Latest / The Burnout Podcast with Fexingo: Workplace Exhaustion, Recovery, and Sustainable Careers / The Burnout of Managing Up When Your Boss Is Exhausted
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this number that's been sitting with me since I first saw it earlier this year. Microsoft's 2025 Workplace Trends report — they surveyed over 30,000 workers across 31 markets — and they found that 62 percent of managers now say they're burned out. That's up from 53 percent the year before. Luna: That is a huge jump. And I think we intuitively know what that feels like on the receiving end, but let's get specific. Lucas: Let's. Because we talk a lot in this show about your own burnout — the direct causes, the personal recovery. But there's this second-order effect that's almost invisible until you're living it. What happens when the person who's supposed to guide, unblock, and advocate for you is themselves running on fumes? Luna: Right — managing up takes on a whole different texture when your boss is already depleted. It's not the classic 'how to influence your manager' advice. It's survival mode. Lucas: Exactly. And I want to ground this in a specific case. A friend of mine — let's call her Priya — is a product manager at a midsize SaaS company here in Austin. She's been at the company about four years, always been a high performer. But over the last eight months, her VP of product has been increasingly unavailable, visibly tired, and making erratic decisions. Luna: I bet she started picking up slack without even thinking about it. Lucas: Exactly what happened. She started prepping her boss for meetings she wasn't even attending — sending her one-pagers, flagging key decisions, re-explaining context that had been covered. She told me she was spending roughly four extra hours a week just bridging the gap between what her boss could handle and what the team needed. That is a full extra half-day of work. And nobody asked her to do it. She just did it because the alternative was the team stalling. Luna: And that's the trap, right? The team sees the bottleneck, someone steps in to unblock it, and then that compensation becomes the new normal. The boss never has to feel the full pain of their own exhaustion because someone else is absorbing it. Lucas: Precisely. And there's research on this. Wharton's Adam Grant has written about what he calls 'energy contagion' in teams. His studies show that a single depleted leader can lower the collective energy of a group by as much as 25 percent over a quarter. Not because they're mean — but because their indecision, their withdrawal, their shortened fuse all send micro-signals that everyone else has to adapt to. Luna: And those micro-signals compound. One study he cited found that teams with burned-out managers had 40 percent higher turnover intent among top performers — the people who had the most options to leave. Lucas: That number is devastating. Because the company doesn't lose the burned-out manager — at least not immediately. It loses the people underneath them who were carrying the extra load. Priya told me she started updating her resume about three months into this pattern. She hasn't left yet, but she's looking. Luna: So let's talk about what she — or anyone in that position — can actually do. Because most of the advice on managing up assumes your manager is functional. What do you do when they're not? Lucas: I think the first thing is to stop treating their burnout as your problem to solve. That sounds harsh, but it's actually compassionate. You cannot fix your manager's burnout for them. Trying to do so just exhausts you and delays them from seeking real help. Luna: So what does that look like practically? How do you disentangle? Lucas: A few things. One — start creating what I'd call 'decision boundaries.' In Priya's case, she had gotten into a pattern where she'd bring her VP a question, the VP would say 'I need to think about it,' and then nothing would happen for days. So Priya would follow up, re-ping, escalate. She was essentially managing the VP's decision queue. Luna: Right — that's classic decision fatigue transfer. Lucas: Exactly. So one shift is to start framing decisions differently. Instead of 'here's a problem, what should we do?' — which puts the cognitive load on the manager — you say 'here are two options. I recommend option A for these three reasons. If you don't respond by Thursday, I'll proceed with option A.' That gives them an easy out — they can just say yes — and it puts a deadline on their indecision. Luna: That's really smart. It turns an open loop into a closed one. And the manager's exhausted brain actually appreciates the structure, even if they don't say it. Lucas: Second thing — protect your own calendar ruthlessly. Priya realized she was blocking her own deep work time to accommodate last-minute requests from her VP. So she started doing what a lot of senior engineers do: she color-coded her calendar. Green blocks are fully protected focus time. She set an auto-reply for those blocks — literally 'I'm unavailable during this time and will respond when it ends.' And she held it. The first week, the VP tried to override it. Priya just replied 'I'll pick this up when my focus block ends at 3.' Luna: And the VP survived. Because they do. The world doesn't end. But it takes incredible discipline to hold that boundary when you're used to being the fixer. Lucas: It does. And the third thing is more structural. Priya eventually had a honest — not accusatory — conversation with her VP. She said something like 'I've noticed you seem stretched. I want to make sure I'm supporting you well. What's one thing I could take off your plate that would free up your energy for the strategic stuff?' That frames it as support, but it also surfaces the actual overload. Luna: Did it