In 2024, burnout was identified as the most common workforce challenge by leaders of Inc. 5000 companies, highlighting its critical impact on leadership and organizational health.
LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE: “I’m struggling to get motivated and do the hard things I need to be doing. I’ve recently taken a break but still feel the same. How can I get my mojo back?”
Quick Summary:
-
- Burnout symptoms are less physical but instead reduce empathy, hope, and self-belief
-
- Over-caring and loss of perspective are major contributors
-
- Demonstrated gratitude will help not only you, but your organization, avoid burnout
-
- Knowing and leading with your strengths reduces burnout
-
- Things left undone or unfinished contribute to burnout, whilst completion restores
Go Deeper:
I recently wrote on Leadership and Imposter Syndrome and mentioned burnout as a significant but hidden contributor. I encourage you to read that too, if you’re also feeling the impact of Imposter Syndrome.
Leadership burnout is common and frequently undetected. Most articles written for leaders on burnout talk about how to prevent it in their organization, but rarely in themselves.
The reason it typically goes undetected is that most leaders imagine burnout as a physical problem, however, it is not. The impact of burnout is more often mental and emotional and includes:
-
- Irritability and impatience
-
- Loss of empathy
-
- Cynicism
-
- Feeling trapped
-
- Feeling worthless
-
- Feeling disillusioned and resentful
-
- Self-doubt
Burnout is often an underlying cause of Imposter Syndrome, and frequently one of the first things to be remedied in bringing out your best. You wouldn’t drive your car with a flat tire, and I do not recommend you tolerate leading with burnout.
You may think the immediate answer is to put on your game face and power through. However, “self-presentation” or faking it is one of the most depleting things you can do and perpetuates the cycle of burnout. I write more about the impact of self-presentation here in Leadership and Why Your Authenticity Matters. So, whilst that may be a temporary remedy, more is required.
Working with burnout is hard enough. Leading with burnout is way tougher.
The primary causes of burnout are:
-
- Over-Caring
-
- Lack of Appreciation
-
- Not Working to Your Strengths or Operating Below Capacity, and/or
-
- Sustained Effort Without Progress (often due to poorly designed goals)
Let’s dig into the causes behind the issue, as understanding the underlying factors is critical to addressing the problem effectively:
-
- OVER-CARING: To what degree are you caring appropriately versus over-caring, where your identity is your role, and the rest of your life has tumbleweeds blowing through it? This is something I see most frequently with founder CEOs, and at the same distinct periods, e.g. when planning to raise the next round.
-
- Over-caring includes perfectionism and a certain element of neuroticism that can surface when everything feels so critical. It’s not unusual for me to coach leaders whose excessively high standards were previously preventing their success, rather than serving them.
-
- If you’re over-caring you’ve likely lost perspective. “Perspective-taking capacity” is a critical skill when leading through complexity and compromised by insufficient distance, time, or recovery. Incessantly keeping your nose to the grindstone will reduce your awareness and lead to burnout.
-
- Vacations often won’t hurt as a start, but even that depends. Beyond that, I recommend asking what restores me? For some leaders, it’s having external conversations that broaden their thinking. Others benefit from learning broadly or spending time with family or alone. Whatever your needs, putting restoration habits and structures in place will invariably require a greater focus on recovery than you’re likely giving yourself. Periodic psychological detachment such as disconnecting on weekends will help you, and those you lead, work at your best. I’ll talk more about that in future in Leadership and Peak Performance.
-
- LACK OF APPRECIATION: I spoke to a CEO last week who’s experienced just one expression of appreciation in the last year. And it made a difference. As Mark Twain once said, “I can live for two months on a good compliment”.
-
- You’re likely grinding things out feeling that no one notices or cares, or even criticizes or judges what you have done or are yet to do. If you’re leading an organization and expecting appreciation to come from above, you’re essentially screwed. Studies done on burnout show that appreciation from any direction is just as impactful, so think about how you may like to build this across your organization as structure.
-
- Acknowledging your own progress also helps. It’s easy to see everything as not yet done, so pay attention to progress and celebrate where possible. You can’t get everything done in one day, one week, one quarter, but you’re likely always moving forward. Don’t lose sight of that and give yourself some credit. I’m thinking of a leader who put in place an evening habit of asking himself, what were three things he did well that day and one thing he learned. Small, consistent habits like this make a difference over time.
-
- NOT WORKING TO YOUR STRENGTHS OR OPERATING BELOW YOUR CAPACITY: Many people unwittingly build their careers on mastering what depletes them. Do you even yet know what your intrinsic strengths are, or what is naturally energizing for you versus depleting?
-
- Knowing and using your true strengths will energize you, which is why I include them in helping CEOs create their unique leadership philosophy and approach. Also, you would think that operating at a level below your actual ability would make you feel better about yourself, but the reverse is true. It diminishes self-esteem. So, you may like to ask yourself if you’re operating at the right level or whether it’s time to step back and up. Confidence comes from doing what scares us.
-
- SUSTAINED EFFORT WITHOUT PROGRESS: The energy we expend is returned to us on completion of the task/project and not before. For this reason working on too many incomplete things can lead to massive burnout.
- In addition, this cause of burnout can stem from many other things, e.g. economic conditions, new competitors, talent gaps or attrition, the pursuit of product-market fit, scope creep, perfectionism (a.k.a. fear), etc. Three culprits I see repeatedly are a lack of completion, the pursuit of inappropriately ambitious goals, as well as too many goals at any given time. The three are normally entwined. I’ll write more about this in future on Leading to Increase Organizational Hope, on how to right-size goals according to the teams you have. And I will also write on how the secret to doing it all is not doing it all now in a future article on How to Reduce Organizational Overwhelm.
-
- Regarding lack of completion, I’m thinking of Emerson’s quote, “Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing.” The effort we expend on doing something is returned to us on completion. This gives us the energy to start and complete the next thing. Too many open loops are enormously depleting and damage our integrity, which I will write about in Leadership and Integrity.
In addition, burnout is also created and sustained by certain core beliefs that aren’t helping you, e.g. I need to have all the answers. We all have default core beliefs about ourselves, e.g. I am not enough. I am not safe, etc. The important thing is to know what those core beliefs are and manage them, which I’ll address in a future article.
Meanwhile, I hope this is enough to help you recognize burnout, understand the likely contributors, and see some solutions for yourself and your organization. Burnout is a topic I’m passionate about and I could say more. If you are interested in addressing your potential burnout and solutions further, please contact me.
On that note, it is time for me to complete.
