Burnout at senior leadership is the risk many overlook. Lana Hindmarch, co-founder of BREATHE, a leadership advisory firm that helps senior teams build burnout-proof high-energy cultures, explores how energy depletion quietly drains culture, trust, and performance, and why CHROs must act now.
We’ve spent years speaking about burnout – how it affects individuals, teams and culture. But there’s a deeper, less visible strain emerging in South African organisations: the steady depletion of those at the top. And its consequences are far-reaching.
Energy, by definition, is the capacity to work. In leadership, it’s the fuel for everything – performance, empathy, decision-making and presence. Without it, leaders may still show up, but what they project is disconnection, not direction.
Burnout is what happens when energy depletion becomes chronic; when the demands on a leader consistently exceed their ability to recover. It’s a systemic signal of overload yet it’s still often treated as a personal issue to be managed quietly or, at best, through a wellness programme.
But burnout doesn’t stay contained at the individual level. The deeper impact on trust, culture and reputation has rarely been named, let alone addressed with the seriousness it deserves. When leaders are running on empty, the ripple effect is real. The leadership team’s energy sets the tone, whether it’s intentional or not.
When the signal and the story drift apart
Organisations talk a lot about wellbeing – it’s written into values, embedded in strategy, echoed in external messaging. But leadership energy rarely gets the same attention. And when the most visible faces of the organisation are clearly running on empty, the story and the signal don't match
Employees notice first the delayed decisions, the closed-door meetings, the shorter tempers. They feel the inconsistent communication and the lack of empathy, but it doesn’t stay contained inside the organisation. Clients, investors, and partners may not name it, but they sense it – the missed deadlines, the defensive responses, the reluctance to look beyond immediate pressures. And inevitably, trust begins to fray.
This state has a name: survival mode. Survival mode is the outward expression of a leadership team close to burnout, and once it shows, reputational risk isn’t far behind.
Five signs often reveal when a leadership team has slipped into survival mode:
- Strategic priorities change frequently, or stall entirely, as focus narrows to short-term pressures.
- Communication with staff becomes filtered and emotionally disengaged.
- Senior leaders withdraw from non-essential interactions, reducing their visibility and accessibility.
- Meetings become purely operational, with little space for reflection or connection.
- Employees hesitate to escalate issues, unsure if they’ll be heard or supported.
These signals may be subtle but they accumulate, and they shape how people experience and talk about the company.
Leadership today is no longer judged only by results. It’s measured by presence, tone and the climate leaders create – inside and outside the business. But a leadership team in survival mode can’t consistently model the behaviours that create clarity and stability. And when those signals break down, it creates more than internal strain.
It quietly redefines what leadership success looks like, often in ways that undermine trust. In a time when culture and brand are inseparable, leadership energy is no longer a private matter. It’s a public indicator of organisational health.
The CHRO’s role
This is not an easy conversation to start. Many senior leaders have built careers on tireless stamina and relentless delivery. Talking about things like exhaustion or burnout, can feel uncomfortable, even indulgent.
But the CHRO is uniquely placed to hold this mirror up. To ask not just how are we performing, but at what cost and with what ripple effect.
Some of the questions the most forward-looking HR leaders are starting to ask include:
- Are we modelling sustainability at the top, or quietly rewarding over-work?
- What unhealthy patterns in leadership behaviour are becoming visible to our people, and to the outside world?
- How do we protect the long-term health of our brand through the energy of those who represent it?
These are not soft questions. They are strategic ones. And acting on them requires both immediate steps and long-term ambition.
Furthermore, some practical things CHROs can do is:
- Energy management training: equip leaders with tools to self-assess, renew and regulate energy under pressure.
- Recovery rhythms: build systemic rest and focus into the design of work, for example, downtime after demanding business cycles, meeting-free days, deep work blocks.
- Decision buffers: implement pause points, for example, a 24-hour rule on high-stakes calls to reduce reactivity.
- Peer reflection forums: host monthly, confidential check-ins where senior leaders can speak candidly about stress and pressure.
- Leadership energy audits: run quarterly, qualitative pulses to identify collective burnout risk early.
- Leadership feedback: integrate energy specific questions into 360s or performance conversations.
Over time, the goal should be to start to embed leadership energy into board-level risk frameworks, tie executive wellbeing to succession and retention metrics, and even reflect leadership sustainability in investor and ESG reporting. It’s a stretch goal but the trajectory starts now, with a willingness to treat leadership capacity as a shared asset, not a private burden.
This isn’t about easing pressure or coddling executives. In a world where we know demands are only going to increase and uncertainty is only going to continue, this is about creating the conditions for clear thinking and steady presence.
Energy is contagious. When leaders run on empty, the drain spreads to culture, decisions and trust. Over time, that becomes the story people tell about your brand. This isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s a sustainability imperative.
The CHRO mandate is clear: move the conversation from personal coping to collective credibility. If we want cultures that thrive and brands that earn trust, we must protect the energy that sets the tone.
