The lesser known reason behind burnout

Burnout, stress and overwhelm are prolific in the world of work right now.  Over three quarters of CEOs say they’re overworked and burned out [1] and depending on the study you’re reading, around half of the general employee population are feeling it too [2,3,4,5].  

We often focus on burnout being the result of a crappy balance in the amount of work vs resources available to do said work, but in my experience there’s a lot more to it and an unexpected reason that shows up again and again in the leaders and businesses I work with.

There are three types of burnout that I see, and they’re all a little bit interrelated (as everything is with people - we’re a complicated bunch):

1. Prolonged periods of having too much work to do with the time and resources available.  This impacts the time you have available for other, likely more fulfilling and energising things in your life.

2. Prolonged periods of work that are physically or mentally stressful.  This creates a downwards spiral: the more stress you have, the lower your stress resistance is, the more stress affects you… and so on.

3. A misalignment of values.  And here are a few examples: having to do work or lead in a way that you don’t agree with or believe in, having to ‘pretend’ your way through things, having to be someone or something you are not to get ahead.

A misalignment of values is an often overlooked but destructively impactful cause of burnout, and it’s probably the most common one I see in coaching clients.  It’s overlooked because it’s difficult to recognise: it’s not quantifiable like the first two - we can all see the volume of work someone has, or get a barometer on what we might think is physically or mentally stressful, to a certain degree of obviousness.  It’s also difficult to recognise because it’s personal - the values of one person won’t be the same as the next, and even if they say they are the same, the way they experience and live them will be by their own definition which, you guessed it, will be different.  

Burnout shows up in lots of different ways, but from my experience, burnout down to a misalignment of values tends to have some key characteristics: 

• a lack of ideas or ability to innovate, 

• just doing as instructed, 

• a reluctance to collaborate

• not caring about whether something goes well or not

This is the specific side of lethargy born out of the continuously draining impact of being someone you’re not, saying and doing things you don’t believe in.

Let’s take a burnout client I worked with earlier this year.  He was part of the C-suite of a thriving business with a purpose and mission he really believed in and felt he could bring a huge amount of value to the business and its performance.  But as we all know, business never stays static.  After a long and gruelling sale process, the CEO left, new ownership came in and the business was left in limbo without any definitive leadership direction.  Now, given two of my client’s values, the things that drove him to do his best work and how he likes to lead his own team, were those of clarity and tangible performance progress, this limbo situation was very quickly a problem.  We talked about leadership meetings that just went round in circles, teams being told different things by different leaders and a lack of any robust or agreed goals to go after.  He constantly put up opposition to these behaviours, asked questions of the board and tried to rally his team, but the system was moving further and further away from his core values and motivators.  He reluctantly disengaged, became accepting of negative behaviours and took every bit of energy he had to just ‘make it through’.  The result: burnout characterised by that specific side of lethargy I spoke about earlier.  Eventually, when a new CEO was appointed and a clear business direction was set, there was nothing left - no enthusiasm for the renewed vision, no belief and no way back.  

So what can we do about it?  It’s much better to try and root it out early than wait and see what happens, especially in times of change:

1. Make sure you understand what your values and motivators are and regularly review them - this makes it easier to recognise when there’s a conflict.

2. Intentionally take stock when anything changes, be that ownership, strategy, leadership or ways of working - protected time when you can do some active thinking about the change, what it means and how that relates to your values.

3. If some of this resonates but you’re not sure where you’re at, start listening.  Listen to your gut when something doesn’t feel right, voice it out loud to someone you trust to determine whether it’s a one off (I don’t agree with this decision and I’m a bit miffed about it) or a growing sentiment (I’m not aligned with where this is going/how things are working/what we are aiming for)

4. If you’re still not sure, listen to those closest to you.  What questions are your friends and family asking? Are they subtly flagging anything to you?  “You don’t seem like yourself, you’re quiet, you seem tired a lot, are you ok?”.

5. If you can see there’s a problem, understand the extent of it: what impact is it having?  How is it affecting you, your work and those around you?  Then set some boundaries to minimise the impact and work out who you need to talk to to help lessen the values conflict.

6. Set a when this/what if plan - you’ll need a light to work towards - if the boundaries don’t work or the improvements in alignment don’t come, you know what you’ll do next.

