What Rugby Taught Me About Sharing the Load at Work

Rugby is a funny teacher. You go in thinking it is about strength and grit. You learn fast that the real game is shape, trust, and doing your job so someone else can do theirs.

I played in the forwards. If the pack splinters, you get turned over. If everyone tries to be a hero, you lose metres. The best sides are not the ones with the loudest speeches. They are the ones who share the work, make clear calls, and reset quickly when a phase goes wrong.

Work isn’t a scrum. The lesson still carries. A lot of burnout is not a personal failure. It is a team shape problem. Too many people carrying invisible load. Too few people allowed to say, “I’m at capacity”. Too much “just one more” landing on the same shoulders.

There isn’t a pill, potion, hack or app that “solves” burnout. Tools can support; recovery and prevention come from behaviour, boundaries, workload design, and supportive environments.

This post is about sharing the load in ways that hold up in real workplaces. Not posters. Not slogans. The small habits that stop one person becoming the shock absorber for everyone else.

The myth of the strong individual

Most teams still run on a quiet myth: the best people can carry more. They respond quickly, fix messes, cover gaps, and keep things moving. They get praised for being “reliable”.

That praise can be a trap. It teaches the team that overload belongs to the strong ones. It also hides the true cost of work, because the cost gets paid in evenings, stress, and sick days.

In rugby, if one player keeps making the tackle because the line is broken, you do not clap them forever. You fix the line. In work, we often clap the firefighter and keep the faulty wiring.

What “sharing the load” actually means

Sharing the load is not dumping work on other people. It means designing the flow so the right work gets done, the work is spread fairly, people are not on duty all the time, and priorities are clear enough for honest trade-offs.

That needs both individual behaviour and team design. You can do your best personal boundaries and still burn out in a badly run system. At the same time, teams work better when individuals speak up early and keep their commitments clean.

Lesson one: call the play, then stick to it

In rugby, someone calls the play. You do not run ten different plans because everyone has their own opinion. You commit, you run it, then you review the outcome.

At work, “ten different plans” looks like ten priorities. Every request is urgent. The week is a pile of half-finished tasks. People keep switching and nobody finishes cleanly.

One simple fix is a short priority list that the team can see. Not a catalogue of everything. A list of the few outcomes that matter this week. When something new arrives, you update the list and name what moved.

If you lead a team, make this your default. If you do not, you can still ask for it. “What are the top three outcomes for this week?” is a strong question.

Lesson two: do your job, not everyone’s job

In the forwards, your role is clear. If you chase someone else’s job, your channel opens and the team pays. You can call it effort, but it is still poor shape.

At work, role blur is a common burnout driver. People pick up work “just to help” because it feels faster. Over time it turns into hidden responsibility and quiet resentment.

A useful habit is to name ownership. Who owns the task. Who supports. Who decides. Who needs to be told. You can do this in plain English in an email thread. “I can support with X. Who owns the decision on Y?” That one line stops weeks of drift.

If you are the person everyone asks, this is especially important. Being helpful is fine. Being the default owner of everything is not.

Lesson three: protect the team’s shape from constant switching

Good rugby sides manage tempo. They know when to play quick and when to slow it down, keep the ball, and reset.

Teams burn out when the tempo is always frantic. Meetings back to back, notifications on, and “quick questions” all day. Focus work gets shoved into evenings and weekends. People look busy and still fall behind.

You can change this with two team rules.

First, define “urgent” in one sentence. Tie it to a real consequence before the next working day. Keep it narrow.

Second, create predictable windows for interruptions. An hour a day for questions. A short daily check-in. A rotating duty person. Something that lets others do deep work without being pinged every ten minutes.

The point is not to become rigid. The point is to protect attention so people can finish work inside paid hours most weeks.

Lesson four: rotate the hard graft

In rugby, you do not ask the same person to hit every ruck. You rotate effort through the phases. You also look after the player who has just done a big carry. Someone cleans out, someone covers.

Work has its own rucks. On-call support. Complaints. Inbox triage. Partner wrangling. The messy tasks that keep the lights on.

Burnout happens fast when the same person always carries that work because they are good at it. The fix is rotation and cover.

If you manage people, put the reactive work on a rota. Write down what “good” looks like. Set up a clear handover. Then protect the next morning for the person who had the late call, rather than booking them into wall-to-wall meetings.

