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How many times have we heard this phrase used as a compliment?
"Don't worry, you have great resilience."
Resilience as an alibi
Often, in the office, resilience has become the perfect alibi to justify unsustainable workloads and inefficient processes. But there is an uncomfortable truth we must face: resilience should never be the minimum requirement for doing your job.
When your team begins to show signs of exhaustion, it is often not because they lack skills or motivation. It is because the system is asking people to fill the gaps of a failed work design.
If we continue to label overload as "performance," the result is predictable: energy plummets, trust crumbles, and, inevitably, the best talent leaves.
Burnout is not a personal problem, it is a design problem
As leaders, our responsibility is not to teach people how to "survive" the day, but to create an environment where they can thrive. Here is how we can start changing our approach:
- Listen to the signals, not the complaints
When a team member says "I'm overwhelmed," they aren't saying it out of weakness. They are flagging a bottleneck in the system. Instead of telling them to "organize better," let's look at the process: what caused this overload? - Value clarity, not frenzy
We have turned "constant activity" into a success indicator. But being busy doesn't mean being effective. As a leader, my job is to eliminate the superfluous to allow the team to focus on what creates real value, not just noise. - Stop rewarding silent overwork
If we constantly reward those who work late hours, we are creating a culture where sacrifice is the norm. We must have the courage to celebrate balance and efficiency, calling out anyone who works too much before that behavior becomes the standard for everyone. - Protect the team "from above"
Pressure shouldn't be passed down, it should be filtered. A true leader acts as a shield, absorbing corporate anxieties and translating them into clear, sustainable goals for the team, without the team suffering the emotional weight. - Challenge the "we've always done it this way"
Sometimes, the processes that seem to work are those that, quietly, drain the most energy. If a procedure is bureaucratic or frustrating, let's break it. There is nothing sacred about a method that sacrifices people's well-being.
Leadership means building a safe environment
It's not about being "soft," it's about being forward-thinking. A team that doesn't have to spend 50% of its energy "surviving" corporate inefficiencies is a team that has that same energy free to innovate, create, and perform at the highest levels.
The question to ask yourself is not "why can't they handle it?", but "what have we created that makes it hard to handle?".
If we fix the system, people flourish. If we ignore it, we will lose our most precious resources.
Note: The inspiration for this piece comes from a very interesting post published recently on burnout culture. It struck me so much that I wanted to "translate" it according to my experience and point of view. You can read the original post here.
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