“I ran someone over and I didn’t stop.”
“I called one of my former business school classmates and said I was going to drop the kids off, and then go jump in front of a bus. My net present value of myself was that I was worth more dead than alive.”
“I sometimes wouldn’t stop working to use the bathroom because I didn’t want to lose time. I ended up getting several UTIs.”
“I couldn’t sleep for more than three days. I was mentally and physically exhausted, but I couldn’t turn off my brain.”
“I couldn’t articulate the feeling – because I was in it. And nothing was physically “broken” for me to tell someone.”
These quotations are stunning.
Even more stunning is that they are from women who are living at a level of high success. They hold top leadership positions, are well-paid and serve as board members.
These are the women whom corporations are hungry to hire and retain, yet each of them questions their jobs—and their self-worth.
The prevalence of these experiences is exactly what led us to further explore burnout in extremely successful and high-performing women through a series of in-depth qualitative interviews. Our initial research began with the launching of the landmark academic study, The Burnout Study in Women, co-authored by Dr. Daria Long Gillespie, Dr. Christopher Cunningham, and Dr. Kristen Black out of the TrueveLab and the University of Tennessee Department of Industrial Psychology.
What Is Burnout?
Burnout has many definitions. At its extreme, it’s a complete mental and physical shutdown. In the earlier stages, it may be irritation and exhaustion that seem to dissipate and return at intervals. But the complexities lie within all of the in-between feelings—the self-doubt, questioning if you are doing enough and doing it well enough, skipping celebrations, quitting activities you used to love because you’re too tired or don’t have enough time…the list goes on.
We know so much more about mental health today than we did decades ago, yet burnout tends to be viewed as corporate jargon – an expression people use when they have a lot to do and little time to do it. In reality, it is a severe state of physical and mental exhaustion with dire consequences for the person suffering from it as well as those around them if left untreated.
Burnout, as defined by the World Health Organization, is characterized by three dimensions: overwhelming physical or emotional exhaustion, feelings of cynicism or detachment and a sense of ineffectiveness.
Source: World Health Organization
While everyone is likely to suffer from some form of burnout during their lives, women in the workforce, particularly working mothers, tend to feel it more acutely. “In consulting, women expect that they'll only be there for 2-3 years, and then they'll have to leave because there's no way to stay in there as a working mom,” one leader shared. This is a huge talent loss for companies.
However, burnout does not only arise from work-related stressors, as we found in The Burnout Study in Women. Any other domain over which a person has responsibility – personal, health, family, home – can lead to burnout. Juggling kids’ schedules, extra-curriculars, planning travel, cooking meals, coordinating health appointments, and everything in between – the mental load for today’s working women is heavy.
Left unchecked, burnout may contribute to a major talent gap in companies. More than 50% of the global labor force is women, so reducing retention to simple math, it pays to retain your female talent, as the cost to replace a senior employee tends to hover around 1.5 to 2 times the person’s salary, according to Gallup. Then there are the demands for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the workforce from shareholders, customers and society, making hiring and retaining female leaders a core tenet in most companies’ hiring strategies.
Also driving that gap is the fact that younger generations, particularly younger Millennials and Gen Z, are opting out of future top leadership roles. “I only ever want to climb so high in an organization,” one Millennial in middle management shared. “I want to go a rung or two higher on the corporate ladder, but that’s it. I know what comes at the C-level, and I am not willing to sacrifice my personal life or mental well-being for it.”
It’s a similar story for another woman who made deliberate career choices to avoid burnout—and to get closer to achieving more personal goals. “I have not advanced my career, despite having a great degree, and I have a job that I feel is beneath my capabilities,” she shared. “I have been trying to have children for 6 years; 4 of IVF and 2 of adoption. I understand that I do not have the mental capacity to take on more at work or I would burn out or break down.” This means she has turned down promotions and sacrificed potential career paths. “It was a hard choice; you are working against the norm of an expectation,” she added.
A 2022 study by Egon Zehnder and Kearney found that older Millennials (ages 36 to 45) are striving for executive leadership positions but younger Millennials (ages 27 to 35) and Gen Z (ages 26 and younger) set their sights on senior management.
Despite all this knowledge, burnout is still not properly addressed for working women. It’s either left on the shoulders of already burdened women to navigate their individual situations or it’s assumed that the company culture is supportive of working women when in reality it isn’t.
