Have you ever heard of brownout?

Have you ever heard of brownout? Michael Kibler, founder and CEO of Corporate Balance Concepts, Inc and the creator of the Pinnacle Program – a holistic executive coaching and development programme, designed for sustainable high performance, has been studying the brownout phenomenon for years.

“Brownout is different from burnout because workers afflicted by it are not in obvious crisis. They seem to be performing fine: putting in massive hours, grinding out work while contributing to teams, and saying all the right things in meetings. However, they are operating in a silent state of continual overwhelm, and the predictable consequence is disengagement.” Kibler said.

In order to prevent brownout in an organization and retain top performers, managers must understand how they contribute to brownout. Today, I’ll touch on two of the top offenders.

Treat everyone equally. This is a motivation killer. Treating top performers the same way you do slackers shows your amazing employees that their efforts aren’t appreciated enough to create a distinction.

Tolerate poor performance. The weakest ones determine the strength of the team. If you permit them to exist without consequence, they will dictate the organization’s cultures, productivity, quality and service and drag the top performers down with them.

In a study by Leadership IQ, a training and research organization based in Washington, DC, 93 per cent of employees claimed that working with low performers decreased their productivity. Leadership IQ chief executive Mark Murphy described low performers as emotional vampires that suck the energy out of everyone around them.

Right alongside your marketing strategy should be your employees’ engagement strategy. One cannot do without the other.

Contact us today at marketing@searchlight.vc or (784) 456-1558 or (784) 494-0031. We’ll help you get noticed.