It's Not the Workload, It's the Thought Load with Dr. Liane Davey

How much of your team's struggle is really about the work and how much is about everything else? In this episode, Kevin talks with Dr. Liane Davey about why the real challenge many teams face isn't simply workload, but "thought load". Liane defines this as the rising cognitive demands, emotional burdens, and depleted energy reserves that make work feel heavier than it may appear. She explains how multitasking, constant urgency, oversized meetings, unclear priorities, and poor energy habits quietly drain performance and create more rework, stress, and burnout. She also shares practical ways leaders can help, including replacing urgency with true priority, creating space for focused work, taking real breaks, managing emotions rather than ignoring them, and modeling healthier boundaries.

Listen For

00:00 Introduction & today's topic: thought load vs. workload 01:38 Introducing Liane Davey, the "Teamwork Doctor" 02:48 Why Liane wrote Thought Load 04:01 The big idea: it's not workload, it's thought load 05:31 Why this problem is bigger now than ever 09:13 The myth of multitasking 11:42 Sense of urgency vs. sense of priority 13:19 Busy vs. productive vs. effective 16:34 Restoring your energy: waterfalls, wells, and cracks in the cup 20:51 Why breaks are for winners, not losers 22:30 How leaders unknowingly transfer thought load to their teams 25:16 Can AI help manage thought load? 28:46 One thing organizations can do: shrink teams, strengthen communities 31:04 What Liane is reading right now 32:06 Where to find Liane and her work 33:05 Kevin's closing challenge: now what?

Liane's Story: Dr. Liane Davey is a New York Times bestselling author of You First: Inspire Your Team to Grow Up, Get Along, and Get Stuff Done, The Good Fight: Use Productive Conflict to Get Your Team and Organization Back on Track, and her latest, Thoughtload: Manage the Madness and Free Your Team to Do Great Work. She is an Organizational Psychologist, CEO advisor, and sought-after keynote speaker with more than 25 years of experience researching and advising teams on how to perform at their best. Known as the "teamwork doctor," she works with teams from the frontlines to the boardroom, across industries and around the world, from Boston to Bangkok. Through her work with hundreds of teams, including 26 Global Fortune 500 companies (and counting), she has developed a practical, research-backed approach to solving the challenges that prevent teams from working effectively together.

https://lianedavey.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/liane-davey-2574911/

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