Despite more coaching, more tools, and more insight, executive burnout is still rising — here’s why.
Many of the leaders I speak with don’t use the word “burnout” right away. Instead, they say things like:
“I feel disconnected from my work.”
“I’m still performing, but it costs more.”
“I don’t recognize myself the way I lead anymore.”
Burnout in 2026 looks different than it did years ago. It’s not always about exhaustion — it’s about identity fatigue, constant pressure, and operating in systems that never truly allow for recovery.
Burnout isn’t caused by lack of discipline. It’s caused by prolonged misalignment between role, identity, and internal capacity AND an increasing disconnect from our human-ness that is being accelerated on pace with the adoption of generative AI tools.
What I’ve observed over my two decades of full-time coaching is this:
Most executive and leadership coaching focuses on insight and strategy — but insight alone doesn’t change how a leader cultivates greater resilience and capacity in their body and mind, day after day.
Burnout persists when:
Awareness isn’t integrated
Change stays intellectual
Leaders are asked to adapt without support at a systems level
In my work, the leaders who recover and regain clarity don’t do so by pushing harder. They slow down enough to rebuild internal resilience and reorient what success means for them. When that happens:
Energy returns
Focus sharpens
Leadership feels sustainable again
As you move through the early part of this year, I invite you to reflect:
Are you trying to think your way out of something that needs to be felt, integrated, and supported?
I’m developing a deeper offering for 2026 that addresses this gap — one that works with leaders as whole systems, not just strategic minds.
More soon. For now, simply notice where burnout might be asking for a different kind of response.
What some easy practices you can use to shift from reactivity to leading with more clear authority? Read on…
A client recently came to me frustrated by how quickly he was snapping in virtual meetings with the level of distraction evident in his distributed team members. He knew his short temper wasn’t aligned with the leader he wanted to be, but awareness alone wasn’t changing it.
The coaching focused less on fixing behavior and more on building his capacity to stay present in challenging circumstances.
I guided him to try some simple, consistent regulation practices. I encourage you to try them as well:
✅ Grounding Through the Body Place both feet on the floor, feel the chair supporting you, and name 3 physical sensations you notice. This practice supports you in shifting your attention away from the mental spin and back into the present moment. From this foundation of being reconnected with the body, you can then make more conscious choices of how you respond.
✅ Breathing + Posture Reset Sit upright, roll shoulders back slightly, and take 5 slow breaths while gently lengthening the spine. I’ve done this practice in yoga classes and functional fitness classes for years. And what I know from my own training as a yoga teacher is that the simple practice of shifting your posture can shift how the nervous system responds under stress.
✅ Micro-Recovery Between Meetings Instead of scrolling on your phone right after a call or meeting, step away from the technology for 2 minutes. Take a purposeful breath while looking out a window and softening your gaze. Let your rate of breathing begin to slow naturally. This practice resets the nervous system by helping to prevent stress from stacking up and compounding throughout the day.
✅ Label the State (Not the Story) Silently name what’s happening inside your body and mind. For example, a word like: “activated,” “tense,” or “settled.” This practice helps the body to be “seen”, letting it know that you are paying attention to the signals it is sending you, so it does not have to shout louder at you. Labeling the state reduces reactivity without needing to fix or change anything about your circumstances.
✅ Regulate First, Then Respond Ever respond to a text or email while feeling charged up? We’ve all learned this does not lead to a positive or productive result, even if the ego does feel good for a bit. Instead, do this: Pause and regulate yourself before responding. How? Pay attention to how you are breathing and follow the inhales and exhales through three rounds of slow breaths. Then, notice how this practice can shift your outlook, and ultimately the tone and clarity of your text or email response.
For this client, I worked with him to learn and practice these approaches for regulation. The result? Within weeks, his team noticed the shift in him. On virtual team calls, there were fewer tense exchanges – and less reason for the team to be distracted with DMing about him. He was having more decisive conversations. His shift led to less second-guessing after meetings and decisions. Overall, he became steadier and behaved more like the leader he wanted to be.
This is an example of what regulation does — it gives leaders access to their best thinking when the pressure is on.
👉 Consider this a small experiment — try it once and notice how your decision-making feels afterward.
Have you ever noticed that even when you’re doing everything “right,” it can still feel hard to sustain your leadership capacity and influence?
I’ve been having more and more coaching conversations lately in which my high achieving clients say something like, “I know what to do — I just don’t have the same reserves to draw on the way I used to.”
January often brings a desire to reset. Do you feel that way? But what I’m seeing as we begin the 2026 calendar year is different. The reset leaders are asking for isn’t about sharper strategy or more output — it’s about how they are operating internally while leading.
As we move through the final month in the year of the Wood Snake – as this past year has been called in the Chinese astrological calendar – we have a “last chance” to confront and release the behaviors, mindsets, and choices that no longer fit with who we are becoming.
