Recognizing Burnout Signs in Colleagues

Burnout impacts more than half the workforce. Can you spot the signs? We often think burnout looks extreme, like a medical crisis, but it’s often much quieter. For years, I thought I was just busy - working nonstop, telling myself, “just one more thing.” But then I stopped going to the gym, stopped exploring nature, and felt disconnected from my kids. That’s when I realised it wasn’t just tiredness - it was burnout. Years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was one of the toughest periods of my life, and I believe that pushing myself so hard for so long played a role. Now, I remind myself that sometimes you need to slow down to speed up. Burnout doesn’t just affect your work - it affects your life and your health in ways you don’t always see. It can show up in hidden ways, like: ↳ Irritability with loved ones or colleagues ↳ Trouble focusing or constant forgetfulness ↳ Physical symptoms like headaches, stomach aches, or fatigue If this resonates, here are 5 actionable steps to take back control: 1/ Prioritise your self-care ↳ Move your body, eat nourishing foods, and focus on sleep 2/ Set boundaries ↳ Turn off work notifications after hours and say "no" when you need to 3/ Take intentional breaks ↳ Schedule time to reset - whether it’s a 10-minute walk or a full day off 4/ Delegate and focus ↳ Let go of what doesn’t need your attention. Use tools to work smarter, not harder 5/ Seek support ↳ Talk to someone you trust - a friend, coach, or professional - before it feels overwhelming Burnout isn’t a weakness. It’s your body asking for a change. Take it from me - it’s okay to pause, reset, and start putting yourself first again. 👇 How do you recharge? Let me know in the comments. ♻ Share this with someone who might need it. 🔔 Follow me, Jen Blandos, for daily insights on business, entrepreneurship, and workplace well-being.

Burnout is so much more than working too many hours. Here’s an example: Jane, a fee earner in your team, suddenly announces she’s taking 6 months off. The doctor’s note cites stress and burnout. She has consistently been recording 6-8 hours a day, sometimes even coming in under target, so had not “flagged” on your system as at risk. Consider this ⬇️ 🔸Jane has a caseload consisting of fatal accidents / catastrophic injuries / child abuse / sexual assault / other highly emotional or stressful subject matter. 🔸Within that caseload are a number of very difficult clients which drain her mentally and emotionally. 🔸Jane is neurodiverse or an extreme empath which means her own emotions as well as those of her clients and colleagues weigh heavier on her than they do on others. 🔸She’s managing a lot of deadlines and is often too exhausted and overwhelmed to record her time properly. 🔸She is an extrovert and your office is now largely remote. 🔸On top of work, she has issues in her personal life that mean she gets very little rest or time for herself in the hours she is not working. 🔸She really needs a promotion next year and no one else in the team seems to be struggling so she’s been trying to push through in the hope that she learns to cope. Suddenly, it seems pretty obvious doesn’t it? What causes an individual to burnout is entirely subjective. Whilst monitoring objective indicators can be helpful, there is no substitute for understanding your people and creating an environment where they can talk openly about how they are feeling.

In 2022, I predicted that by 2025, 60% of enterprises would actively foster socialization to combat chronic loneliness and social isolation exacerbated by digital technology. How has loneliness progressed? 🔍 Here's a snapshot according to Gallup's Global Workplace 2024 Report : 🌐 Globally, 1 in 5 employees report experiencing loneliness frequently, with those under 35 and fully remote workers most impacted. 😔 62% of employees are not engaged, while 15% are actively disengaged. 🆘 58% of employees feel they are struggling in life, with only 34% considering themselves thriving. ⚠️ 41% experience "a lot of daily stress." Loneliness and disconnection are silent problems — they often manifest as apathy, disengagement, or learned helplessness at work. So, what can we do to help? 💡 Steps to Consider: -Create a Support Network: Identify your team’s needs and implement channels to address them, such as employee assistance programs, financial planning tools, family assistance, buddy systems, communities, and ERGs. -Rethink the Work Environment: Co-design spaces for deeper relationships by mapping the employee experience and identifying changes in physical spaces, inclusive technology, and management practices. -Redesign Teams: Foster interdependence with collaboration platforms like fusion teams, cross-functional mentoring, and shadowing for problem-solving. - Recognize and Incentivize Goodwill: Acknowledge efforts with peer recognition/gratitude programs, making support visible to all. Implement an Inclusion Index: Measure fair treatment, collaboration, psychological safety, trust, belonging, diversity, and integration of differences through various feedback methods. - Train Managers: Provide managers with guidelines on the expected level of involvement in employee well-being. Train them in handling sensitive conversations, building personal connections, and evaluating mental health on a spectrum. Managers account for 70% of the variance in team employee engagement. Let's address these silent issues head-on and create a more connected and supportive workplace! 💪✨ #WorkplaceWellness #EmployeeEngagement #Inclusion #MentalHealth #FutureOfWork #Leadership #TeamBuilding For data see: Gallup's State of the Global Workforce Report https://lnkd.in/ecj8KUuw

