The Shadow Side of Excellence: How Leadership Strengths Can Lead to Burnout

I first met Tess* when she was selected for a leadership development programme – a high-potential executive with an excellent reputation. I was her coach.

From the outside, she embodied success—leading complex projects at a global tech firm, known as the person who could "make the impossible happen." Her boss relied on her implicitly, and her team depended on her.

"I’m excited for this challenge. I'm ready for promotion and to step up in my leadership," she told me, her voice steady, but her eyes made it clear she was utterly exhausted.

As our conversation deepened, a different story emerged. Her nine-year-old son had recently been diagnosed with autism, her marriage was feeling the strain of two demanding careers, and despite working late most days, her to-do list never seemed to shrink.

"I can't really tell when things switched – I used to thrive in my role. Now I just feel like I'm going through the motions... I feel hollow."

Leadership burnout rarely appears overnight. Few realise that burnout often begins not with exhaustion, but with enthusiasm—that initial period of excited overcommitment when everything feels possible.

The initial stage of burnout, sometimes referred to as the "honeymoon phase", is often characterised by enthusiasm and high energy.

It had crept in gradually, from her early energy to the emotional depletion she was now experiencing.

The very qualities that make us successful can eventually start working against us.

The Shadow Side of Excellence

Think about your own strengths for a moment. Perhaps you're known for your meticulous attention to detail, your sense of responsibility, or your care for others.

These qualities are valuable—they've likely helped you build your career and relationships.

But what happens when strengths become safety nets? When they shift from being choices to becoming default modes of engaging with the world?

For Tess, being indispensable had become her primary source of self-worth. "I know I can't keep up with it and need to start saying 'no', but it's so uncomfortable. I worry I'll become irrelevant."

This is what I call conditional self-regard—the belief that we are only worthy when we give others what they expect from us. We build our identities around being the reliable one, the empathetic one, the one who delivers exceptional quality.

And slowly, what began as a genuine strength starts to undermine us.

Burnout: Beyond "Working Too Hard"

Many of us think of burnout as simply working too much, but the reality is far more nuanced. Burnout is a physiological state caused by chronic, unresolved stress exposure.

What many discussions about burnout miss is how intertwined our personal and professional lives are. Your nervous system doesn't categorise stress neatly—it all accumulates in the same bucket.

For Tess, her son's autism diagnosis wasn't separate from her work burnout—it was part of the same overwhelmed system. Every specialist appointment and every night of disrupted sleep drew from the same finite reserve of energy she used for her leadership role.

This is why simple advice like "just work less" often falls flat. Burnout is rarely about a single factor we can neatly extract from our lives. Looking at her life holistically was a significant shift for Tess. We examined everything draining her energy—from the obvious work and family demands to what she has been keeping in the shadows: the anxiety when reading news headlines, the 3 AM worries about her parents' health she shook off by morning, and the unacknowledged grief of menopause she'd labeled as "just getting older."

Each ignored reality had been silently withdrawing from her emotional bank account, invisible but compounding.

Zooming out, I've been pondering how these individual struggles might reflect broader societal patterns. Have we created a culture that celebrates constant achievement, blurring the line between external expectations and our internalized drive to succeed?

This question reminds me of philosopher Byung-Chul Han's provocative concept of the 'achievement society' in his book "Burnout Society" - a perspective suggesting that in the Western world, our apparent abundance of freedom might paradoxically generate exhaustion under the illusion of choice. It's a thought-provoking lens through which to consider our relationship with work and achievement.

From Balcony to Basement: When Strengths Turn Against Us

Every strength exists on a spectrum, with its empowered expression (what is sometimes called "the balcony") and its less conscious expression ("the basement"). This spectrum isn't about right or wrong ways of being, but rather about expanding our range of choices and awareness.

Take responsibility, for instance. In its balcony form, it's about ownership and accountability—qualities that had propelled Tess into leadership. But in its basement or shadow form, it becomes an inability to delegate, a compulsion to carry everything alone.

Or consider empathy. On the balcony, it allows for deep connection and understanding. In the basement, it becomes emotional overwhelm and boundary dissolution.

Attention to detail is another common one. On the balcony, it creates excellence through precision and thoroughness. In the basement, it becomes perfectionism—an exhausting state where nothing ever feels 'good enough' and work expands endlessly.

For Tess, her ability to handle problems had turned compulsive.

"I always thought the way I made myself available was a great way to lead," she reflected. "I realised I was actually seeking out fires to put out. Chaos had become comfortable because it reaffirmed my value. I realised that my behaviour was not only laying a path to burnout but also actually disempowering my team."

I see this in what my other clients share in coaching. They are so accustomed to achieving that doing more becomes their safety mechanism, even if it’s exactly the opposite of what their nervous system needs.

Does this resonate with you? Which of your strengths might have slipped from the balcony to the basement?

Expanding Awareness: From Automatic to Intentional

The path forward isn't about abandoning our strengths—it’s about reclaiming agency over how you use them.

Strategic Application vs. Default Response

Instead of automatically deploying your signature strength in every situation, pause to assess whether it's actually needed.

Instead of automatically deploying your signature strength in every situation, pause to assess whether it's actually needed.

For Tess, this meant recognising that not every project required her involvement. She admitted she felt good being needed, but she was applying herself to things by default, trying to quieten that whisper that told her she wasn’t enough if she didn’t.

When she examined it with some distance, she realised that some projects needed her strategic vision more than her tactical precision. Others needed her to create space for her team to develop their own strengths.

Boundaries as Self-Preservation

Before saying yes to a new commitment, it’s worth asking yourself:

• Does it have to be me?

• What will I need to give up to make space for it?

• Will I still feel good about this decision tomorrow?

For Tess, this meant mentoring her second-in-command, but also doing practical things like creating clear delineations between work and home—including turning off notifications after hours and blocking non-negotiable personal time in her calendar.

What makes burnout so difficult to overcome is that it doesn’t just exhaust us physically—it often challenges our fundamental understanding of ourselves.

When the qualities we’ve built our identities around begin to harm us, it triggers profound questions: Who am I if not the person who always delivers?

Different phases of this journey invite different forms of support

If you're starting to recognise burnout creeping in, coaching can help prevent it from taking over**.

This work can focus on:

• Recognising your unique patterns and triggers before they lead to depletion.

• Developing new boundaries and practices.

• Examining the narratives we hold about productivity and success.

But for very progressed burnout—often accompanied by depression and severe somatic symptoms—working with a therapist can provide the space for deeper healing.

For Tess, our coaching journey involved more self awareness, developing delegation skills, negotiating a four-day work week, and addressing the underlying beliefs that had tied her worth to her output.

“I haven’t stopped being detail-oriented or responsible,” she told me. “But now I choose when to bring those qualities in, instead of letting them run the show.”

Perhaps that's the most important shift of all—moving from being unconsciously driven by our strengths to consciously choosing when and how to express them. This evolution in awareness represents a natural maturation process that many leaders experience as they develop greater wisdom about themselves and their impact.

If Tess's story resonates with you, I invite you to consider what strengths might be burning you out—and what reclaiming choice might look like in your own life and leadership.

*Tess is an amalgamation of a few clients. Details have been changed to protect privacy.

**Important note: Severe burnout requires professional medical/therapeutic support. Coaching can be valuable for prevention and early intervention, helping you recognise patterns before they become debilitating—but it's not a replacement for appropriate clinical care when symptoms are severe.

Get in touch if you'd like to discuss working together.

Email me at coaching@martaabramska.com.