🔵We want our people to get more done without burning out or checking out

CAPABILITIES

How staff can get more done without checking or burning out

Unlocking sustainable productivity through Emotional Intelligence (EI)

Key points

Growth is back on the CEO agenda, but in 2025, the road to greater performance is paved with complexity, caution, and cost control. For HR leaders, that pressure is increasingly being distilled into a single, stubborn goal: improving employee productivity. Sixty-five percent of CHROs now rate this as a top priority, yet productivity at both staff and managerial levels remains middling—and, in many cases, is in quiet decline. The reason? Many organisations are pursuing output without addressing the emotional and cognitive conditions that make productivity sustainable.

This is where Emotional Intelligence (EI), specifically in the form of applied improvisation, flow state practice, and growth mindset training, must become a capability embedded across the workforce.

The productivity problem managers can't ignore

Gartner’s data reveals that organisations that execute on targeted productivity strategies—rather than assuming traditional HR initiatives will indirectly improve output—can see up to a 35% increase in employee productivity. This isn’t abstract. That 35% is equivalent to 2.8 more hours of effective work per person, per day—translating to over $47,000 in added revenue per head annually.

But organisations are hitting a wall:

Managers struggle to coach productivity because they lack the time or confidence.
Employees feel productivity expectations are vague, unrealistic, or misaligned.
‘Measurable’ productivity is often prioritised over meaningful work.
Local context is ignored in favour of centralised, uniform mandates.

In these conditions, staff are disengaging. Quiet quitting, presenteeism, and burnout rise. And managers, themselves under pressure, lack the tools to reverse the slide.

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A study by consulting firm Gallup showed that for every 10,000 workers struggling or suffering, it equates to $20 million of additional lost opportunity, and that employee burnout contributes to an annual global figure of $322 billon of lost productivity.

What traditional approaches miss

Efficiency alone doesn’t equal value creation. According to Gartner, true productivity is the convergence of two things:

Employee efficiency: delivering quality work consistently and on time.
Employee value creation: directing effort toward priority-aligned, results-focused work.

Without emotional and relational alignment between staff and leadership, both of these suffer. Organisations that fail to treat productivity as a relational and psychological capability often breed cynicism rather than performance.

What managers can shine their focus

EI enables people to navigate ambiguity, sustain motivation, collaborate effectively, and self-regulate through stress and shifting priorities. It's not a nice-to-have; it’s what underpins every single one of Gartner’s four CHRO productivity imperatives. Here's how:

1.

Becoming a true productivity partner

Managers are urged to embed productivity metrics role-by-role, not team-by-team. But co-designing these metrics requires psychological safety, mutual trust, and clarity of purpose—all of which stem from EI-informed conversations.

Training managers in emotionally intelligent coaching through applied improvisation equips them with the ability to ask reflective questions, listen deeply, and challenge productively. It turns ‘performance reviews’ into energising collaborations.

2.

Empowering local leadership

Lee Health, cited by Gartner, succeeded by empowering local leaders to tailor productivity strategies to their team's reality. This only works when local leaders can read emotional cues, balance authority with empathy, and foster genuine ownership. This is the language of EI.

3.

Making data feel human

Gartner stresses role-specific metrics and localised thresholds. But data without context dehumanises. Applied EI methods enable managers to translate numbers into narratives—“Here’s what this drop means and what support looks like.” This preserves motivation while still holding standards.

4.

Preventing burnout, fuelling flow

Training teams to access flow states—a concept popularised by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi—means designing work around intrinsic motivation. Flow, EI, and productivity are deeply linked: where challenge meets capability and emotional regulation is high, performance follows.

EI-focused practices help staff:

Recognise and reframe unproductive self-talk (growth mindset).
Move quickly from reactive to proactive states (improv-based responsiveness).
Reconnect personal meaning to team and organisational purpose (value creation).

The upside: performance, loyalty, reputation

When EI becomes a leadership and team-wide capability, organisations are:

3.1x more likely to grow revenue
3.6x more likely to grow profitability
3.9x more likely to see brand reputation improve (Gartner)

And most importantly, they are more likely to retain and re-engage top talent. Productivity without burnout is not a contradiction—it’s a leadership challenge.

Closing thought

Improving productivity in 2025 demands more than better tools or tighter performance metrics. It requires a rehumanisation of the workplace where psychological safety, authentic collaboration, and adaptive thinking thrive.

EI isn’t the soft stuff—it’s the infrastructure. Without it, productivity remains a hopeful metric. With it, it becomes a lived capability.

One of the most common beginner improv exercises that promotes interpersonal mindfulness is the “Mirror Game” (Leonard & Yorton, 2015; Spolin, 1999, p.61; Halpern et al., 1994). In this game, participants pair up and one member of the duo is instructed to begin making spontaneous movements and motions, including facial expressions.
As this is often one of the first exercises introduced in improv training, it is astonishing how quickly beginners enter a mindful state. Initial awkwardness, judgmental laughter or behavior, and clunky movements are quickly replaced by connection and presence through concentrated attention towards one another.

During de-briefing, participants commonly discuss how they notice subtle facial expressions or movements that were previously missed, or how they suddenly become aware of the sensation of the air passing by as they move their hands.

Not only does this exercise create a mindful state, it also appears to build trust, connection, and understanding in the process. Cohen and Miller (2009) utilized this exercise in their experiment for their interpersonal mindfulness training program and found that participants experienced enhanced connection, emotional intelligence, and well-being.

Jordana Cole

Researcher, Scholarly Commons, Master of Applied Positive Psychology Capstone Projects, Penn Libraries, University of Pennsylvania

For further insights on cultivating high-performing teams and embedding psychological safety into your organisational culture, connect with Rebooter Group's Human Psychological Safety and Performance specialists.