An intervention is needed to course-correct for decades of assumptions, gloss-overs and good intentions overshadowed by not enough action and authentic commitment. We spoke with 25 senior female leaders about their personal experiences with burnout, what they learned from it and what needs to change so women don’t “suffer with a smile.”
Seeing the Hidden Signs
It’s impossible to solve for something if you cannot first identify it. From our research in both this report and The Burnout Study in Women, a theme was evident: Many women knew at a base level that something was “wrong” in the absence of a physical impairment, but they couldn’t put words to it. They couldn’t make others understand what they were feeling. In addition, women are good at compensating – they’re accustomed to just taking on more, and getting it done. Which meant that they could hide it for a while – even from themselves. Alternatively, they didn’t want to give voice to it, for fear of how it would appear to their superiors or team members.
However, we found that often means that burnout is not recognized until a woman reaches a breaking point. It is possible to create steps to alleviate this burnout, and it’s crucial to be able to recognize the earlier signs, to be able to intervene proactively.
Experiences women shared with us included:
- Difficulty concentrating and focusing. A COO shared that she found herself becoming more agitated and overwhelmed by little things and more forgetful. “I was like a hard drive, and the hard drive had no further capacity,” she said. Another summed up her symptoms as an inability to focus and concentrate. “You know you are not 100% in terms of interactions and quality of work,” she added.
- Irritability and crying – even when it feels irrational. “I was irritable. I was constantly annoyed and frustrated with everyone,” an interviewee shared.
- Difficulty sleeping.
- Physical pain in the absence of injury: “I’d have daily headaches and extreme tension in my shoulders and back,” a leader noted.
- Feeling alone.
- Guilt. “Feeling guilty that I’m not performing my best either at home or at work,” an interviewee said.
Why We Can’t Break the Burnout Cycle
While many discussions of burnout tend to focus on “self-care,” missing from the discussion is the role of the society, corporate, and organizational culture. For the women interviewed here, the solution isn’t as easy as “Try more self-care” or “Just stop doing some of those things/delegate more to your team/make time for yourself/prioritize your family/get more sleep.” If only it were so simple.
Some of the key drivers that keep women in this cycle are:
- Fear of losing exquisitely hard-won ground: Women had to work and fight to gain the ground they have in the corporate world, and to take what would be perceived as a step back doesn’t seem like an option for many female leaders. They now have the amazing opportunities they’ve always wanted in their grasp. Saying no to these things now feels like you are throwing everything away—and you may not have them offered again. And what about when you actually like all of the things you are doing, but you simply don’t have enough time to do them all well? “My identity in my firm is that I'm the most senior woman, and I don’t want anyone to take that,” one leader explained.
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Fewer resources and astronomical expectations: In startups, there is an urgency and a need to be “on call.” But in all sizes and types of companies, unrealistic expectations are often a root cause. One leader shared that she was frequently asked to do more and more by her boss while working from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. every single day without taking holidays. “I needed my job, so I would do whatever they told me,” she said. “The market was so bad, and I was worried I wouldn’t easily land another job.” -
Poor boundaries between work and home: Another leader shared that there were no boundaries on meeting times, which became the norm during Covid-19. “I would get meetings that popped up as early as 7 a.m. and as late as 8 p.m., and with 3 kids, a 7 a.m. meeting is really hard,” she explained. “People would ask me why I couldn’t make the meetings, and I felt like I couldn’t say it was because of my kids. I didn’t want people to think that I didn’t care about the client call.” She added that it’s gotten slightly more manageable being back in the office since people are more understanding that mornings and evenings are really challenging for working mothers because that is valuable time with their kids. -
Must “Fake it to make it”: “You cannot talk about the challenges of motherhood,” a leader shared. The undercurrent is that you need to perform at work and keep your personal life in that realm. Specifically, working mothers often don’t want to have a conversation about the challenges of trying to balance motherhood and a career. “Talking about the pressure we feel as moms makes us feel like we're making excuses or looking for favors – we need to open that conversation that allows discussion to show that this isn’t a crutch – it's just the reality,” an interviewee shared. “We need to normalize it, and not make someone feel that they can’t talk about picking up their kids from camp because it makes them feel noncommitted at work.” Added another: "I deal with it by saying, ‘It's all perfect,’ so when the opportunities come in, no one would think that I'm less than 100% available.” -
Asking for less puts you on a singular, commoditized career track: The reality is that some C-level female leaders actually would like to take a step back from work – either temporarily or permanently. But many don’t because there isn’t a “slow lane” or a temporary off-ramp. It’s made to seem that if you take the exit from the career fast lane, you don’t have an option to get back on. “What I found really hard is that I had to lower my rank in order to stay and work, instead of having an alternative situation,” one leader noted. Another added that stepping back has become the default option. “If you’re struggling, your only option is to cut back, when sometimes you just need some additional support,” she explained.
