How My Team Beat Burnout with a Simple Chart
I once inherited a diverse team with high levels of burnout and attrition. With a looming major deadline, I needed to shift culture quickly and had little room for error.
Let’s fast-forward to the tool that helped me take a team with an average retention of two months to a place of stability, rapid growth, and productivity.
Sanford’s Theory of Challenge and Support
At a previous startup, one of my managers had taken me on a walk and asked me a simple question weeks before my biggest product deadline ever.
“You signed up for a challenge, and that’s great — but do you feel supported?”
In this comment, my manager was able to surface a need that I didn’t know I had, and I scribbled a diagram on a sticky note when I got back to my desk.
By taking on challenges and never asking for help, I was consistently putting myself in the burnout quadrant without realizing it. I had periodically used the graph as a personal check-in tool for myself. Could I extend it to my team now? Was there formal thinking around this?
A little research along those lines led me to Sanford’s Theory of Challenge and Support. While studying the success of college students, Sanford noticed that students who were both challenged and supported succeeded in the real world. His classic example is around teaching a kid to tie a shoelace — if you don’t show him how (no support) he won’t succeed, but if you tie the shoelaces for him (no challenge) he won’t succeed either. His theory illustrated the top-right corner of my graph.
Challenge, Support, and Retention
I adjusted my chart to communicate how challenge and support relate to an individual contributor’s future at a company.
Let’s take a quick look at each quadrant. Engineers in challenging workplaces with little support (typical for an early-stage startup) are likely to burn out. Engineers lacking both support and challenge (typical for a disorganized workplace) are likely to leave. Engineers who have high levels of support, but no real challenge (think of that cushy engineering job) are in limbo — they’re not going to leave, but they’ll also never be as engaged or passionate as your best engineers. Finally, the engineer who is adequately supported and challenged enters growth and is most likely to stay.
Based on this chart, it was easy to see why the standard approach to this problem (increasing support through process) wasn’t enough to keep everyone happy.
The increase in support moved some members of my team from burnout to growth, and they were happy — but it moved some members from turnover to stagnation.
The Chart as a One-on-One Tool
I began to show my “stagnant” group the chart in one-on-one’s and asked them to place themselves somewhere on the graph (see an example at the end of this article).
I then asked, “What would be a meaningful challenge for you? What are you interested in?” Based on the answer, we aligned on challenges to boost them into the growth quadrant, with bi-monthly “chart check-ins” to make sure they weren’t slipping into the burnout quadrant.
These goals were sometimes engineering challenges, and other times they came in the form of an article or lateral growth in management or product.
I discovered a lot about my team in the process. For instance, one of my more productive engineers had actually moved from burnout to stagnation after we centralized engineering tasks. She had been particularly good at interacting with stakeholders, and although standardized tasks had decreased her workload (increased support), we hadn’t decreased the right kind of work for her. Instead, we had removed the opportunity (challenge) for her to develop a unique skill set. The very premise of standard engineering process (“just let the engineers code”) wasn’t valid for this individual.
With this new insight, we were able to split her time between product (10%) and engineering (90%), resulting in an increase in both her engagement and the quality of centralized engineering requests.
What if you don’t agree on quadrant?
This exercise is about your team member’s perception of their environment. You should assess where you think they should be and keep an eye on a very useful metric: the delta between those two perceptions.
Sanford later added a third dimension to his theory — readiness. Even with correct levels of support and challenge, if the student in question was not in a growth mindset, they wouldn’t progress.
I believe this is what a consistent mismatch in perceptions indicates. If a team member never feels like they’re in the growth quadrant, despite receiving extended amounts of support and challenge, their position or environment might just not be a good fit until that person is ready and able to shift into a growth mindset. Unfortunately, no tool takes away the need to make tough calls about team members.
It’s important to note that if you’re seeing consistent deltas across everyone you manage, you’re likely missing something as a manager and need to improve your communication or understanding of the team’s work. Is your support less effective than you think? Do your engineers tend to over or under-estimate challenge?
Stagnation as a goal
I also found that not everyone wanted to be in the growth quadrant at all times. When an engineer chooses to temporarily move into stagnation, their job is to support an engineer in growth. This kind of cycling between growth and stagnation builds a healthy, balanced team dynamic. Self-care and camaraderie become core values without ever having to write them on a whiteboard.
This technique helped me humanize my team members more than anything else — it’s unrealistic to think that we can consistently work at 100%, so we take turns sprinting and resting. Your job as a manager is simply to orchestrate that, making for better estimations and a healthier work-life balance.
Communicate, Track and Aim for Growth
Conclusively, as the engineering workforce becomes more diverse in their training, thinking, and background, we need communication tools to help us re-evaluate the stereotypes we operate on as engineering managers.
Hopefully, this tool will help you dig deeper into your team’s real needs and skills, all while tracking quadrants to accurately predict and reduce the likelihood of turnover.
For anyone else hoping to transform their team, I recommend reading about change management to prepare you for the nuances of these one-on-ones. “The Default Future” is a powerful first concept to explore.
I welcome your ideas, questions, and experiences as I continue to iterate on this system!
~Doa (@daughterofpoets)
p.s. TYSM to Chuck Groom, Bo Ren, and Aaron Graves for looking over my ramblings, James Nord for inspiring the support/challenge connection, and Robert Tod for nagging me to finally hit publish.
Resources: See a sample chart below. Click here for a blank chart.
