By Sue Shellenbarger
Amid a sweeping workplace trend pushing collaboration, some people are finding they play a little too well with others, causing stress and overwork.
When you hear the phrase “bad team player,” you might think of someone who refuses to collaborate. But you can also hurt your organization if you burn out trying to accommodate every co-worker’s request or attending more meetings than you can keep up with. This can stem from a basic inability to draw boundaries or an ego-driven desire to look like an office MVP.
Many white-collar employees who in the past would have worked side-by-side with a few colleagues now spend 85% of their time collaborating with multiple teams of co-workers via meetings, email, conference calls or instant messaging, often across several time zones, research shows.
The volume and diversity of collaborative demands on employees have risen 50% in the past decade, says Robert Cross, lead author of an eight-year, 28-employer study on the topic. Researchers used surveys, email analysis and interviews to identify the most efficient collaborators, or high performers who wasted the least time—their own or others’.
“It shocked me to see how overwhelmed people are today,” says Dr. Cross, who has been doing workplace research for 20 years, formerly at the University of Virginia and now at Babson College in Babson Park, Mass., where he is a professor of global leadership.
The research shows that the trend toward collaboration has turned some personal qualities that might be strengths in other settings into weaknesses at work. A desire to help others, a need to feel in control on the job or even a wish to be seen by colleagues as an expert on a particular topic can cause people to say yes to nonessential work, says Dr. Cross, whose research has been used in training programs at Ford Motor Co. , Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp. , General Electric Co.