A virus, fishing, and emotional contagion.
In 2003, a virus most people had never heard of hit Toronto hard.
It was called SARS. And it was really, really scary.
One consultant was working inside some of the hospitals where it was happening. Around the same time, she was also working with a global shipping company. While she was there, pirates boarded one of their ships.
Two very different crises. Same strange pattern.
The teams were amazing. They were focused and aligned.
Then the crisis passed. And the same teams who were high-performing fell apart.
"During regular times, they're so misaligned, they don't prioritize their resources well, there's infighting, so they get nothing done," she told me. "And they love a crisis because then it's clear what the top priority is, resources get unleashed, nobody's infighting because everybody knows there's a job to be done."
She has a name for them. Crisis junkies.
Does that sound familiar to you?
That consultant is Dr. Liane Davey. She's an organizational psychologist, known to a lot of people as the "teamwork doctor," and the author of You First and The Good Fight. A mutual friend, Henna, brought us together, and I'm so glad she did. Liane is the rare expert who is both very smart and very fun. (She calls herself a business mullet. Business in the front, party in the back.)
The key insight here: the fastest way to help your team perform is to tell them what they can stop paying attention to.
A crisis does that for free. Everyone knows what matters. Everything else disappears from view.
Which brings us to this week's question:
How do you influence your team to do their best work, without burning them out?
Let’s get into it.
(A reader actually brought this topic to my attention. So if you have influence challenges, please reply and let me know! I read every single reply.)
⚡️ 60 SEC INFLUENCE
Give every person a "go fishing" list.
Most leaders tell people what to do. Very few tell people what they can ignore.
So everyone pays attention to everything. Every meeting. Every thread. Every project they're loosely tied to.
Liane's issue with the classic RACI chart (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) sums it up: "Whether I'm responsible, accountable, consulted, or informed, it still takes some of me. Like, where's the, like, no, you can go fishing on this one."
The science: Liane calls this thought load. It's a simple equation:
(Cognitive load + Emotional weight) ÷ Energy reserves
Cognitive load is everything you're trying to keep track of. Emotional weight is the frustration, worry, and conflict you're soaking up from other people. Energy reserves are what you have left in the tank.
Here's what makes the top of that equation so expensive. Organizational researcher Sophie Leroy found that when people switch from one task to another, part of their attention stays stuck on the first one. She called it attention residue. People carrying that residue did worse on the next task.
Now picture someone on six cross-functional teams. That's a lot of residue.
A crisis cuts the equation down to one thing. You can do the same using a shared purpose, so you don’t have to rely on pirates.
Try this:
In your next one-on-one, list every project that person touches. Then sort each one together into three lanes:
Drive it. "You own this. It's your focus."
Support it. "Make time when asked, but you're not steering."
Go fishing. "Don't monitor it. Don't go to the meetings. If I need you, I'll come get you."
Remember to say the third lane out loud. Permission only works when people hear it.
You know people rarely do what you hope. They do what feels safe. Telling someone it's safe to ignore something might be the most generous thing you do all week. (And your generosity might be paid back in results. That’s the principle of reciprocity in action.)
As promised, influence in 60 seconds.
The Influence Anyone podcast:
The full conversation with Liane Davey covers the parents who raised her to believe that anything was possible, the ONE question she uses to calm a screaming or crying colleague in 90 seconds, why she thinks most advice about "holding people accountable" gets it backwards, and what she tells people who need to disagree with their boss (step one: delete every adjective).
🔎 DEEP DIVE
Why good teams burn out
Most burnout advice is aimed at the individual. Sleep more. Meditate. Take your vacation days.
All good things. But Liane's equation points to something different.
(Cognitive load + Emotional weight) ÷ Energy reserves = Thought load
Two of those three pieces are created by the team around you. Which means the leader, and honestly anyone on the team, can shrink them.
Let's take them one at a time.
1. Cognitive load: everything you have to keep in your head
Liane put it plainly: "I'm not just at my meeting. I'm at six meetings that I'm a cross-functional team member of."
This is the modern workplace. Matrix org charts. Cross-functional everything. More Slack channels than anyone can read.