When I sit with high-performing leaders, a few themes come up again and again:
The pace feels relentless and there’s very little room to recover between demands
Decisions feel heavier and harder to make
“I can no longer push myself to do work that doesn’t “feel” right to me”
Traditional leadership approaches tend to push thinking faster, optimizing more, and powering through. But sustainable performance requires something else — regulation.
My prior training in yoga, meditation, and Reiki exposed me to practices that support nervous system regulation. More and more, I work with my clients to intentionally regulate their internal state so they can:
Make clearer decisions under pressure
Respond instead of react
Lead with a steadier, calmer authority
Before you roll your eyes and stop reading, I invite you to recognize that these are not fringe practices, nor is this a topic relegated to wellness alone. Instead, these are foundational practices for sustainable leadership capacity, ensuring that your system can actually handle the demands of your role so you can not only perform but also have positive influence and impact.
When I work with my clients in leadership roles to help them learn how to calm their system and stay present under pressure, something shifts:
Decision fatigue softens
Confidence becomes more grounded
Results come with less force
As you begin this new calendar year and a new era in human leadership, I invite you to consider:
Are you asking yourself to perform at a level your system can no longer sustain?
I’m in the process of developing a new offering for 2026 focused on helping leaders strengthen nervous system regulation so performance becomes more sustainable. If this resonates and you’d like to learn more, you’re welcome to schedule a call with me in the new year. Click here to do so.
Have you noticed that something has shifted as we enter 2026? In conversations with leaders, I’m noticing the focus is not on performance metrics as much as usual.
What do leaders seem to be asking for and focusing on as we move into 2026? I invite you to read on and let me know your thoughts.
Over the past few months, I’ve been noticing a clear shift in what my high-performing clients who work in leadership roles are asking for and focusing on. It’s not another productivity framework or performance sprint.
What they’re wanting is more like a long-lasting shift in being more people-focused and finding a sustainable way to work that still allows them to make an impact. And it all begins with them taking time to get really clear about what they want and noticing what it’s difficult for them to let go of.
What I’m hearing most often:
“I know I need to use AI and technology more, but I also want less time in front of a screen.”
“I know I should go for this next promotion, but something feels misaligned.”
“I need to keep performing at a high level, but I’m exhausted and I don’t want to burn out again.”
Burnout, identity fatigue, AI pressure, and leadership dissonance are no longer edge cases — they’re mainstream challenges experienced by leaders working at higher levels in organizations.
After 20+ years of observing what creates sustainable transformation, one pattern is clear: the accelerating pace of work and the dehumanizing nature of technology are not promoting a healthy leadership culture. And until we all get really clear about what we want and what we are willing to accept, we are complicit in letting the status quo and the systems we work in degrade our performance — impacting our creativity and innovation with a huge toll on us cognitively, emotionally, interpersonally, and physiologically.
That said, not all is lost; I’m also seeing who is thriving and what they’re doing differently.
The leaders who will be thriving in 2026 are:
Leading with a human-lens, dynamically balancing the optimization of technology with the conditions that ensure the team performs creatively and productively.
Intentionally slowing down the pace to get grounded and clear about priorities before rushing ahead with implementing half-baked solutions..
Building their internal resilience and capacity with disciplined and conscious practices that nurture mental, emotional and physical well-being.
As we start the calendar year, I invite you to reflect:
Where are you mindlessly pushing ahead for answers and impact, when what’s really needed is to slow down to see reality as it is and make tough decisions about what can be sustained for the long-term and integrated to support a high functioning team culture?
I’m currently developing something new for 2026 that directly addresses this shift at the individual leader level. Stay tuned…more to come, but for now, start the year by noticing what your internal leadership compass is actually asking for.
December does something no other month does. It slows the world down just enough for you to hear what you’ve been too busy to acknowledge: “Something in my career no longer fits.”
It’s the quiet voice beneath the calendar alerts, the performance reviews, the holiday deadlines. The voice that says:
“I want meaningful work.”
“I want to feel aligned again.”
“I want impact that matters, not just responsibilities.”
“I want to be myself at work — not a curated version.”
“I want clarity. I want purpose. I want direction.”
What you may not realize is that this voice is not only pointing to “career problems.” This voice is communicating spiritual signals. This voice is coming from that deeply human part of you that is calling for something more aligned with your soul’s purpose.
In my view, spirituality shows up in our job search and in day-to-day business as the desire to feel aligned in one’s purpose and career. It’s the desire to work in a way that reflects your identity, your values, and the impact you genuinely want to make.
This Rising Leader year-end edition brings together four conversations that every high-achieving professional is either having now… or will have soon.
Let’s walk through them together…
Conversation #1: Why Success Doesn’t Feel Like Enough Anymore
Most of us hit a point where we look at our life and think, “This should feel better than it does.”
This feeling does not mean you’ve failed. It means you’ve outgrown the version of you who built this chapter.
