Laura Martin Of The Glinda Group On How the World’s Best Leaders Build Burnout-Free Workplace Cultures
An Interview With Chad Silverstein
Be crystal clear on priorities. As Brene Brown famously said: “Clear is kind.” Burnout often begins with confusion: unclear goals, shifting priorities, or handoffs without context. When people know what success looks like — and believe it’s achievable — they can focus their energy instead of constantly recalibrating. Use short-term planning cycles and make sure initiatives are resourced before they launch. It’s more rewarding as a team to accomplish fewer things faster than to try to push fifty initiatives forward an inch at a time.
In today’s high-pressure business landscape, burnout has become an epidemic affecting both employees and leaders. The question is — how can companies create workplace cultures that prioritize well-being without compromising performance? To dive into this important topic, we are interviewing Laura Martin.
Laura Martin is the co-founder and CEO of The Glinda Group, a consultancy that helps organizations drive engagement. With 25 years of leadership experience across Fortune 100 companies and high-growth startups, she brings a rare blend of strategic clarity, cross-functional experience, and human insight. She is known for her optimistic style, systems-thinking approach, and practical wisdom that helps companies inspire action and elevate performance.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?
I’ve been blessed with what I call a “choose your own adventure” career. It’s only in looking back over two-plus decades that I can see a story arc that makes perfect sense.
To complete the arc, I have to start with one fun fact about what a nerdy kid I was. Anyone who asked six-year-old Laura “What do you want to be when you grow up?” got a very confident answer: “I’m going to be an entrepreneur!” Somewhere along the way, I forgot this. By college, my risk tolerance was low, and my enthusiasm for steady paychecks and health benefits was high.
I graduated with a business degree and took a job at Target right out of school. I never expected to stay in retail, but over the next 17 years, I changed roles about every 18 months. I worked in store management and at corporate headquarters in Finance, HR, Operations, and IT — 11 roles, 9 promotions, and a crash course in how large organizations run. I always joked that I’d changed careers multiple times without ever rolling over my 401(k).
I left Target with a huge range of functional experience, but very little industry experience beyond retail. That changed when I joined The Marcus Buckingham Company, a leader development consultancy on the path to becoming a tech company. The whole company was smaller than the last team I had led. I’d never worked remotely, never managed external clients, never been a consultant. It was humbling, and incredible. As I built relationships and absorbed the core principles of the company — we perform at our best when we are intentional about working within our strengths — I discovered skills I never knew I had, and had the freedom to explore the best version of myself without having to worry about fitting a precise corporate mold. I had the opportunity to craft the perfect role over and over again as we grew and the business evolved. I learned Client Success, Product Management, Executive Coaching, and more, working with clients in healthcare, professional services, sports, and beyond. I discovered how much I love small company culture and still love saying: “I haven’t created a PowerPoint deck to get a decision made since 2015, and I’m never going back.”
Like many startups, we were acquired — by ADP. I admit I had reservations, but the cultures were surprisingly aligned, and we gained access to incredible resources. I met more wonderful colleagues, including a brilliant mad-scientist type who held the title of Chief Behavioral Economist. (Spoiler: he reappears later.)
I was having an amazing time with a team I loved, but the pandemic gave me time and space to reflect. It was clear the world of work was evolving faster than most companies could keep up. I felt a pull to engage in those bigger conversations. So when the opportunity came to step into a Chief HR Officer role at a fast-growing tech company, I jumped. I loved being in the C-suite and leading HR at scale. From there, I was recruited to an even larger, global firm — working with PE investors and a global board — adding another layer of experience to my journey.
And then, the mad scientist called.
He had left ADP and was consulting. We’d stayed in touch, swapping ideas and insights. Now, he had more work than he could handle and saw a bigger opportunity. His question was: “Are you ready to be a CEO?:” My question was: “Did I still remember what six-year-old Laura once said?”
