Burnout is often framed as an individual failing. Maybe this leader isn’t resilient enough, not managing their boundaries, not coping with the pressure. But what if fatigue isn’t a flaw in people, but feedback from the system?
Frequently, when we work with leadership teams, we realise time is a fundamental issue. How much we have, how much we perceive we have, how we use it, how we’re expected to save it.
Interestingly, this comes to light as a major theme in the DDI Global Leadership Forecast 2025. It concludes that there’s an overarching reason why:
- 71% of leaders are reporting a significant rise in stress (up from 63% in 2022).
- 54% are concerned about burnout.
- 40% are considering leaving their role for the sake of their well-being.
and that reason is a pervasive sense of time scarcity.
Globally, only 30% of leaders feel they have sufficient time to execute their responsibilities.
This realisation has been far-reaching for us because we know that time isn’t just about diaries and deadlines, it’s about culture and attitudes.
When leaders and teams believe there’s not enough time, it usually reflects the habits and expectations of the organisation they’re working within.
What high-burnout organisations look like
Looking further into the correlation between time and burnout, I turned to Nick Petrie’s three-year global study into sustainable high performance. It adds depth to this picture because he found that while every organisation wants to be high performing, some achieve it in ways that quietly erode their people.
He identified seven characteristics of ‘high burnout’ organisations:
- High workload, insufficient resources.
- A culture of fear, threat or emergency
- Treating people like expendable resources
- A system designed for insecurity
- Lack of support from above
- The talk doesn’t match the walk
- People don’t talk about burnout around here
Look at the list again from the perspective of time.
Insufficient resources – people have too much to do and not enough time to do it.
A culture of emergency – panic stations, rushing to hit deadlines.
Expendable people – you are only useful for a finite period.
And many of the other ‘features’ represent a lack of investment of time in helping and supporting the workforce.
Taken together, these behaviours don’t just create long hours. They shape how people perceive time; as scarce, pressured, and never enough. That perception fuels stress, which in turn fuels burnout.
Behaviour and outcomes are data – use them
The signs of burnout rarely arrive with a label attached. More often, they seep in through the everyday rhythms of work. It’s the flurry of late-night emails that no one questions, because “that’s just how we do things around here.” It’s the Monday morning meeting that begins at a sprint and sets a tone of urgency that never quite resets. It’s the endless stream of shifting priorities, where nothing is ever taken away, only added.
Sometimes the signals are more subtle. A team that once debated ideas with energy now falls quiet. Colleagues begin to soften their language, careful not to say out loud that the pace feels unsustainable. People still show up, still deliver, but there’s a dull edge creeping in; a sense that performance is running on adrenaline rather than clarity.
These aren’t signs of individual weakness. They’re system feedback. They tell us the organisation’s design, culture, and leadership patterns are out of balance with the resources people actually have. And if those signals are ignored, pressure mounts until it tips into burnout.
Nick Petrie uses a metaphor of the three degrees of burnout.
First-degree is the manageable kind: pressure is high, but with recovery and stronger boundaries people can bounce back.
Second-degree is when performance begins to suffer, and work itself needs redesigning with fewer priorities, clearer decisions, and more support.
By third-degree, the issue is no longer about individuals at all: the system is depleted, and only fundamental shifts in structure, leadership norms or resources can restore balance.
Why this matters now
The rise from 63% to 71% of leaders reporting stress in just three years isn’t a small fluctuation; it’s a warning sign. If organisations keep chasing performance in ways that drive time scarcity and replicate Petrie’s burnout patterns, they risk not only losing talent but undermining long-term performance.
If this trajectory continues, organisations risk losing their leadership talent at a time when every other aspect of business is volatile.
But burnout isn’t just an individual problem to be solved with mindfulness apps and resilience workshops. It’s a message from the system.
If you’re curious, try tuning into your organisation’s behaviours and energy. By opening up the discussion, you’ll start to see the fatigue for what it is: feedback rather than weakness, and a warning sign of areas where culture, capacity, and expectations are out of step.
And that’s when meaningful change can begin.