When you are a high achieving leader, you rarely slow down long enough to ask whether the career you’ve built is still aligned with who you are becoming.
Often, the external world sees accomplishment… while the internal world feels emptiness.
These are three common sources of that misalignment:
You built a career based on an earlier version of you, often influenced by what others told you that you should be doing to be happy and successful.
Who you were at 22 or 25 may not match who you are at 35, 43 or 55.
You are rewarded for competence, not authenticity.
You’ve mastered performance. Yet your heart is calling for expressing more of who you really are. But then fear arises. Fear asks “what might it require to be more true to who I really am?” Feeling fear does not mean you are weak. Instead, fear is often tied to wanting to do responsible thing. You feel compelled to do “the right thing”, however you define that. And responsibility often competes with desire.
This is where the internal voice of the spiritual aspect of our lives quietly nudges us: “You’re allowed to want more than achievement.”
Conversation #2: Is Meaningful Work Even Possible?
The belief that meaningful work means sacrificing pay, stability, or prestige is one of the biggest misconceptions in modern leadership.
Meaningful work is not about working for a nonprofit, starting a charity, or walking away from everything you’ve built. High achievers often imagine a dramatic leap — but meaningful work is rarely dramatic.
Meaningful work is simply aligned work. It’s work that matches:
Your values
Your natural strengths
The impact you care about
The environments where you thrive
Your stage of life
Your identity
What you feel called to do this lifetime
And if you’re feeling burned out, know that burnout doesn’t come from working hard. Burnout comes from working out of alignment.
When you operate from your purpose, work feels energizing rather than draining.
The real shift is this: You stop asking, “What job should I do?” And you start asking, “Who am I becoming, and where does this version of me belong?”
Purpose leads. Strategy follows.
Conversation #3: The Fear of Being Yourself at Work
This is the conversation we avoid the most. “Because if I show them who I truly am, they will…” (fill in the blank: …judge me, fire me, not choose me for that next project or promotion).
I’ve heard countless high performers admit privately: “I don’t feel safe being myself at work.”
Not because they’re hiding something dramatic — but because they’ve learned to lead through armor:
The polished version
The agreeable version
The stoic version
The dependable version
The version who never needs anything
The problem? Armor gets some results… but it also drains your life force energy.
The opportunity:
Embrace your spiritual self. By this I mean: embrace your heart-centered, purpose-driven, aligned self at work and in business.
What do I mean by this? It’s the practice of letting your career align with your true identity instead of you having to twist and bend your identity around your job.
Aligning more with your spiritual self is not unprofessional. It’s not risky. It’s not too emotional. It’s more authentic. And at this critical time in human history, authenticity is one the strongest and most needed leadership qualities of our time.
Why?
Because teams don’t want flawless leaders. They want grounded leaders — leaders who bring clarity, self-awareness, and presence.
A powerful self-reflection for this season: “Where am I performing in my career, and where am I expressing my true self?”
Expression leads to genuine connection and influence. Performance alone that is not aligned with your true self leads to burnout.
Conversation #4: What To Do When You Feel Lost
Many of my high performing clients tell me: “I feel stuck. I don’t know my next step.”
But feeling lost is not a sign you’re behind — it’s a sign you’re evolving.
Feeling lost doesn’t mean you lack clarity. It means you’ve outgrown your old clarity.
Leaders often try to think their way out of confusion. But clarity rarely comes from thinking harder.
Clarity comes from listening to that internal voice that whispers to you about what you long for.
Here are four questions I ask clients when they say they feel directionless:
1. What no longer fits? Hint: Your body often knows this before your mind does. Exhaustion, burnout, sickness, illness, injury… these are calling to you to slow down and listen.
2. What energizes you more than it “should”? Excitement is a roadmap. Pay attention and notice it with curiosity. Where is it directing you to explore?
3. What values have you drifted away from? Values don’t disappear — they get ignored. When you are working in greater alignment with your values, notice how it affects your energy, creativity and productivity.
4. What would I choose if I trusted myself more and feared less what others think? This is the doorway to alignment. Are you courageous enough to take a step through and look around to see what’s here?
Purpose is not found in a single moment. It’s built through small truths you stop running from.
The Real Work of This Season: Integration
This December, all four conversations converge into one central realization:
You want to feel aligned — in your work, your identity, and your impact.
Not because your current career is wrong. But because your next chapter requires a deeper and more authentic version of you.
Alignment is not a career pivot. It’s a return. A remembering. A reconnection with the parts of you that success made easy to ignore.
And the truth is this:
You don’t need a massive leap. You don’t need to start over. You don’t need to figure out the next 10 years.
You just need the next aligned step.
How to Take the Next Step?
If you want a clear, practical framework for understanding your purpose, aligning your career, and mapping your next chapter with confidence — message me“Send me the link.” I’ll send you my methodology video that walks you through it step-by-step.