The research here is sobering. In a 2016 Harvard Business Review article called "Collaborative Overload," Rob Cross, Reb Rebele, and Adam Grant reported that the time managers and employees spend on collaboration had grown by 50% or more over two decades. And the load isn't spread evenly. In most cases, 20% to 35% of the collaborations that add value come from only 3% to 5% of employees.
You probably know who those people are on your team. They're the ones everyone pulls in. They're also usually the ones closest to burning out.
Add attention residue on top. Sophie Leroy's 2009 research showed that switching to a new task while the old one is unfinished leaves part of your mind behind. Every extra team, every "just keep me in the loop," every standing meeting adds another tab that never fully closes.
This is why a crisis feels weirdly good. It closes all the tabs but one.
Application:
Run the Drive / Support / Go fishing sort with each person once a quarter. Projects shift. So should the lanes.
Watch your top 3–5% most-requested people. Ask them directly: "What are you being pulled into that you shouldn't be?"
When you add someone to a project, say which lane it's in. "I'm adding you as support, not driver" saves hours of guessing.
2. Emotional weight: the feelings you absorb from everyone else
Liane told me about a scene every team has lived through. Someone walks in with a grumpy face. Suddenly everyone is grumpy. Two people snap at each other.
"And you're like, all this, because this guy actually just stepped in a puddle on the way into the office," she said. "It had nothing to do with [us]."
This is emotional contagion. Moods spread from person to person, often without anyone noticing.
Wharton professor Sigal Barsade tested this in a clever 2002 study. She planted a trained actor in small groups working on a task. The actor showed different moods: cheerful and warm in some groups, irritable and down in others. The mood spread through the groups. And when the actor spread a positive mood, the groups cooperated more, had less conflict, and rated their own performance higher.
Now multiply that by six teams. Liane again: "I'm not just exposed to the emotions and the frustrations and the conflict of like my six or eight folks. I'm in the firing line of that from a whole bunch of different groups."
And this weight is heavy for a real reason. Naomi Eisenberger's research at UCLA found that being left out in a simple online ball-tossing game activated a brain region also involved in processing physical pain. Liane's version: "When you say you hurt my feelings, well, it actually is hurt. It is pain."
So when a meeting turns tense, people's brains are reacting to a real threat.
Liane's favorite tool for these moments is what she calls a shield. When someone is "breathing fire" (her word for being upset in a meeting), say this:
"This is important. What do I need to understand?"
"It's almost impossible to keep screaming at someone who has just said to you, this is important, what do I need to understand," she told me. "Within about 90 seconds for most human beings, as they start to answer that question, the tears will stop, the screaming will stop, the frustration will stop."
Notice what's missing. No "calm down." No "it'll be fine." Those make the fire bigger.
Application:
Use the shield question the next time a conversation heats up. Then actually listen to the answer.
Check your own mood before a team meeting. As the leader, yours spreads the fastest.
Name your own emotional weight out loud when it's running high. Liane's example: "I noticed I'm getting a bit loud here... I think it's because if we go this way, then three months of my team's work is gonna go in the garbage can."
3. Energy reserves: why saying yes to everything drains everyone
Liane breaks trust into four layers: connection, confidence, reliability, and integrity. The one she worries about most right now is reliability.
"Reliability to me is the most common problem in trust right now," she said. "People saying yes to too many things, thinking that that's what it means to be a good team player."
When everyone says yes to everything, it’s a trust risk, because nobody can deliver on everything. Then everyone double-checks everyone. More meetings. More follow-ups. More load.
The fix starts with leaders modeling a different kind of honesty. Liane's rule is to always pair vulnerability with accountability.
Vulnerability alone sounds like: "I'm such a failure and I have no idea what to do here." It’s not helpful and people start getting worried.
Vulnerability paired with accountability sounds like this, in Liane's words: "I'm really feeling out of my depth here, I'm really worried that I can't do this up to the standard. I'd love your advice on who I could talk to... what I could be doing."
The first part builds connection. The second part builds confidence. As Liane put it, "we want our colleagues to feel connected to us and confident in us, especially if you're a leader."
When a leader says, "I'm stretched too thin on this, so here's what I'm dropping," it gives everyone else permission to do the same.
