Am I Accidentally Burning Out My Team?

Mar 31
3 min read

Updated: Mar 31

“It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem, it’s me.”

— Taylor Swift (and, occasionally…leaders everywhere)

Most leaders don’t set out to exhaust their teams.

They care about results. They care about their people. They want to help them. They want momentum, growth, and success. And the very strengths that help them achieve those things can also — unintentionally — create the conditions for burnout.

Not because they’re bad leaders.

Because they’re human leaders operating from their natural wiring.

When Your Strengths Start Working Against Your Team.

Each of us has parts of work where we naturally thrive — where we feel productive, confident, and energized. We call these stages of work our Working Geniuses.

We also have parts of work that drain us: the steps we rush through, postpone, or quietly decide aren’t as important. We call these our Working Frustrations.

The challenge? When leaders consistently operate from their preferred strengths, they can unintentionally skip critical stages of work their team depends on. When stages of work get skipped, not only does the quality of work suffer, we unintentionally skip the people who need them most.

And that leads to team members feeling burned out, overlooked, and underutilized.

A True Story

I recently reconnected with a friend who left her job less than a year after joining.

She didn’t leave because the culture was toxic.

She didn’t leave because people were unkind.

In fact, she said the opposite — the organization was full of good people who treated her well.

She left because the pace never stopped.

From the moment she signed on to the moment she signed off, it was constant motion. Back-to-back client meetings. New clients added regularly. Very little control over her calendar. Almost no space to step back, think, or assess what was realistic.

When I asked what finally pushed her to leave, she said, “You know what it was? I never got time to think. And when I would say something, my leader would listen… but nothing ever changed.”

That sentence says a lot.

Her leader is a great human being. His Geniuses are Galvanizing and Tenacity, which means he gets energy from driving execution, creating momentum, and achieving results — the kind of leadership most organizations reward.

But the momentum kept accelerating, without enough pause to consider bandwidth, onboarding pace, or the downstream impact on the team and the client experience.

In the process, key stages of work were getting skipped — particularly Discernment and Enablement.

There wasn’t enough space to step back and evaluate what was realistic.

And not enough support to ensure the team could sustain the pace.

So while results were being driven forward, the people responsible for delivering them were quietly being stretched beyond what was sustainable.

This Isn’t Just One Type of Leader

It would be easy to read this story and think, “Okay — that’s a leader who moves too fast.”

But this isn’t about one leadership style. Any leader — with any combination of strengths — can unintentionally wear out their team when those strengths go unregulated.

See if you recognize any of these:

The idea-driven leader who brings constant “surprises” and curveballs… but to the team, it feels like chaos. Priorities shift monthly, focus gets fragmented, and decisions take longer because nothing ever fully lands.
The thoughtful, inclusive leader who wants everyone’s input… but ends up overanalyzing and delaying decisions. Meanwhile, the team is thinking: “Please, just decide so we can move.”
The loyal, get-it-done leader who jumps in to help and finish the work… but defaults to “here, let me do it.” Meanwhile, the team feels underutilized, sidelined, and unsure where they can contribute.

Different Geniuses.

Same outcome.

Burnout Isn’t Always About Workload

It’s often about how the work is happening.

Too fast without pause.

Too slow without clarity.

Too many ideas without direction.

Too much action without support.

And over time, that creates something much heavier than a full calendar.

What makes this tricky is that it’s usually not intentional. It’s leaders overusing the strengths that make them successful — without realizing where those same strengths are creating gaps for their team.

This is where The Six Types Working Genius, by Patrick Lencioni, changes the game. It gives leaders visibility into which stages of work they naturally lean into — and which ones they tend to skip.