Quietly Burning Out? What To Do When Your Leadership Starts Lacking

Forbes

2 days ago

Post by Dr Katie Best, Visiting Fellow at the Department of Management at LSE, Head Tutor on MBA Essentials and Chief Examiner on Core Management Concepts. Dr Best is the author of upcoming book, The Ten Toughest Leadership Problems (and How to Solve Them) (August 2025), and Leadership Coach and Consultant at KatieBest Associates.
Today's most committed leaders are often deeply helpful, hyper-responsible, and always ready to step ... More up. But that very strength can become a trap
Most leaders don't realise they're burnt out—because they're still high-functioning. They're answering emails, running meetings, and hitting deadlines. But under the surface, their energy, creativity, and confidence are quietly eroding.
I used to think burnout looked like someone who's at home, signed off work with stress. But I've realised more recently that burnout doesn't just live its life away from work, it lives its life at the office, sending one more email, making another tough decision, and keeping going, seemingly endlessly — surviving, but certainly not thriving.
This might sound at odds with how we typically imagine burnout, but it's entirely in line with the go-to definition from the World Health Organization: a state of chronic workplace stress that hasn't been successfully managed, marked by exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced effectiveness.
In my upcoming book The Ten Toughest Leadership Problems (and How to Solve Them), I talk about how overloaded leaders often try to fix burnout with better productivity tools — when the real solution lies in changing the way they lead. Whether that means delegating, narrowing focus, or letting go of unrealistic expectations, the shift has to be strategic, not reactive.
Today's most committed leaders are often deeply helpful, hyper-responsible, and always ready to step up. But that very strength can become a trap—keeping them constantly on alert, always anticipating the next high-stakes decision or crisis, unable to switch off.
The problem? When we're depleted, we often can't see it. We normalize the stress—tell ourselves this is just what leadership looks like. Or if we do notice we're struggling, we deny it. Surely a good night's sleep or a productivity hack will fix it? But when you're at this point, it's not just a time management issue.
Rather, it's a role design issue, a personal standards issue, or others' expectations being unrealistic. And depending on which of those it is, you need a plan to help you fix it.
When the workload inherent to the job is too great, it's time to look at what needs taking away. If you are doing work meant for two people, or in a job that assumes 60 hours a week from the outset, something needs to change. If the load is genuinely unmanageable, you should consider solutions such as redistributing tasks, hiring support, or renegotiating deliverables. Share the problem with others, such as HR, your seniors and peers, so that work can be started on what must be done.
If you're setting your own standards too high, it's time to choose what you can afford to drop. I call this 'strategic failure'. By that, I mean that high-functioning leaders are clear on what they're willing to fail at or let slide in order to protect what matters most. Make peace with strategic failure with the unimportant things to protect success in the critical ones. Also: work isn't everything. People who reach the end of their lives and are asked their regrets don't typically (if ever) say, 'well, I just wish I'd worked harder. I didn't achieve inbox zero enough of the time.'
When others expect too much, it's time to reset the narrative. That might mean clearer boundaries, more transparent capacity-setting, or simply letting others see that you're human—not a machine. The strongest leaders don't absorb every ask—they model sustainable performance for their teams.
Resetting your leadership energy starts with recognising that you're not lazy, disorganised, or underperforming — you're overloaded. And the solution isn't to 'power through.' It's to make strategic choices about what gets your time, your energy, and your attention.
The ultimate consequences of burnout can be serious – if a leader fails to spot a critical error, loses a key client, or makes a bad financial decision, burnout starts to have significant and far-reaching consequences. And this is without considering the serious health risks which burnout, left untreated, can bring.
The strongest leaders aren't the ones who absorb it all. They're the ones who lead differently — who model focus, clarity, and enough space to think. Not just for themselves, but for the people who are watching.
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