Your Most Burned-Out People Are the Ones Running Your Team
Wellness perks usually target frontline employees first.
That may be backwards.
The people translating strategy into Monday morning are often the most depleted people in the building: managers and mid-level leaders. Their exhaustion becomes the team’s weather.
Gallup’s 2026 workplace findings report burnout among 71% of managers, rising to 78% among mid-level managers compared with 65% of individual contributors. Managers are 36% more likely to report burnout than individual contributors.
The paradox is easy to miss: engaged and exhausted can both be true.
Notice
Stop treating manager burnout as a private resilience failure.
Ask, “What are you carrying that no one sees?”
Track workload, decision volume, and emotional labour, not only engagement.
Watch for leaders who remain dependable while becoming less available, patient, or connected.
Gallup also found leaders and managers report higher daily stress (+7 points), anger (+12), sadness (+11), and loneliness (+10) than the people they supervise.
That is not a motivation problem. It is a system signal.
Redesign
Resilience-based leadership is not asking managers to absorb more pressure with a better attitude.
It is redesigning the conditions around them.
Clarify the three priorities that matter most.
Remove low-value work before adding wellness programming.
Give managers authority to solve the problems they are held accountable for.
Protect recovery time as seriously as meeting time.
A manager who cannot pause cannot help a team think clearly. A leader who must hide depletion teaches everyone else to hide theirs.
Reconnect
Managers are relationship infrastructure. When they run on fumes, check-ins become transactions, conflict gets avoided, and trust thins.
Return on Relationship means treating connection as part of performance, not a perk after the real work is finished.
Build it through:
honest workload conversations;
brief, consistent relationship check-ins;
recognition for sustainable performance, not heroic overextension.
Roxanne’s ROR: Return on Relationship work offers a useful reminder: healthier relationships create stronger results. Her resilience-based coaching and speaking helps leaders create that connection without sacrificing performance.
Your most burned-out people may also be your most committed. Do not ask them to become more resilient while leaving the system unchanged.
Sources
Gallup. (2026). State of the Global Workplace 2026. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-workplace.aspx
Vibhas Ratanjee. (April 8, 2026). “Gallup’s 2026 Workplace Report: Leaders Are Thriving. They’re Also Burning Out. Both Are True.” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/vibhasratanjee/2026/04/08/gallups-2026-workplace-report---leaders-are-thriving-theyre-also-burning-out-both-are-true/
Reflect: Are your managers being asked to create resilience for everyone except themselves? What would change if manager wellbeing became a leadership responsibility rather than an individual coping task?
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