The “Do It All Discrepancy”
In The Burnout Study in Women, we defined “The Do It All Discrepancy,” noting that the discrepancy between what a woman feels that she should do and what she can actually do – is a direct contributor to burnout. The challenge? For working mothers, that “should” column gets taller and taller – particularly when women are considered the “default parent” – if there’s an issue with a child, the mother is the most likely one to be first contacted and responsible. A Planet Money experiment showed that mothers are 40% more likely to receive phone calls from school than fathers. As one participant noted, “It’s not just the one thing, it’s the whole feeling of mental overload – the number of complicated, difficult things that you’re dealing with across your life. There are always 50 more things to do, and then you do them and have 50 more things.” As another put it, “If you’re a working mom and a manager, you never have a break; either you’re taking care of your 25 team members or your own children.” Another summarized by saying, “If I don’t do it [work and all of the home load], then no one else can…or will.”
There is a scarcity of examples of true balance in leadership. As one participant told us: “There seems to be only one prototype for the working mom – the one who ‘does it all.’ But we don’t actually see the context. Sure, there’s the woman with an amazing husband who is a senior executive and has three kids and we all look at her and marvel at how amazing she is. But in the background, she had two sets of nannies and tutors for all of her kids and didn’t take a vacation for two years. We need that as one prototype. But we also need others – such as the working mom who has a great career and kids, but her husband is a stay-at-home dad. Or the other who stayed at home when her kids were young, but then came back. And another who still works while her kids are young but balances it in different ways.” Working moms need to know that there are many different ways to balance – and that it’s OK for them to find what works for them.
The reality is that, while there are male leaders who are fathers, the context is typically different. The vast majority of working fathers do not carry the full brunt of the mental load at home. Women we interviewed noted that there is not necessarily anything malicious in their male colleagues not understanding – they simply do not get it, because they do not experience it. One woman voiced: “It’s that no one even notices. In my company, they’re not used to dual-career families – most are husbands with wives at home.” There is also a double standard for working parents. “If a father leaves work to go coach baseball, everyone compliments him. When I leave work for my child’s activities, it’s met with me ‘going on mommy duty,’” an interviewee noted.
Adding to the discrepancy is the moms vs. non-moms construct. Because burnout isn’t discussed at an in-depth or transparent level in organizations, women find themselves inadvertently being pitted against each other. “Women with children feel they are being asked to do too much: “I have to pick up my kids, I can’t take that call,” and women without children feel they have to accommodate for that “You take the call, you have no after work hours obligations,” an interviewee shared.
Adding to the stress is the unpaid corporate housework that women often find themselves doing. When women assume leadership positions, the expectations go way beyond their job descriptions. Take the well-intentioned efforts of companies that are working on making their cultures more inclusive. There is added pressure for female leaders to champion this change and actively improve DEI in the workplace. “I'm the only one that they can look to. I feel quite a responsibility in that,” a leader said. Due to the scarcity of women at the top, there is no way to equally divide this burden of responsibility. “Other people who have done my job before me have just done my job, but I've probably added a full level of work to my job—to look after the other women, coach the younger people, make sure my firm has a good culture,” she added. These unspoken responsibilities, while important, are a major drain on women.
Tackling Burnout Together: Transitioning the discussion from Self-Care to Workplace Care
There are solutions to curtailing burnout in working women at the individual and company levels. Early detection is key and recognizing that anyone and everyone can be susceptible to burnout. Women need to identify their personal triggers and have conversations within their families and workplaces to be able to intervene.
