I want to start with someone I used to work with.
I never knew for certain. But I knew.
The gum. The mints. The mouthwash underneath all of it. The small adjustments they made before getting close to anyone. They thought the performance was working.
It wasn’t.
I could smell it. Which means everyone else could too.
I’ve thought about that person a lot since I started coaching. Not with judgment. What I think about is the energy they spent every single day managing the perception. How exhausting it must have been. And how none of it was actually working.
Here’s where I’m going with this.
If you think you’re hiding it well, you’re not. Absolutely not.
Not the burnout. Not the exhaustion. Not the fact that you’ve been running on less than you should be for longer than you want to admit. The people around you can feel it. The performance of fine is one of the most transparent things a person can put on.
I know because I’ve worn it.
The Thing About Sacrifice
Early in my career, I gave away every break I could find so the people I was responsible for could have it. Events I personally wanted to attend. I gave them away because that’s what I believed a good leader did. You sacrifice. You put your people first.
And I was right. To a point.
The problem is nobody talked about what comes after the sustained sacrifice. What happens when the giving doesn’t stop and the replenishment never comes. I kept giving because it was the only model I had.
A few years ago, I had a trip planned. Five months of planning, tickets purchased, everything in place. The first real break in longer than I could clearly remember. It was cancelled three weeks out. Just like that.
That didn’t just disappoint me. It landed somewhere physical. Because it was physical. The body keeps a more accurate count than you do.
That’s what people miss about burnout. They talk about it like a mindset problem. Something to manage or push through.
It is not a mindset problem.
What Accumulates
Think about what repeated hits do to a football player. Not one collision. The accumulation. The ones they walked off and kept playing through. The damage compounds in ways that eventually can’t be reversed. What looks like toughness from the outside is damage building on top of damage.
Burnout works the same way.
The weekend you worked through. The vacation you didn’t take. The conversation you swallowed. Those are hits. They accumulate. And at some point the damage stops being something you can just decide your way out of.
Burnout is a horrible place. A horrible place to work from.
If you expect the people that work for you to not burn out, why the hell are you doing it to yourself?
That’s not rhetorical. I want you to sit with it.
What’s Being Taught Right Now
Here’s something worth saying directly: leadership is not a title.
The person who just joined your organization is watching. Right now. They are learning what leadership looks like from the people around them, and the curriculum isn’t the handbook or the values statement on the wall. It’s what they watch happen every day.
If what they watch is someone running on empty and calling it dedication, that’s what they’ll understand dedication to mean. That’s the culture being built. Not the one that gets announced in the all-hands. The one that gets demonstrated in the ordinary moments.
And this goes further than the obvious hierarchy. Everyone in a room has the capacity to lead. The person without a title is still shaping what the space feels like, what it makes possible, whether people bring the real version of themselves or the managed version.
You cannot model burnout and expect belonging. You cannot perform fine and build psychological safety. Those things are incompatible.
The Standard You Hold
So I want to ask you something. Not rhetorically. Actually.
When did you last do something that genuinely restored you? Not collapsing in front of the television because your brain had nothing left. Something that actually put something back.
I have to nourish myself. I freaking have to. So do you.
That’s not a luxury. That’s maintenance. And the people you lead deserve a version of you that has something left to give.
I’m not trying to get rich. I’m trying to help people. And if I can feed my family while doing that, then I’ll tell you what, this will have been a life well lived.
That’s what I’m building toward. And part of what I’ve learned in building it is that the work is not sustainable if you aren’t.
Where to Start
If any of this landed somewhere honest, I have a starting point for you.
The Values Investigation Exercise is free. No discovery call required. No strings. It’s a tool for getting clear on what actually matters to you, so your decisions start moving in that direction.
Depending on what you’re carrying, there may be a better fit. Send me a message. Tell me what’s going on. I’ll send you the tool that matches where you are.
We are communal beings. Get help.
I will be over here waiting for your message.
If you’re ready to go further, the discovery call is the next step.
LaSchwann Killens is an ICF-trained life and executive coach and the founder of VALADD Coaching. He works with leaders who are ready to stop running on empty and start leading from something real.