[00:00:00] Hi everyone. My name's Dex Randall, and this is the Burnout Recovery Podcast where I teach professionals to recover from burnout and get back to passion and reward at work.

[00:00:22] Hello my friends, this is Dex. Welcome back to the podcast. Today's episode is about a hidden burnout trap and it catches some of the best people I know. In fact, I was a bit of an early dive into the trap myself. In my early career, I worked as a software engineer developing logistics, manufacturing, business software for multinationals and I really loved the work and I was very lucky to have a great degree of latitude in my decision making and solutions. And happily, that worked very well. I was well regarded by my boss, my team, and my big name clients. In fact, they kept trying to promote me and I kept refusing, not wanting to lose my autonomy and my reward as an analyst. My sweet spot. I love solving complex problems for my clients, and I really enjoyed the project management and client facing aspect too.

[00:01:21] In the end, though, I bowed to the inevitable and I stepped up as director of the software division and oh boy, was that hard. I was trained all my life to sit quietly in the corner like the nerd that I was, and now I was jumping from technical work into strategic work. Which was not really my thing.

[00:01:44] And I think there were four key skills that I was lacking to make it into senior management: strategic thinking, business acumen, executive presence and communication, and people wrangling. Luckily I did speak executive, but I was not trained in strategy, business management nor leadership, and nobody taught me.

[00:02:10] Tech skills really don't transfer that well into leadership. It's a whole different mindset. You need to stop talking like an engineer because no one at executive level wants to hear the details and you're no longer the tech guru for your team. You need now to solve the executives' problems for them.

[00:02:32] Of course, mindful of status and politics as you go! And let your own team do their own brilliant thing. And for myself, and these days also for my coaching clients, leadership might not come naturally. It flies in the face of this brilliant lone ranger, time-based productivity and fine-grained solutions model that we have always used so well.

[00:02:59] At the executive level, if you're still thinking of yourself as exchanging time and skills for money, you are way off beam. The game is now about chess moves, risk management and being the best multiplier of resources.

[00:03:14] So I guess I did flounder for a while and with my team I was rather brisk, dictatorial, demanding, and impatient. 'cause crowdsourcing ideas seem like a waste of time to me when I already quote, unquote, "knew" what should happen next! I didn't suffer fools as they say. No wonder they thought I was arrogant. I was!

[00:03:40] Of course, I did manage to wrestle some success out of it, but often shut away my office behind a pile of boring paperwork, gnashing my teeth about the politics.

[00:03:52] My new boss by this time was a man I significantly failed to appreciate, shall we say, or kowtow to. I left that place after a couple of years thoroughly disenchanted and worn out. And then I took a contract position with a bank, another questionable move since the politics were worse. And frankly, I deplored their hardnosed mission to increase a variety of fees

[00:04:18] on an investment portfolio, rendering them more profit, but of course lowering returns for investors. Anyway, it didn't matter because after a year on that project, senior management changed and they canned the whole project. That was coincidentally about the time when I came out of the train station at 7:00 AM one morning and saw a man in a suit lying dead on the pavement with other commuters almost racing over his ankles to get to work.

[00:04:49] So that's how I ended up. And if you are, or if you have been experiencing difficulty transitioning from being a doer to an executive, you are by no means unusual. The skills gap is huge and likely you're not getting the mentoring that you need.

[00:05:07] Leadership transitions, promotions, stepping up, becoming the boss. It all sounds like such a win. And of course there's the new challenge of it, but for many, this moment is exactly where exhaustion, doubt, stress, and overwhelm begin to grow. So why? Why does stepping up feel like wearing a crown that's too heavy? And what can you do to grow into your leadership without burning out or losing yourself? That's what we'll explore today.

[00:05:39] One of my clients right now is at this same jumping off point into leadership, and he too is burning out because of it. A brilliant man, but frozen, demotivated and overwhelmed now. Highly, technically skilled, but more recently he's procrastinating, feeling shame, dread and anxiety. This scenario is so common in executive transition. And a reframe is urgently required. But when you do decide to do that, the leap is smaller than it looks. You just need to remediate some of the discomfort that you have.

[00:06:17] So what is the invisible burnout risk in promotion?

[00:06:22] It really starts with identity disruption when you take on a new leadership role. Whether it's CEO, department head, team lead, you leave behind an old mastered identity, often built around deep technical skills in your profession. You're basically dynamite at the coalface!

[00:06:44] When you're promoted, what you were good at no longer applies fully, and the language of leadership changed. It's no longer rooted in technical detail, but the big picture. Your sense of mastery disappears. Herminia Ibarra calls this the "in-between self" and William Bridges cause it the "neutral zone", where your old identity has died and the new one isn't formed yet. Essentially, you've gone from years or even decades of unconscious competence to sudden conscious incompetence.

[00:07:22] That probably hasn't happened to you, what? Since your first job? And it might be very uncomfortable. Flailing in this fog, self-doubt over-efforting and imposter feelings rise. You try to do everything because clarity hasn't landed yet, and no one's throwing you a lifeline. This is exhausting.

[00:07:44] You might ask yourself: Am I really the right one for this role? What if they find out I'm not up to this?

[00:07:52] Sounds familiar?