Your team is sending subtle warning signs. Are you missing them? Most managers obsess over their performance dashboards. But they ignore the quiet signs from their high performers. They push for quarterly results.  While their people quietly push their way out. The cost of missing these signals: • Quality drops & deadline delays. • Top talent starts looking elsewhere. • Team chemistry dissolves into dysfunction. Here are 5 silent energy killers destroying your team: Meeting Madness • No time for deep work between meetings • People eating lunch at their desks • Solution: Morning work blocks + efficient afternoon meetings Decision Paralysis • Teams debating minor choices for hours • Analysis replacing action on simple calls • Solution: Set decision deadlines, delegate reversible choices The "Almost Done" Trap  • Projects stuck at 90% completion • Fear of shipping anything imperfect • Solution: Ship 70% experiments, scale the winners The "Everything-Is-Urgent" Chaos • No clear hierarchy of what matters most • Constant priority whiplash • Solution: One North Star metric + ruthless editing Conflict Avoidance • Fake harmony masking real conflict • Problems gossiped about, not collaboratively solved • Solution: Ritualize honest feedback and healthy debate [Review the carousel for all 8 energy killers and their solutions] The reality check: Your team's energy is finite. Your actions will either: • Energize your team • Deplete your talent The signs are there. The choice is yours. Your metrics might be green.  But how are your team's vital signs? ♻️ Share to help other leaders spot these early. 📕 Bookmark so you can refer back to this post for help.  🔔 Follow Dave Kline for more insights and leadership frameworks.

I once called a meeting with an employee who had a bad attitude. “I want to discuss your bad attitude,” I said. What happened next was a leadership lesson I'll never forget. She was a veteran employee and much wiser than me. Probably had survived many young punk supervisors like me before. "I don’t have a bad attitude,” she countered. My plan to take charge was foiled! How could I argue without solid evidence? I asked a mentor for help. She explained it was important to separate inferences from observable behaviors. An inference is subjective. It's a judgement based on what you perceive. An observable behavior is a fact, something you can see and prove. 🤔What did I observe? Five people from other departments had complained about working with my employee! They described her as unapproachable and unhelpful. We met again, but this second meeting was very different. I opened by explaining that I had received five complaints about her and described the specifics that were shared with me. I then explained that I didn’t expect her to agree with her colleagues, but that we had to come up with a plan to prevent future complaints. She wasn’t happy, but she also couldn’t dispute the facts: Desired performance: 0 complaints Current performance: 5 complaints We put our heads together and came up with some ideas. She put them into action and I checked-in regularly to offer support. Thirty days later, her colleagues had warmed to her considerably. They commented on seeing a remarkable turnaround. She was now being seen as approachable and helpful. Conclusion: Avoid inferences when coaching employees. Focus on observable behavior to help them improve.

If you're in events, joining the wrong company can destroy your career. I talk to 70+ event profs per month. It’s clear who feels trapped. Here are the 9 red flags. 1. You're a team of one doing the job of five. Company treats events as a priority but staffs them like a side project. You burn out. You drop a ball. It gets framed as your failure. Not a resourcing decision. 2. Your budget gets approved annually but defended quarterly. Conference is in October. Budget approved in January. By Q3, you've lost your on-site agency and half your A/V budget. If events are the first thing leadership cuts, they don't believe in events. 3. Events are treated as logistics, not strategy. You sit in ops or admin. Not marketing or revenue. Nobody asks what pipeline came from your conference. They ask if the Wi-Fi worked. 4. Nobody defined what success looks like before they hired you. You're told to "run a great conference." No connection to pipeline, retention, or brand goals. Three months later, leadership wants ROI for something that was never scoped as a business initiative. 5. Your event data never reaches the people who should care about it. No connection to CRM. No attribution. No proof your 500-person conference generated pipeline. When your work is invisible to the revenue org, you're the first program cut. 6. You don't control your own vendor relationships. Finance negotiated the contract. IT manages the integration. Marketing owns the email tool. You own the event but control almost nothing around it. Something breaks on event day? You absorb the blame for systems you didn't choose. 7. Leadership sees events as a perk, not a function. No event strategy. No repeatable playbook. No career path. You're the person who "handles events." Not an event leader with a program and a roadmap. If your hiring manager can't articulate the strategic role of events during your interview, you will spend your entire tenure justifying your existence. 8. They want senior execution at junior comp. Vendor management, budget ownership, content strategy, live production. Title is "Event Coordinator." Salary reflects it. You'll do director-level work with coordinator-level leverage and pay. 9. The tech stack was chosen by someone who's never run a live event. Platforms selected by IT or procurement. If you're not in the room when tool decisions get made, you'll spend the next 2-3 years living with someone else's priorities. The company matters more than the title. And the companies who care about events use Accelevents. Learn more --> https://hubs.la/Q03fjrP30