Turns out, I did. That’s how The Glinda Group was born — a consultancy designed to help leaders build cultures that are not only high-performing, but deeply human. We bring behavioral science and decades of leadership experience to help organizations solve their toughest engagement challenges.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
Probably not the most interesting story — as a CHRO you see it all, but you can’t talk about it!
But one moment that stands out was my first time experiencing a totally new cultural context while also being put on the spot as a senior leader.
During my time at Target, I traveled to our offices in India. It was early in a new role, and I thought the trip was mainly to meet colleagues and learn about the division. I had a rough agenda, but not much detail — and I’m not someone who needs a script to feel comfortable, so I was genuinely excited.
What I didn’t realize was that the very first day I was in the office, I wasn’t watching the morning panel discussion — I was on it. The topic? “The Future of Technology.” I had a bit of an out-of-body moment, but I took the mic, leaned in, and did my best. I vividly remember saying, “If you’d asked me twenty years ago, I’d have bet on flying cars — but no one imagined FaceTime.”
Throughout the trip, I kept finding myself in moments where people looked to me to go first, offer perspective, or lead a conversation — often without warning. It was a crash course in executive presence and a lasting lesson: when you’re in a senior role, people are looking to you — whether you’re ready or not.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
I think that everyone’s path to success is unique. It’s wonderful to learn from others’ experiences, and I also think we benefit most from paying close attention to our own unique characteristics.
For me, I believe three things that have served me well are curiosity, optimism, and a natural preference for collaboration.
Curiosity is related to my love of new experiences and learning new things, which has consistently pulled me forward to explore new responsibilities. Sometimes that led to promotions, but some of my most meaningful career experiences were lateral moves, or even just taking on projects in addition to my day job. The wildest example of this was when I was running Client Success at The Marcus Buckingham Company and was asked to also manage the Product team while the leader was on a leave of absence. That was the catalyst for bringing together several previously disparate teams and led to a time of incredible innovation (and fun!)
I’m not optimistic at the expense of being practical, but I do generally believe things are going to work out. That keeps me going when things are difficult, since I’m always convinced there’s a best path forward from any situation. My job is to figure it out and go. One of my favorite pieces of feedback I’ve consistently received throughout my career is that I make teams feel like they really can be successful, even when the path forward seems rocky.
Collaboration is such a buzzword, but I seem to have a natural instinct to seek out the right partners to move work forward. I think the fact that I have worked in so many different functions has given me an ability to work very effectively across organizational boundaries. Where some see insurmountable constraints due to organizational silos, I see fellow humans with whom I can build productive partnerships, regardless of department or title. I have no patience or regard for an “us vs. them” mentality within an organization.
Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. Can you share a pivotal moment in your career when you realized the importance of creating a burnout-free workplace culture? How did it influence your approach to leadership?
There are two key events that really drove this home for me, at very different scales.
The first was early in my career, when I was still a relatively young manager. One of my direct reports became a single mom. In my effort to be supportive, I realized that many of our team norms were designed around the preferences of young professionals with few responsibilities outside of work. Long days were the norm. Team bonding happened after hours. To be clear — she never asked for anything to change. But trying to see things through her eyes helped me notice what was previously invisible to me. I connected her with a mentor who was a successful working mom, and I began to rethink how we structured work — and fun — so that being “a great teammate” didn’t require sacrificing life outside of work. That shift benefited all of us.
The second pivotal moment came in May of 2020. I was leading a large, geographically distributed team, already navigating the uncertainty and stress of the pandemic. Then George Floyd was killed. I live in Minneapolis, as did about 15 members of my team. We were a diverse group and up to that point I thought we were all very open and transparent with each other, but that incident, and its aftermath, broke open a whole different level of discourse. There were people on my team who were not okay. They didn’t need a motivational speech. They didn’t need resilience training. They needed space. What I learned in that season was the difference between toxic positivity and genuine support. My job wasn’t to figure out how to get back to business as usual — it was to lead with empathy, remove non-essential pressures, and protect the work that mattered most. And yes, we let go of some expectations. But not the critical work. And not the humanity. I didn’t navigate it perfectly, but I learned so much. That experience permanently changed how I lead. Now, I try to maintain space to adapt as much as possible to what is happening in people’s lives — because no one does their best work when they’re barely holding it together.
