Leading While Drained: Burnout - The Quiet Cost Of Doing It All

Forbes

3 days ago

Why burnout doesn't wear a name tag and how ambitious women are rewriting the rules of resilience.
It's Summer Somewhere… But Not in Our Calendars Lately, every Zoom call starts with a sigh and a confession: 'I'm busier than ever.' The summer slowdown? Apparently it missed the memo. From London to Dubai, my colleagues are juggling project wrap-ups, cover for vacationing teammates, and squeezing in guilt-tinged getaways that feel more like covert missions than rest. Remember when summers felt endless as a child? Time stretched like elastic. Now it's compressed into deadlines, childcare coordination, and the unspoken competition of who can reply to emails fastest from a beach lounger. Time certainly speeds up as you become busier and older.The Time Warp Trap
Andrew Scott, in his book, The longevity imperative, explains how routines speed up time. While routines provide continuity, certainty and safety they can also reinforce a sense of being stuck, ruminating on regrets or feeling powerless to make changes - small or big. Without new memories, days and week blur into each other and time feels compressed.
Factor in the levels of stress we experience individually at work and against the backdrop of global events to create the perfect conditions to distort how we perceive time and routines. The sense of powerlessness becomes a strong underlying current for burnout. We cling to structure for safety, but routines can calcify into burnout if we don't make space for new memories and meaning. It's the paradox of high-achieving women: the busier we get, the less time we have to ask, 'Is this working for me?'
In every single leadership program I run for women there's always that moment: 'How do I balance it all?' The truth? Balance is a myth. It's a trap disguised as a wellness goal. Balance assumes there is state of equilibrium that can be achieved and maintained. The truth is the idea of balance creates more stress and exhaustion in trying to achieve something unattainable. And the harder we chase it, the deeper we fall into burnout's well-tailored arms. For women navigating high-stake roles, time often feels compressed, packed with expectations, performance pressure at work and juggling childcare during lengthy summer vacations. When time becomes a scarce resource, burnout accelerates. Burnout creates an invisible tax on women. Dr Tina Grigoriou a chartered psychologist who has spent the last two decades working with senior executive leaders, explains how burnout is not easily recognised; 'Burnout doesn't show up with a loud alarm. It creeps in quietly and gradually manifests through brain fog, physical and mental exhaustion, disrupted sleep, and is often accompanied by anxiety, panic, or depression. People begin to doubt themselves and their capabilities. The more insecure they feel, the harder they try and in doing so, they dig themselves deeper into a hole.'
The truth is the idea of balance creates more stress and exhaustion in trying to achieve something unattainable. The pressure to 'do it all' leads to exhaustion masked as excellence. Grigoriou explains why we fail to recognise burnout; 'The roots of burnout vary from person to person. Some professionals are driven by unrelenting standards. They don't pause to reflect or celebrate achievements, each success is immediately replaced by the next target. Others are people-pleasers, hungry for external validation, needing others' praise to feel worthy. Still others secretly fear they're frauds, pushing themselves relentlessly to prove they're not as defective as they feel inside.'
According to the World Health Organization, 12 billion workdays are lost annually due to depression and anxiety with a productivity loss of approximately US$1 trillion dollars. But that's just the financial ledger. The emotional toll is harder to quantify. The World Economic Forum is calling for a rethink of success, one that doesn't require sacrificing wellbeing at the altar of productivity. The Thriving Workplaces Report argues that boosting workplace wellbeing could help the global economy grow by $11.7 trillion, curbing losses in productivity through absence and low morale. 'We need to rethink how we define success in the workplace,' says Shyam Bishen, Head of the World Economic Forum's Centre for Health and Healthcare. 'For too long, wellbeing has been treated as an option. But the evidence is clear: when organizations put people's health and wellbeing at the heart of their strategy, everything else improves, from innovation to resilience to business performance. This is a pivotal moment to make workplace health a shared priority across leadership teams, for the sake of employees and the future strength and sustainability of organizations. Good leaders create an environment of wellbeing for their teams.'
Spoiler: Thriving humans make better leaders. Grigoriou offers a wild proposition: 'What if you did 20% less? Many believe that working less will confirm their worst fears: that they are, in fact, frauds. Some worry they'll be rejected or no longer valued. Others realize they have no identity beyond work, and the idea of exploring joy or meaning outside of productivity feels threatening or unfamiliar.' Cue panic. What if we're exposed as frauds? What if we're no longer needed? What if... we find joy and it terrifies us?
Rewrite the Rules
Real healing isn't a quick fix, it's about tuning into the observing self. The part of you that gently interrupts the perfectionist, the imposter, the people-pleaser and says, 'Hey, maybe rest isn't rebellion.' Building the capacity for these conversations is about having the time to step away from routines and tasks, but it also requires a willingness to engage in conversations that are likely to be uncomfortable and challenging. For women, who still carry disproportionate domestic loads, burnout is three times more likely. And yet, space for reflection often comes last on the list, if at all. Creating it starts with silence. And maybe… a very unsubtle 'Do Not Disturb' sign.
Burnout isn't weakness. It's your ambition asking for new terms. It's your inner compass pointing to a deeper form of success. . . not louder, just truer.