Burnout doesn’t always show up as exhaustion. Sometimes, it looks like: → Feeling trapped in expectations you can’t escape. → Anxiety at the thought of stopping, even for a moment. → A creeping sense of detachment from everything and everyone. → Pushing through—even when your mind and body are screaming, "Please, no more." Two years ago, a client watched her husband break under the pressure of it all. - Being a new dad, and the main provider. - Relentless client demands. - The expectations of being a Partner in a Magic Circle firm. A job he didn't enjoy. He suffered a complete mental health collapse. He hasn't been back to work since. A sign of burnout that nobody talks about? The fear of stopping, or taking time off. Rest helps exhaustion. For burnout, rest can increase anxiety if deeper issues aren’t addressed. Burnout is not about managing energy. It's managing the fear of not meeting expectations. It requires psychotherapeutic intervention. If this feels or sounds like you - don't let the fear of being unable to provide for yourself and/or your family leave you unable to provide at all. Please reach out to a mental health professional and seek help. Thoughts? #burnout #mentalhealth #careers

Do you feel unmotivated to take action of any kind? Do you no longer find joy in hobbies or spending time with loved ones? These could be symptoms of burnout, indicating you may be overworking and feeling mentally and physically drained. According to research by Deloitte: 77% of professionals experience burnout in their current jobs. As alarming as this statistic is, the real issue lies in the fact that many of us don't even recognize the signs until it's far too late. Throughout my career, I can recall several instances where in hindsight I experienced burnout. While from the outside I was succeeding in my career, on the inside I was struggling with my mindset, feelings and relationships. I was fortunate to have a strong support network (both professional and personal) that supported me through these struggles. This personal experience made me realize the importance of normalizing speaking about this topic and educating myself and others on prevention and management strategies. To get some practical insights and tips on this topic, I reached out to my friend Dora Vanourek. Dora is a Burnout Coach for Tech Professionals, a LinkedIn Top Voice on Resiliency, and a Senior Consulting Services leader at IBM. Here are 5 invaluable tips she shared on preventing and managing burnout: 1. Recognize Early Signs of Burnout: Burnout does not happen overnight - instead, it slowly creeps in. Watch out for early signs such as exhaustion, emotional overwhelm, disrupted sleep, changes in eating habits, disconnect from social life, reduced motivation and self-care, physical ailments, and reduced performance. 2. Understand and Address Root Causes: Long hours might seem to cause burnout, but they're often just a symptom of deeper issues. Common root causes include feeling undervalued, working in a toxic team environment, lack of autonomy in how you work, perceived unfairness, and a mismatch between job requirements and your values. Addressing these core issues is essential. 3. Engage in Activities: Find an activity that energizes you and helps you disconnect from your work. Aim for at least 15 minutes on most days. Anything you enjoy will be beneficial: walk, exercise, creative hobbies, dancing to favorite songs, gardening, meditation, etc. 4. Incorporate Meaningful Tasks in Your Work: All jobs have less enjoyable tasks. Research shows that you are less likely to burn out if at least 20% of your work is meaningful. An example is mentoring or coaching someone, developing new ideas or developing a training course for others. Everyone finds meaning in different tasks - reflect and find yours. 5. Ask for help: You are never alone. Reach out to a friend or professional. Your company might have employee assistance programs, or point you to available help in your country. Looking for additional insights on the topic? Follow Dora here on LinkedIn. She posts daily on the topics of  burnout, careers, mindset, coaching, and leadership.

