Why High Performers Burnout First In Dysfunctional Organisations

When your greatest strength becomes your breaking point — and how to reclaim your energy.

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

It’s been 30+ degrees this week in London. The office is a slow-motion pressure cooker. No decisions or direction, but everyone’s pretending as if nothing’s wrong.

The real stress isn’t the workload but the silence hanging above it all.

On one particularly gnarly multi-year programme, senior leaders are dodging calls but having quiet side conversations.

Teams are stuck in limbo, trying to forge ahead but knowing it might not be worth it.

Everyone’s bracing, waiting, checking emails, and rewriting plans.

And we're all gossiping like an informal organisational therapy group.

It’s not just inefficient. It’s exhausting.

But the mental fatigue I felt this week wasn’t just from doing too much.

It came from the decision-making vacuum.

That kind of Schrodinger’s situation where all possibilities exist but none are confirmed.

And my nervous system?

It abhors a vacuum, and I bet yours does too.

The moment it hit me (after spiralling first)

I caught myself overthinking everything.

Conversations, tasks, dynamics.

Spinning out on the frustrating politics, the what-ifs, the backstory of how we got here.

That internal tug-of-war between context and action that paralyses so many companies.

I felt the tension in my chest and fogginess in my flighty mind.

That’s when I remembered my own work.

I needed to get out of "fix-it" mode.

Let go of being the upbeat, functional one.

Stop carrying the emotional admin in place of leadership avoidance.

Those behaviours come from somewhere. My people-pleaser pattern.

The one learned in childhood.

The one that resurfaces when things feel chaotic and uncertain.

When no one else is steadying the ship, your system rushes to fill the gap.

But that doesn’t mean it’s good for you.

Choices feel harder as we lean into these shortcut behaviours.

They might not help us in the long run, but they feel familiar and like false control.

So I paused.

I took a breath and named it:

• I’m trying to become the leader no one else is being.

And it’s draining me.

The resilience shift: leading when others won’t

This is what I see repeatedly in the high performers I coach.

You’re the calm one. The capable one. The one others lean on.

So when leadership disappears, you quietly become the container.

You fill the gaps. Hold the tension. Try to stabilise the system.

It’s a form of protective self-leadership. But it can easily become a trap.

Because without regulation, it pushes you into:

• Over-functioning

• Hyper-responsibility

• Low-key resentment

• Emotional burnout masked as ‘just getting on with it

This is why Self-Leadership is a core pillar in the Adaptive Resilience System I'm developing.

You can do all the breathwork and boundary-setting you like, but if you can’t make decisions under pressure, you’re just paddling in circles.

When outer leadership disappears, your Inner Captain must step up.

Not to be harder on you, but for clarity and filtering the nonsense.

Self-leadership is about shaping your internal container, so you don’t drown in other people’s chaos.

Why your brain freaks out in power vacuums

When leadership is absent, your brain doesn’t just notice - it registers threat.

According to Paul Gilbert’s Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) model, we operate across three emotional regulation systems:

• Threat system (detects danger)

• Drive system (pursues reward)

• Soothing system (regulates and restores)

It’s not a triune brain myth, but a functional view of how your nervous system manages stress, emotion, and safety.

At a recent training with clinical psychologist Russell Kolts, we explored how these systems react under social and psychological stress.

In environments where leadership or clarity is missing, the threat system gets activated.

Cortisol spikes.

Your prefrontal cortex, the part you need for planning, decision-making, and self-leadership, gets side-lined.

No wonder you start gripping tighter and more erratically.

Over-functioning.

Micromanaging yourself or others.

You’re not overreacting. Your nervous system is just doing its job the best it can.

Creative reflection: Externalise to regulate

Before you push for solutions, try this: Contain, then lead.

Creative processing is a powerful form of self-regulation.

Non-verbal emotional expression, such as drawing, visual journalling, metaphor, reduces physiological stress markers and activates parts of the brain associated with perspective and identity.

This is where the Captain’s Log journalling practice comes in.

It draws on both CFT and narrative coaching approaches to explore and make sense of the chaos.

Try this:

• Imagine you are the Captain of your internal ship. The sea’s been rough. The crew (your thoughts, emotions, coping strategies) are panicking - some over-functioning, some hiding below deck. You’ve just returned to the bridge.

Now write a short log entry or message to your crew:

• What have they been doing in your absence?

• Which ones tried to take over, and why?

• What do they need to hear from you now?

• What do you need to remember to steady the course?

Close with:

• Here’s what I’m choosing to do next, not from panic, but based on what matters. Not what’s shouting loudest.

Here’s a line from my journalling this week:

"Soldiers are running around barking orders and trying to plug the leaks. Crew’s exhausted and losing interest in the fight. I’m back at the wheel but realise I need to narrow their focus to just the essentials in the next few days to keep some mental distance and restoration."

Key takeaways

In chaotic systems, leadership gaps are stressors in disguise. But self-leadership isn’t about doing more.

It’s about:

• Noticing when you’re compensating for external dysfunction and chaos

• Recognising when burnout patterns (Pleaser, Perfectionist, Overthinker etc) are running the ship

• Knowing when venting with others turns into emotional enmeshment

• Letting your Inner Captain return to the helm and bring calm direction to the forefront

You can shift from the threat system to the soothing system.

You can contain the chaos and lead from the centre.

You’re allowed to care, but you don’t have to carry it all on your own.

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P.S. Reply or comment on this: who’s been running your ship this week?!