We are trained to analyse problems and solve them. With complex problems, and a team under pressure is one of them, that very strategy often leads to burnout sooner than to success. Helping a team at its breaking point starts with an uncomfortable insight, which I will come to shortly.
Burnout cannot be ignored away. Many companies still notice late how much strain their people carry, or it has no priority. Leaders see it every day. And they need help, for the team and for themselves. Leading a team under pressure is therefore their task first, long before HR launches a programme for it.
I wrote this piece in October 2022, in the aftermath of the pandemic. The pressure has since changed its name: Skills shortages and reorganisations. The mechanism is the same.
A regional HR leader had been very successful for five years. Then came the pandemic, constant pressure from the executive team and an uncertain economy. Her team worked around the clock, without a break.
At first she acted as if it were no big deal: A short stretch of hard work, then things would calm down. Relief never came. What had started as a stone chip with a small crack in the windscreen was now a web of cracks running in every direction.
For the first time in her career she was dealing with double-digit "voluntary" turnover, open positions and a stress level that forced her into a short medical leave.
In one session she asked a simple question: How can I make things easier? My answer was just as simple. It is easier to accept first that it is hard. In uncertain times your leadership is needed most, and little about leadership is easy.
Burnout describes a state of physical or emotional exhaustion, combined with a sense of reduced performance and a loss of personal identity. In a Deloitte survey of around 1,000 US professionals, 77 percent said they had experienced burnout in their current job (Deloitte, Workplace Burnout Survey, 2015). For a team under pressure that number means: Expect affected people in your own team before anyone speaks up.
Stamina and the willingness to push yourself belong to every significant achievement. Burnout is something else. It is the start of a decline that begins with stress and can end in health problems and broken relationships.
Admitting that you or your team are exhausted is therefore a sign of strength. Goal-driven people in particular earn praise for their first coping attempts: Work harder, skip breaks, push once more. Until nothing works properly any more.
The symptoms show on many levels. Motivation takes more and more energy. Emptiness and a sense of futility spread where there used to be joy in the work. Cynicism towards others grows, and withdrawal creates a false sense of space. Anyone leading a team under pressure reads these signs as information about the team and acts before the body does.
The body speaks up with chronic headaches, tension, ringing in the ears or dizziness. Constant fatigue and a permanent susceptibility to illness mark a system at the end of its reserves. Finally a bell of depressive mood settles over the whole person.
Yes. In acute burnout a person cannot go on, however much they want to. Life pulls the emergency brake and everything stops. Perhaps that is the point: To finally stop and reorder one’s strength. Leading a team under pressure starts before that point.
Burnout grows where someone experiences demands as high and relevant and at the same time sees no room left to shape anything. Anyone in that state belongs in the care of doctors and psychotherapists. Before that point lies a zone where you as a leader can activate resources, for yourself and for the team.
Toxic workplace behaviour is the strongest predictor of burnout symptoms among employees (McKinsey Health Institute, 2022). Add the examples I hear in coaching all the time: Unclear priorities alongside a full calendar. Decisions handed down without explanation. Recognition that only arrives with the numbers. Meetings that fill the day, and work that starts afterwards.
The common denominator of all the main causes is leadership. That is a hard message for leaders, and a good one at the same time: Where the cause sits, so does the lever.
Nobody wants to experience stress, anxiety or depression. Cutting work or withdrawing rarely helps against burnout, though. The psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, author of Man's Search for Meaning, put it roughly like this:
Work is no enemy. It provides income and can create meaning and community, two basic human needs.
There is no universal manual against burnout. These three levers have proven themselves in my mandates.
There is no universal manual against burnout. These three levers have proven themselves in my mandates with a team under pressure.
2. Personal growth. Development programmes and learning opportunities motivate from the ground up. Resilience training for leaders belongs here for me, because the leader either filters the team's load or amplifies it. Give your people the means to reach their goals.
3. Taking responsibility. Most roads to burnout run through managers. Yet many companies judge their leaders on results alone. Better to assess results and culture together. The effect of good leadership shows in both.
Four years on, my position has hardened: Leading a team under pressure is a leadership task and belongs in every target conversation with the executive board. It is time to bring exhaustion out of the shadows and recognise it as competence.
The three levers shrink the problem noticeably, even if a remainder stays. My aim as an executive coach is leadership that enables economic success and a way of working together that preserves health. Those who make room for recovery in time lead longer. That goes for the person and for the company's culture.
Motivation takes more and more energy, joy gives way to emptiness, and cynicism and withdrawal grow. Physical signs include chronic headaches, tension, dizziness and constant fatigue. Reading these signals early leaves room to act.
A central one. According to the McKinsey Health Institute (2022), toxic workplace behaviour is the strongest predictor of burnout symptoms. If the cause sits in leadership, so does the lever.
Three levers have proven themselves: A deeper purpose that gives the effort meaning, personal growth, and leaders who take responsibility. Cutting work or withdrawing rarely helps against burnout. There is no universal manual.
As soon as someone is in acute burnout. A person who experiences demands as high and sees no room left to shape anything belongs in the care of doctors and psychotherapists. Before that point lies the zone where leaders can act.
Further reading on hofmann.coach: Resilience at work · Positive Leadership: Five tests · Leadership Coaching · Leadership mindset: Staying effective when the pressure rises
Cristian Hofmann is an executive coach in Zurich and Schaffhausen (MAS Coaching & Supervision BSO, Forbes contributor). Over more than 20 years he has coached more than 1,500 leaders: CEOs, executive boards and leadership teams in Switzerland, with measurably agreed goals and, on request, pay-for-results. More about Cristian Hofmann.
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