Understanding Burnout - The Hidden Cost of Caring
When I first began studying self-care, I assumed burnout was mostly about workload, too many hours, too few breaks. But the more I read, the more I listened to coaches, doctors, and leaders, the more I realised: burnout is not just about how much we give, it’s about how we give, to whom, and for how long without renewal.
We often treat burnout like a personal failing, a sign of weakness or poor resilience. Yet, in every domain I’ve studied, sport, business, healthcare, burnout is better understood as a relationship problem: a breakdown in the balance between effort, meaning, and recovery.
What Burnout Really Is
The World Health Organisation defines burnout as a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed, characterised by three dimensions:
Emotional exhaustion
Depersonalisation or cynicism
Reduced sense of accomplishment
But definitions can feel sterile until you sit across from a coach who’s lost their spark mid-season, or a doctor who says, “I still care, but I can’t feel it anymore.”
In sports coaching research, burnout is described as a progressive motivational withdrawal (Raedeke & Smith, 2001). Coaches enter the field for love of the game and growth of others, but over time, constant emotional labour, performance pressure, and blurred boundaries drain that original passion. The same pattern appears in medicine and leadership, the altruistic drive that once inspired excellence becomes the very source of exhaustion.
The Hidden Costs in Leadership
In leadership roles whether managing a team, running a clinic, or guiding athletes, burnout erodes the very qualities that make leadership effective: empathy, creativity, and perspective.
Medical studies (West et al., 2018) show that physicians experiencing burnout are more likely to make diagnostic errors and experience compassion fatigue. In coaching, burnout reduces the quality of feedback and the coach’s attunement to athletes’ needs. In corporate leadership, it leads to transactional thinking managing people as problems to solve rather than humans to lead.
Burnout, in essence, narrows our field of vision.
When we’re depleted, our leadership shifts from expansive to defensive. We lose curiosity. We begin to protect energy by withdrawing emotionally which only deepens the disconnection we feel.
The Role of Identity
One theme I’ve become increasingly fascinated by is how identity intensifies burnout.
In the literature, high-identification professionals, those who see their role as central to who they are, are more vulnerable to burnout. In sport and medicine alike, people often describe their work as a calling. That sense of purpose can be deeply sustaining, but it also means that failure or fatigue feels personal.
When the coach’s team underperforms, or the leader’s team culture starts to fray, they don’t just feel professional disappointment they feel an erosion of self.
So the very passion that drives excellence can, without balance, become the accelerant for burnout.
Recovery: The Missing Variable
Most burnout interventions focus on stress reduction such as time off, workload adjustments, mindfulness programs. These help, but they often miss something crucial: recovery is not the same as absence of work; it’s the presence of restoration.
Research from performance science supports this. Anders Ericsson’s studies on deliberate practice found that elite performers in any field work intensely but intersperse their effort with deliberate recovery, breaks, reflection, sleep, and detachment.
In medicine, micro-recovery strategies (even two-minute resets between patient consultations) have been shown to reduce fatigue and restore empathy. In coaching, reflective practice after sessions, not to critique but to decompress has a similar effect.
The key seems to be intentionality: recovery needs to be built into the rhythm of leadership, not bolted on when crisis hits.
A Shift from Endurance to Sustainability
I often hear leaders say, “I just need to push through this busy period.” But what if the busy period never ends?
The mindset of endurance, pushing harder, staying later, absorbing more may work in short bursts, but it’s incompatible with long-term leadership.
Sustainability, by contrast, asks different questions:
How can I maintain curiosity and empathy over time?
What habits protect my clarity of thought?
Who helps me regulate my energy when I can’t see it slipping?
Leaders who think sustainably treat recovery as a collective practice, not an individual indulgence. They normalise rest for their teams. They talk openly about fatigue. They schedule debriefs that include not just tactical review but emotional check-ins.
When leaders make recovery visible, it becomes cultural permission for others to do the same.
What I’m Still Learning
As a researcher, I’m learning that burnout is not something we “solve.” It’s a signal, a warning light, that our systems of work and care are misaligned.
As a practitioner, I’m learning that self-care in leadership isn’t about avoiding difficulty but creating renewal systems within it: reflection, supportive relationships, boundary-setting, and small acts of rest that accumulate into resilience.
Perhaps the first step is honesty, to name when the weight feels heavy, when our empathy is thin, when our energy is fractured. Because self-awareness is the entry point to recovery.
Closing Thought
Burnout is the hidden cost of caring, but it doesn’t have to be the inevitable outcome.
When we shift from seeing ourselves as infinite resources to recognising that our energy needs stewardship, not sacrifice, we begin to lead differently. We model a kind of strength that sustains not just performance, but humanity.
And maybe that’s the kind of leadership the world needs most.
Next in the series: “Reflective Practice - The Mirror That Builds Resilience.” We’ll explore how reflection acts as both a performance tool and a self-care practice across sport, medicine, and leadership.