People often come to coaches like me to help them succeed in their leadership roles. But what happens when you’re tasked to lead in an environment that seems – whether deliberately or accidentally – designed to stretch people to their breaking point?
When engineers build systems to operate in the real world, they almost never design them to run any component at its maximum capacity uninterrupted. Instead, they add tolerances and margins to give components a chance to cool down so they don’t burn out.
But when your workplace drives a constant high-volume load with minimal recovery time or autonomy, you and your team are naturally at risk of burnout yourselves.
As a leader, you can be especially susceptible, because you absorb pressure from those who created the environment as well as from those who experience it. You feel like you’re supposed to shield the team, but you don’t have the authority to change the systems. And that feeling of powerlessness can be one of the strongest predictors of burnout.
It’s important, then, to look for the things you actually can control or influence. Consider how strongly you can articulate what delivery commitments support a sustainable workload. How can you structure the pacing and timing of interruptions and overhead? How can you give your team space to decompress after an intense push to deliver? Can you acknowledge the reality that the current pace is not sustainable so your team can at least feel seen?
Those small moves won’t fix the system, but they can reduce the harm that results, and they can matter more than you might think. Even a small relief grants your team some agency, which can help rebuild energy and help your team stay more engaged.
You may not be able to fix a system designed for burnout. And sometimes becoming the manager your team needs may simply look like honesty about the current reality and the boldness and integrity to take tiny steps of courage to make a difference that shows that you care.
If you’d like to explore more creative ideas for your specific situation, let’s talk. Visit stevedwire.com/talk to start the conversation.
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