Burnout can be an individual issue. It can also be a sign of a systemic failure of leadership organization-wide. I’ve experienced extreme burnout professionally, and I see it in the leaders I work with every day. The exhaustion, the loss of confidence, the creeping cynicism – burnout is a slow erosion of everything that once made you passionate about your work.
Many leaders I work with come to me at a breaking point. They are successful on paper, leading major organizations, managing massive budgets and influencing company strategies. Inside they’re struggling mentally and physically from high-pressure expectations (theirs or someone else’s), toxic workplace cultures and an unrelenting demand for more.
Burnout trickles down through an organization, affecting culture, productivity and retention. If leaders are running on empty, how can they inspire and support their teams? What is this costing your company?
What Burnout Looks Like in Leadership
Though burnout has been studied by psychologists and researchers for 50+ years, the stress of the pandemic and society’s renewed focus on health has brought greater attention to the fact that many leaders and employees at all levels struggle with burnout.
A 2022 Deloitte study found that 70% of C-suite executives considered quitting due to burnout, while Microsoft’s Work Trend Index reported that 53% of managers felt burned out. These statistics underscore how burnout permeates leadership, negatively impacting strategic decision-making, employee morale and overall company performance.
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines burnout as excessive and prolonged workplace stress that has not been adequately addressed. Other experts who’ve studied burnout describe it as a combination of:
- Physical fatigue
- Emotional exhaustion
- Cognitive weariness
- Depersonalization (cynicism towards the customers and the work)
- Reduced personal accomplishment or effectiveness
- A negative self-evaluation of your work (diminished confidence)
Not recognizing burnout among your leadership and managers can have a pervasive effect organization-wide. Ignoring burnout personally can lead to professional failure and damaging health repercussions.
I pushed through burnout for three years. My wake-up call was when it started to impact my health. Similarly, many of my clients come to me struggling with the physical ramifications of burnout: trouble sleeping, high cortisol levels, an inability to see other options, mental exhaustion, etc.
With the right support and/or honesty with yourself, burnout does not have to get to this level. Caring inquiry as a leader or boss is one of the best ways to understand whether the poor performance of one of your managers or employees is a result of burnout.
The Role of Toxic Work Cultures in Burnout
Once I recognized I was dealing with burnout, I began to recognize it in my clients, many of whom were coming to me ready for a career change and struggling with burnout. For many, their burnout was caused by a toxic culture where they felt undervalued, unsupported and trapped. Despite being high achievers and leaders with multiple professional accomplishments, many of my clients share similar stories:
- Unrealistic performance expectations – the pressure to deliver more with fewer resources.
- Lack of control – feeling micromanaged or excluded from important decisions when a new leader comes in or an acquisition occurs.
- Toxic leadership – working under erratic, unempathetic or narcissistic leaders.
- Lack of recognition – delivering outstanding results but receiving no appreciation or acknowledgment.
One of my clients experienced a roller coaster of emotions. He was one of the best at what he did. He solved a major problem that had stumped others and ended up saving his company millions. Concurrently, he was on the receiving end of constant criticism from a new executive who, as he later discovered, was unhappy with her own role. The stress became unbearable, he had no enthusiasm for his work anymore, so he took a leave of absence. During that time, he found a new job in a healthier work environment where he could thrive.
I worked with a senior executive who had been with the same Fortune 500 company for 30 years. He was a high performer, respected and someone who’d been consistently promoted. When he came to me, he wanted out. He had been pushed to his limits in a toxic work environment. He was on medication to manage the health challenges presented by the toxic culture. His confidence was shaken, and he wondered if he would be an attractive candidate to another company. I’m happy to report he was snapped up by another company and no longer needs meds to manage his stress.
Toxic workplace cultures don’t just harm the individual, they poison the entire organization. Burned-out leaders lose their ability to think strategically, their decision-making suffers and their disengagement ripples down through their teams. Burned out leaders create burned out teams. If your company has high levels of attrition or a business unit is experiencing high levels of attrition, look at the leadership first. Are they burned out? Has their disengagement and tendency to be overcritical or disillusioned created a toxic culture that people want to leave?
The Financial Cost of Burnout
Burnout’s repercussions cannot be understated. Symptoms of burnout include loss of productivity, increased absenteeism and higher turnover rates. That adds up quickly. The American Psychological Association estimates that workplace stress costs U.S. businesses nearly $500 billion annually. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reported in 2019 that U.S. businesses lost $200 billion in five years because of workplace turnover due to toxicity.
In the case of my client who took a leave of absence and found a new job, his departure and the departure of some of his colleagues since have cost his former employer over $1 million in turnover costs and lost institutional knowledge.
The financial costs alone are incentive enough for companies to integrate burnout mitigation strategies.
What Can Companies do to Prevent Burnout?
Recognizing that burnout exists and is a threat to the success of your company is the first step. The second is taking meaningful action to prevent it. Here are some of the approaches companies are taking to mitigate and address burnout:
- Encouraging healthy work-life boundaries: Leadership must set the tone by respecting work-life balance and encouraging employees to disconnect.
- Emphasizing teamwork and support: People want to feel connected and that they’re working toward a common goal. Collaboration builds trust and leads to better outcomes.
- Providing resources: Offering coaching, therapy and stress management programs can make a real difference. Make sure your employees know about those programs and encourage them to use them.
- Reviewing leadership impact: Burned out or toxic leaders may be the root cause of your high attrition.
- Providing meaningful work: Encourage your leaders/ managers to take on more of the work they love to do. Studies show that physicians who spend 20% more time a week doing meaningful work have half the burnout rate of their colleagues who don’t.
Taking Control of Your Own Burnout Recovery
If you’re a leader or high performer struggling with burnout, I’ve been where you are, and I’ve worked with many others who’ve been there too. Here’s what I recommend:
- Acknowledge burnout early: Recognizing the symptoms can help you take action before it gets worse and impacts your physical health.
- Set firm boundaries: Protect your personal time and energy.
- Seek support: Whether it’s a coach, mentor or therapist, don’t try to navigate burnout alone.
- Prioritize your health: Sleep, nutrition and exercise are not optional.
- Reconnect with meaningful work: Focus on the aspects of your job that bring you fulfillment.
- Stop isolating and start connecting: Schedule golf after work, take walks with your colleagues at lunch, plan a happy hour. Emotional connection is a huge part of recovery.
- Identify if you have a savior complex (you must step in to do the job) or an incompetence bias (everyone is incompetent and only you can do it right): If you do, empower your team to find the gaps in the work processes and have them develop a solution.
Creating a Healthier Workplace
I’ve seen firsthand how burnout drains amazing leaders. When leaders take control over their mental and physical wellbeing, they regain their passion. When companies take steps to address burnout and toxic cultures, employees re-engage and companies thrive. Understanding and addressing burnout is an opportunity for better leaders, strong companies and sustainable success.
By Michelle Peters; originally published in SBAM’s May/June 2025 issue of FOCUS magazine
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