From my perspective, I’ve noticed a marked decrease in the number of organizations looking to talk about burnout. A few years ago, I was booked month after month for short talks on burnout, well-being, and how organizations could help their people take care of themselves and, hopefully, avoid burning out. It was definitely the trend of the moment. But I haven’t had this topic requested once this year.

Much of that initial boom was definitely born out of the COVID pandemic, when care-minded organizations were scrambling to come up with whatever they could to support their people. It was an urgent need, and in many cases, a well-being workshop probably felt like the best band-aid most had at the time. It made sense. Doing something is better than nothing at all.

But where is burnout in the conversation now? In my world, it feels like it evaporated into thin air.

I found myself wondering if it was simply a case of bigger fires burning that have diverted attention in a new direction? Or then again, maybe it was time to move on from burnout being a key part of our organizational vernacular, and it had simply done its dash?

Did the Business World Actually Move on From Burnout?

It feels like the question used to be - how do we balance all the important things? But that it has shifted to feel a little something more like: how do we ensure we keep up in a world that will probably never slow down again?

Pulling out the Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends series for the last three years is fascinating fodder for my hypothesis.

• In 2024, Deloitte was addressing burnout directly, identifying work stress as a top concern, and using framing including “human sustainability”.

• In 2025, they moved to talking about workplace stress and declining manager mental health as part of a broader set of “tensions” that leaders must navigate between business performance and human well-being, and how leaders need to find the right balance between each of these polarities.

• And by 2026 (the report was released in March), the narrative has shifted strongly to speed, nimbleness, and maintaining competitiveness in an AI-powered world. There is a brief mention of “change exhaustion” as they highlight that the pressure on leaders is intensifying, but, notably, it feels like burnout and well-being have fallen off the agenda and been replaced by the need to keep up.

On the other hand, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) in its 2026 State of the Workplace Report listed stress and burnout as among the most pressing workplace needs. My experience doesn’t suggest this is marrying up with the market demand right now.

It feels a bit like we have a gap between what HR professionals perceive as needed to take care of people, and what the market is demanding in terms of adapting to new realities.

The Pressure Hasn’t Decreased

What we do know is that the stress itself hasn’t actually decreased. In fact, there are many indicators suggesting the challenges facing leaders are only accelerating and coming in thick and fast. COVID was a moment in time that required rapid pivoting, and while it was a really whacky moment, leaders are now facing increasing business pressure, flattening organizations, and the challenge of adopting AI in a world that won’t let them forget it.

And the middle management “squeeze” is real. This is that tough spot where it can often feel like leaders don’t have high levels of control or influence, but that is paired by high expectations, and that can feel extra tricky and icky.

Recent data supports the idea that leader stress hasn’t abated. DDI’s 2025 survey found that 71% of leaders reported increased levels of stress, which is up from 63% in 2022.

Another recent stat based on Gallup’s Future Forum 2025 data (as reported by BTS) stated that 45% of middle managers report burnout, which is higher than any other employee group. And only 21% say they’re thriving.

So what is clear is that stress, and its exhausted equivalent, burnout, haven’t actually disappeared. But we also haven’t somehow become immune.

Maybe Moving on from a Burnout Fixation is Healthy?

I’ve always had a problem with how we’ve framed stress as a society. The pendulum swung so far that we’ve literally reached a point where people get stressed about the risk of being stressed. We collectively built up a fear around something that is a very natural, even adaptive, and helpful human response.

I’m not advocating for pushing people to unsustainable levels for unreasonable amounts of time. I am absolutely an advocate for employee well-being and building workplaces that value human contribution in a way that is sustainable. We need healthy businesses and healthy human contributors.

But I am also here to say that being uncomfortable, feeling a little overwhelmed maybe even stressed at times, having some constraints put on us, and pushing ourselves outside our comfort zone isn’t something we should be afraid of. In fact, it’s the very thing that can help us thrive as humans.

Eustress is the side of stress we don’t talk about enough. It’s the fact that most things we do that feel truly worthwhile and like a real achievement are intimately interwoven with stress.

When I ask people about what they are most proud of, they will always look back at things that stress cannot be separated from - raising children, completing college, or a huge work project that they initially thought might be beyond their capabilities. Every single one of those things is stressful, and that is part of what also makes it feel fulfilling and meaningful.

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Naming burnout so readily did give us a label for a problem that had long been overlooked - and that was overdue. But it can also keep us stuck in the predicament. Labeling almost everything as feeling burnt out can trap us, purely because it casts stress as an enemy.