What are some of the most common causes of burnout in today’s workplaces, and what signs should leaders look out for in their teams?
The clearest definition of burnout is “chronic workplace stress that is not effectively managed.” The key phrases there are chronic and not effectively managed. Stress itself isn’t the enemy — there’s a mountain of research that shows some degree of stress can actually enhance performance, if we have the right mindset and support. Burnout happens when the stress becomes relentless, or when small stressors stack up without relief.
This can show up in many ways. Leaders may notice team members who seem constantly distracted or exhausted, respond with cynicism or frustration to otherwise routine interactions, or begin to drop the ball in ways that feel uncharacteristic. These are often signs that someone is approaching — or already in — a state of burnout.
I’ve spent many years studying and helping organizations drive engagement, and while burnout and engagement aren’t exact opposites, they are related. Beyond the obvious cause of an overwhelming workload, I often find burnout emerges when the core drivers of engagement are missing. Here are a few signals I look for:
- They’re doing work that doesn’t align with their strengths
- Their efforts go unrecognized
- Their goals or expectations feel vague or constantly shifting
- They don’t feel a sense of connection or support from their coworkers
This is why proactively measuring engagement, by asking the right questions, is a critical ingredient to preventing burnout.
How do you personally balance the need to drive results with the need to ensure employee well-being?
I don’t actually see those two goals as being in conflict. When teams are burned out, exhausted, or frustrated, productivity and quality suffer. Yes, there are moments when you need to push — responding to a critical issue or hitting a tight deadline — but if that’s your default mode, it’s a sign that something in your planning or resource model is broken.
In addition to the engagement drivers I mentioned earlier, I work hard to keep business results and team capacity in sync. One strategy I use is setting goals on relatively short time horizons. It varies by business, but as a rule, I focus on 90-day outcomes. It helps create urgency without overwhelm, and it gives us natural checkpoints to reassess capacity and priorities.
Prioritization can be tough for me — I’m an optimist, which means I tend to believe we can do more than we realistically can. I’m also the queen of scope creep. But I know this about myself, which is why I lean on team members who are more pragmatic to keep things grounded. The truth is, it’s more productive — and more energizing — to do fewer things really well than to inch forward on a hundred half-baked ideas.
The second discipline I rely on is proactive resourcing. Every priority needs to be staffed appropriately from the start. That has to be owned at the leadership level. When you’re clear up front about which teams need to be involved, you can avoid the chaos that happens when work gets tossed over the wall to a team that wasn’t expecting it and didn’t plan for it. That kind of friction creates frustration, rework, and… burnout.
What role does communication play in creating a burnout-free workplace, and how can leaders foster open dialogue about mental health and work-life balance?
Communication is critical — but not just communication volume. What matters is quality, tone, and intent.
I personally don’t love the term “work-life balance” because it implies there’s some perfect formula or ratio at which we are “balanced”, and I don’t think that exists. Work is part of life. We don’t pit any other category against life — no one talks about “exercise-life balance.” I have always preferred the language that exists around well-being, across multiple areas of life: physical, mental, social, financial, career, community.
When companies acknowledge that employees are more than just their job titles — and make space for conversations about what people need to be well — it creates conditions where the best ideas can surface, and people can truly thrive.
As leaders, we can’t just ask about deliverables. We have to normalize checking in on how people are doing — without making it performative. That can be as simple as starting 1:1s with, “How’s your energy this week?” or “Is anything feeling harder than it should be right now?” Over time, those kinds of questions create trust. And trust is what makes real conversations possible.
What is your take on traditional corporate norms, like long working hours and “always-on” availability? Are these practices outdated, or do they still have a place in certain industries?
