Even Leaders Get Burnout. Here's How They Deal

The line between working hard and too hard is only getting thinner in today's workforce. A 2024 Mercer study found 82 percent of the US workforce is at risk of burnout, or the official diagnosis for emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive stress. Women at the helm of businesses from fashion to tech can feel the burn most acutely. Sometimes, they even mistake it for dedication to their jobs.

"Leaders become masters at pushing through and overriding the signs of burnout," Daisy Auger-Dominguez, the author of Burnt Out to Lit Up, said to open her panel "Navigating the Executive Burnout Phenomenon" at Marie Claire's Power Play Atlanta summit. "Recent research shows executive burnout is at record highs. Over half of CEOs say this year will be the toughest year [yet] and we're seeing rising executive attrition across government, corporate, and university sectors."

After climbing to the top of an industry's ranks, the last outcome anyone wants is a burnout diagnosis. How can leaders rise to the challenges of their fields without giving up all their energy in the process? Katie Kime, designer of her namesake label, Kat Cole, CEO of AG1, and Hillary Kerr, co-founder of Who What Wear and Future Publishing SVP, shared their tactics for navigating the demands of a high-intensity role. As Auger-Dominguez summarized onstage, their insights aren't just for "beating burnout." They're actionable steps for "thriving" at work and beyond.

Protect Your Time

Katie Kime's schedule can get hectic at the head of a growing fashion brand. But she's found a way to preserve the creativity that her business grew from. "This year, I blocked my calendar every day from nine to eleven and it says 'KK creative.' In that window, do not call, do not email—this is my time." Building time to pause, slow down, and refocus has helped fuel her ideas and start her days on an anti-burnout note.

What about when work starts to leak into dinner and the evening wind-down? Hillary Kerr shared a work adage earning the audience's applause: "It's PR, not the ER." Unless there's a true emergency, she expects her teams to save their questions, comments, and concerns for work hours. "I really try and be as respectful as I can about people's time off because I want to be respectful of my time off, too," she said. "It ultimately makes me a better leader when I can have a life outside work."

Inevitably, times will come when there's too much happening to log off consistently. That's okay too, as long as it doesn't become a pattern of sacrificing time. "There are seasons that are for hustling," Cole said, "and there are others where we have to realize that that sustained stress is not meant to be kept on forever."

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

Burnout symptoms go unnoticed when executives, and their teams, aren't speaking honestly with one another. Establishing where, when, and how to communicate sets expectations that keep both sides safe from frustrating or ineffective workspaces.

"I think the most important thing is treating people like individuals and meeting them where they are," Kerr said. "I think having those conversations early and often about the level of communication that you two would prefer to have together is really the thing that makes things go more seamlessly."

Cole referenced a method she coined "Make My Day Difficult." She'd ask her teams to write down single biggest pain point in their work before they clocked out. "By the time they came back the next day, I would have fixed the most commonly mentioned things or have conversations around things that we weren't going to or couldn't fix right away," she said. Problems couldn't fester when she was proactively solving them. Burnout couldn't fester, either.

Not every day—or year—on the road to success is blue skies and positive energy. All three executives noted the Covid-19 pandemic put additional stress on their businesses. Kerr reflected that her first major test came during the 2008 financial crisis. There's always another side to work toward—and getting there is a team effort. "Things will be bad, then things will be good because that is how life goes," Kerr said. "When things are great, fortify, build, learn, and build tech" because it will make teams that much more prepared to handle the tough times. (And, communicate effectively through them.)

Practice Self-Love

Cole admitted this piece of advice might sound "bold" to some women: "The greatest thing you can do to avoid burnout is to deeply, deeply love yourself." She explained it's not simply a matter of building confidence or strengthening the tie between work and identity. She's actually found practicing self-love beneficial to her health.

When you're practicing self-love, "You'll listen to your body more. You'll make a bigger deal about the little things before they become big things," she said. "But if you feel you are second, third, fourth, fifth or worse, you will ignore those things in service of other people's goals."

For Kime, owning high-level work and avoiding burnout comes back to a simple, self-first directive: "Knowing what you want and saying what you want."