How to identify (and decrease) burnout
If you’re waiting for burnout to show up as someone dramatically sighing into their third cup of coffee and muttering “I just can’t anymore,” you’re going to miss it.
Burnout is subtle. And it is expensive.
Turnover costs somewhere between 50-400% of an employee’s annual salary when you factor in recruitment, hiring, and training, as well as less obvious costs such as lost productivity, lower morale, operational disruptions, and lost institutional knowledge.
Disengagement in 2023 cost the world $8.8 trillion measured in terms of lost profitability, productivity, customer loyalty, and other measureable factors. And that was before the US went to war.
A recent Harvard Business Review article makes the case that burnout isn’t one-size-fits-all—it shapeshifts depending on where you sit in the org chart.
“When capable, committed people are exhausted, the issue is not resilience; it is work engineered without regard for human limits and systems that quietly reward overextension.”
Amen. Now, let’s unpack how this shows up in organizations.
Burnout at the Top: Decision Fatigue in a Blazer
Executives don’t usually say, “I’m burned out.” They say things like:
“I just need to get through this quarter.”
“Why is everything harder than it should be?”
“Why does nobody work like they used to?”
At the senior level, burnout looks like chronic overwhelm paired with isolation. Executives are making high-stakes decisions with incomplete information, which often leads to both emotional exhaustion and cynicism.
How can you help?
Share the thought process behind difficult or controversial decisions and encourage communication that shares not just the final decision, but also constraints and tradeoffs
Clarify decision making rights and timelines; discourage a culture of reactive, immediate decision making
Promote safe spaces—both within the organization and externally through coaching or affinity groups—to allow executives to share experiences, thoughts, and concerns
Burnout in the Middle: The Organizational Sandwich
Middle managers have a tough job—they’re translating strategy from above and absorbing frustration from below. They have accountability without full authority, responsibility without full control, and calendars that look like a game of Tetris designed by someone who hates them. And, as layoffs continue, middle managers are often the individuals most worried about their jobs.
Burnout here shows up in Sunday Scaries and in phrases like:
“I don’t know if I can make the final call here.”
“I’m just telling you what I’ve been told.”
“Now that my meetings are finally over, I can start my work… at 4 o’clock.”
When your middle is burned out, execution grinds to a halt.
How can you help?
Clarify decision making rights so managers know when they can proceed without needing approval
Reduce meeting load—distinguish between meetings and productive work
Establish norms around off-hours communication and when responses are required
Do not allow availability to become a proxy for performance
Burnout on the Front Lines: Disengagement with a Smile
At the individual contributor level, burnout is easier to misread—and often easier to ignore.
It looks like:
Quiet disengagement
Doing the bare minimum
Disinterest in taking on additional responsibilities
Lack of curiosity regarding growth opportunities or how to improve
Leaders often blame burnout on laziness or a general lack of motivation. However, research consistently shows burnout is driven by structural factors—unmanageable workloads, unclear roles, poor communication, lack of control, and lack of support—not a lack of grit.
In other words, it’s not that your team doesn’t care. It’s that the system quietly drains their motivation.
How can you help?
Give clear, real-time feedback
Normalize and encourage questions about unwritten rules
Make decision rights explicit
Spend time with your team members doing more than just asking for status updates
Burnout Is a Design Problem
Across every level, the pattern is the same:
Burnout isn’t about fragile people. It’s about poorly-constructed systems where:
Expectations don’t match capacity,
Priorities compete instead of align,
Individuals don’t understand their role and decision-making rights, and
Leaders are stretched too thin to actually lead.
No amount of nap rooms, free lunches, or gym memberships can overcome a broken operating model.
How to Fix Burnout Without Launching a “Wellness Program”
If burnout shows up differently across the org chart, your solutions need to be just as targeted—and a lot more operational.
At the top: Improve communication and reduce decision bottlenecks. If everything requires executive input (and even worse—an executive-level meeting), you don’t have alignment—you have dependency.
In the middle: Clarify decision rights. Ambiguity is the fastest path to burnout (and the slowest path to execution).
On the front lines: Fix role clarity and workload. If people don’t know what matters, everything feels urgent—and nothing feels meaningful.
Did you notice what is missing? Yoga. Meditation apps. Free snacks.
Those perks aren’t bad, but they are irrelevant if the system itself is the problem.
The Bottom Line
Burnout is already in your organization. The only question is whether you recognize it in its many disguises.
If you are only looking for the obvious signs, you will miss the executive who is quietly drowning, the manager who is one meeting away from quitting, and the employee who stopped trying three months ago.
By the time burnout is obvious, it has already become costly.
The good news? Systemic burnout is fixable, but it will take a commitment to productive change, improved communication, and better operations.
