The 4 Leadership Habits Driving Your Team Toward Burnout
- 2 hours ago
- 7 min read
We talk about burnout in teams. We talk about burnout in organisations. We don't often talk about the behaviours of leaders that can lead to the burnout of the individuals in those organisations.
Most leaders who contribute to the burnout of their teams are not bad leaders. They have habits that might have worked for them in the past but aren't working for them right now, and are having a negative impact on the people they are responsible for, whether they mean to or not. Let's be honest, most of the time that is not their intention.
The problem isn't the leader. It's the habits they're leading with.
I talked about this recently on stage at the SITS conference in London. The feedback was strong enough that I've had several requests to develop it into a full workshop for organisations. I wanted to share some of it here too, because it's an important conversation for any leader to have with themselves.
The Burnout Data Leaders Need to Be Aware Of
When I gave the talk in London, I started with some data. You may already be familiar with parts of it, or it may be new to you.
Gallup completes a report every year looking at how organisations are working. Alongside that, I looked at data from the more recent Mental Health UK Burnout Report, where YouGov polled over 4,500 adults in the UK. The findings are worrying, and if you're in a leadership position, you need to be aware of them. This isn't industry-specific or geographically isolated. It's happening globally, and the picture in the UK is stark.
Of the adults polled:
91% said they were experiencing high or extreme stress
20% had taken sick leave under the category of mental health
Only 1 in 4 felt their mental health is prioritised at work
96% of 25 to 34 year olds are the worst affected
As leaders, we need to be aware of this data. We also need to be aware of the influence and impact we have in our leadership positions, both through systemic issues we may be able to influence depending on our level of seniority and through our daily interactions with the individuals on our team.
I speak from my own experience here. Looking back at my own leadership positions, I can see how I also fell into some of these categories. Nobody is immune. But we need to be aware of how our habits and behaviours, even when well-intentioned, can have a negative impact on the people we are responsible for.
This isn't about labelling it as personal failure. Sometimes there are systemic issues at play. But we do need to recognise our own habits and behaviour and the impact we have, because leaders play a bigger role in this than most of us realise.
If you have a team heading towards burnout, the starting point is to look at your own habits and behaviours and ask where you might be part of the problem. Awareness is the first step. When we recognise the part we play, we can recognise how to show up differently in a way that helps our team.
The 4 Leadership Habits That Lead to Burnout
None of these are intentional. This isn't leaders deliberately driving their workforce towards burnout or putting pressure on their teams. This is, more often than not, an unintended consequence of habits that have worked well for a leader in the past.
1. Operating in a constant stress response
A lot of leaders will tell you they work well under pressure. Because they identify as someone who is good under pressure, they can end up creating that pressure, and their stress becomes their team's stress. If you are in a constant hyper, reactive mode, your energy transfers to your team. You can't stop that happening, because that's how humans work. We pick up on the energy of the people around us.
If your adrenaline and cortisol are up and you're working in a permanent stress response, your team will pick up on that too.
Stress is contagious, especially in close proximity, though even remote and hybrid working only dilutes this slightly. Just because you work well under pressure doesn't mean you want to pass that pressure on to your team.
2. Creating uncertainty and chaos
As leaders, we can pride ourselves on being quick decision makers. The unintended consequence is that we make a lot of decisions, sometimes without communicating them well, sometimes changing our minds from one decision to the next. That creates uncertainty in the team.
If everything has to come through you for approval, nothing moves without your say. You become the bottleneck. You don't want that, both because it undermines your team's authority and autonomy, and because it can create a kind of decision-making paralysis in the people who should be empowered to act. Over time, it risks reducing their confidence to make decisions at all.
3. Rescuing instead of coaching
A great habit of a good leader is being able to jump in, fix a problem, and drive things forward. Plenty of leaders pride themselves on being someone who can be relied on under pressure to find and implement solutions quickly. These are often the exact habits that helped them get promoted.
