Work Until the Wheels Fall Off? Understanding The Lebron James Effect

It was the 2024 NBA playoffs. The Los Angeles Lakers were losing and in a series deficit, 0–3, against the Denver Nuggets. The team’s prospects of coming back and keeping their postseason alive seemed to be waning, but legendary player Lebron James wasn’t fazed. In a post-game 3 interview, James remarked, “As long as you still have life, then you obviously have belief. I just think you play ‘til the wheels fall off. That’s what it’s always about for me.”

Pouring your heart and soul into work as James did is something many professionals can relate to. Heavy workloads, deadlines, and relentless stress have become a fact of life—sometimes amplified for those working on distributed teams. You may feel that you need to stay at work until you reach James’s threshold—until the wheels fall off mentally and maybe physically. This work approach does have its values: Studies say you are more likely to enjoy your work, feel fulfilled, inspire others, and advance if you feel more engaged in work. For elite athletes like James, the “‘til-the-wheels-fall-off” mindset serves them well, but in business, it can quickly lead to personal burnout and mental fatigue, affecting your performance and well-being, as well as that of your team and organization.

Here are ways for talent developers (TDs) to support your teams and leaders by guiding a pivot from James’s mentality to a version more aligned with what peak engagement and performance look like for your organization:

Work Is a Marathon, Not a Sprint

In a workplace sprint, we can intentionally opt in for a short-term grind because we know it’s worth the tradeoff and it won’t last forever. This can create a shared sense of urgency and acceleration for an “all hands on deck” approach, which may be tied to an impending deadline or upcoming event. Being hyper-focused and delivering our best work can lead to incredible output and then great results. In fact, many knowledge workers look back with fondness to moments of intense shared effort that led to impressive outcomes.

For many organizations though, the day-to-day is always a sprint and there is never a cool-off period. Managers identify the goals; team members meet the goals and repeat. Frequently, teams can feel lost or as if they are constantly in execution mode, with no time for deep thinking or problem-solving. In addition, there is more focus placed on output without optimizing for efficiencies related to the time and effort put into accomplishing these results. In this operating mode, leaders lose access to the creative and critical thinking capabilities of their team. Emotional regulation and gut instincts start to decline as well, further eroding a culture of positivity or innovation.

In contrast, a marathon is a sustainable pace of work. Even in marathons, there are periods of rest and renewal, to ensure a steady pace can be maintained. In a work environment, this is accomplished by more explicitly designing and articulating working hours and rhythms. When managers do this in collaboration with their teams, agreements of communication cadence and meeting times can better be adapted to meet the team’s unique preferences and needs.

A New Approach to Avoiding Burnout

What can TD professionals do to help? First and foremost, you can find ways to do this yourselves. Practice ways to collaborate that feel sustainable, experiment with how to set working hours and deadlines that allow everyone on your team to use intentional times to unplug, and rest as mechanisms to accelerate the quality and efficiency of your projects.

If your executive team is open to it, partnering with them (or sourcing a coach to do this) to set the tone from the top is an extremely effective approach to shifting from a constant sprint to a marathon culture. To do this effectively, it is important to lean into how this will unlock better outcomes for the business. Examples include adapting your goal-setting or strategic planning process to lend itself to simpler and fewer goals. Sometimes just one goal with multiple metrics (key performance indicators/KPIs) associated with it will get you further. When employees have even three quarterly goals on top of executing their normal workload, we may be unintentionally fueling the always-be-sprinting mindset.

Another option is to source best practices unique to your company size, stage, and industry. These can be external best practices published by peer organizations or best practices you hear about from your TD peers in other companies. You can also source best practices happening in pockets of your own company. What is one person or team doing that helps them maintain high levels of engagement and performance without burning themselves out? Once you know what can work for your company, you can create a culture guide or short best-practice trainings to ensure these options are understood and normalized. Examples I have heard recently to be particularly effective: Choose one day per week as focus time (no meetings), delete all recurring meetings every six months (only add them back to the calendar if they have a clear purpose), and encourage no communication Friday evening to Monday morning, setting a qualitative rally cry such as “Efficiency through Process Innovation” and reinforce it over a full six month period with trainings.

If you feel stuck, you may consider finding support for yourself. Coaches are attuned to the nuances of company culture and may identify resources or paths forward that otherwise would not be considered. Working in conjunction with talent leaders, coaches will incorporate new mindsets into teams so that there is a shared vision, and employees are empowered to work together. In doing so, you will invest in a company culture which prioritizes ongoing success paired with the mental wellbeing of everyone involved, rather than a constant sprint, which results in fear-driven work and regrettable attrition.

Play Hard—But Not Until the Wheels Fall Off

Lebron James’s mentality is not for everyone. While it can work for athletes of his caliber, in business it doesn’t translate to an optimal high-performance culture as it does on the court. Set boundaries, encourage leaders to work with you or a coach, and reframe company culture accordingly, and share widely success stories from peers and bright spots within your own company. Then you will ensure your team won’t just do good work but great work in a method that’s sustainable for long-term success.