And an ongoing fixation on avoiding stress is like looking straight into a black hole and trying not to be sucked in. We tend to do better if we focus on what we do want and seek, rather than on what we want to avoid.

Just like self-care was never going to be a one-way track out of burnout-ville, nor is a workplace with no pressure ever going to be realistic.

And, ironically, this is what I’m now being asked for by organizations and very much aligns with Deloitte’s 2026 Trend Report. I call it adaptability; Deloitte calls it nimbleness - but I’m pretty sure we can all appreciate that is just a game of semantics.

Burnout appears to have had its moment in the sun, but great organizations will keep doing the work of building healthy workplaces and creating environments that support well-being. I’m confident that it won't fall off their agenda.

And it also feels timely to put the focus somewhere else - into building the skillsets and mindsets that will help us thrive in a world that will keep throwing challenges our way. That is taking a future-focus and building toward what we all need.

We can all benefit from being more aware of our stress mindsets and focusing on flexing with ebbs and flows of life and work. But according to the stats, leaders have the most to gain, not just because of the example you can set, but also the payoff to your own well-being.

It’s shown up in comments and questions like:

“I want to build trust, but what am I supposed to do with the direct report who is constantly in my office spilling their guts? It’s exhausting.”

Or

“We support people being authentic at our workplace, and it’s a stated value, so how am I supposed to have the conversation about spaghetti strap tank tops and ripped jeans not necessarily representing our professional standards when facing clients? Do I just not go there even though everyone knows it isn’t the right fit?”

And

“Recently, a leader who reports to me had a completely inappropriate emotional outburst at work. She’ll say she was being authentic, but the team was left shell-shocked and now they’re all walking on eggshells. So do I just allow her right to authenticity to be damaging to other people’s ability to feel safe at work?”

The dilemma for leaders is real. These are all situations that are icky, and make me want to grit my teeth, but I know these leaders aren’t alone in what they’re experiencing at work.

So how did we get here?

And what does authenticity actually need to become if it’s going to help contribute to a better workplace community?

Authenticity at work went way too far

I want to be clear - “bring your whole self to work” was a correction for something very real. For the longest time, many people felt like they had to mask up and leave large parts of themselves at the door, and were managing how much of their identity was really safe to show. Telling those people that they didn’t need to do that was a genuine gift.

But it’s a case of the fix for one problem becoming the cause of another. What led free people to stop hiding also inadvertently gave others the permission to stop filtering altogether, and turn their backs on professional standards that are also essential to stitching our workplaces together.

Then pop psychology inflated the trend into something that felt like an expression of pure freedom, speaking to our individual needs to be in control and feel valued. We took this new face of empowerment, and we went all in.

Yet we’re not just a bunch of disconnected individuals living next to each other. We’re social beings, and at work, we’re charged with working alongside one another. In this setting, we have a responsibility not only to ourselves, but to each other. We used to call meeting that responsibility character - doing what’s right even when it’s hard - and saw that as something to actually aspire to.

Authenticity itself isn’t the problem. It’s just that the authenticity we need is a demanding character-based virtue. What we’ve been sold is a flattering knockoff that is easy-peasy because it doesn’t ask anything of us. Its motto is - just show up as you feel, whatever that is.

We need a shot of “other-centeredness” to help balance out the overly “me-centered” authenticity we currently have. It is no surprise this is where it has currently landed, as it’s absolutely in lockstep with the current cultural moment.

We’ve been encouraged to take this individual focus through the self-help movement for decades now, and if you’re in the USA like me, it’s not hard to see that we live in a very individualistic society.

It’s woven into most of our psychological models, which tend to put the self right at the center. Authenticity is the modern face of self-actualization - a concept wrapped around realizing our full potential, personal growth, and self-directed authentic expression - which sat at the pinnacle of Maslow’s famous Hierarchy of Needs, where he framed it as the ultimate aim of human psychological development. “Bring your whole self to work” is simply this concept dressed up for the office.

But late in life, Maslow himself acknowledged that he had stopped short of human potential, recognizing that self-actualization, because it was only ever about the self, was utterly incomplete. He added the concept of self-transcendence - the idea of turning your energy outside of yourself and focusing it toward others - and realized it was an essential next step, sitting higher than the individualized approach on the path to becoming truly fulfilled.

Tragically, the textbooks never updated his model. And it’s clear that the workplace has yet to get a useful updated memo, too. Instead, we’ve taken self-actualization, added a good dose of authenticity-buzz, and dressed it up as “bring your whole self to work”, wrapping our culture and leadership philosophy all around it.

