And when leaders reach their limit

1. What pushes leaders to their limit

Leaders’ overload rarely comes from a single source. It is the accumulation of factors, day after day, that gradually consumes their emotional margin. Permanent responsibility is the first of them: the leader does not switch off when leaving the office, because decisions, conflicts and deadlines travel with them — on the phone, at dinner, over the weekend.

Then comes the loneliness at the top. The higher one climbs in the hierarchy, the less room there is for shared doubts. Leaders feel they cannot show hesitation to their team, cannot expose weakness to their peers and cannot disappoint those who appointed them. The result is a relational isolation that removes precisely what protects mental health the most: the possibility of speaking openly about what is hard.

Add to this availability without boundaries — the expectation, often self-imposed, of an immediate response to everything and everyone — the continuous pressure for results, the management of other people’s emotions and conflicts, and the human weight of decisions: layoffs, restructurings, choices that affect the lives of real people. Each of these factors, on its own, is manageable. Together and without recovery, they form a direct road to the limit.

2. From acute stress to burnout

Stress, in itself, is not the enemy. In occasional doses, it mobilises, focuses and prepares us for action. The problem begins when peaks of acute stress repeat themselves without intervals of recovery: body and mind start living in a permanent state of alert, sleep deteriorates, irritability grows, concentration fails and decision-making capacity — precisely the one leaders depend on most — begins to decline.

It is on this ground that the risk of burnout grows significantly. Exhaustion settles in first; then comes detachment, cynicism towards work and people; finally, the feeling that nothing we do produces the effect it should. A leader who reaches this point loses not only their health: they lose the quality of their leadership, and the whole team pays the bill.

There is also an aggravating factor specific to leadership: denial. Many leaders recognise the signs in their staff, but not in themselves. They read tiredness as a lack of discipline, irritability as high standards, isolation as necessity. And so the process advances, nameless and uncared for, until the day the body or the mind decides to stop on their behalf.

3. The numbers we cannot ignore

If the human dimension were not enough, the numbers help us grasp the scale of the problem. According to the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization, depression and anxiety cost around 12 billion lost working days every year worldwide — the equivalent of roughly US$1 trillion in lost productivity, year after year.

The WHO also estimates that, even before the pandemic, about 15% of working-age adults were living with a mental disorder, and that work environments which fail to protect mental health — excessive workloads, low control over work, harassment or violence, insecurity — demonstrably increase that risk. Global workplace surveys, such as Gallup’s, consistently show that managers are among the groups reporting the highest levels of daily stress.

These numbers are not abstractions: they are teams without a leader, interrupted projects, prolonged sick leave, lost talent and costs no organisation can sustain. Investing in the prevention of leaders’ mental health is not an act of benevolence — it is a management decision, with human and economic returns.

4. Topics for preventive action

Prevention is not a generic programme: it is a set of concrete choices, individual and organisational. Here are the essential topics:

• Recognise and name the signs — learning to identify, in ourselves and in others, the early indicators of overload: changes in sleep, irritability, loss of concentration, detachment, postponed decisions.

• Create safe spaces to talk — mentoring, supervision, coaching or peer groups, where leaders can share doubts and difficulties without fear of judgement.

• Set boundaries on availability — response times, meeting-free periods, switching off notifications: small rules that give back room for recovery.

• Share the decision load — delegating with trust, clarifying priorities and accepting that not everything needs to go through the leader.

• Care for the body that sustains the mind — sleep, physical activity, real breaks and mindfulness practices, with consistent evidence in stress reduction.

• Train and raise awareness across the organisation — because leaders’ mental health is also the structure’s responsibility: realistic workloads, a culture of trust and clear prevention policies.

• Seek specialised support in good time — coaching, counselling or psychological support are not a last resort; they are instruments of performance and health, all the more effective the earlier they are called upon.

A conversation can be the first step

Throughout more than 35 years of activity — in public and private institutions, in national and international contexts — I have closely followed the life of organisations and of the people who lead them. I know what the limit does to a leader, and I also know how much well-planned prevention increases efficiency, serenity and decision-making capacity.

If this article resonated with you — personally, or on behalf of your team — I invite you to book a meeting with me. Together, we can look at an individual plan or a plan for your company, focused on preventing burnout and increasing the efficiency of those who lead. The first step is almost always a conversation. Book yours.