While many discussions of burnout tend to focus on self-care, employers have a duty of care as well. “There is too much focus on what the employee can or should do, and not enough focus on the employer,” one female leader shared. “We should put more blame on employers for creating work environments that make people burn out.” Employers need to be attuned to the workload and expectations they have of employees. Simply saying “We don’t require employees to work weekends,” but then having a workload that can’t be accomplished in the work week sends a subliminal message that employees still need to deliver, regardless of whether it’s their personal time or not. “Too many companies burn and churn their employees and then tell them to ‘do yoga.’ That doesn't solve the problem,” an executive added.
For these reasons, we are focusing on corporate solutions, which can include:
- Flexible tracks: Creating on and off ramps. Women we spoke with noted that you either have to appear like “nothing is wrong” and continue to work as hard after having children as you did before or if you bring up any concerns, you’re placed onto the “mommy track,” which many described as a career path of slowing, less involvement and less leadership, with no hope of return. For corporations to retain top working women, they need to recognize that there are many needs in between for working women – and that not only do these priorities shift with the onset of motherhood – but they will continue to evolve over time. Some women may wish to stay at 100% - but simply may need more corporate support – while others may wish to slow down for a short period of time, and need the confidence of knowing that they will be able to ramp back up, as their needs shift.
Our study participants noted the importance of having a deliberate discussion with each woman, as each will have different goals, and creating a workplace that is able to accommodate these goals will be the one that’s best able to retain top talent. As one participant noted, “My company was amazing during Covid. It enabled me to help the company in the long term. I never needed time off because I could make it work at home and with the support I had.” Another leader shared, “We have two women in my team just back from maternity leave. One of them wanted to get back to doing deals immediately, but another noted that she wasn’t ready for that intensity, so we are staffing accordingly.”
The most basic thing companies can do is listen when an employee says they are burning out and create alternate pathways to avoid or at least curtail burnout. This can be any number of combinations. Perhaps women still stay on at work at 100% capacity, but they are provided resources to draw from (such as childcare, meal delivery, and additional executive assistance). Or it’s the option to temporarily take part-time work with adequate on-ramps back to full-time, and the ability to move back and forth as circumstances dictate.
Many companies offer flexible work schedules today, but some of our leaders cautioned against assuming that is a silver bullet. “There’s still room for companies to get creative,” a leader noted. “Sometimes it's ‘I just need help getting seven birthday gifts for this weekend,’ or ‘I need help booking this party venue that's only open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. but I'm in meetings then.’ In these cases, they just need support.” While there may be a line between asking someone to help with life versus work tasks, companies could consider offering a stipend for women to hire an occasional personal assistant to help shoulder the load.
- Protection of holiday and daily disconnected time. This is how and when people communicate, and their expectations for a response. “The language ‘just because we send emails outside of work hours, doesn’t mean you have to respond,’ is there. But if you are signing off at 6 p.m. at night and on at 9 a.m. and you have 50-100 emails in your inbox which you are already behind on, the action does not support the language,” an interviewee shared.
To ensure the company culture supports time off, there are a few things our interviewees suggested:
- Protect and encourage employees to be fully off during vacation.
- Make it the norm for employees to have disconnected time out of the office. Of course, before big deadlines, hours are lengthened – but extra-long workdays should be the exception, not the norm.
- Ensure managers have a strong understanding of the roles they are overseeing so they understand the time commitment required for tasks.
- Establish a shared, clear definition of success. One driver of burnout is uncertainty – and perhaps ambivalence – when it comes to defining success. Unlike sales, where one can clearly know if they hit a target, many leadership positions do not have a tangible, quantifiable goal. When success is ill-defined, insecurity sets in, and people may overcompensate with worry, unnecessary meetings, and nonessential work in hopes that some of it makes a difference in their perceived performance/contributions/impact.
Early Identification and Early Action
As with most afflictions, early identification and intervention can curtail a full onset of burnout symptoms. It’s important for women to be able to speak up for themselves if they need support or to step back. A leader shared that as two women returned to work from maternity leave, they had an open discussion of how they would handle the workload. “One employee expressed concern about dealing with the intense point of deals, so I said to her, ‘OK, if that's happening, we'll both know it, and we'll over staff that deal, so you won't feel anxious,’” she said. “The other employee said she doesn't want to do deals for three months, and I said, ‘That's fine, we'll find other projects for you to do.’” The interviewee also added it’s crucial not to assume every employee will approach a return to work in the same way, noting that some people want to and are ready to launch back into intense work.
