As the year gallops off at breakneck speed, it feels timely to talk about burnout.
Are there people you’re watching with a close eye? Is anyone quietly watching you?
When I was asked to speak on this topic it initially felt a little out there. But as a member of the sandwich generation, the timing couldn’t have been more apt. Digging into it has felt personally meaningful as well as professionally important.
A few things worth naming.
Burnout is not tiredness. Tiredness resolves with rest. Burnout doesn’t. Even when you finally stop, the recovery doesn’t come.
The signs are often threefold:
- A feeling that you have nothing left to give
- A creeping detachment from the work, the people, even the mission
- An inner collapse of confidence — a quiet erosion of “maybe I’m not up to this”
In the social purpose sector leaders often skip the second sign. The mission is too important. The stakes too high. Detachment gets suppressed — and people arrive in coaching when that third sign has already taken hold.
The risks in our sector go beyond the personal.
- Complexity fatigue.
- Vicarious trauma.
- Identity conflation — when who you are becomes inseparable from what you do.
This isn’t solved by better self-care habits. The strategies we need — for ourselves and our teams — have to address the personal, structural and systemic. Sustainable leadership is not accidental. It is designed.
Three questions worth sitting with:
- Where am I, really?
- What’s contributing to this right now?
- Who do I need to be thinking with about it?