Supporting a Team Member Through Grief: Lessons in Awareness and Action The past month has been challenging for me personally. Losing my Mum has been one of the hardest experiences of my life. Grieving while leading a team hasn’t been easy, but it’s taught me a lot about trust, connection, and resilience. What’s helping me navigate this? Leaning in and trusting my team more than ever. By creating space for open communication and mutual support, I’ve seen our team grow and thrive during this challenging time. It’s a powerful reminder that we don’t have to carry everything alone—whether as leaders or team members. How does a team maintain 100% performance when one of its members is navigating grief or personal struggles? Life doesn’t pause for work. When challenges hit, they ripple across the team. But instead of ignoring or sidestepping them, teams that lean into support and awareness emerge stronger and more connected. Here’s what I’ve learned about supporting a grieving teammate: 🌟BE: Start with Awareness🌟 Awareness is the foundation. It begins with you: 1. Notice your emotions and energy. 2. Be mindful of others’ cues—both spoken and unspoken. 3. Recognize that grief doesn’t come with a rulebook; it’s deeply personal and unpredictable. When you’re aware, you create a culture where it’s safe to acknowledge emotions without judgment. 🌟DO: Actions to Support Your Team Member🌟 Awareness alone isn’t enough. Here are actions your team can take to create a supportive environment: 1. Ask for and offer support. Normalize asking for help—whether it’s extending a deadline or delegating tasks. 2. Give time and space. Grief is unpredictable. Some days are manageable; others are overwhelming. Respect that rhythm. 3. Hold space for sharing. Check in, create room for honest conversations, and simply listen. I once cried at a bakery because it reminded me of my Mum's favourite kueh. Sharing moments like these is part of the healing process. 4. Have each other’s backs. Step in to lighten the load when needed, without waiting to be asked. 5. Involve others in decisions. Collective ownership ensures the team doesn’t miss a beat. 6. Respect individual timelines. A productive morning doesn’t guarantee the afternoon will feel the same. Be patient and flexible. 🌟HAVE: A Culture That Thrives🌟 When you prioritize awareness and action, your team will gain: 1. Trust and inclusivity. Everyone feels valued and supported. 2. Resilience. Challenges bring the team closer instead of pulling them apart. 3. Sustainable performance. Balancing humanity with productivity ensures long-term success. Grief isn’t a roadblock; it’s a part of being human. When teams show up with compassion, they prove that emotions and performance can coexist beautifully—even in remote or cross-border setups. How does your team create a supportive environment during tough times? I’d love to hear your strategies. #business #team #growth #leanin #leadership #cassandracoach

12 signs of silent burnout you may not see coming — but they escalate fast. You’re the one everyone counts on. 
Reliable. Driven. Resilient. But lately... something feels off. And no one can tell — because you're still delivering. This is what I call silent burnout — the kind high performers experience when they’re “functioning” on the outside, but slowly draining on the inside. It doesn't show up as dramatic breakdowns. 
It shows up in micro-moments that are easy to ignore. If you’re in leadership, entrepreneurship, or managing big responsibilities — you’ll relate to this: 12 subtle signs of silent burnout that sneak in but grow quickly if ignored: 1. Constant fatigue, but can't shut off.
You’re tired and restless. Even sleep doesn’t reset you.
 2. Mental fog during meetings.
You’re present, but not fully there.
 3. Low-grade irritability.
Little things feel bigger than they are.
 4. More scrolling, less satisfaction.
You keep reaching for your phone, but it doesn’t make you feel better.
 5. Guilt around taking breaks.
You feel you haven’t earned rest.
 6. Loss of joy in achievements.
Wins feel flat. The high fades fast.
 7. High output, low presence.
You’re productive, but disconnected.
 8. Avoidance of important conversations.
Emotional bandwidth? Barely there.
 9. Increased self-doubt.
You second-guess things you’d usually decide on in minutes.
 10. Relationships feel draining.
Even the ones that usually uplift you.
 11. Desire to unplug from everything.
You fantasize about escape—not vacations, but relief.
 12. Doing “everything right” but feeling off-track.
Success outside, imbalance inside. These are not just signs of stress. 
They’re your nervous system whispering: something needs to change. And the earlier you catch this, the easier it is to recover. That’s why I created the Silent Burnout Scorecard — a 3-minute self-check to spot the invisible signs and regain clarity. → Private.
→ Actionable.
→ Created for high achievers who don’t have time for burnout. Link is in the comments below. Awareness is the first step to sustainable performance. 
Not hustle. Not pushing through. 
But noticing — and taking responsibility early. Because leadership isn’t just what you do. 
It’s how you lead yourself back to balance.