"Managers help people find and mine the gold that lies within them."

Edward Hallowell. Shine: Using Brain Science to Get the Best from Your People

In-groups and out-groups

Do you have in-groups and out-groups in your work team? In-groups are those with whom the group leader is most comfortable, while out-group members seem to live on the periphery of the leader's world.

On the one hand, as a leader I know I prefer to work with people who are self-motivated, who are willing to disagree and to do so agreeably, whose work quality is consistenly high, and who either do what is asked or explain why they shouldn't do what is asked. And those not fitting that profile? They end up in the out-group.

On the other hand, there are risks when some members of the group have the leader's ear and others have less influence: good ideas get lost and perceptions of (or actual) biases lead to active disengagement. The full work-group's potential is reduced.

So, is that just the way it is? Because some people, no matter how hard a leader tries to coach a poor performer or communicator, will not get to the level that others achieve we will always have in- and out-groups?

When I teach leaders to coach their employees, I encourage them to focus their energies on those with the greatest potential to improve: taking a B-quality employee to A-quality is like mining gold. Getting a D-quality employee to a C? Well, then you still have a C-quality employee -- what good is that? And at what level of effort and investment of time?

What if the leader eliminates lower-performing employees? Then there won't be out-groups, right? Unfortunately, I see in-groups and out-groups even when employees are working at a high level.

What happens is that leaders, like all humans, are more comfortable with some personality types than others. I might like to talk about my kids but you might like to talk football. I might be into technology and want to show off my latest app, and you might find such talk tedious or vapid.

If you're the leader, TOO BAD! It's up to you to be sure to eat lunch with a variety or employees, take care not to have coffee with the same 1 - 3 people every day, stop by everyone's work space on a regular basis, ensure employees are communicating with each other consistently, and generally be on a friendly basis with everyone equally. Take care to allocate the most visible projects and juicy challenges equitably. Talk up and support all employees when communicating with the higher ups. Close friends are for outside of work.

A leader will make decision-errors if he hears more information or gives more credence to information from his in-group. Take extra care to disband in- and out-groups at work.

Can you change your mind?

Burnout vs. exhaustion

People talk about burnout at work as if it's caused by spending too much time doing high stress tasks or in a high stress environment. It is not. That is exhausting, but is not burnout. If it were, doctors, firefighters, teachers and others in these types of environments would be burned out all the time.

Burnout is doing work that has no meaning to you personally. People burn out even in low-stress jobs completed in 8 hour days. I've been overworked and I've been burned out. Burnout is a much worse experience and to be avoided at all costs. Overwork is life for most people trying to do something truly great. That's why there are vacations.

Vacations don't cure burnout yet many people expect them to. If you do work that to you has no value, you will be just as burned out when you return to that work from vacation as you were when you left it.

There are two cures: either redesign your job or get a different one.