I’m hesitant to speak in absolutes; there are industries and roles, especially those involving safety or emergency response, where being available at all hours really is a matter of life or death. But for most knowledge work, I think that most of what we came to accept as normal in the classic hustle culture is outdated.
If you can’t tie long hours or constant availability to actual business outcomes, they probably aren’t serving your organization. In many cases, they’re doing real harm: fueling burnout, reducing productivity, and signaling that boundaries aren’t respected. The goal shouldn’t be to monitor hours worked, or face time in the office. Tech advancements allow for automation, asynchronous work with agreed-upon response windows, and other options to optimize for creativity and impact.
Based on your experience and research, can you share “5 Ways to Build a Burnout-Free Workplace Culture”?
1. Be crystal clear on priorities. As Brene Brown famously said: “Clear is kind.” Burnout often begins with confusion: unclear goals, shifting priorities, or handoffs without context. When people know what success looks like — and believe it’s achievable — they can focus their energy instead of constantly recalibrating. Use short-term planning cycles and make sure initiatives are resourced before they launch. It’s more rewarding as a team to accomplish fewer things faster than to try to push fifty initiatives forward an inch at a time.
2. Be patient with your people, but ruthless with your processes. Audit for friction. Don’t try to “performance-manage” your way out of burnout. Look first at broken workflows, redundant approvals, and unclear priorities. Ruthlessly fix inefficiency — not people. Consider the human experience at every stage of how work gets done. Create clear communication channels to surface pain points, and empower teams to adapt workflows that are not working. The beauty of this approach is that the best ideas will surface from within the teams, and it’s both empowering and fun to see fast solutions emerge. I once made a game of “slaying time vampires” across all teams in an organization, and the ideas that surfaced not only sped up work, they also built deeper connections between departments and dramatically improved communication across organizational boundaries.
3. Radically frequent attention. The importance of frequent check-ins is one of the biggest leadership lessons I learned in my time at The Marcus Buckingham Company. The most powerful tool a manager has to prevent burnout is consistent, meaningful check-ins. A weekly “What are you working on?” and “How can I help?” can surface issues early, prevent overload, and build the kind of trust that keeps people engaged even in high-pressure environments. The frequency matters.
4. Focus on strengths. This works for multiple reasons. When people are doing work that they enjoy and are good at, they experience work very differently than when they are doing work they dislike or struggle with. We all know that an hour on a dreaded task and an hour on a favorite project don’t feel like the same amount of time, and we can be more energized after a ten hour day of winning at work than after a six hour day of drudgery. When leaders understand the distinct strengths of their team members, they can be more thoughtful in how work gets assigned, and the whole team’s performance elevates.
5. Normalize conversations about well-being. A burnout-free culture doesn’t just happen — it has to be designed and modeled. That starts with how leaders talk about energy, stress, and what’s realistic. You can skip the toxic positivity. Instead, make it safe for people to say, “I’m at capacity,” or “This pace isn’t sustainable.” Ask, “How’s your energy this week?” in your 1:1s. Culture is built in the moments between the meetings.
What do you say to skeptics who believe that creating a burnout-free culture may come at the cost of productivity or profits?
I tell them to follow the data. Burnout is costly. A team that is in a constant state of exhaustion, frustration, or anxiety is less productive, less creative, less engaged, and less healthy than a team who is not burned out. And when you have a team that knows you care about their well-being, in those times that do require heroic effort to solve a critical issue, they’ll run through a wall for you.
Can you share a real-world example of a team or organization where prioritizing employee well-being led to unexpected or exceptional results?
There are plenty of great examples from smaller, more agile companies — but I’m especially encouraged when large, complex organizations take the lead. One that stands out to me is EY. They were ahead of the curve in appointing a Chief Wellbeing Officer and have since taken a deeply data-driven approach to employee wellness.