Application:
Ask your team: "What did you say yes to this month that you can't actually deliver well?" Then help them hand something back.
Model it first. Share one thing you're taking off your own plate, and why.
Pair every "I'm struggling" with a next step. That's what keeps vulnerability from turning into worry.
The bigger fix: not every group needs to be a team
This is my favorite idea from the whole conversation.
During COVID, Liane's family of four lived and worked in a small house. Her daughter was in her senior year of high school. Her son was in grade eight. Everyone sharing one bathroom. Everyone fighting for the Wi-Fi.
That's a team. Huge interdependence. You need high trust, constant communication, and lots of coordination.
Next door, they share a driveway with a neighbor. Every few years, a big snowstorm hits and someone asks, who's got the snowblower? Who knows if that new restaurant is any good?
That's a community. Some cooperation. Some trust. Far less coordination.
The word that separates them is interdependence.
Here's why it matters for burnout. Building trust takes real work, and the work grows fast as a group gets bigger. The number of one-to-one relationships in a group is n × (n − 1) ÷ 2. A team of 6 has 15 relationships. A team of 8 has 28. A team of 15 has 105. (Liane joked it might be "15 factorial." The real number is smaller, but still a lot of relationships to keep healthy.)
Liane's sweet spot is six to eight people. Beyond that, "you really start to dilute the relationships and the trust."
So she asks organizations a hard question. Which of your "teams" are actually communities?
Her example: a group of finance business partners who all support different business units. They report to the same boss. They meet every Tuesday "just because you always have." But they don't depend on each other to get their work done.
Treat them like a team, and you get weekly meetings and forced collaboration. Treat them like a community, and you get something lighter and more useful: "What are you learning? What's going wrong? You've rolled out the new budgeting process first. What can we learn from you?"
"Communities don't need to meet every week," Liane said. "There's just so much that you don't need to do."
Application:
List every recurring group you lead. For each one, ask: "If one person dropped the ball, would the others fail?" If the answer is no, it's probably a community.
Move communities to a lighter rhythm. Monthly instead of weekly. Shared learning instead of status updates.
Save your team-building energy for the groups that truly depend on each other.
What if you're not the boss?
Liane's core belief is that you can change your team from any seat at the table.
If your boss is a crisis junkie, the cause is usually a failure of alignment. Liane uses a baseball pop fly to explain it. The ball goes up. Either two players crash into each other, or everyone stands still and the ball drops between them.
You can fix that from below. Her suggestion: "Can we all meet together so we can hear what you're asking of one another, so that we can orchestrate our work more effectively?"
Same goes for the go fishing list. You can ask for one. "Which of these should I drive, which should I support, and which can I let go of?" Most bosses have never been asked that question. Most will be relieved you did.
The playbook
Sort the work. Drive, support, or go fishing for every person, every project.
Say it out loud. Permission only counts when people hear it.
Shrink the emotional weight. Use "This is important. What do I need to understand?" when things heat up.
Protect reliability. Help people hand back the yeses they can't keep, starting with your own.
Find your communities. Keep "team" for the groups that truly depend on each other.
References
Barsade, S. G. (2002). The ripple effect: Emotional contagion and its influence on group behavior. Administrative Science Quarterly, 47(4), 644–675. Link
Cross, R., Rebele, R., & Grant, A. (2016). Collaborative overload. Harvard Business Review, January–February 2016. PDF
Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302(5643), 290–292.
Leroy, S. (2009). Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residue when switching between work tasks. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 109(2), 168–181. Link
Davey, L. You First: Inspire Your Team to Grow Up, Get Along, and Get Stuff Done.
Davey, L. The Good Fight: Use Productive Conflict to Get Your Team and Organization Back on Track.
🔥 IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
7 Habits that quietly destroy your brand.
Your brand is what people think and feel about you when you are not in the room. And whether you intentionally build it or not, you already have one. Avoid these mistakes so it doesn’t cost you missed opportunities.
I hope this can help you influence your team to do their best work, without burning them out.
I’ll see you next Sunday!
Influence for good 🤘🏽,
Howie Chan
Creator of Influence Anyone