7. This step isn’t for everyone, but at the right time, you could have a grown up conversation with your boss.  This is clearly only possible if that person isn’t the main cause of your values misalignment!  If you’re able, reinforce the things you like about work and what you’re doing, then explain the ‘but’.  Genuine and honest wins every time for me, and with most values oriented people, especially at leadership level.  You can then work together on your boundaries, better values alignment and when this/what if plans transparently. 

8. Stick or twist?  It might reach a point where you’ll need to decide - an extended stay in the unknown is hard.  If things have improved, take stock again, stay aware of yourself and your values alignment.  If they haven’t, you have some thoughts and potential plans already formed.  You can decide what comes next.

I’m conscious I’ve left my client’s story in a state of despair, but that’s not where our coaching ended.  We worked through steps six to eight over a number of sessions, focusing largely on how to have a transparent conversation with the new CEO, who ended up being incredibly understanding and supportive.  They crafted an extended exit plan (it was twist) that supported both my client - who was able to add value in the ways that were true to him before he left, and the new CEO - who was able to utilise my clients skills and knowledge to make decisions in a way that would land well with the team.

“I wouldn’t have been able to get to the outcome I did without Faye’s support.  She spotted the opportunity with my incoming CEO and helped me put a narrative together that was clear and concise - something I couldn’t have seen or done alone.”

Burnout will happen to most, if not all of us at some point in our careers - as mere humans we’re not evolved to function optimally in the crazy, overstimulating world we live in.  But on the other hand, we are human!  Our intelligence and awareness means we can understand ourselves, our drivers and drainers and if we’re all a bit more gutsy, we can choose ways to live and work in this world that gets the best out of us.  

[1] 2025 LHH (Adecco Group) research reported in HR Magazine, 2025

[2] Lattice and YouGov research reported in People Management, 2024

[3] BCG research: Four Keys to Boosting Inclusion and Beating Burnout, 2024 

[4] Atlassian research reported in HR Magazine, 2025

One for the Solopreneurs

Solopreneur

noun

a person who sets up and runs a business on their own

In the last few months, I’ve had a good few people tell me they’re thinking about leaving their jobs and exploring the possibility of going out on their own. “What’s it like?” they say. And I can see the excitement in their eyes, like they’re expecting I’m going to tell them it’s a utopia. Some are more realistic, thankfully! I had a brilliant exchange with one person recently who explained that going independent had been on the edge of her thinking for a while now and it’s increasingly looking more attractive, but she also understands it's not all “rainbows & butterflies” and “in fact it may be more stressful than in-house”. She’s not wrong, but the stresses are different and on the positive side, so is the payback.

Let me lay this out clearly at the start, I am so happy this is my world at the moment. It’s providing me with the flexibility I need to be more present with my family, prioritise my health and to help with the 11+ pressures, but that’s in this moment, right here and now. It doesn’t always work like that. It didn’t work when I had two overlapping projects, my regular coaching clients and a new executive team to plan a multi-date development journey for. The upside - my business was thriving, the down side - I was broken and had no time for anything else.

Being a solopreneur isn’t just a change to how you work, but also how you live. This can be brilliant if the two decide to corroborate their timing, seamlessly giving you all the work when there aren’t too many demands on your personal time and quietening down when it’s school holidays, but when they haven’t had that little chat or have decided to conspire against you, it’s really quite painful. I’ll pause here and say, people in salaried jobs experience this too - totally get it, I’ve been there, but there are two things that are different when you experience this as a solopreneur. One, when you’re booked on client work, you’re giving everything to the client - no expectation of flexibility because of the late notice school sports fixture or illness - you’re going to be letting someone down either way. Two, it’s just you. Nobody to brainstorm solutions with, no teammates to pick you up when it’s tough, nobody to cover meetings for you, no finance team to send and chase your invoices, no marketing team to promote your brand and services… I don’t need to go on, you get it!

I guess what I’m saying is, the feast and famine model is very real and you do have to embrace it: that’s to be prepared financially, look to diversify your product and services, but also consider how it might impact the way you live your life and where to draw your boundaries, especially if you’re considering the solopreneurship move to get more flexibility. My boundaries give me the upsides. Things like my non-negotiable Monday mornings - family breakfast, setting myself up for the week, spin class and admin out of the way; getting to ALL the pre-planned school events because they’re blocked out of my diary and I am in control of it; spending time working on things that genuinely interest and bring me joy and no time on things that don’t.