What I love about their strategy is that it goes far beyond perks. For example, their internal research found that employees who take two days off per month report significantly higher well-being — and are 1.6 times more likely to stay. And participants who complete their mindful work training course report higher energy, increased ability to think clearly, and reduced time ruminating.
EY’s ability to integrate well-being into the business — through culture, leadership, and measurement — is what makes their approach so compelling.
How can leaders in high-pressure industries (like tech, finance, or healthcare) realistically apply these principles without falling behind on deadlines or performance goals?
One thing I’ve learned in consulting is that every industry feels like a high-pressure industry from the inside. And as mentioned, there are roles where the stakes are literally life or death. But that’s exactly why well-being can’t be seen as “soft.” It’s foundational.
If your team is constantly overwhelmed, you’re already behind. There’s what I call a “productivity tax” when you’re leaking energy, focus, and clarity. Burnout doesn’t just reduce performance; it distorts judgment, limits innovation, and increases costly turnover. You can’t afford that in any industry.
What I’ve seen work well in fast-paced environments is shifting from vague, annual goals to tight 90-day priorities. When you operate in shorter cycles, it’s easier to course-correct and spot early signs of overload. I also believe that prioritizing doesn’t mean doing less overall — it means doing the right things in the right order, with the right people resourced from the start.
The leaders who win in high-pressure industries aren’t the ones who grind the hardest. They’re the ones who build teams that are clear, connected, and able to sustain their focus.
What trends or innovations are you seeing in workplace well-being and culture that excite you the most?
This may be controversial, but I feel genuinely optimistic about the potential impact of AI, especially when paired with insights from biometric data through wearables. I know the noise around AI right now is loud, both the hype and the fear. But I believe there is a real opportunity to hyper-personalize well-being benefits, education, and interventions in a way we’ve never been able to do before. When we move beyond one-size-fits-all programs and meet people where they are — physically, mentally, and emotionally — we create the conditions for real, sustained well-being.
In your opinion, how does a burnout-free culture impact a company’s long-term success, its relationships with employees, and even its customers?
I’ve long believed that creating a culture that prioritizes well-being isn’t just a nice-to-have — it’s the only way to unlock sustained creativity, engagement, and effectiveness. When people feel supported, they bring more of their energy, insight, and initiative to the table.
I also strongly believe that how an organization treats its employees shapes how those employees treat customers. That impact is far greater than anything you can write into a handbook or enforce with a policy.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement to help more companies embrace burnout-free workplace cultures, what would it be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
If I could start a movement, it would be to seize this unique moment in history — when advances in technology are reshaping jobs, companies, and entire industries at breakneck speed — and design human well-being into the center of that transformation.
Right now, the conversation is dominated by fear and hype. Will jobs be replaced? What happens to human effort in a world of automation, reskilling, and constant disruption? Both organizational leaders and individual workers are navigating deep uncertainty. But what if, instead of letting technology drive the agenda, we set a guiding principle from the start?
If I could wave a magic wand (and I mean, my company is called The Glinda Group…), I’d embed this into every conversation and decision: that this sea change in the world of work must, first and foremost, improve human lives. Not just for employees — but for customers, communities, and future generations. That’s the movement I’d start.
How can our readers further follow you online?
Thanks so much! You can always find me on LinkedIn, or reach out directly via www.glindagroup.com
This was great. Thank you so much for the time you spent sharing with us.
About the Interviewer: Chad Silverstein is a seasoned entrepreneur with 25+ years of experience as a Founder and CEO. While attending Ohio State University, he launched his first company, Choice Recovery, Inc., a nationally recognized healthcare collection agency — twice ranked the #1 workplace in Ohio. In 2013, he founded [re]start, helping thousands of people find meaningful career opportunities. After selling both companies, Chad shifted his focus to his true passion — leadership. Today, he coaches founders and CEOs at Built to Lead, advises Authority Magazine’s Thought Leader Incubator.
Laura Martin Of The Glinda Group On How the World’s Best Leaders Build Burnout-Free Workplace… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.