As can be predicted with most fads, we’re now at the extreme end of this trend and are seeing all the ways it isn’t working. “Bring your whole self to work” tells people to turn the lens inward and to make their own self-expression the central element.

What we need is to focus that lens more on others, beyond ourselves, and on our shared commitment to each other. Or in the case of work, toward being a thoughtful contributor to a greater whole, whether that is to the task at hand, our team, or our organization.

And here’s the thing - the individuals who are over-authenticating and overexpressing themselves at work aren’t to blame. This is the very narrative that has been encouraged for the last several decades. They’ve been given a permission slip. Because we’re the ones who jumped on the bandwagon, listened to a bunch of leadership gurus, took authenticity and self-actualization, and have effectively built a workplace religion around it. We did that together. But the thinking was incomplete. We have ignored that Maslow himself spent the end of his life saying he got the top of the pyramid wrong. We just need an idea reset.

The Diamond Metaphor

So how do we bring authentic self-expression back into lockstep with what it means to be professional, collegial, and considerate of those who work with and alongside us?

When I was trying to explain to an executive coaching client a couple of years back how we can be authentic without showing every part of ourselves, I landed on the metaphor of a diamond, and I've continued to find it helps illustrate my thoughts. We can be authentic without necessarily having to show every part of ourselves, but by instead finding the part of ourselves that meets the moment just right and bringing it forth.

A traditionally cut diamond has many facets, and depending on where the light hits, that area will reflect light and “shine”. We, too, are like diamonds. We are made of many parts, and we can consciously choose which parts of ourselves we bring forward to face the light, and which parts are better left in the background, so we can best meet the moment.

So if self-transcendence tells us that our focus should also be on what is outside of us, the diamond is how we direct our light. This is what thoughtful, character-based authenticity looks like. It allows us to be both real, and considered.

For example, I’m naturally shy, but there is a part of me that is a performer at heart. If I were to walk into a workshop and let the shy part of me lead, I would do a terrible job. That is a space where I need to hold a room, and so I need to dig deep and find the part of me that is a performer. She is in there; there is still me, but I do have to consciously bring that part forward. It is a facet of myself I have to bring into the light. Default-me would be shy. But performer-me is not a role I play, but an authentic part of me I can bring forward when I need to.

And this is useful authenticity. We all have parts of ourselves, and not every part needs to be shown at every point in time.

The Reframe

It’s bigger than the unhelpful behaviors we’re currently seeing in the workplace. The very concept of authenticity and the way it has been sold is actually the problem. We’ve drifted culturally toward a me-centered version of the concept, and we need to shift it toward a me-and-others-centered, balanced expression. Authenticity at work needs to be redefined. From self-actualization-focused to self-transcendent-focused.

We can value authenticity, and value professionalism and care for others. We can still be authentic and real, while also considering the impact our behavior has on others. They do not have to be mutually exclusive.

We need to rebrand authenticity so we all understand it is about bringing out the right parts of ourselves to meet the responsibilities of the moment.

Famous psychiatrist Viktor Frankl pointed us toward this self-transcendent approach decades ago. His reframe was to flip the question we ask from “What do I want from life?” to “What is life asking of me?"

We can do the same. At work, we can ask not, “How do I feel like expressing myself?” but rather, “What is this moment asking of me now?”

Our professional self should be the one coming to work, not necessarily our whole self. And leaning into our professional selves doesn’t mean we have to mask up; it just means we should be considerate about which parts of ourselves we’re bringing forth and ask ourselves whether they are the most effective for adequately responding to what the moment is asking of us, ensuring that they respect the freedoms and take care of others too.

Spilling our guts is a great match for a therapy session.

Sharing our thoughts, concerns, and maybe even frustrations, while also looking for solutions, is a better match for a discussion with our leader.

Ripped jeans are a good fit for a weekend with friends, but polished clothing is a better match for client-facing work when we’re representing a professional brand.

Leaders shouldn’t be afraid of clearly and explicitly redefining what authenticity looks like at work. We can’t expect our people simply to know when our cultural discussion has been so one-eyed (or self-focused) for so long.

But people are adaptive, and they will relearn and refocus if they know what is expected of them, and can see that they don’t have to give up being real and true in order to also be considerate of those they work alongside and of what the environment requires of them.

The simple message is that we need to recognize in ourselves, and highlight to our teams, that we can discern and choose which parts of ourselves to bring onto center stage at any given time.

You can still be real, but you should also be considerate. So maybe it’s time for us to stop encouraging people to bring their whole selves to work, and instead bring the parts of us that the moment actually needs.