The challenge is recognising when you're at risk of rescuing instead of supporting someone to problem-solve for themselves. Every time you step in and solve the problem, you take away the opportunity for that person to learn, grow, and build the skills to do it themselves. As much as it feels helpful, it creates dependency. If you know the drama triangle, you'll recognise how quickly the hero can become the villain when things go wrong. The willingness to be helpful and to solve problems quickly can become the very thing that creates the most frustration further down the line, because now everyone comes to you for the answer.
4. Managing workload through pressure
If you know the Eisenhower Matrix, this will land. We want to work on the things that are important before they become urgent. That means planning ahead and building in capacity and contingency, so pressure doesn't become the default state and people aren't operating from fear of missing a deadline or not doing something well enough. That's when mistakes happen.
When workload is managed through pressure, the risk is that your good people leave first. Pressure as the primary motivator isn't a sustainable place to work from over time, and the people with options, often your strongest performers, will be the first to go.
These four patterns have one thing in common. They all come from a leader who cares, who works hard, and who has been successful. Let's be honest, these habits are often exactly what made them successful and what got them promoted in the first place.
I think of one senior leader I worked with who put it perfectly. They told me,
"Moving from one thing to another has just been my thing, I used it as a badge of honour."
Working with me on the EYE programme helped them realise it wasn't sustainable, either for their work-life balance or their career progression. It also made them reflect on the example they were setting for their team.
That's the badge of honour trap. Busyness feels like proof you're working hard. It isn't proof of anything except that something needs to change.
Busyness is not the same as effectiveness.
Why Leaders Develop Habits That Lead to Burnout
These were once your greatest strengths. In this environment, at this level, they're starting to have unintended consequences.
Stepping in and solving problems quickly: great at an earlier level, not so helpful now.
Being the go-to person with all the answers: great at an earlier level, not so helpful now.
Staying late, doing more, showing your dedication: great at an earlier level, not so helpful now. These are the leadership habits that lead to burnout.
These aren't bad habits. They're good habits in the wrong situation. So the question becomes: what is driving them, what are you actually trying to achieve, and how does that need to look different at the level you're at now?
This is leadership identity work.
What does good look like in the leadership position you're now in?
What does success look like?
What does supporting your team look like at this level?
What does being a problem solver look like here, compared to where you were before?
The habits served you well. They're part of how you got promoted. And right now they may be having a negative influence, with great intention and unintended consequences. Which means they can be revisited, and you can show up in a way that creates a more positive outcome for the people in your team.
How Leaders Can Start to Reduce Burnout in Their Teams
The key shift is from reactive leadership to intentional leadership and it starts with awareness of your own habits and patterns.
Go back through the four patterns above and ask yourself which ones you recognise in how you're showing up right now. Then think about how you want to show up at the level you're at today. What does the next evolution of you, as a leader, look like?
The habits and behaviours that have worked well for you have been driven by your core values as a leader.
Think about those values, and how you can align your behaviours with them in a way that works in the role you're in now, not the one you were in before.
The habits that reduce burnout aren't complicated. They're just different, and they require a different version of you to sustain them. It will be very individual to you, your values and your team, which is exactly why this isn't something I'm covering in full here.
If you've moved from a tactical leadership role into a more strategic one, there needs to be a shift in your habits and behaviours to match. If you recognise that your habits haven't changed since your promotion, and you're showing up exactly as you did before, there is likely an unintended consequence playing out that's worth your attention.
Your team's burnout is not inevitable. There are things you can do, as a leader, to prevent it, whether that's building the resilience of an individual or shaping a more resilient team. You can influence that simply by showing up differently.
Before you go, think about the four patterns. Which ones resonated with you? What would be different for your team if you changed just one thing?
Now you know what you know, what will you do differently?
Ready to transform from reactive to intentional leadership?
I'm Zoë Thompson, leadership and performance specialist, and I help overwhelmed leaders transform from reactive to intentional leadership in 8 weeks, so you finish work on time, take The Big Week Off with zero work, zero stress and zero guilt, and create success that feels as good as it looks.
The Elevate Your Efficiency Blueprint addresses the root cause – the habits, behaviours and identity keeping you stuck – not just the symptoms in just 8 weeks.
The Leadership Community helps you keep the momentum of progress going.
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YouTube Channel: Intentional Leadership with Zoë Thompson
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