If you are not the manager, you can still push for fairness. “We need a rotation for this, otherwise it keeps landing on the same few” is a reasonable line.

Lesson five: trade-offs are part of teamwork

In rugby, you cannot do everything at once. If you commit numbers to the breakdown, you have fewer in the line. That is a trade. Good teams make those choices on purpose.

At work, we often pretend there are no trade-offs. We accept new work without moving anything else. That forces people into silent overtime.

The boundary that holds is simple: no new work without a trade-off.

When new work arrives, ask: “What should move to make space?” If you lead, you should answer that question out loud. If you do not, you should ask it until the pattern changes.

Trade-offs can be moving dates, shrinking scope, changing who owns a task, or pausing low-value work. The key is honesty.

What sharing the load looks like in a normal week

Let’s make this concrete.

A team has a product deadline on Friday. They also have support tickets coming in daily. People are stretched and working late. The team decides on three changes for the next two weeks.

They agree the top three outcomes for the week and put them in one place. That cuts noise.

They create a daily support rota. One person handles tickets for the day. Everyone else has protected focus blocks. The duty person gets a lighter load the next day.

They adopt the trade-off rule. New requests get answered with a clear choice: “Yes, and we will move X” or “Not this week without moving Y”.

None of these moves is revolutionary. Together, they change the feel of work. People stop sprinting all day. They finish more. The evenings ease.

The quiet blocker: shame about capacity

A lot of people do not ask for help because they feel they should cope. They assume everyone else is managing better than they are. They keep it private until it turns into sickness or a blow-up.

In rugby, you call it early. You tell the captain your shoulder is gone, or you get replaced and someone else does the job. That is not weakness. That is protecting the team.

At work, the equivalent is a simple line: “I’m at capacity. If we add this, we need to choose what drops.” It is calm and factual. It is also a gift, because it prevents late surprises.

How to ask for help without sounding dramatic

You do not need to spill your whole inner world. Keep it about work and time.

Try this:
“This week I can deliver A and B to a good standard. If we add C, I need agreement on what moves.”

Or, for a quick moment:
“I can do this today, or I can finish the other task. Which do you want first?”

Those lines push the decision to where it belongs.

If you are the one who always carries it

Some people become the team’s unofficial shock absorber. They cover gaps, fix mistakes, smooth relationships, and respond quickly.

If that is you, sharing the load starts with visibility. Write down what you do that no one sees. Support pings, last-minute fixes, “quick” checks, emotional labour in meetings. Bring that list to a manager and ask which parts are truly yours.

Then pick one boundary that protects you. A cut-off time for messages. A daily focus block. A rule that you do not take on new work without a trade.

It can feel awkward at first. It gets easier when you see the results.

If you manage people, this is on you

Leaders set the pace. If you send late emails, people feel on duty. If you praise heroics, you train the team to hide overload. If you never name trade-offs, you create silent overtime.

Three things help quickly.

Keep a short priority list and update it when work changes.
Rotate the messy work and protect recovery after late shifts.
Model the trade-off habit in your own requests.

You do not need a wellbeing campaign. You need sane work.

A small daily practice for teams

Teams often want a bigger system. Start with one tiny practice for two weeks.

In the daily check-in, ask two questions.
“What are you finishing today?”
“What are you dropping or moving to make that happen?”

That second question is the heart of workload health. It makes trade-offs normal. It also makes it clear when the system is overloaded, because people will struggle to name what can drop.

When sharing the load is impossible

Some workplaces are genuinely broken. Understaffed, chaotic, punitive. In those places, the best team habits can only do so much.

If you keep hitting the same wall, take it seriously. Document the workload, the hours, and the risks. Ask for changes in writing. Use HR, a union, or a staff network when you need to. Consider whether a role change is the right long game.

I say that as someone who left policing after burnout. Sometimes the fix is not a better routine. It is a different environment.

When to get extra support

I’m not a clinician. If you are not sleeping for weeks, leaning on alcohol or drugs, having panic symptoms that keep rising, or thinking about harming yourself, contact your GP, NHS 111, or Samaritans on 116 123 today.

Takeaway

Sharing the load is team shape. Clear priorities. Clear ownership. Rotated graft. Honest trade-offs. It protects people and it improves delivery.

One clean rep today: pick one task you are carrying that should be shared, then ask for a rotation or a trade-off.