Manager burnout is rising. Caught between top-down pressure and team needs, managers are exhausted. We interviewed three leaders to hear from different voices in the chain and understand the disconnect and the solution.
Emily Link, Senior Leader
As you gain seniority within an organisation, you inevitably take on more responsibility. But it quickly becomes clear that you can’t (and shouldn’t) try to achieve everything on your own. Delivering bigger and better results depends on your ability to empower your team.
I won’t pretend that I always get it right, but I try to challenge my team, support them, and ultimately trust them. It can be a big adjustment, accepting that you no longer need to (or should) be doing everything that you once did. You simply don’t have the bandwidth to engage with every detail like you used to.
Often, my team holds me accountable for focusing on ‘more directing and less doing’. What they want — and what ultimately serves everyone best — is for me to let them get on with their areas of responsibility, but to be accessible and available when they need support. When you become comfortable letting go, that’s when you really start to see people sit up, take note, step up and grow in ways you hadn’t imagined.
Milly Gladstone, Middle Manager
Managing people at work is a privilege - it’s a chance to develop more junior members of a team. It’s also a sign that the business trusts you to help others grow, and allows more autonomy to stretch your skills whilst learning something new.
However, like all opportunities, it comes with its risks. If the support isn’t there, it can be tricky to take your team on the development journey with you. Being able to help your team members with the day-to-day tasks and seeing your feedback lead to improvements is a great joy. But if you’ve never managed people before, and you aren’t given the structures to do so, it can be a difficult landscape to traverse. Becoming the person sat on the other side of the table conducting the 1:1s, rather than being a participant of them, for example, is hard without some guidance or training. How can you be developing your team if you’re not being given that development yourself? We see this all the time as L&D consultants. The neglected middle management — promoted because they’re excellent at their job, but never given guidance on how to do the ‘people’ side of it all. It’s assumed that, because they’re a high performer, they’ll know how to manage. But it’s a very different muscle that needs to be flexed.
So, promote your people and give them the opportunity to manage if they’re up for it. But first, make sure the structures are in place that enable them to thrive.
Reuben Fletcher-Louis, Frontline Employee
Being at the end of the food chain (I prefer ‘end’ to ‘bottom’) makes it very easy to feel everything my manager feels. If they are squeezing 50 hours of work into a 5-day week, it can feel chaotic and stressful. On the flipside, when a manager is learning and thriving, that gets passed down as well.
The most salient symptom of a burnt-out manager that I have experienced is a lack of availability. Easily hidden behind the guise of ‘autonomy’, when a manager becomes overwhelmed or disengaged, they may not have time, or they may care less about the outcomes when it’s not about their performance. In these cases, I have felt less supported when tackling tricky projects and less celebrated when I’ve exceeded expectations.
Beyond the direct effect that I feel on myself, the temperature within the team also goes up a couple of notches. I’m a big believer in small environmental changes having a large impact on behaviour and productivity. A great manager understands their impact on the temperature of the team.
What We All Need
Solving burnout is a collective effort. Senior leaders must create space for empowerment, not micromanagement. Middle managers need clear guidance, structured development, and the trust to lead confidently. And frontline employees thrive when their managers are present, supportive, and emotionally available. When each role commits to supporting the others, with empathy, clarity, and accountability, we build cultures where people grow, not burn out.