It’s not always easy to be a self-advocate, especially if your corporate culture doesn’t encourage speaking up about burnout. This is when leadership comes into play. One interviewee shared that her company puts out a weekly pulse survey so employees can flag if they are under-occupied or if they are overwhelmed. “Previously, the only way to flag this was to come into my office,” she added.
Leaders also need training to be able to sense when employees are struggling. “Companies need to hire managers with higher EQs and also have resources such as counselors to recognize burnout happens at all levels, including the senior levels,” an interviewee noted. Listening to what an employee is truly in need of is also important, especially if they are highly motivated to achieve. “My survival rests on other people recognizing that I need to have boundaries and that if I ask for that, they need to give it to me,” a leader shared. Above all, an accommodating and accepting culture needs to be reinforced by managers, not just HR. “There should be management accountability and real oversight and ownership around it,” a leader noted. Another added that HR must evaluate new hires for EQ. “Companies need to hire managers with higher EQs and also have resources such as counselors,” she said. “They must recognize burnout happens at all levels.”
Then there are the intangibles companies must be aware of that are embedded in culture. Having policies and options for help alone is not helpful—especially if it’s informally frowned upon if people use them. “In theory, most companies legally provide PTO/sick time, FMLA, but the company culture is what determines whether people take the time and whether they’ll truly feel like they haven’t missed out on whatever is important to them and their career and thus minimize burnout,” one female executive explained.
It’s also critical for leaders to designate a clear place to go if someone is struggling. When one working mom participant experienced burnout, she shared that she had no idea whom to reach out to. “It's just dealt with by your line manager, so it depends on them,” she explained. “There is no formal policy for how we deal with working moms and women who have just had a baby." Companies can adjust for this by having a clearly designated role so that all employees experience consistency in support.
Additionally, companies need to find ways to celebrate the many models of working mothers. There is currently a dearth of realistic female role models in top leadership roles. Realistic meaning the women who appear to “do it all,” may not be the aspiration for all women. There are working mothers who are 100% present at work, have more help at home, and then do more work at night and there are others who want to prioritize being 100% present at home but still care about their job and doing it well. “Seeing more women share their stories, who may not be your exact model, talking about the challenges they've had to overcome, and being open about them is helpful because there are more women to whom you can relate,” an interviewee explained. This can also be another opportunity for mentorship. Pairing women with similar circumstances can help both the mentor and mentee establish camaraderie and also help them learn from each other.
Another added that seeing women who successfully have created and maintained their own boundaries would send a strong message that other women can do this too. One leader recognized that she needed to decouple working extra hours in the office with commitment levels. “For some junior women, it can be very hard to leave early if the boss is still there,” she said. “I try to set this standard early and have an open dialogue about how extra time in the office doesn’t have anything to do with commitment.”
Cooling the Burn: Enhancing Well-being for Women
There is no easy solution to burnout nor is there a way to completely prevent it from happening. But ensuring we are taking a human perspective is a way to start – recognizing that we are not just our workplace roles but someone’s daughter, mother, sister, aunt, friend, caregiver—the list goes on. In addition, we must draw more attention to where there are cracks and holes in our systems to prevent women from falling into them and not being able to climb back out. “The most important thing is that we're making this conversation public, being transparent, vocal and increasing awareness,” an interviewee shared. “This will help women like me who can use this as a narrative or as data [navigate my own situation].”
It's also important to acknowledge that you are responsible for your own well-being and health. “Take care of yourself and vote with your feet for a job that won’t allow for this [to be neglected],” a leader noted. Tied to that well-being is to determine your own boundaries and stick to them. “Women need to be deliberate about how they spend their time, and demand that their organizations support that,” a leader said.
It’s crucial to remember that being a working mother is not a drawback. As one participant noted, “Being a mother has given me more strength, because I had another reason that I had to wake up every morning.” Plus, creating a workplace where you facilitate a woman’s ability to thrive as both employee and mother creates loyalty and opportunity to retain top talent. We can no longer sweep under the rug the concerns that working mothers face, drop our assumptions of their priorities, and engage in open and transparent discussions about how to make working motherhood work. In the end, this is no longer a working mother's discussion. It’s even bigger than a “working parent” discussion. It’s a talent retention one – and key for every company that wants to succeed in the next decade.
