’ favorite people, this helps spread responsibility, takes the demand off the center and brings in the fringe elements of networks.
River: How do you apply the Infinity Loop in a hybrid environment to ensure you’re making the most of in-person time?
Cross: We conducted network analysis with leaders to understand what they need from face-to-face interactions vs. what can be addressed virtually. What we consistently see across studies is that people are saying that face-to-face is critical for interactions to create energy, for development and growth, and for enabling problem-solving and innovation. But project coordination, decision approvals, and other tactical topics are still happening when people are together. It is critical that leaders don’t default back to old ways of managing groups and running team meetings. You really want leaders carefully engaging groups in a way that creates purpose, learning, and problem-solving. Let the other things drift into the virtual forums. We know from retention statistics that people stay for the authenticity of connections. For example, if you lose an energizer in an organization, it’s not just [them] walking out – organizations can be as much as 200% more likely to lose the people they’re connected to. That’s only going to increase as we continue in the hybrid format and we have less aspects of physical shared space. Leaders who are able to form ties in limited face-to-face time are going to do much better.
