How to respond to burnout, difficult managers, and new team leadership

Executive overview

Organisations are experiencing a widespread surge in burnout and mental health leave. Leaders who respond with urgency to fix the problem often make it worse. The most effective response is to slow down, listen without an agenda, and separate the emotional signal from the operational question.

Emotion in the workplace is data — the job is to understand it, not resolve it.

When a team shows unexpected emotion

• Multiple people crying in a meeting is a signal to stop the meeting agenda entirely.
• Set aside the topic at hand; ask what is going on beneath the surface.
• Replace "why are you crying" with a what question: "What's causing the tears?"
• Use the eight-second rule: pause after asking, create space, resist filling the silence.
• If people don't open up in the group, follow up in a one-on-one with the same curiosity.
• Approach from lightness and genuine interest, not defensiveness or urgency.

Avoiding dualistic thinking as a leader

• Framing a problem as "two ways to do this" is dualistic thinking — rarely accurate, often limiting.
• Binary framing can close off innovation and signal to the team that the leader has already decided.
• When staff are burning out, adding a forced choice amplifies the sense of loss of control.
• Leadership is about answering the question of change — sometimes the right answer is not to change anything.
• Stability can be a deliberate leadership choice, especially after prolonged external disruption.
• Naming "we're keeping this the same for the next 90 days" gives people an anchor.

Responding to burnout in a post-disruption context

• Industries that experienced sustained forced change leave employees with very low tolerance for further uncertainty.
• Task-oriented leaders may read emotional responses as resistance; they are more often exhaustion.
• Shift from "how do I fix this" to "how do I understand this" — fixing without understanding makes things worse.
• Know what mental health resources your HR department has available before a crisis surfaces.
• Offering resources is the appropriate leadership action; diagnosing is not.

Starting well in a new leadership role

• The First 90 Days principle: the most valuable thing a new leader can do is listen, observe, and learn.
• Resist giving unsolicited advice even when people expect you to have answers immediately.
• The quality of a leadership decision is multiplied by people's enrollment in it — right decisions imposed without buy-in fail.
• Premature action forfeits trust that is very hard to rebuild.
• Set a personal rule: no unsolicited advice for a defined period, and resist even solicited advice early on.

Creating team guidelines — timing matters

• Team guidelines work best when created collaboratively with the team, not handed down by the leader.
• The process of creating guidelines together is as important as what the guidelines say.
• Three natural moments to create team guidelines: joining a new team, a team forming for the first time, after a major structural change.
• If a significant restructure is imminent (within 30 days), complete it first; give people time to process before starting the guidelines exercise.
• Do not delay indefinitely waiting for the "right" moment — the bigger risk is never doing it at all.
• Use the word "I" carefully when joining a new team; "I will make changes" signals unilateral intent before you have the full picture.

Managing up when your manager won't engage

• Many executives are unable or unwilling to have career development conversations — this is widespread, not personal.
• Receiving token increases with no feedback usually signals a manager who avoids sensitive conversations, not a performance problem.
• Do not make your direct manager your sole source of career development — this creates a dependent relationship that leaves you exposed.
• Build a personal board of directors: distinct people for career advice, industry expertise, financial decisions, learning, and other domains.
• A hands-off manager also creates autonomy — use it to do things a micromanager would never permit.
• Own your career development: define your own role, set your own objectives, and identify what skills you need to build next.
• Bring a framework to any conversation with your manager rather than waiting for them to lead it.