Your Team is Burnt Out, Now What?
They’re not lazy, they’re drowning
This is
- your weekly guide and shortcut to mastering emotional intelligence through the power of empathy. I recently wrote about how stress can make you kinda dumb.
The meeting is well past the 5-minute mark, and the energy is flat. Every question is met with silence. Every playful provocation is met with a forceful laugh or no response at all.
You feel like you're dragging your team along and swimming upstream.
The enthusiasm that was once there is gone, poof!
Their cameras are off, so is their spirit.
This is not a one-time occurrence, though.
The meetings have been painful like this for months, whether in a group or one-on-one.
The only moment a genuine smile cracks through is when you announce you are giving some time back, as the meeting has ended early.
You might be a manager, tech lead, CSO, or supervisor. It does not matter.
Your team is done. How can you lead a team that has hit its low, back to soaring heights?
It starts with empathy.
They're Not Checked Out, They're Tapped Out
I was once an employee who was burned out. A terrifying stat puts the job burnout rate in 2025 at a high of 66%!
At the time of my deep burnout a few years ago, one more book or course on time management or getting engaged wasn't going to cut it. Professional development resources were not the answer.
I was not checked out. I actually enjoyed my day-to-day work. I was tapped out, and the leaders around me either lacked the power to stop the tsunami of work coming my way or were unaware of just how bad it was.
Along with the workload, my locus of control was out of reach. I worked, managed my time, and met the requirements for my stakeholders; yet, others were taking the credit, and one stakeholder team was displeased regardless of what my team produced.
What would I have wished for from my leaders at this time?
Empathy, acknowledgement, and a game plan to make it better.
A genuine commitment to work through the system issues and regain our ownership of our work and prioritization.
All of this would have alleviated the emotional drain and exhaustion caused by overwork.
In the end, it didn't happen, and I left the company.
Toxic Positivity Is Still Toxic
"Change begins when emotionally intelligent leaders actively question the emotional reality and the cultural norms underlying the group's daily activities and behavior," as quoted from "Primal Leadership" (Page 195) by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee.
But what if they do not question at all, and pretend everything is "fine"
I worked with a leader like this. If she was up till midnight making urgent deadlines, surviving on 5 hours of sleep, everything was "fine"
At first, I looked at it as a sign of a calm and level-headed leader.
I thought she was working to keep spirits high.
But then I realized, everyone else was expected to do the same.
It did not matter when a colleague of mine had to work several days of his tropical vacation (that he had booked 6 months ahead). He grimaced in silence, out of view from this leader.
When this leader even contracted COVID, it was a higher-up who forced her to accept the reality of her situation and step away. She was still pretending to be "fine," even in the pits of illness.
Is this healthy? No. It's toxic. Some would even argue that it is poisonous positivity.
If your team does not feel safe expressing their thoughts and feelings, even within the realm of professional dialogue, and they must pretend all is cheery, they will eventually tap out.
Life is messy. Work can be even messier. It's okay if some days are not great.
It does not mean you have to blow up and emotionally dump it on those around you. Even feeling comfortable to say in a calm and collected voice, "You know, today has been a bit crazy," is powerful.
Powerful enough to be one of the steps to ward off feeling tapped out.
It's a step to acknowledgement, before the negative emotions sit in the pit of one's stomach, and one day their brain is fried in burnout.
Empathy Isn't Coddling, It's Clarity
One of the key components of being an empathy catalyst is simply listening.
It sounds easier than it is for many of us, especially in a culture that often fills the void of silence with small talk.
Empathy and active listening in themselves can feel vulnerable and bring to mind the bias that it is a form of coddling. But it is not.
Imagine you have a stakeholder team that is unhappy with the end product provided by your engineering or data team.
The grumbles are mostly, "It does not work!" or "It makes no sense."
Sure, the receiving team is frustrated, but your team is even more so. After all of the work, documentation, and training provided, it makes no sense! How demoralizing.
The truth is, though, people are well…people. It's not feeding a text sample to ChatGPT and asking it to absorb it all.
Yes, an AI can hallucinate and make mistakes, but human brains can become even more susceptible to errors when trying to present different information. Based on learning styles, energy level, working knowledge, and attention span, you have a whole set of variables to work with.
You can't just get frustrated and keep trying the same prompt as you would with an AI. You are dealing with people.
Without addressing the problem honestly, your team will eventually burn out if the complaints continue to flow in. The stakeholder team might lose someone if they get frustrated with their job.
Empathic listening will go a long way here.
What does this mean? Prompt them to talk, but then listen attentively. Ask questions, do not lead.
I encountered a similar scenario with a product my team worked to deploy. There were plenty of naysayers. One selected group, consisting of 3 people, had the same negative statement: they could not find a particular data point they needed, like they used to.
So, we sat with them and listened. We asked questions about where they used to get it. We asked them where they expected to get it.
It turns out it was one click they were missing. They missed clicking in one area that would have led them to all the information they needed.
The complaints from these three people calmed down. The volume of negativity that could undermine my team's morale lessened.
Empathy was the key ingredient.
Real Leadership Begins Where the Masks Come
Let's say a few months later, after the meeting that almost everyone was disengaged, some of the squares are lit up again, and you see some genuine smiles.
How do you get here?
You do this by acknowledging what your team is going through, especially during a busy period. Being open about it, such as saying, "The next 30 days are going to be hard," clears the air and shows that you are in it with them.
Do not just work with your team to prioritize, but enable them to do so. Be the sea wall that stops the oncoming wave. Say no, or yes but later to those that you can.
You can be vulnerable and honest in a professional setting. You don't have to wear a constant mask of a pleasant smile when times are tough. Build trust with others by doing this.
Build on empathy, not just within your team, but also the teams surrounding you nearby. Listen, and get to the root causes.
Leveraging empathy, relationship management, and social awareness are not liabilities, they are necessities.
Your team and those around you look up to you. In tapped-out mode now, you can turn the tide. Not there yet? Be proactive in your empathy by stopping it from ever happening.
✅ What I’ve been analyzing this week (reading, watching, listening, etc.)
📖 I’m reading Trailblazer: The Power of Business as the Greatest Platform for Change by Marc Benioff and Monica Langley. I am learning more how the concept of Ohana came about at Salesforce.
📺I watched this short 3-minute video to learn more about the inspiring story of Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania during WWII who saved thousands of lives. What an amazing and brave act of humanity!
💭 I read this post by
and and it reminded me that wisdom, not just efficiency, is what makes leadership humanWant more on Empathy and Emotional Intelligence to Elevate your career? 📈
I empower💪tech people to elevate their empathy, to accelerate their careers
Empathy isn't coddling, it is clarity. Great post.
Excellent post!!! Thanks for the shoutout :)