work for her? Lucas: Partially. The VP acknowledged being overwhelmed and offloaded two meetings a week to Priya. But she didn't change her own habits. About a month later, the VP took a two-week sabbatical — which the company actually offers but few people use. That seemed to reset things temporarily. But Priya told me she's now watching for the pattern to return. Luna: And that's the hard truth. You can build all the boundaries in the world, but if your manager's burnout is systemic and they're not addressing it, there's a ceiling on what you can do. At some point, you have to decide whether the situation is salvageable or whether you need to leave. Lucas: Yeah. And I think that's a really important point. Because a lot of the conversation around burnout focuses on individual resilience — take breaks, meditate, set boundaries. But it ignores the relational and structural dimensions. You can do all the right things and still be drained because the person above you is leaking energy into the system. Luna: It's like trying to keep a room cool when the air conditioner is broken. You can open windows, you can turn on fans, but the system itself is failing. Lucas: So what do you think listeners should take away from this? If they're in Priya's position right now, what's the first step? Luna: I'd say audit your invisible labor for a week. Track every time you do something that should be your manager's job — preparing their materials, making decisions they should make, absorbing their emotional spillover. Just write it down. The act of seeing it in black and white is often the thing that makes people stop. Lucas: And then? Because awareness alone isn't enough. Luna: Then pick one boundary from what we've talked about and test it. Just one. Don't try to fix everything at once. Maybe it's the decision recommendation format Lucas mentioned. Maybe it's protecting one focus block a day. See what happens. The worst case is the same as now. The best case is you reclaim some energy. Lucas: And if the manager's burnout is truly intractable — if they're not open to help, if the company doesn't offer resources like sabbaticals or coaching stipends — then the honest answer might be that the environment itself is the problem. And that's not a personal failure. That's a data point about fit. Luna: Yeah. And speaking of fit — one thing that helps us keep having these conversations without ads or sponsors is listener support. If the show has helped you think through a career situation or just feel less alone in a tough work dynamic, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a simple, no-pressure way to say this content matters. Lucas: And it genuinely lets us keep the show independent and focused on what we think is useful — not what an advertiser wants. So thank you to anyone who's done that. It means a lot. Luna: Alright — back to the thread. Lucas, one thing I've been wondering: are there any companies that are actually doing this well? That are recognizing manager burnout and building systems to prevent it from cascading? Lucas: Yes, a few. I've been impressed by what I've seen from companies like GitLab and Basecamp — though they're not perfect. GitLab has this really thorough asynchronous communication framework. They explicitly discourage real-time decision-making for non-urgent matters. The idea is that if a manager is burned out, they're not expected to respond instantly. They have 24 hours to reply to most messages. That structure protects both the manager and the team from the 'waiting for boss' spiral. Luna: That's a system-level solution. It doesn't rely on the manager being superhuman. It assumes they'll have off days. Lucas: Exactly. Another example I've seen: some companies now offer 'manager coaching stipends' — separate from general professional development budgets. The idea is that managers get a dedicated fund to hire an external coach or therapist, specifically for leadership-related stress. It de-stigmatizes getting help and it's not tied to performance reviews. Luna: That's smart because it decouples the support from the company's own evaluation system. A manager can be honest with a coach in a way they can't be with their own boss. Lucas: Right. And the return on investment for the company is pretty clear. If you prevent one top-performing team member from leaving because of manager burnout, you've probably saved three to four times the cost of those stipends. Luna: So to wrap this up — if you're a manager listening and you recognize yourself in the 62 percent, what's your takeaway? Lucas: I'd say the most important thing is to stop hiding it. Not in a dramatic way — you don't need to announce it in a team meeting. But find one trusted peer, or a mentor, or a coach, and say 'I'm struggling.' The data shows that managers are actually less likely than individual contributors to seek help for burnout, because they feel they have to project confidence. That's a trap. Luna: And if you're a team member seeing your manager struggle, remember: you're not responsible for fixing them. You're responsible for protecting your own energy and communicating boundaries clearly. That's not selfish. It's sustainable. Lucas: It's also probably the best thing you can do for your manager in the long run — because if you keep absorbing the cost, they never have to confront the problem. Let them feel the friction. That's how change happens. Luna: Alright, that's a good place to leave it. Next episode, we're going to look at something I think a lot of us have felt but rarely name: the exhaustion of performance — when you're constantly 'on' for presentations, client meetings, or even just being the upbeat person in the room. Lucas: Looking forward to that. For now — take care of your energy, and maybe start that invisible labor audit. Luna: See you next time.