[00:07:54] Then you're slammed with increased complexity without increased capacity. The demands of the role stretch, but your mind, work systems, and nervous system haven't caught up yet. Jennifer Garvey Berger describes this as a "complexity gap". I concur.

[00:08:14] Robert Kegan would say that your "order of mind" must grow to handle this bigger reality. But at first, you are under equipped. Result: decision fatigue, overwhelm, firefighting instead of visioning. Extreme unease and anxiety will probably follow. You work longer hours trying to cover the gap with effort, when you lack next level skills.

[00:08:42] This can push you right into burnout, and then you drop into the isolation trap as you rise. Peers thin out. The old crowd can't relate. The new peer group feels distant or competitive, or in fact, unavailable. Patrick Lencioni calls this the risk of trust erosion at the top, where leaders stop confiding in anyone.

[00:09:09] And this isolation is deeply stressful. The nervous system needs trusted connection to stay regulated. Bonnie Badenoch's work reminds us that without safe co-regulation, stress spirals fast. Leaders burn out not just from work, but from being alone at the top.

[00:09:31] And looking at the neurobiology of transition stress: when you step into a new leadership role, the amygdala spikes vigilance, scanning for threat, rejection, failure. Your prefrontal cortex, the rational big picture part of your brain, the bit you really need online right now, gets suppressed under chronic stress, reducing clarity, patience, strategy, and even function.

[00:09:59] Your dopamine system, falters. The reward of mastery is missing. Everything feels like a struggle. No win. As Dr. Robert Ky says, "the brain hates uncertainty more than bad news". So your body pumps stress chemicals to keep you hyper alert even at home. This is why new leaders lie awake, worrying, grinding their teeth. And, feeling bad, they may fight with their spouse too.

[00:10:30] So if all that's happening, how do you step up without burning out?

[00:10:35] First of all, I suggest that you expect and normalize the neutral zone. You will feel uncertain. You will feel slow. This is not failure. It's the identity change you need in process.

[00:10:51] As William Bridges, the author of Managing Transitions, observed "the Neutral Zone is the only place real change happens", and "it's when we are in transition that we are most completely alive". If uncomfortably!

[00:11:09] If any of this hits home for you, ask yourself: What part of me is trying to cling to the old identity? What am I being prompted to let go of? and What new capacities are asking to emerge?

[00:11:25] Somebody has seen this future in you. It's almost certainly there, but you yourself may not yet embrace it completely. It's time to expand your inner capacity, not just your effort. You might try journaling on What complexity am I avoiding or resisting? What decisions am I overmanaging because I haven't yet delegated trust?

[00:11:51] Remember, you are no longer required to solve technician level problems, rather to guide and mentor others to do so. You are out of the time-is-money game. Learn new complexity tools, systems thinking, paradox tolerance. Kegan & Lahey suggest rather interestingly, that "we don't resist change, we resist the loss that change brings".

[00:12:18] If you've stepped into a new leadership role, build your trusted circle fast. It will save your energy, your clarity, and maybe your career. Find new mentors, peer forums, coaches. Think about who in your organization or industry you secretly wish would mentor you and ask them! And be honest with at least one person: "I don't fully have this yet, and that's okay".

[00:12:49] As Shawn Achor says, in Big Potential, "Our potential is not determined by what we alone can achieve, but by how we can lift and leverage others". The old myth of the self-made leader, the lone genius, is not only false, it's dangerous. Isolation fuels burnout. Connection, on the other hand, fuels expansion and passion.

[00:13:13] So let your team help shape your role. Vulnerability here will enable you to build trust fast. Ask more questions than you answer. Prioritize listening skills and give credit where it's due. Be authentic. Channel the power of your people with humility, transparency, support, and willingness to be wrong.

[00:13:40] Of course, while all this is going on, you're still feeling the upheaval and you will need to soothe your nervous system.

[00:13:48] For example, by taking daily quiet breaks, just walking away for a moment, or using breath exercises to calm the fight or flight state. Practice allowing uncertainty on purpose. Otto Scharmer calls this "Letting go to let come". Your leadership cannot rise if your body is trapped in survival mode.

[00:14:14] So with all that said, you can learn the skills that you need. A leadership transition can break you or it can make you bigger than you've ever been. And that's where I aim with my clients in coaching, to transcend every barrier they've ever had of every kind and free them up to take on the future in the way that suits them.

[00:14:37] But really the transition can only make you bigger than you've ever been if you see this truth: burnout is the risk of trying to do more of the old you, when life is asking for a new you. Leadership promotions aren't just jobs, they're identity upgrades, so handle them consciously and you will rise, handle the unconsciously and burnout wins.

[00:15:00] If you're in a leadership transition right now where you've got one coming and you're feeling the weight of it, you do not have to go it alone. This is the work that I do with my clients. I will coach you to make the very best of your transition and the opportunities it brings and come up smiling, being noticed for your leadership acumen and marked for greater things.

[00:15:24] Great leaders are rare beasts. But only because they've yet to learn the specific skills that will put them constantly in demand. Visit dexrandall.com and let me know your challenges in leadership transition and let's map the path to guaranteed leadership results for you, which brings with it a great deal of ease and the return of your passion.

[00:15:49] Or you can message me directly and let's get you the support where it matters.

[00:15:56] That's what I have for you today. Thank you for being here and listening. I will catch you next week.