We broke all previous attendance records at Dion Leadership’s March webinar—Managers Are Cracking: Here Is What We Can Do to Fix It. And while we were thrilled to have so many engaged talent development professionals join us, the popularity of the topic is something that should concern us all. Why? It highlights the pervasiveness of manager burnout in our organizations.

Why Should You Be Concerned About Manager Burnout?

Why is manager burnout a problem? Two reasons. First, managers play a highly valuable role in our organizations. If they are disengaged, unproductive, or absent, it will create organizational performance problems. Second, managers are the key to engaging the rest of your organization. If your managers suffer from burnout, your employees are not far behind.

Today’s workplace continues to undergo profound seismic shifts. Employees demand more from their job. They seek purpose, fulfillment, and flexibility alongside traditional benefits. However, this surge in expectations has left managers caught in the middle. Balancing the well-being and productivity of their teams with managing their own workload has become an increasingly daunting task—a double-edged sword for managers. And it is causing many good managers to throw up their hands in frustration and defeat.

There is an overwhelming consensus—among coaches and trainers, consultants and researchers, C-suite executives and human resource professionals—that managers are in trouble. They need our help. Now.

What Is Manager Burnout, Exactly?

As identified by Christina Maslach, a pioneer in burnout research, burnout manifests as extreme exhaustion, deep-seated cynicism, and a depleted sense of self-worth and accomplishment. These symptoms, while often subtle, can be measured and tracked, serving as red flags for potential manager burnout.

Moreover, managers frequently express a sense of invisibility—a feeling of being overlooked and unheard within the organizational hierarchy. This lack of recognition exacerbates existing burnout symptoms, compounding the issue.

Recent studies corroborate these observations. Gartner’s 2024 HR Priorities survey found that an alarming 76% of HR leaders acknowledged that managers are overwhelmed by their expanding responsibilities, with 73% admitting their inadequacy in leading change.

More Eye-Popping Manager-Related Stats

• An average manager has 51% more responsibilities than they can effectively manage.
• 1 in 5 managers would prefer not being people managers, given a choice.
• Only 1 in 2 employees say that their managers treat them with empathy and fairness.

*Sourced from Harvard Business Review’s “4 Reasons Why Managers Fail” and Gartner’s 2024 HR Priorities survey.

As talent development professionals, we can take concrete steps to address manager burnout. As we shared during our webinar, consider mitigating burnout in the four key areas shown in our model below:

First, look at the work itself. Resetting role expectations is a crucial first step. If the duties and job expectations of your managers extend beyond a 35- or 40-hour work week, it’s time to make some adjustments. This may involve streamlining processes to reduce administrative burdens. This may also include helping managers find meaning in their work. Helping them with the latter is crucial to showing them how their efforts positively impact the organization, which can result in greater engagement and productivity. You can also help managers find fulfillment in their roles by pointing out how their assigned tasks align with their values or the organization’s values.

Next, teach leaders to improve themselves and their ability to be agile and resilient. This will likely include helping them form productive habits and cultivate reasonable routines. Additionally, you may encourage self-care and prioritize well-being. By championing all of these values, as well as by modeling them in your own actions, you can help your managers establish healthy work-life alignment. This can help build psychological safety on your team and among your managers.

Third, leadership needs to step up. HR can’t shoulder the burden to fix this. It requires time, attention, and role modeling for reinforcement from senior leadership. Secure an audience with your senior leaders to share this data, talk about the hidden and not-so-hidden costs of manager burnout, and create clear and actionable solutions. As a leader, it’s important to model owning up to your own mistakes and normalize showing vulnerability. Actively invite input from your team and respond productively to the feedback you receive.

And finally, take a close look at your culture. Are you a “die at the desk” environment? Will “do whatever it takes, anytime of the day and night” be a sustainable solution? What are the side effects of that behavior? Set new behaviors and expectations and then imbed them in programs, policies, and practices.

Mitigating Manager Burnout

In the longer term, building a robust manager pipeline will help to assure that the managers you have in place are prepared and ready to step into their increased responsibility. There are also several holistic, organization-wide actions that will help mitigate manager burnout:

1. Learning and Development: Equip managers with the necessary skills to navigate challenges effectively. Put your managers through a comprehensive leadership development program.
2. Flexible Work Arrangements: Empower managers to work in ways that suit their needs, fostering a culture of trust and safety. Give them some sense of control and ability to manage multiple aspects of their lives.
3. Community and Support: Provide platforms for managers to connect, share experiences, and seek guidance. In fact, in a study at Microsoft, when their managers experienced true burnout, they scored 34 points lower on the sentiment “I feel safe to speak up at work” than those experiencing no burnout. Creating community is a relatively easy and highly underutilized practice. Bring managers of people together to talk. Listen to them. Co-create solutions and ensure they know they are important and valued—that you want them to stick around and be part of creating a stronger organization.

There’s an important reminder in all of this that needs noting if you expect your efforts to really pay off: each level of management likely requires a customized approach. A study cited in the Harvard Business Review article “More Than 50% of Managers Feel Burned Out” found that managers are more likely than individual contributors to experience exhaustion and lack of professional efficacy. The study also found that managers who manage individual contributors (i.e., front-line managers) are more likely to experience cynicism than managers who manage other managers (i.e., middle managers). As managers are promoted higher in the organization and the scope of their role increases, they find more meaning in their work, which can help reduce cynicism.

At all levels, listening to managers’ feedback and acting upon it promptly can go a long way in fostering trust and a culture of inclusivity and fairness from the top down. And let’s not forget: cultivating leadership agility and resilience among managers helps them adapt to changing demands.

Addressing manager burnout is not just a moral imperative—it’s essential for organizational success. By implementing targeted strategies and fostering a culture of support, we can empower managers to thrive in today’s complex work environment. Together, we can create workplaces where both employees and leaders flourish.

Please reach out if you are interested in implementing any of our leadership development or coaching solutions for your organization’s managers.

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