Is It Burnout or a Leadership Problem?

What do you do when you’ve improved your leadership skills, your communication, your delegation, and your ability to hold others accountable – but something still doesn’t feel right? How do you know if it's burnout or a leadership problem?

I worked with a client who was leading a major initiative under intense pressure. He was passionate about the work but exhausted by how often he had to step in and fix problems that others were responsible to resolve. Every time he flagged an issue and suggested a fix, the burden fell back on him.

After a while, that frustration started to show in meetings with his leadership, who weren’t doing their part to hold other departments accountable.

He didn’t want to be seen as difficult or overly negative, but he was reaching the edge of what he could handle. When he came to coaching, he said he wanted to feel excited about his job again.

Over the next six months, we worked together on building skills, confidence, and boundaries. He stopped taking on so much himself. He practiced new ways to communicate, lead, and advocate for what his team needed. And he got results: stronger relationships with his management, better collaboration and delegation with his team, less stress, and more fulfillment.

A year and a half later, he reached back out.

He was still using those same skills, still doing a good job, and still confident in his leadership. But something had shifted. He said he felt like he was “washing out.”

He’d had an opportunity come up that excited him. It was a chance to join a different team doing the work he loved with the kind of technology and mission that mattered to him. He’d decided to go for it and even talked to his boss about it, who was supportive. But he didn’t feel the relief or excitement he’d anticipated.

Instead of relief or excitement, he felt flat.

He wasn’t sure what was wrong. He wondered if he was missing something. Was he supposed to enjoy his current job? If he were better at handling stress, more motivated, or more capable, would he?

What we uncovered was powerful: it wasn’t that he was doing anything wrong or lacking in some way. His job no longer aligned with who he was and what he wanted.

He was still resilient but not engaged. Still competent but not connected. He was in burnout again, but didn’t recognize it because he could still function.

This time, though, he wasn’t blaming himself. He could see that something wasn’t right while also knowing it wasn’t all on him.

That shift alone was powerful growth.

In our work together, he realized the project hadn’t changed, but he had. And that was OK. His priorities had evolved. His definition of success had grown. Beneath the stress, he was ready for something more.

He was tired of feeling like he needed to be more [insert trait here: resilient, resourceful, capable] to make it work. The real breakthrough came when he admitted that maybe it shouldn’t work. Maybe the system around him was broken, and he shouldn’t be the one under the pressure to hold it up alone.

That moment – that refusal to make it all his responsibility – freed him to envision what might come next.

Here’s why this matters: burnout doesn’t always look like collapse. Sometimes it looks like apathy or disconnection.

Because high achievers are so skilled at pushing through, burnout often gets misinterpreted as a leadership problem, a resilience problem, or a motivation issue , or a skills gap – anything that puts the responsibility back on the individual (easier to “fix”) instead of examining the organizational dynamics that caused it (much more challenging).

But the real issue might be that something no longer fits. Recognizing that truth isn’t giving up, it’s choosing to prioritize what you need to feel fulfilled in your work.

If you’ve been feeling like something’s off, even when you’re doing all the “right” things, it might be time to stop asking what’s wrong with you and start asking whether the job is still right for you.

If you’re ready to explore that question, I can help.

👉 Schedule a conversation with me here

Not ready to talk yet? Take the Career Clarity Quiz to find out what’s really driving your dissatisfaction and what to do next.

👉 Take the Career Clarity Quiz

Then go deeper into your results with the Clarity Over Chaos Workbook.

👉 Download the Clarity Over Chaos Workbook