As a CEO, you’re no stranger to long hours, high-pressure decision-making, and the relentless demands of leadership. But what happens when the weight of your role isn’t just affecting you—it’s dragging down your entire team? Staff fatigue is a silent productivity killer, and worse, it can create a toxic cycle where negativity spirals out of control, pulling even the strongest leaders down with it. If you’ve noticed that morale plummets after meetings and your team’s energy seems depleted, it’s time to take proactive steps to combat burnout—for both yourself and your organization. It’s time to energize your workforce.
Energize your Workforce: Understanding the Burnout Cycle
Burnout doesn’t happen overnight. It builds up slowly, fed by stress, exhaustion, and disengagement. It starts with employees feeling overworked, which leads to reduced motivation, cynicism, and ultimately a culture where even the CEO can’t escape the drag of negativity. When negativity takes hold, it becomes infectious—spreading from one frustrated employee to another, and eventually pulling leadership down as well. When this cycle isn’t broken, decision-making suffers, creativity diminishes, and turnover increases. As a CEO, you must recognize the warning signs and intervene before fatigue and negative thinking turn into a company-wide crisis.
Step 1: Reset the Meeting Culture to Energize your Workforce
One of the biggest drains on energy? Meetings. If negativity spikes after meetings, it’s a clear signal that something is off. Here’s how to fix it:
- Make meetings meaningful: Too many meetings are unfocused and unnecessary. If a meeting doesn’t have a clear purpose or doesn’t require discussion, consider handling it via email or a quick check-in instead.
- Start with wins: Open every meeting by celebrating small victories. This shifts the energy from dread to motivation.
- Shorten and streamline: Long, drawn-out meetings are exhausting. Keep them short, focused, and action-oriented.
- Encourage engagement, not complaints: Create a culture where problems come with proposed solutions, not just grievances.
- Address negativity head-on: If meetings end in frustration, take time to identify why. Is it unclear expectations, poor communication, or a lack of support? Tackle these issues proactively.
- End on a high note: Finish meetings with clear takeaways and an optimistic outlook to maintain morale. This will help energize your workforce.
Step 2: Be the Energy You Want to See
Leadership is contagious. If you’re visibly drained, your team will reflect that. To combat this:
- Prioritize self-care: CEOs often put themselves last, but proper sleep, exercise, and time away from work fuel long-term success.
- Set emotional boundaries: Absorbing everyone’s stress will only pull you down. Acknowledge concerns, but don’t let them dictate your emotional state.
- Practice optimism: Not blind positivity, but a mindset that seeks opportunities instead of dwelling on obstacles.
- Recognize and combat negative thinking: When you sense a negative spiral—whether in yourself or your team—pause and reframe challenges as opportunities for growth.
- Use mindfulness techniques: Deep breathing, meditation, or even a short walk can reset your mindset before or after difficult meetings.
Step 3: Energize Your Workforce by Addressing Workload Issues Head-On
Fatigue often stems from excessive workloads. If your team is constantly overwhelmed, something needs to change.
- Identify inefficiencies: Are people bogged down by unnecessary tasks? Automate or delegate wherever possible.
- Encourage realistic expectations: High standards are essential, but unrealistic demands lead to burnout. Make sure your team’s goals are ambitious yet achievable. To energize your workforce, be sure their roles are aligned with their strengths. To find out their strengths, you can take have them take the Clifton StrengthFinders test.
- Support mental health: Offer flexible work arrangements, encourage breaks, and provide access to mental health resources.
- Combat negativity caused by overwhelm: When employees feel overburdened, frustration grows. Regularly check in on stress levels and adjust workloads accordingly. Users of Burnoutable, the only platform to prevent and beat burnout, check in every day. Leaders have the opportunity to check in with themselves in the platform, and they also receive a weekly report of how their team checks in. This helps the leaders keep a finger on the pulse of their team, and with the next steps in the report, they are able to address any issues that may arise.
- Rotate responsibilities: If certain team members are consistently overwhelmed, consider redistributing workloads.
Step 4: Reinforce a Culture of Resilience
Resilience doesn’t mean ignoring stress—it means equipping your team with the tools to handle it.
- Foster psychological safety: Employees should feel comfortable voicing concerns without fear of repercussions.
- Promote continuous learning: Burnout often stems from stagnation. When employees are growing, they stay engaged.
- Recognize effort, not just results: A simple acknowledgment of hard work can go a long way to energize your workforce and boost morale.
- Encourage peer support: Building strong team connections reduces isolation and helps combat negativity.
- Train employees to recognize and challenge negative thinking: Offer training on negative thinking and resilience to help employees reframe challenges more constructively. Pro tip: We offer this training, so feel free to contact us at Jessica@JessicaRector.com
Step 5: Take a Hard Look at Leadership Styles
Sometimes, fatigue isn’t just about the workload—it’s about how leadership interacts with employees. If negativity spikes after meetings, it might be time for a leadership audit.
- Are you leading with inspiration or fear? A culture of fear leads to exhaustion. Lead with vision and purpose instead.
- Do employees feel heard? If meetings feel like top-down lectures, engagement will plummet.
- Is feedback constructive? Criticism without solutions drains motivation. Make sure feedback is actionable and balanced with positive reinforcement.
- Model healthy work habits: If you’re always working late and sending emails at all hours, your team will feel pressured to do the same.
- Recognize when negativity is becoming habitual: If a culture of complaining is forming, it doesn’t energize your workforce. It drags them down. Address it directly by encouraging solutions-based discussions.
Energy is a CEO’s Greatest Asset: To Energize your Workforce, it Begins with You
As a CEO, your energy is one of the most influential forces in your company. When you take steps to combat fatigue—both in yourself and in your team—you create a workplace that thrives rather than just survives. Reset your meeting culture, lead by example, address workload concerns, and build resilience. By doing so, you’ll break the burnout cycle and create a more engaged, productive, and positive company culture.
Because at the end of the day, when your team is energized, so are you. And when negativity tries to take hold, you’ll have the strategies to rise above it and keep your company moving forward.
If you’re ready to build a resilient, high-performing workforce that thrives without burnout, let’s talk. The future of work belongs to companies that put well-being first—make sure yours is one of them. Burnoutable.com>> Info@Burnoutable.com
ABOUT JESSICA:
Jessica Rector is on a mission to help others truly live.
Founder of Burnoutable, the first comprehensive SaaS platform to prevent and end burnout, Jessica empowers you to get out of your comfort zone and into possibilities, so you can break through burnout and tackle your negative thoughts to turn them into positive action and bigger outcomes!
Through their research, The Burnout Institute consults with companies and train teams to create a culture that no one wants to leave by enhancing mental health and eradicating burnout. They have worked with clients such as Scotiabank, NBCUniversal, the Dallas Mavericks, and Fortune’s #2 “Best Company to work for.”
As a #1 best-selling author of 12 books, Jessica has been interviewed on NBC for her research and work on burnout. As an HR.com Future of Employee Well-Being Advisory Board Member, Jessica helps to change the conversation around burnout and mental health with senior leaders and executives.
When she is not traveling around the world for work, Jessica enjoys creating more Say Yes experiences, while learning about the exciting world of Transformers, so she can carry on real conversations with her CFO, Chief Fun Officer, her twelve-year-old son, Blaise, who is also a #1 best-seller author and the youngest published author in the United States.
Get Jessica’s recent book, Blaze Your Brain to Extinguish Burnout: 52 Tip to Prevent, Break Through and Eliminate Burnout at jessicarector.com. Connect with her on LinkedIn by CLICKING HERE.