I have always been a passionate supporter and promoter of balance - what that means here is accepting that for every rainbow and butterfly there will be a dark cloud and a wasp (I’ve never met anyone who likes a wasp) - thinking about what those might be and how you might handle them surprisingly does a lot to ward them off, and if they still arrive, you’re prepared to take them on.

I regularly share bits of my solopreneurship journey on LinkedIn, but if you’d like a chat about what it’s like, please do get in touch. I’ve had (and still do have) some wonderfully generous advice from people who’ve been there and done it and I’d love to share it forward if it’ll help.

You’ve got your seat on the Leadership team… now what?

Whether you’re promoted from within, or it’s your first Leadership Team role in a new business, there’s things I consistently see and have personally experienced that a lot of new leaders go through.

You’ve been the high performer of your field or function for a while now, you’ve managed decent sized teams and finally you’ve been given the opportunity you’ve been working towards for years - a functional leader, sat on the Leadership Team, now part of the inner circle that leads the whole business together.  But really, what should you expect?

I love an analogy, so here goes… It’s a bit like starting big school.  For the last year at least you’ve been the ruler of the playground, know every trick in the book, revered by the younger year groups, the star pupil who teachers have grown up conversations with.  And now, you’re the new kid, you don’t know your way around, you’re getting lost all the time and everyone else is so much bigger than you.  You might feel like you’re starting all over again, a loud crisis of confidence comes crashing over you (aka imposter syndrome).  Or you might go in with the same ‘big boy/girl’ mentality and confidence you had at the end of primary school - the feeling of status you had in your last role - only to get shot down immediately by the big kids.  It can be quite the shock. 

You think you know the LT, you’ve been invited in to present to them and collaborated on projects many times in your old role.  But that’s just like when you visited all those big schools last year, with special set ups to impress potential pupils.  Now you’re in, you aren’t afforded that careful treatment.  It’s a different world now, a much broader perspective and a different set of expectations.  And this is where the analogy ends, because at school you’re surrounded by others in the same position, you’re all uncomfortable and figure it out together.  It’s not so easy to find your place that quickly when you’re new to the LT.

I work with a lot of new leader coaching clients on the reality of the onboarding curve.

For the first few weeks you’re overtly classified as ‘new’ - you are comfortable saying “I don’t know” and your colleagues are proactively offering their time and advice.  

Gradually it shifts to a more subconscious awareness of being ‘new’ - the overt support from others starts to decline but they’re still there for you, your comfort with not adding tangible value as you did before starts to become frustrating.  

Then the three to four month point hits you like a sucker punch.  This is just after you and others have decided you’re not ‘new’ anymore - nobody said anything, it just happened.  Expectations started to rise; colleagues are asking you for things you don’t yet know how to do, your CEO wants your input during LT debates but you haven’t found an approach that feels right, you feel like you’re failing because you’re not yet up to the level that surrounds you.  But here’s the thing… you’re actually still new - who actually is an expert, high performer in something this complex after 3-4 months?!  

Generally, the people who successfully come through this dip in the curve demonstrate self awareness, patience and realism and an ability to focus on the values they can bring, not the things they can’t (yet).  There are some common questions I tend to work through with clients at this point to support their self awareness and confidence in what those things are: 

What were the reasons you were given the job in the first place?

What are your unique strengths compared to the rest of the LT?

What perspectives do you bring to the LT that others might have lost touch with?

Deepening and challenging your thinking around these types of questions helps you form an idea of how you want to show up, taking control of your authentic style.  This is exactly the type of work I love doing with new leaders.

I’ll share more in future posts about other things to expect on a Leadership Team -  that no/few decisions are easy, the recognition void and seemingly impossible challenges.  For now, remember, the first few months on the LT can feel like a rollercoaster - exciting one moment, overwhelming the next.  If you’re in that dip right now, know you’re not alone and know it’s normal. It doesn’t mean you’re failing, it just means you’re still finding your feet.  Stay anchored in the strengths and perspectives that got you here in the first place and you’ll do just fine.